by Olga Werby
Her face was blank. More than just blank, I could see her facial features dimming and fading into a white mask. It was very disconcerting, and I was, in fact, very disconcerted.
Her face continued to dissolve, but at the edges, next to the hairline, I started to notice a few perturbations. It was like another face was fighting the mask for domination.
“Jude?” A set of small lips by the receptionist’s left ear asked.
“Doc?” I tried to focus just on the lips and ignore the rest of the unhelpful avatar. She tried to turn away. If Doc hacked his way into this woman’s face, he had only partial control. “Is that you?” I asked. Yes, that was a stupid question. Who else would it be? Who even knew I was out here?
The face blinked and was back to normal—and she looked pissed. “You need to go now, Miss. We are closing for a scheduled maintenance shortly.” Of course they were. “We won’t be able to accommodate you at this time.” Of course they wouldn’t!
I was sure Doc was somewhere in this building. I just needed to get past this annoying social barrier. I got up and moved as if intending to exit, but instead, I flipped my vertical orientation again. I don’t know what made me think of doing it, but it worked to get into this place, so it could have worked to get in the back room, behind the receptionist’s head. It didn’t. But as I was flipping, I saw that if I rushed past the woman, I could force my way into the room behind her. So I propelled myself that way.
As I sailed toward her, she exploded or turned inside out, not sure which really. Her size expanded tenfold. She became an amalgam of teeth and arms—a weapon more than a receptionist. She tried to seize and bite my legs as I was trying to float over what used to be her head. These people took their jobs way too seriously.
I kicked, but there were way too many arms grabbing for me. Fortunately, I had more snakes on my head than she had arms. And my snakes were vicious. Like vipers, they snapped and buried their fangs into whichever arms were closest to them. I was sure I was poisonous, too. I imagined the mouthy receptionist melting under my venomous bites.
Her arms wilted like petals on an elderly daisy. Her teeth were still active, though. But without arms to support and navigate them, they were snapping in frustration as I finally maneuvered into the back room. I turned and kicked the door closed behind me. I could hear her gnashing on the other side. I would have nightmares about this, I decided, but later. Now I had to go find Doc.
Once I was in the back, I imagined how the receptionist looked when I first stepped through the black water wall, before she became all arms and teeth, then “sucked” that look into my avatar. It wasn’t a perfect mimicry—I wasn’t good at that yet—but I managed to look kind of like that woman at the front desk…with a poisonous orange snake hairdo. Now that my little babies had tasted blood, they were way too excited to form anything even related to a decent professional hairstyle. I decided that was fine and marched inside the building with a full Gorgon do.
The walls around me played the ads I’d seen outside. As I passed a bank of floor to ceiling screens—I know it doesn’t make sense to call them screens in cyberspace, it’s all just ones and zeros—I noticed that they reflected me but with the suggested enhancements they were selling. I did a double take in front of one screen that showed me with a set of double dragonfly wings. They were translucent with a rainbow sheen rippling up and down. If I had cash, I would have so gone for those.
There were other enhancement options, stranger and stranger, as I walked deeper into the building’s heart. Nipples turned into blinking eyes—why? Weathering faces—not attractive. What looked like black eels swimming beneath the surface of my skin—my snakes liked that and hissed excitedly at that image. It was very easy to get distracted by all of the enhanced possibilities of me for sale here. Even when I didn’t like or even understand what I saw, it was still interesting. Still mesmerizing.
“Doc!” I called into that kaleidoscope of possibilities. “Doc!” But I wasn’t getting anything back. I wandered the labyrinthine corridors, probably doubling back dozens of times, but, aside from the cool ads, there was nothing and no one there. I needed a new strategy.
I considered going back to the receptionist and asking her questions—from behind the closed door, of course. She did still have a mouth—a bunch of them. So, I turned to walk back, which I knew was pointless since I was sure I had been walking in circles. But what else could I do? I tried to pay attention to the walls around me, not just the screens with ads but all of the surfaces. I might have missed a door in all the flickering busyness.
I must have seen her a few times before my conscious brain clued me in—an image of me was sneaking around, just at the edge of certain video frames, dodging out of sight when she thought I’d spotted her. It was me as I am in real life, not me the Lizard Girl. That’s probably why it took me so long to notice her. Me. Whatever. I pretended I wasn’t paying attention to that me and stopped to admire an ad selling snake tongues (yes, with an “s”). And there I…she was on her hands and knees, in a pink tutu, sneaking into the next video frame. But I could run faster than she could crawl. One leap and I caught her. She crouched there, frozen.
“Where’s Doc?” I said to her…me.
She shook her head then extended her hand to me. An old-fashioned, ornate hand mirror grew from her palm. I didn’t hesitate to take it, even if it was handed to me from a video frame. Cyber reality is not life reality—there’s no real distinction between a video and a sub-reality. The doppelgänger me in the “video” just became a true reflection, and I saw that I was holding the hand mirror just like the me in the video wall.
“Now what?” I asked my reflection in the hand mirror. But that me just smiled and ran out of frame.
Fine. Whatever. I can figure it out on my own, I thought. I examined the mirror. I assumed it was a physical representation of my side of the Mirror-Mirror app Doc gave me. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. I didn’t look into it again—that would have been stupid. Mirrors’ active controls were their reflective surfaces—I knew that much now. This mirror looked like one of those your great-great-grandmother had at the turn of some century. No one has mirrors like this anymore. Who would want a dumb mirror? All mirrors in the real world are IRRDs—information-rich reflective devices—that can show you your reflection and suggest makeup tips and wardrobe choices as well as tell time and keep track of your alarms and schedule and provide a quick round-up of news plus important notifications.
Well, this mirror wasn’t dumb, either—I was in The Far Cinct, after all—but it looked dumb. There were no action points, no swipe surfaces, no buttons to press, and nothing responded to touch. I pushed and rubbed and experimented with sliding decorative patterns and surface edges, trying to figure out how to interact with the thing, but nothing worked. Obviously, there was only one mode of use for this mirror—I had to look into it again.
“Doc?” I yelled instead. I really didn’t want to gaze into the stupid mirror. I stomped my feet in frustration, closed my eyes, and held it up to my face. I cautiously opened one eye—just a crack. My reflection—the stupid one-eyed squint grimace—stared back at me. I opened my eye a little more. My face still looked stupid. Whatever. I opened both of my eyes.
The image of my face dissolved into an Imprint Accepted message, and the mirror went dark. I poked it again to see if it activated a touchscreen or any other features now, but nothing more happened. I activated CatEyes to check the map app for Doc’s location again. Nothing. I’m not generally obtuse. I get things fast. I do. I really do.
“Doc!” This was getting ridiculous. “If you don’t give me some kind of a clue, I’m going home. School starts in just about an hour. Dad’s probably up and wondering why I’m still locked in the bathroom. And I am tired and cranky. Hear me? Cranky! So, you better give me a clue or I’m outta here.” Of course, I still had to get out of this stupid Try-n-Buy maze, not to mention make my way to the exit point.
I sta
rted to leave and the world derezzed: the walls dropped down. I dropped the hand mirror trying to stabilize myself. Hit my elbow on the vanity. Ouch!
“Jude! What the hell is going on?” My dad sounded mad. “Why are you on the cyber terminal instead of getting ready for school?”
“Dad! My mirror. Mirror!” And in a disappearing cyber-distance, the hand mirror lit up and showed Doc, curled up like a little kid…a giant black panther in a small white-gray cage.
Then there was nothing. I was fully back in the reality of my own bathroom again.
I was disoriented. One unpleasant way of leaving cyberspace was by having your parent yank the connection plug. My terminal has parenting controls installed, although the police can do it to anyone, of course.
7. Two Days Ago
“Mirror, mirror,” really? Why do baby hackers always fall back to fairytale metaphors? Was that the best Doc could come up with for a code word? Why not “abracadabra”? Next thing he would start using spells from Harry Potter. I never had the head for that kind of nonsense. I fumed and hollered at the kid silently. I was angry that it never even occurred to me to use the stupid phrase as a password. It was so obvious…in retrospect. Damn.
I went around my bedroom absentmindedly, putting on my clothes and gathering my school sutaffu. But what I needed to do was to get back to The Far Cinct. I hoped I still had my hand mirror in there. I’d never been yanked out of cyberspace before. What happens to the avatar once the person leaves that world? I wasn’t sure. My green lizard princess avatar didn’t have pockets or a handbag. If an app is represented by a physical metaphor, where does it get stored? And is something like a bag necessary to store virtual objects? Perhaps I have some sort of a pouch in my lizard getup, like a kangaroo. If I was programming these avatars, that’s what I would do—a nice, discrete, convenient hiding place for all my cyber sutaffu. Like an expanding bellybutton—pull a string, and a big storage space opens up. What else would virtual bellybuttons be good for? Mine could be a motorcycle garage—walking to The Far Cinct from our cyber arcade took way too long. Or a plane hangar—why think small? My bellybutton storage could be as big as I want. Avatars are all skin: no skeletons or internal organs, so there should be plenty of space inside. No, that doesn’t even make sense. All this stress was turning me into a natterer.
I was so preoccupied that I didn’t notice Dad standing next to me, talking. When I finally looked up, I knew something was wrong. He looked freaked.
“—missing since last night,” he was saying. “Tom has been looking for him. He called all of Bartholomew’s friends and none of them have seen him since school yesterday. Claudia called the police.”
“Dad? Doc is missing? He’s not in his room?” I assumed that the kid just locked himself in his room, like I did, to go wandering around in cyberspace. “Did they look under his bed? In a bathroom?” I knew that was a stupid thing to say as soon as I said it.
Dad looked at me like I was crazy. “He’s missing, Jude.” He shook his head. “I know you really like Bartholomew. Can you think of any place he could be?”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew where he was—curled up like a pretzel in a small room somewhere in that strange building in The Far Cinct. But where was his body? His real little boy body?
“Did you talk to him last night?” Dad asked.
“Y-yes,” I stammered. “He was telling me about the cyber arcade.”
“So, you weren’t with him just now?”
“No,” I replied honestly.
“Claudia thought he might have plugged in somewhere.” Dad was nodding, agreeing with his wife. “Do you know anything else? Anything? It’s important, Jude.”
I knew it was important. “Can I stay home and help?” I asked. I felt tears streaming down my face. I was tired and hadn’t slept. My emotions were too raw, too close to the surface to keep under control.
Dad came over and gathered me in a hug. “Of course, princess. I’ll call the school.” He pressed me close and rubbed my back, and I sobbed into his clean shirt. He would have to change it.
After a few minutes, Dad went downstairs to make calls, searching for Doc. I heard Claudia down there, too. She was talking on her CT—cyber terminal. I carefully closed and locked my bedroom door, dragged my connection back into my private bathroom, and locked that door as well. I should have gotten coffee first. Instead, I bent down and drank straight from the faucet. Cold water wasn’t as good as caffeine, but it would have to do. I plugged back in.
I materialized behind the arcade. I was hoping to get back to exactly the place from which my dad yanked me, but I guess that’s not how things work. Kind of like a game, you disconnect, you go back to the start. Do over. I needed to get all the way back to The Far Cinct again.
It was early morning and there wasn’t a lot of school age action at the cyber arcade—teenagers like to sleep late, even on school days. Especially on school days. I searched my avatar body, trying to find that hand mirror, and almost jumped out of my virtual skin. Just under the surface of my green scales, about half a dozen black eels swam around inside my body. I stifled a scream. Once I got hold of myself—which wasn’t easy—I realized that my hair snakes must have really bonded with the eels from the showroom a few hours ago and snatched them. On top of everything else, I was an eel thief. Wonderful! I wondered what the penalties were for underage cyber criminals?
Mirror. I still needed that mirror. Where was that cool marsupial pouch I thought of? Where’s my bellybutton? My avatar didn’t come with one, apparently. Couldn’t my snakes steal a body pouch app instead? I felt myself getting angry and annoyed—a much better set of emotions than fear and anxiety out here in cyberspace.
I felt the stampede of footfalls before I heard them. My rhythm app went nuts, sending ripples down my body to the running beat. That scream that I thought I stifled must have been louder than I realized. I hoped my dad or Claudia didn’t hear me back in reality. Bad enough my own ruckus got me caught out here in cyberspace.
“There she is!” someone yelled, and I saw a posse of bouncers from the rave club.
Great! Now what? I started running, away from the burly men and away from The Edge. Damn. I tapped myself all over as I ran—hoping to find that secret app pocket. My avatar wouldn’t be so stupid as to drop the mirror, would it? What I didn’t know about how things worked in cyberspace was astronomical!
The eels swirled away from my hands and let out sparks when I “touched” them—electric eels, apparently. I wondered if they could be used for self-defense and, if they could, how? Something practical, please!
“Stop! Stop!” a man the size of a giant gorilla bellowed…or was he more King Kong-sized? It was amazing the way my mind wandered, complete free-association, like I was a total teenager. Wait—I was! I am! I hope to continue to be! Well, no. I want to grow up. Please let me grow up!
“We just want to talk to you,” Kong called to me. “There’s a kid missing…” So these guys were searching for Doc, too. Great. Somehow, I didn’t think their motives for finding my kid brother were the same as mine.
I darted into an open doorway. It was one of the avatar boutiques that lined most of the side streets off the main shopping avenue in the cyber arcade district. Patrons with more discerning taste, and money to spare, shopped for their digital bodies here. Inside was a nice androgynous sales clerk doing something with the inventory of hair options. I guessed the store wasn’t open yet, for she…uh, he was not pleased to see me. Or he disapproved of my hair choice—snakes.
The clerk was just about to protest my rude entrance when the King Kong dude blocked the front door. More of his brethren stood outside, watching through the windows, unable to fit into the shop’s door.
“What’s the hurry, Lizard Lady?” Kong asked. There was a sick smile on his face. The mega dude wasn’t inquiring about my scheduled appointments.
“See here,” the clerk said. It was his job to protect his customers and, between me a
nd that oversized gorilla, it was clear who the potential customer was. “We only allow one person at a time to browse our merchandise,” he said—a nice way of telling King Kong to beat it. I slinked farther into the store, behind the annoyed clerk. Let them fight it out; I needed to get out of there.
“I’m just here for the lizard girl,” King Kong informed the shop clerk and reached for me. His arms were huge. More than huge. And I think they were actually extending, growing out to reach me—a nice little enhancement app for the avatars of grabby men.
I patted myself again. “Where is that mirror?” I murmured.
“Mirror?” the clerk asked. That was something he could understand. “Just behind—”
King Kong swiped him out of the way, and the clerk never got to finish his directions to the fitting room. The sausage-like fingers grabbed my waist, then all hell broke loose. My snakes hissed and snapped at the oversized gorilla’s snout. The eels exploded with electricity, frying all of the hairs and nails off the offending bouncer’s paw. Lighting-like pyrotechnics continued to explode from my body anywhere I came in contact with furniture, inventory, or people. Things were either flying away from me or being fried on contact. The cyber hair salon—or was it a digital wig boutique?—incinerated spectacularly around me.
When I was finally able to look around—during the altercation, I just kept my eyes closed tight because of all the sparks and confusion—the gang of bouncers was gone, the store was a burned-out cube, and the clerk was standing, relatively unscathed, blinking at me in total disbelief.
“Mirror?” he asked again and pointed at a charred wall.
“Mirror. Mirror!” I yelled frantically and the stupid thing materialized in my hand. But of course! “Take me to Doc,” I ordered and was instantly transported back into The Far Cinct, to what now appeared as the ruin of the building that used to sell avatar body enhancements. The Enhancements Try-n-Buy Emporium was no more. Two for two—now, I had a track record for destruction out here.