Lizard Girl & Ghost

by Olga Werby

  Cyberspace is not like reality. Entropy flows freely in both directions out here. Buildings that blow up can come back together again, every pixel and data point restored to their initial programmed position. Well, that’s true as long as there’s a backup and the digital item that was blown up could be restored from that backup. Sometimes, viruses and malware get in the way of the free flow of entropy, then bad outcomes stay bad. The emporium looked to be in ruins, with thousands of little fluffs of bad code munching away at the broken walls that used to feature the upward-falling black waterfalls. I was vaguely curious about what happened here…other than me. I didn’t think I could be responsible for all of this damage.

  I cateyed and examined the map app for any clues left by Doc as to his current whereabouts. There was the faintest of a suggestion of a mark—like something was erased repeatedly and the leftover schmutz was more of an absence of information than a data point on the map. But it was good enough for me! And the mirror wouldn’t have taken me here if Doc wasn’t around, right? So, I walked around the rubbled site, looking for clues. Doc was a big light-sucking panther, for goodness sake; he’d be hard to hide.

  The little furry data eaters tried nibbling on my feet, but I kicked them out of my way. I wasn’t some passive ruin for them to gobble up. I kicked some virtual rocks and broken furniture for good measure. Everything turned into dust as soon as I touched it. Convenient.

  “Doc?” I called tentatively. I wasn’t sure if I had to be looking for him surreptitiously or if it was okay to scream out his name in here, in The Far Cinct. The result was a cross between a whisper and a yell—stupid. But it did attract attention—more and more of the data devourers rolled my way. I didn’t like that. I leapt away from the collapsed building, where most of the insatiable data guzzling fuzzies congregated. I didn’t have a clue what to do next. Perspicacious, I wasn’t.

  I considered my predicament. I didn’t have much time. At any point, Dad or Ms. Evil would find some reason to want me and start banging on my bedroom door. And I just didn’t know much about The Far Cinct. What were the rules? Could the cyber dust eaters hurt me? Where would Doc go to hide? Who would take him? Who would want to?

  Gattara. She was the only one I knew out here. I turned to go to the place where I met her last, a few buildings away. The fuzzies ingesting the rubble were probably hers anyway.

  “Hello again, sweetie.” Gattara appeared in front of me almost as soon as I thought of talking to her. Made me jump. “Still looking for your friend?” she asked.

  It took me a moment to gather my wits and to kick a few information-chewing apps away from me. The dust balls were definitely Gattara’s minions—they rushed to her for protection. “Yes,” I said finally. “I’m still looking. Do you know where Doc is?”

  “I see you got a few upgrades,” she went on as if I hadn’t answered her. “The eels are quite lovely.”

  “Thank you.” I heard a crash behind me—more of the building coming down? Seemed silly to go to all this trouble in a simulated environment. But I knew a lot of money and brain power went into making cyberspace as realistic as possible, with smells, sounds, and haptics almost as good as reality.

  “I hope you picked up a few non-superficial enhancements while you rummaged around in there—”

  “I did no such thing!” I snapped at her. How dare this old hag accuse me of theft? The eels weren’t even my idea…

  “The poor receptionist was very distraught by your behavior,” Gattara said.

  I bet she was. “We did have an unfortunate unmeeting of the minds,” I said. “And I did end up leaving without finding my friend. And to get back to that—do you have any idea where he might be?”

  “The panther kid?”

  Now we were getting somewhere! “Yes.”

  “We removed him from this disaster heap a little while ago,” Gattara said completely nonchalantly, as if she didn’t know I’d been looking for Doc for hours. “For his own safety, of course.”

  As if! “Where is he?” My snakes stood up on their tails and eels emitted sparks to stress my distress over such incredible non-helpfulness.

  “What pretty little things,” Gattara approved my herpetological display, although technically eels are fish. But out here in cyberspace, who was keeping track?

  “Where is he now?” I asked again, trying to keep her on topic. I was tired of playing games.

  “My peewee darlings can take you to him, if you desire.”

  “I desire.”

  “So be it,” she said, and, suddenly, a throng of two-bit-algorithms-swabbed-in-hairballs avatars swarmed me.

  I didn’t even have a chance to gulp. I was covered head to toe in nasty little data cloud grabbers. I couldn’t even see past the thick wall of info fog. I felt like I was suffocating, except avatars didn’t need to breathe and I had plenty of air in my bathroom back home. I tried to suppress the strong feelings of torschlusspanik—flipping out was the last thing I needed. I tried to brush, pull, and rip those nasty dust bunnies off my face and body. But they were like foxtails on athletic socks—relentlessly clingy.

  Then they were gone and I was in a small gray room flooded with weak white light. Doc was lying on the floor next to me. His black panther avatar seemed to be unhurt. Well, at least nothing was obviously missing or bleeding. Not that I thought there would be a telltale sign of injury here in cyberspace. Do avatars bleed?

  “Doc?” I said and bent down to pet him behind the ears.

  He purred. It was low-frequency purr, more a distant thunderstorm rumble. And I could feel the vibrations not only in my fingers but all the way deep inside my nonexistent virtual guts. The eels backed away from Doc’s panther, and the snakes settled down, relaxing into the rhythm of his strong vibrations, dancing little sinusoidal pirouettes.

  “What happened to you? Are you hurt?” I asked. But Doc didn’t answer, he just continued to lie there and purr. “Can you hear me?” I tried shaking him a little, but my fingers didn’t like that. Almost without my volition, they continued to scratch behind the panther’s ears in a complicated circular motion. I pulled away, but found that I was rubbing the fur almost immediately after I stopped paying attention to my hands. The compulsion to pet Doc was spooky and comforting all at once.

  “Doc? I need you to wake up now. I don’t know where we are. And I don’t know how to get you back home. But your dad is looking for you. And your mother, too. And my dad is helping. And I’ve locked myself in my bathroom, but I don’t know how much time I have…” I blabbered on even as my own mind disconnected from the conversation. Doc was clearly not helping. Something was wrong with him and I had to find a way to get him out and back someplace safe. Someplace where he could get the help he obviously needed.

  I looked around while both of my hands engaged in vigorous panther shoulder massaging. The room we were in was small, just big enough to hold mine and Doc’s avatars. There weren’t any doors or windows, no openings of any kind. It was just a blank gray box. And we were inside. The gray, though, was the familiar gray of The Edge. So, I guessed we were in there somewhere.

  I considered what I could do—what parts of my avatar and my environment did I have access to? I “ghosted” a little—my pattern absorption app was working fine, and I didn’t feel drained of energy by using it. My rhythm app was obviously working—my hands and scales danced to the beat of Doc’s purring. I brought up the map app—should have thought of that sooner—and asked it to show me our current location in cyberspace. It showed nothing, of course. It was such a stupid app. But I was careful to keep my opinion of its performance to myself—I didn’t want it to bug out on me again. Who knew that map apps could be sensitive?

  I considered what to do next. Perhaps Doc programmed a little hack to the map app to make it work with my special eyes? I bet that was why he got the eye enhancements for me in the first place. Sneaky, but useful. I felt bad for maligning my little mapper. I considered showing it some love, but it ha
d stopped manifesting itself as a little origami cat, so whatever. Good app, I tried sending positive emotions its way. Then I cateyed and tried the map app again. This time, it highlighted a whole street out on The Far Cinct—a little more helpful. Having the whole street highlighted as our current location was strange. The “you are here” notifications are points, not lines—it takes two coordinates to mark a location. But it was something and I was willing to take it.

  I considered what else I could do. When I was buying my avatar, I was just going for coolness, not practicality. But Doc’s smarter than me. I pulled up my eye selection menu. So far, I’d used the Starry-Eyed option, the CatEyes option, and the default option. I’ve also played around with colors, doing the whole kaleidoscope effect for Dude. That date seemed ages ago. What other options were there? I scrolled through a bunch of shapes and colors—noober stuff. Once you go CatEyes, why would you want happy face irises? I went into the advanced options. Here we go—X-Ray vision, Night Sight, Lazer Glance, Ghost Seekers, Fireballs, MalSpy. Now we were talking! I didn’t know what kind of superpower each eyeball option gave me, but they all sounded much cooler than the Baby Blues or the AnimEye selection in the non-advanced feature set. There were detailed instructions for each option that went on forever. I’ve already mentioned that I’m not the type to read instructions.

  X-ray! And, suddenly, I could see beyond the walls of our little gray cube cell. We were suspended over a street not far from the collapsed building. The rubble was almost gone now; the hairy data scavengers had consumed it all. I wondered if the customers of the Enhancements Try-n-Buy Emporium had suffered a security breach. Well, at least no one would learn that I was an eel thief…maybe. That was something.

  The walls of our gray cage weren’t all the same. Two, the ones aligned in the direction of the street below, had a slightly different feel to them, less solid somehow. D’oh! I should have used my other senses to examine our little room; you know, feel around with my hands…which were still busy vigorously scratching the big sleepy cat.

  I kept my vision in x-ray mode, pulled myself away from Doc, and crawled to one of the “less solid” sides. They felt solid when I knocked on them. I compared that sound to the sound of rapping on an adjacent wall. It was slightly different. Of course, I wasn’t just knocking; I was making a fancy beat—that’s the rhythm app for you. I wondered if it had an off switch. Something to explore later, in my copious spare time. So, visual and audio data were telling me the walls were different. I tapped on the floor and the ceiling for good measure—these were just like the “normal” walls on the sides.

  I considered my next steps. And as soon as I wasn’t actively thinking or using my hands, they were back kneading the panther. It was a strange feeling, impulsive yet reassuring. I could easily imagine Doc programming some tricky app that made everyone around him want to give his avatar a rub. To each his own. Perhaps Ms. Evil wasn’t a hands-on mother with Doc; I certainly found her cold and unavailable. I looked back outside. I could do that now—the walls, the floor, and the ceiling were all transparent to my x-ray vision. It’s a good thing I’m not a sufferer of acrophobia—fear of heights—or I might have had a problem, looking down at the pavement from my position far above it.

  The street below was one of those small alleys that made up the maze of city roadways in The Far Cinct. There were a few shops down the street, selling things I couldn’t figure out from this distance…or any distance really. Closer, some artisan studios advertised code enhancements, although I didn’t know enough about programming or the cyber world to understand what they could be. But mostly, we were suspended over an empty street, not even a ghost in sight. I’ve always imagined The Far Cinct to be more exciting, more exotic, but it was a city with micro-neighborhoods, just like any city in the real world. It wasn’t even all that different from the cyber arcade. If I could get us out there, into the street below, I could carry the sleeping panther to an avatar first aid clinic, near one of the main cyber exit stations.

  If you can’t think through to the solution, get there by brute force, I always say. I kicked the wall as hard as I could. Ripples radiated from the point of impact, but the gray cube held together. I tried again and again. The ripples undulated over the whole surface of our holding cell and converged behind me, only to bounce back around. It was like dropping sugar balls into a cup of coffee—interesting, if one was bored or didn’t want to hurry to school. But I was in a hurry now and didn’t want to watch the distortion waves reflect off each other indefinitely. I gave the wall one last kick for good measure and sat back down, scratching Doc’s soft ears.

  It was time to try a different set of eyes—Fireballs! No, that was stupid in an enclosed space. Lazer Glance! I made the selection, and the parallel beams of green lasers leaped from my eyes and almost cut Doc in half. I shut my eyes and took several deep breaths. Then, with my eyes still tightly closed, I moved over to the wall I wanted to cut and gently squinted. Less intense beams zapped out and hit the wall. It sizzled! I opened my eyes all the way and let the wall have it. Gray smoke filled our cell, but I kept my Lazer Glance firmly on target—one can’t get cancer or black lung from virtual smoke. And bit by bit, the wall melted. I watched small sections of gray weep then drip down onto the street below, melting like candle wax. I waited until the holes merged into something big enough to get Doc’s avatar out and shut my eyes. I knew now to change my eyeball options with my eyes closed. One lesson learned, so many more to go.

  I chose normal vision for the moment—normal for my green sexy lizard avatar, anyway. I could always pick something else later. I gasped as the hole I made came into focus. The gray, boring alleyway I saw with my X-Ray vision was replaced with a brightly colored, wildly chaotic, extremely loud, Chinatown-like shopping bazaar, a free for all. It looked like an awesome place to hang out or go on a date. I was blown away by the vibrancy and seductiveness of the “get anything you want” street below. But I had work to do; my hands were already wrapped around Doc’s thick fur.

  “Come on, Doc. Time to get a move on.” I hoisted Doc’s avatar on my shoulders and draped him like an old-fashioned fur coat. His paws were dangling down by my feet; his big sleepy head was resting against my hips, tongue lolling out. It was a good thing that in The Far Cinct, gravity wasn’t an issue. I stepped over the edge of the burned-out hole and jumped a full story or two down onto the pavement below.

  So far, so good. My body flexed. I crouched my landing then I stood up and walked away, Doc still cloaking me.

  I managed to go just a few steps before I spotted one of Gattara’s minions rushing toward us. And where there was one…I kicked it as far as I could, which turned out to be over the low roof of one of the Repair-Me stalls selling app updates, custom fits, and unauthorized system preferences repairs. Doc would have probably killed me just for thinking about trusting those guys, but he was still out. And the moment, I desperately needed some software reconditioning, and the Repair-Me engineers looked like they could help.

  I eyed a particularly loud stall. It zapped and flashed and twirled e-signs that tooted all the possible enhancements and adjustments they could do to me for a fraction of the cost of legitimate operators. I assumed by “legitimate operators” they meant the clinics at the official cyber exit stations. Unfortunately, I needed an avatar medic sooner than that. I stopped to ask a question and was immediately inundated with proposals and propositions. Some of their stuff was obviously extremely dirty. It made me want to run and take a shower just hearing snippets of what those guys sold. No, that wasn’t the cyber-aid I was looking for. I practically ran from that stall and heard them chasing me with hundreds of other offers of what they could do for…to me. No thank you!

  The street was full of vendors trying to catch my attention. I gathered that it was too early for the daytime customers and too late for their regular crowd of delinquents. I decided that if I lived through this day, I would have stories to tell for the rest of the school ye
ar.

  I hurried. A few more dust balls tried to follow me, but they got the same boot-kicking treatment. I noticed a little alert for my eyeball-ware—a little digital irritant that drew my attention inwards. It really wasn’t a good time, but I found it too hard to resist. There was an option for SnakeEyes. And as I saw it in my mind’s eye, my hair snakes got super excited. Call me a sucker, but I opted to try the SnakeEyes feature. Immediately, my attention split into a thousand views of the street all around me. It was overwhelming. I tripped and almost fell into a spinning wheel churning out fuzzballs, like the kind Gattara used. Maybe this was where she bought her blanks, prior to customizing them.

  “Watch it, Lizard Girl!” someone screamed at me, as if I was trying to fall into the sick mini data daemon assembly line on purpose.

  I recovered myself, but Doc’s tail got tangled up with something and the whole thing started to tip over on top of me. I whipped Doc away and threw him, then tried to catch what I could. It was confusing because I saw everything with many sets of eyes—each of my snake hair bundles and eels was now capable of independent eyesight, courtesy of SnakeEyes, I guessed. It was a fine option, but I needed time to learn to use it. As I was struggling with the digital dust bunny factory, I tried to return my eyes back to normal, but instead, I selected the Fireballs feature. Fire streams poured out of my many eyes and turned everything within a four-foot radius into dust. Thank goodness I’d thrown Doc out of range.

  So, the SnakeEyes and Fireballs could be combined. Cool. Well, hot. But cool. I switched all eye enhancements off.

  I stood up and dusted myself off. I wasn’t going to dustsceawung for the incinerated fuzzies. I looked around. The whole street had quieted down and everyone’s attention was on me. Way to keep a low profile.

  “Sorry about this, everyone,” I said, waving. “Just a little accident.” I’m sure stuff like this happens all the time out here in the Far Cinct, but the street was quiet. What? They didn’t believe me that it was an accident? I backed away towards Doc’s prostrate panther body. “Time to go, buddy,” I said, hefting him back over my shoulders. “I think double time would be appropriate.” I ran to the next intersection and turned. I couldn’t handle everyone gaping at me.