by Olga Werby
Then there’s a white flash and the room explodes around us. After a brief moment of nothingness, I’m standing in the middle of a busy street out in The Far Cinct. Ghost, now recombined into a single feline entity, is rubbing himself against my leg. I can tell he is shaken, too.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Should we go back to Doc’s hideout?” he asks.
I consider it, but no. “We still don’t know if all of the kids are real,” I say. “We need a new space to hide.”
“I know just the one.” He grabs my hand with his long, soft tail and pulls me through the crowd.
No one seems to care we are there. No one appears surprised by our sudden appearance. I guess tall verdant lizard girls with gray cat companions pop in and out of existence all the time in this world—the cyber uncertainty principle and all that. I’m glad we don’t have to field any questions from the locals. We hurry, avoiding the people haggling for goods and services on either side.
After several minutes of running in the maze-like confusion through the little side streets and alleyways, we come to a tall spindly building with a large sign that reads “Hackers Apothecarium.” I am about to ask what it is, but Ghost pulls me around and takes me to a ladder affixed to the back of the building.
“Follow me,” he advises me and starts to climb up. His cat body shifts somewhat to a more human aspect. He is fast and has a strange feline grace, but I like him even more as a human. I scoot up behind him. I’m bigger and have more reach, but he is facile. And I get a feeling he is keeping his speed slow to allow me to keep pace. I would like to show him up, but I still don’t have my normal vision. And depth perception is very difficult with dozens of pairs of eyeballs providing a multitude of jumbling, ever-changing perspectives. I climb by feel, mostly.
We climb forever it seems. It’s at least as long as we ran to get here. Is the Apothecarium building really this tall? Reality is so fluid in The Far Cinct. Finally, Ghost slides into a small opening. It seems too small to accommodate me, but then size was not a barrier in the past. I pretend that I fit, so I do.
We are in a small, tidy room with a computer terminal and a window looking out over The Far Cinct cityscape. I hear a noise behind me, turn, and catch Ghost rolling a door, like a bank vault, over the opening. He spins the lock, and the gears click. He turns to the window and does it again—I totally missed the solid metal shutter during my first look at the room. We are completely locked in, safely away from the world. Well, that’s the illusion anyway.
“You can relax now,” he says. “They can’t get us in here.”
“Who? And why?” I am still out of my depth in here. There’s so much I don’t understand. “What’s with all of the metal hardware? It doesn’t mean much here, does it? It’s all virtual.”
He offers me the only chair by the computer terminal. I sit down and turn to him, waiting for an explanation.
“Do you know what skeuomorphism means?”
I shake my head no, so he settles into a classic cat-sitting pose and instructs me. I wish he was more human again, but I force myself to listen and learn.
“Skeuomorphism is a design approach to making items in the virtual world resemble their real-world counterparts. So, a ladder looks like a ladder. A hand looks like a hand. A chair resembles a chair.”
“A lock looks like a lock,” I demonstrate my understanding.
“Yes. It’s a shortcut to comprehension. A virtual world doesn’t have to resemble the real world. But it’s so much easier for people to act, and to use tools, and to live out here if they can bring some of their intuitions from the real world into this virtual one.”
“I see. So, the heavy locks on the door and window represent tight security, right?”
“Very good. That’s exactly it. The bigger the lock, the more cyber security is built into it. But it doesn’t work like this in all virtual worlds.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Well, physicists, for example, use interaction elements that help them understand their work better. Their cyber environments are very esoteric and most casual visitors can’t really get past the lounge areas.” He smiles a shy smile. “Of course, those scientists like it that way.”
“I am sure they do.” I can only imagine the stupid little traps the brainiacs set up for us regular folks.
“It’s kind of fun, actually,” Ghost says enigmatically, and I make a mental note to ask him about other virtual world systems at some other time.
“What you are telling me is that we are safe in here behind the big security locks?”
“Yes.”
“And the computer terminal?” I turn to face the virtual screen. There is a continuous scroll of data that means absolutely nothing to me.
“It’s the same,” he explains. “I need a way to get to the guts of this world and alter it to suit my needs.”
“So, this is a skeuomorphic computer terminal.”
“Precisely!” He looks pleased by my sagaciousness.
“But no one uses this stuff anymore!” I’ve never even seen line-by-line programming in real life. It’s all done with blocks and construction segments now. Who types in code by hand? It’s ancient history.
“It’s what I’m used to.” I think I see him blushing underneath all that gray fur. I’d forgotten how old Roman really is. Old enough to hand code, apparently. He leaps into the air and, by the time he settles down at his skeuomorphic terminal, he assumes a werecat form with nice long fingers, claws sucked in, ready to type commands. A chair materializes under him just in time for a soft landing.
“Smooth,” I mutter. I am impressed. I’m sure he is showing off.
And I can see that Roman is pleased by my reaction. He looks like a teenage boy, slightly nerdy, with smooth dark skin and a surprisingly gray shock of hair. It’s hard to think of him as Ghost when he takes this form.
“What are you doing?” I ask. I watch Roman typing at lightning speed. Things zoom up his screen so fast I can’t even see the individual characters, much less words.
“I’m trying to research some information,” he says. “While I can’t tell what happens outside of this world, I can do a search.”
Obviously! I almost do a head slap—all of the important and completely unimportant sutaffu is available to any search engine agent, in cyberspace or otherwise.
“Are you looking for information on Doc’s friends?”
“I’ve already done that.”
“And?” I get annoyed when people just don’t come right out with it. And I’m still feeling kind of funky. My eyesight has not returned and herding my snakes in the direction I want to look is taxing. They are uncooperative little beasties.
“Doc is real,” Ghost says. Obviously! “And at least one of his friends goes to school with him in real life.”
“Yeah, the one whose closet he was using for a hostel. It was Pixie, by the way.”
“It might have been Pixie,” he says enigmatically. “I’ve always found her too competent.”
“What? Girls can’t code?”
“No. Not like that. Of course girls can program.” I can see the fur on his shoulders bunching up in consternation. “But she’s always so confident—”
“I’m confident,” I say. I don’t know why this irks me so. I can’t program at all. I can barely type—why bother learning the location of each character key when dictation works just as well? But Roman—Ghost—clearly puts great weight on the ability to manipulate cyberspace literally by hand, and I want to seem competent to him. His opinion is important to me for some stupid reason. I can feel the eels in my guts shooting little sparks in their displeasure at my anger.
“Nice,” he says to them. They spark brighter. My eels like Ghost.
I know that the eels are connected to my emotions in some way, and I hate them for ratting me out. I want my feelings private, even out here, in The Far Cinct, even in front of someone not very human anymore.
&nb
sp; “What are you saying?” I ask, getting back to Pixie.
“Pixie and Sleazy have always been enigmas to me,” Ghost says. “They’ve never shared their true names. Doc says that they have classes together all the time. But he is never clear whether they’re virtual classes or if they meet in a real classroom.”
“To Doc, it might not make any difference,” I say. “He grew up where it was all the same. But I remember when we first had kids join our kindergarten class via a cyber connection. It was a bit strange at first, but now it’s just normal. Unremarkable.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve never experienced that. I mean, I collaborated with adults from all over the world, but kids in my classroom were kids in my classroom. I even knew where most of them lived.”
“Really?” In my school, it isn’t cool to ask for real world addresses. We spend time in the school space. We do activities together. We meet to go on play dates. But it is all arranged via our parents or guardians—I never simply ask a friend over to my home. It’s just not done. Mostly, we chat online or hang out in the after-school programs. The cyber arcade is the next level up in interaction. It’s a big deal. We all aspire to go there. I am so jealous of the upperclassmen who seem to go there all the time. But my dad was, is, too protective. My chest contracts painfully when I think of him. Poor Dad. How is he dealing with all of this? He seemed so fragile when he visited me out here.
“Are you okay?” Ghost asks. He is good at reading my emotions.
“Just worried about Dad,” I say. “Do you think Slick is real?”
“He’s dumb enough.” Ghost smirks.
I break down in laughter—the fuzzball is a bit dim compared to the rest. But to have Ghost say it…I laugh and laugh. And Ghost joins me. My snakes are dancing in a sinusoidal pattern above my head. My eels put on a pyrotechnic show in my belly. This is all just so crazy. How did I ever end up in this situation? All I wanted was to go out on a date with Dude. Now that is ancient history. I couldn’t care less about him.
After a good long while, Ghost says, “Well, he was dumb enough to tell me his name and address and brag all about his parents and such.”
“Really?” Hadn’t anyone ever talked about Stranger Danger to that kid? “Who are they? His parents, I mean?”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Ghost says.
I can see from his reaction that he won’t divulge Slick’s confidences. I like that. I like Ghost, period. Even if he is an old man—a dead old man. “Okay, okay. So, it’s either Pixie or Sleazy,” I say. “They might be some kind of cyber spies?”
“They might be just what they say they are,” Ghost says. “I just don’t know. My guess is that they’re older than Doc, but still students at your school.”
“Why would they hang out with Doc, then? He’s just kid.”
“A very smart kid, with a mother who controls a lot of valuable property out here. She can give people access to entertainments and enhancements that would be difficult for someone unconnected to obtain on their own.”
“So, they might be using Doc?”
“Maybe.” Ghost shrugs. “Doc likes them. Maybe what started out as a bit conniving turned into a real friendship.”
“Do you like them?” I asked.
“Yeah. They’re cool. They helped put me back together again.”
I keep forgetting that Ghost is a shell of his former self. How much of him is a simulation? How much is clever code meant to compensate for his lack of humanity? I only see the boy in him. It makes me nervous. Can I trust him? Can I trust myself? Do I have a choice?
There’s a chaotic ripple and I’m back down on the floor. Everything is confused again. Where am I? I feel cold. It’s dark and empty. I’m so scared. What is happening to my body? How sick am I?
“Jude? I didn’t know what to do, so I brought help. Jude? Can you hear me?” That’s Ghost’s voice. “I can’t tell when she hears me. Sometimes, she gets up and walks around. But mostly, she just lies here. Her snakes stare at me. Her eels spark to the beat of her heart. I don’t know how to help her.”
It doesn’t sound like he is talking to me, does it? I wonder to whom Ghost is speaking.
A deep resonant voice says something. I can’t understand. I strain to listen. Why is everything so difficult? Ghost? Roman? I can’t move, so I ask my snakes to make inquiries on my behalf.
“I think she’s aware,” Ghost says. I love the tenderness in his voice.
“Good. It’s working.”
What’s working, I want to ask, but nothing comes out. What’s wrong with me? I don’t want to panic, but I feel it constricting me, pulling me into its vise.
“Can you give her something back there?” Ghost asks.
“No.”
Thanks for nothing! I dislike this person. Give me something! I’m scared and sick. Make me better. Do it!
“Jude?” That’s Ghost again. I can tell—my eels love him.
“She has too much crap on her avatar.”
Leave my sutaffu alone, I cry out, but nothing comes out. My snakes and eels snap at this insensitive man. I hope he is bitten.
“Easy there,” he says, and I feel pleasure at his discomfort. He deserves it. “Did she just smile?” I hear awe in his voice. You bet I did.
“She is a very strong and willful woman,” Ghost says.
“Girl,” the man corrects Ghost, and I hiss at him.
“Jude?” the man says. He feels very close. I wonder if I can bite him again. “Jude, I’m Tom. Doc’s dad?”
Really? Suddenly, I’m all hopeful. Tom will save me. I know he can.
“Easy there,” he says, I think mostly to my snakes. “Ghost found me and brought me here.” His voice is soothing now, none of the indifference from a moment ago when he was talking with Ghost. “If you can hear me, please try to respond.”
I strain as hard as I can. Obviously, my snakes and eels are active. They seem to be quite independent from me. Or they are just taking advantage of my helplessness. As hard as I try, I seem to be locked out of the movement controls for my avatar. I consider my options. CatEyes. I still can do that. Good, I try something else. I select Snake Vision and for the first time, I see the giant bending over me.
Tom’s avatar is huge. I’m a big lizard girl, but he is monstrous. I’m guessing he is easily two heads taller, with broad shoulders, two extra arms—a useful addition, I decide—and giant eyes like some nocturnal mammal. But not cuddly. Definitely not cuddly. I can’t see his torso or legs, other than to note their size. Unlike my dad, Dr. Blake went with a few extras for his avatar choice. And he went big. Really big. Interesting.
“She was able to use her hair snakes to see before,” Ghost says. “See how they follow you?”
“Yes. Very good,” Tom says. “Jude? Can you hear me?”
I try to use my snakes to communicate, but all they know how to do is hiss and bite. My eels cower deep in my belly, intimidated by Doc’s dad.
What can I do? What can I do? What can I do? I feel the rhythm of my thinking, and my snakes report that my scales react with ripple patterns.
I think: yes, and my skin pulsates in slow, deep, wave patterns. I think: no, and small, concentric ripples crisscross my chest and arms. Good, this might work. I just need Tom to understand. I make one of my snakes snap at his face.
“No,” he cries out, and I demonstrate my “no” pattern. “Jude, please listen to me. Can you hear me?”
I change the pattern to yes—deep and slow and deliberate. Can Tom see the difference? Is he getting this? Ghost, help!
“Jude?” Ghost calls to me.
I renew my yeses.
“Can you see me?” he asks.
I make my snakes swirl together to look in direction of Ghost’s voice. Yesssss, my body reacts.
“I think she’s communicating,” Ghost says.
Oh good. Finally.
“It could be just an autonomic response,” Tom says.
What is “autonomic”?
I pulse no.
“How many arms do I have?” Tom asks.
Really? We are just working out our yeses and noes. I wish I had working eyes to roll. I make four of my snakes stand up, the rest I cajole into relaxing on my shoulders. It takes time—my snakes are not very cooperative. But finally, I see Tom is satisfied with my answer.
“Good girl, Jude,” he says. “Show me your yeses again.” I do. “Okay. Got it. Show noes.” I demo the no pattern. “This is very good, Jude. Very good.”
I want to ask him what’s going on but have no tools to do so. I just have to be patient. I am a patient. Hmm, it’s the same word. I hate that. You’d think with all of our technological know-how, comatose patients would get a bit more support with communication. But since we can’t communicate, we can’t suggest to the people around us how to make the communication tools we need. It’s a vicious circle. What is Tom saying? Since I’m not really part of this conversation, my attention slips. I wander into my own thoughts. Is this how locked-in patients survive? Do they also get lost in the jungles of their own thoughts? Engaging in endless internal shinrinyoku—forest bathing? Maybe when I grow up, I will help those people. I will give them tools to become people again.
“Jude?”
I force myself to listen. It’s so hard. It’s so easy to just drift away into oblivion. I make my snakes focus. Who is talking? Ghost? Is that you? I look around. The gray cat is leaning over me; Tom is checking something on his data pad.