“There’s something else we need to consider,” I began, hoping that this was a good moment to raise a topic I’d been pondering. “A lot of the refugees want to go back to the App World. And we have those plugs in Briarwood. . . .” I trailed off. I’d been mulling this idea over for weeks, but the word virus whispered itself inside my head, adding to all the other things that made this idea seem not merely difficult, but possibly terrible.
Rain was staring at me like I might be crazy. “You’re kidding, right? Do you know how complicated that would be? It’s illegal, first of all, never mind incredibly dangerous with the border patrols.”
I sat up straighter in my chair, banishing thoughts of viruses and bugs for the moment. “But what if we could negotiate a truce? Get your father to help us? You and I could plug back in, and negotiate permission.” Rain’s eyes grew suddenly interested at this mention of the two of us working together, so I barreled on forward. “A kind of passport system for people to go back and forth? Yes, setting everything up would be complicated, maybe even impossible. But it could be worth a try since once we did it, after all these years, people would have real choices about how much time they’d like to spend in each world.” I pulled out the tablet that lay dormant in my jeans pocket and swiped my finger across the surface. Then I pushed it across the table toward Rain. I’d scribbled all sorts of notes about the possibilities and I wanted him to read them. “They could exercise their right to be citizens of both worlds—and wasn’t that the whole point? To reconcile real life with the virtual one? To give people options?”
“Yes and no,” Rain said, getting up from the table and walking toward the door without even glancing at what I’d written. He looked out through the windowpane. “Let me think about it. It’s not as though my father is the person running things anymore. I don’t know how much he could help us.” I waited for him to mention Emory Specter, but he didn’t, and once again I was relieved to avoid talking about the various members of my family. “And as much as I’d like for you to go back to the App World with me,” Rain went on, “it would be extremely dangerous for you to cross the border. So if anyone goes, it will be me alone.”
I got up and took a couple of steps toward him. “But what if we didn’t cross the border by plugging in? What if we—what if I—crossed it by shifting instead? Maybe if we circumvent the traditional methods we’d get through undetected.”
Rain was shaking his head. “We don’t know that it would work. Besides, shifting nearly killed you.”
“That was a long time ago, now. I’m feeling so much better—”
“—Skylar, no.”
“But—”
“—no buts.” Rain’s eyes flashed. “You’re not going to the App World by any means. End of story.”
“You don’t need to protect me. I can take care of—”
“—it’s getting late,” Rain cut in. “We should head back to Briarwood.”
I shook my head. I hated when Rain got like this, when he thought he could control me or decide what I would and wouldn’t do. “Fine,” I snapped. “Let’s just go.”
He was turning the knob on the door and heading outside before I could say another word. But just before I joined him and before I could think better of it, I went to the table and lifted the bunch of daisies out of the vase and took them with me.
6
Ree
watery grave
THE APPS SWIRLED around me.
I took them in, one by one, contemplating all the things they promised to reveal to me, show me, make me. The tennis racket and its bouncing ball, entreating me to a game. The chocolate bonbons tempting me on a binge. The car inviting me to a race. There were the usual Fantasy Apps that would allow me to fly, to change my appearance in a million ways, both beautiful and strange, the Apps that would make me smarter, that would allow me to kiss the boy or girl of my dreams and a thousand other people I’d yet to meet and never would.
The Bedroom Redecorator App kept coming at me, jumping up and down in front of my right eye and then my left, probably because it knew I’d downloaded it or one of its cousins about a thousand times since being imprisoned in this apartment. I mean, what else was I going to do, cooped up in this place, my mind closed to everyone I’d ever known? My bedroom lately had resembled that of a medieval princess, an Arabian palace, and a Parisian bohemian in the 1920s. When I’d gotten bored of these styles, I’d transformed my room to copy Tonna Tomson’s beach house. She was the celebrity Over Eighteen Char and I had been obsessed with since we were twelves. She became famous for never having downloaded an Appearance App in her life, making herself into a symbol of “natural virtual beauty” for an entire generation. I’d even made my bedroom look like something out of Loner Town for a change, shutting down each night on a bed tilted at an angle because it was missing a leg, and staring at my face in a shattered mirror each morning. I’d only changed things back to normal after my mother yelled at me about tripping every time she entered my room on the broken floorboard.
I swiped my hand across the atmosphere and the App Store disappeared.
I’d called it up at least a hundred times since yesterday, but no matter how many times I did, I couldn’t get that ominous glittering icon to appear for me like it had for my mother. I’d watched footage on Reel Time over and over again, but there was nothing to suggest that this App had appeared to anyone else—and no evidence that it had happened to Char either. No warnings about viruses and untimely virtual deaths, no talk of unlawful imprisonments of citizens of the City by the government. The only blip among the gossipy celebrity news was occasional discussion of the terrible plight of the App World refugees who’d listened to Skylar Cruz and gone and unplugged themselves and now probably regretted going back to that horribly clunky real body.
And I should’ve gone with them, despite the tragedy of our floppy, fragile, original forms. Except that, for some unbelievable reason, the day of Skylar’s emergency broadcast I chose to listen to my mother and stayed put as a virtual girl. Speaking of . . .
“Mom?” I called out.
There was shuffling in the hall. My door opened.
My mother’s face was a horrible shade of pea green, a visible sign she’d overdone it again with the Cocktail Apps. I supposed this was part of the punishment for having an unlimited supply of any App you could ever want.
“What, Ree?” My mother’s virtual voice was clipped and angry.
“Can you please not be perpetually annoyed with me?” I was so tired of her being nasty to me on a constant basis.
“I’m not annoyed,” she replied, sounding absolutely annoyed and unwilling to hide this.
I took a deep breath. “Listen, I need you to, I don’t know, like, find some lucidity for a minute, because we need to talk about something important. Okay?”
The pea-green color in her virtual cheeks only deepened as she pondered this proposition. But then, to my surprise, she was shuffling again, this time entering my room, stumbling only once on her way. She join me on the bed, which sent the two of us rocking and swaying like we were on a little boat floating across a stormy sea.
“What in the—” she cried, clutching her virtual stomach, her cheeks turning a shocking shade of gray-green this time.
“Sorry!” I placed a hand gently on her shoulder. “Try not to spill your code, Mom.”
The bed eventually began to steady and she managed to hold things down.
“What did you do?” She glanced around the rest of my room.
I smiled a bit sheepishly. “I’ve reverted back to being a seven.”
The bed was still bobbing, my mother’s fists closed around the fabric covering the duvet, hanging on for dear life. Everything was a different shade of Mediterranean blue, except for the colorful fish that darted across the walls now and again and the sea grass that grew up from the floor, all of it coordinated to make a girl feel like she was living underneath the surface of the ocean. The Under the Sea App I’d downloaded promis
ed to make my childhood underwater dreams come true, and the bed itself was modeled after those old-timey ones they used to have in the Real World that made you feel like you were sleeping on water. Or, I don’t know, sleeping on a boat, maybe? Back when I was a six and a seven, it was a super-popular App and everyone I knew was downloading it, except for me. I’d been really obsessed with Arabian horses and my bedroom was always decked out in a horse-related theme, and I was often sleeping on a mattress stuffed with hay, which meant I missed out on the water-bed craze. So I figured, why not now? Who cares if I’m a seventeen?
Also, I’ve been really bored.
“Remember how unhappy you were about the Loner Town theme? I redecorated my room, Mom, because you asked me to.” I gestured at the walls right as a shark chased a smiling goldfish from one end of the wall to the other.
Given the sick grimace on my mother’s face, she wasn’t really appreciating the cuteness of my altered environment. “Why was it you wanted to talk to me? What’s the matter now?” From her tone, she clearly regretted giving me the time of day. This and she sounded exhausted.
“Well,” I started, knowing that the sands in the hourglass were already running low. She was probably anxious to download her usual eleven a.m. Bloody Mary App, the extra-spicy version she preferred, and get going on her big day of liquoring herself up on the terrace and then passing out into shutdown. “I want to talk to you about something that happened yesterday.” I hesitated. “Do you remember yesterday?”
“Of course I remember,” she snapped.
“Of course,” I agreed, though I wasn’t convinced that she did. “Yesterday, when you called up your App Store, there was this App in it—it’s quite beautiful, really, all glittery and so compelling. It was in the shape of a present? I was wondering if you did something to call it up. Like, where did you find it or how did you get it to appear for you?”
My mother’s virtual brow furrowed. “I don’t remember any glittery Apps.”
I sighed. She didn’t remember a thing from yesterday. “You were about to download it,” I tried. “Your finger was nearly touching it when, um, suddenly you went into shutdown.”
The color in my mother’s cheeks became a horrible mottled red mixed with dark green, like one of those clunky-looking heirloom tomatoes Tonna Tomson was always downloading into her vegetable garden. My mother was blushing. She must be embarrassed about Apping until she was unconscious. “Ree, I really don’t remember.”
The bed bobbed us as gently as the sea on a calm summer’s day. “Okay. But if you do see an App like that? I want you to call me right away. And most important of all”—I looked at her hard, so she could see I was serious—“you cannot touch—”
“—wait a minute!” The red began to fade from her cheeks and her eyes grew wide and clear for the first time since she’d entered my room. “I do remember. . . .”
“Mom, what? Think hard. It’s important.”
She began nodding, so forcefully the bed began to sway. “I remember . . . I remember a beautiful App, like nothing I’d ever seen before!” Her voice grew wistful, the look in her eyes far away and dreamy. “I remember wanting it so badly, I was thirsty for it. . . .” The look in her eyes turned dark and cold as she turned them on me. Two giant sharks hovered on the wall behind her. “And then you took it from me! You stole my most beautiful App!”
“Mom, I did not—”
“—what did you do with it? Where is it? Is it in your App Store now?”
“I swear, I didn’t—”
“—I knew you were selfish, but really, Ree? We have an unlimited supply of downloads and you had to take what was mine for yourself?”
“But Mom,” I pleaded. “That App, I think it’s dangerous and I—”
“—stop lying to me,” she seethed.
I shut my mouth. When she got like this, there was no use arguing.
My mother got up from the bed and a great wave of blue-green duvet rolled toward me from the shift in weight. “If I ever catch you stealing from my App Store again we are going to have some serious problems. Do you understand me?”
I nodded.
“Are you sure you understand me?” she shouted.
“Yes,” I barked.
She turned on her heel and stumbled, caught herself by poking her fingers into an unsuspecting sea anemone, and stomped out of my room. It was only after she’d slammed the door so hard that even the sharks fled that I finally managed to speak what I’d wanted her to understand so badly amid all her ranting.
“But I saved you.”
I stayed in my room practically all day, floating listlessly on my bed with only the fish and the sharks and an occasional lobster crawling across the ocean floor to entertain me. I waited until I couldn’t take it anymore, the confinement, the boredom, the frustration with my mother, before I decided to go out onto the terrace to try and talk to her again. To explain why I’d come between her and her precious App Store. I opened the sliding door and enjoyed the feel of the fresh atmosphere on my virtual skin. It was nice after being cooped up all day. At least the government didn’t take our terrace away from us, too.
There was my mother, as usual, all the way in the corner where one of the tallest trees from Main Park stretched its branches overhead, creating a nice shady place to relax. She was in her lounge chair, which had transformed itself into some sort of luxurious raft. The sound of water splashing rippled across everything. I guess she’d grown to like the water bed and was trying to duplicate the swaying of it. I didn’t know you could download a lounge-chair version, though. Maybe they made them for adults?
Her App Store encircled her.
“There you are,” she was cooing. “Finally!”
It took me a moment—one moment too long—to realize what was happening. The horrible, irreversible error my mother was about to commit out of stubbornness or rage or some combination of suspicion and insolence that I hope didn’t get passed down into my virtual code.
“Mom, no!” I screamed.
It didn’t matter what I did or what I said or why my mother chose to insist on doing what came next. And I was too far to knock her hand away, too late to stop her, and she was too angry to listen to any warning from me regardless. She heard my words—of that much I was absolutely certain, because she turned my way, a satisfied look in her eyes, a cold triumphant glare, really, and watched me straight on as she reached a long, crooked, heavily ringed finger out like some wicked witch.
Our eyes met right as she touched the poisoned App.
7
Skylar
emptiness
“I’M NOT ARGUING any more about this, Skylar!” Rain shouted.
“Stop yelling at me,” I said, keeping my voice even. Rain and I had been up all night, sitting in my room, arguing. I’d decided that someone should go check on Adam in the App World. And privately, I was worried about what Trader had said about the virus. Rain was adamantly against anyone crossing the border, though. Especially me. To put it mildly.
“I wasn’t yelling.” He lowered his voice. “But there isn’t anything you can say that will convince me this is a good idea. Not for you to go, or me either. Not yet, at least. We need to gather a lot more information before we do anything that stupid.”
“It’s not stupid!” I was the one shouting now.
Rain stood up from the edge of my bed. His eyes blazed. “Skylar, yes it is. We have no idea what could be waiting for us on the other side.”
“Adam is there and I’m worried about him!”
“It’s too dangerous.” Rain was shaking his head, looking at me like I was some child who didn’t know anything. “Adam could be in virtual prison for all we know.”
I huffed and glared. “Well, if you’ve been worried that Adam is in prison, then you’re not a very good friend. We should have gone to find out if he’s okay a long time ago.”
Rain sighed. “If anyone is going to do anything in the App World, it’s going to be me, not you, and
it’s only going to be after we get more information about the situation we’d be crossing into. Let me talk to Zeera and see what she can find out. We need to know where your sister is, exactly, and we need to make sure that Emory Specter hasn’t laid a trap for any of us—me included. But you especially. I’m sure it’s you he’s after most.”
“Don’t talk about them,” I whispered.
Rain threw up his hands. “Why not? We need to talk about Jude and Specter at some point. They’re not exactly your biggest fans! You decimated their plans, and regardless of your sister, Emory Specter is the most powerful person in the App World right now. The exodus of those refugees made him even more powerful in the City. And I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. The people who stayed behind were against us and grateful to him for the Cure. They could care less about the Real World and their bodies.”
I got up from the bed and stood before Rain. “I don’t care how powerful he is. I have to go to the App World and I have to do it soon.”
He stared down at me. “You’re being reckless and unreasonable.”
“No. You’re the one who’s being unreasonable.”
Rain’s eyes narrowed. “What else is in the App World that you need to see so badly?” he asked. He was quiet a moment. “Does this have something to do with Kit?”
“No.” Frustration and anger welled up again. Tears pricked the corner of my eyes. “And if you’d stop being so overly protective, then maybe I’d actually want to answer your question.”
“You’re impossible sometimes!”
“Well, I guess we have that in common then!” I stormed out the door, slamming it behind me before Rain and I could say anything else we might regret.
I went straight to see my mother. It didn’t matter that it was early.
I knocked on her door.
I wanted her on my side about going back to the App World. If I got her on my side, then maybe she’d help me go on my own.
I waited and waited. There was no answer.
The Mind Virus Page 5