by Yvonne Woon
A voice interrupted my fantasy.
“Xia?”
To my horror, it was Kate. She was standing next to Mike, one hand clutching his, the other holding a bag of popcorn.
“Are you here alone?”
I wanted to invent a universal light dimmer so I could turn the lights down until no one could see my face.
“Um, yeah,” I said. “I’ve never seen it and the Truth or Dare game planted the seed. Plus, it’s about a computer. So when I saw it was playing, I figured it would be fun to go since I wasn’t doing anything tonight.” I don’t know why I said so much in such an inarticulate way, but there it was, my nervous word garble.
Though her expression barely changed, something about Kate’s face looked like she was deriving pleasure from my pathetic situation. I looked at Mike, who was wincing ever so slightly as though he was embarrassed for me.
“Cool,” Kate said, and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. Everything easy and simple, everything in its right place.
I sank even lower in my seat.
“Should we sit in the front?” she said to Mike.
“Sure,” he said, and turned to me. “See you.”
“Bye,” I mumbled.
The lights dimmed and my heart began to race. He wasn’t coming. What if he saw who I was and turned around?
In the front of the theater, an organist played the iconic first five notes of the opening theme. I’d spent the day imagining what it would feel like to hear them while sitting next to ObjectPermanence in real life: the music building to a sublime crescendo as we looked at each other for the first time, like we were starring in our own movie. It felt like a ridiculous fantasy now. If I was the star of a movie, it wasn’t a romance but a tragicomedy about a single girl doomed to spend the rest of her life talking to her AI who was secretly trying to convince her to buy corporate products she didn’t need.
I sat through the film, wanting to leave but also wanting to believe that he would still come. Maybe he was late. Maybe he’d been held up by an emergency.
A few seats ahead of me, I could see the silhouette of Mike’s and Kate’s heads as they leaned toward each other, Kate resting on Mike’s shoulder. I wanted to beam myself into the movie and float out to space, slowly, inexorably, past the satellites and detritus of all the equipment that made it possible for me to message ObjectPermanence in the first place until I was just a little particle floating amid other particles into an infinite expanse of black.
Twenty-Seven
I debated whether or not I should write to ObjectPermanence, but in the end I did. He’d been right—you can never truly know a person. You can just get closer. Maybe I’d gotten as close as I could.
SENT MESSAGE FROM U/ARRAYOFLIGHT:
You weren’t there. I watched the movie without you. I think I would have liked it if I hadn’t been so distracted by the empty seat next to me. Why didn’t you come? Or maybe you did come, and you saw who I was and left. I’m not sure which is worse. The latter, I think, though I never thought you were the kind of person who would do either.
The next morning felt vacant—the sun thin and the air hollow, the bird songs tinny and mechanical. I rolled out of bed and went through the motions of my morning routine, and though to an outsider I might have appeared the same as I always had, I couldn’t help but feel like I was spinning on a wheel, going nowhere. Then breakfast happened.
I knew that something was wrong the moment I walked into the dining hall. The room went quiet.
Kate was glancing at me and whispering to Seema. AJ and his friends were laughing, and I thought for a second I could hear them saying the words array and light under their breath, though that couldn’t be possible. I made eye contact with Amina, who gave me a sympathetic look before turning back to her waffles. Mast was sitting a few tables away. When he saw me, the smile faded from his face.
I walked toward the drink counter, peering around the room.
“Hey,” I said to Ravi, who was walking by with an orange juice. “What’s going on?”
He looked like he didn’t want to be the one break it to me. “Check Façade,” he said, his tone apologetic.
A familiar lump rose up in my throat. I grabbed a breakfast sandwich and a juice and hurried to a bench in the hallway. I knew what it was before I opened the app, before I even took out my phone. The way Mast had swallowed when he saw me, as though I had caused him fresh pain. The way Amina had looked sorry for me, like she was watching a doomed character meet her demise. The way the words haunted the room like a ghost. Array of light.
I hadn’t been tagged this time, which is why I hadn’t gotten any notifications. Still, I knew where to go. ValleyBrag’s page was a wash of text now—no photos or faces in sight. Instead, they’d posted screenshots of messages—my messages to ObjectPermanence—for anyone to see. Beneath them, the caption read: New work by Xia Chan.
I didn’t understand. How had they gotten online? The only person who had seen them was ObjectPermanence, but why would he have done such a thing? I didn’t think he was capable of being so cruel.
I scrolled through them, feeling dizzy. My mind was spinning with possible explanations, but none of them made sense. All I knew was that the worst thing that could have happened had happened. Anyone with an internet connection now had access to my most intimate and humiliating thoughts, including one person in particular, the last person I ever wanted to find out about ObjectPermanence—Mast.
I’d been sitting there for an indeterminate amount of time, staring at my uneaten sandwich and wondering how I was going to face anyone at school ever again when my phone vibrated. It was Mitzy.
>Saw the posts about your online joystick and thought you might need a distraction. Want to pick up two iced coffees and come over? Don’t worry, I’m not going to yell at you
Though things with Mitzy had been volatile recently, her message was a welcome relief.
>Okay
I went to Mitzy’s favorite coffee shop, a sleek café with bright fluorescent lights and a permanent line of hip tech people stretching out the door. When it was my turn, I ordered two iced coffees and handed the cashier my Vault card.
She swiped it twice, then frowned. “Declined.”
“That can’t be right.”
She tried once more but shook her head. “It doesn’t work.”
“It must be an error,” I said, trying not to sound flustered.
“Do you have another card?”
I didn’t, nor did I have any cash. The customers behind me looked annoyed.
“I’ll just check with the card company.”
The guy behind me rolled his eyes as I slipped out of line and checked my Vault. While I clicked the icons on my card, I allowed myself to entertain less painful explanations. Maybe my account had been compromised and the Foundry had temporarily put a hold on it. Maybe the strip was buggy and needed refreshing. Either seemed possible until my balance materialized on the screen.
$6.12
A lump formed in my throat. It couldn’t be. My account had started with $150,000. I knew I had taken to splurging with Mitzy, but could a few expensive lunches and dinners per week really have depleted that much money? There had been that big invoice from Veronica, and the acid-induced spending spree at the Karlsson Barrow party, and a few other purchases that I probably didn’t need, but surely even with all of that I should still have at least half of what I’d started with. I could barely afford one iced coffee. Someone must have hacked into my account and transferred money out. Or maybe there was a clerical error at the Foundry and they’d moved the decimal point over three spaces or deleted a few crucial zeros.
I realized then that I’d started to sweat. I scrolled through my account history, looking for any unusual activity, when I saw it. A $10,000 transfer every month, from my account directly to Mitzy Erst.
I left our coffees on the counter and stormed to Mitzy’s house, where I banged on the door.
“What is this?” I de
manded when she appeared in the doorway in a silk robe, looking like she’d been interrupted from a bath.
“Whoa,” she said, waving her hands as if I were overstimulating her. “What’s what? And where’s my coffee?”
I pushed my Vault into her face so she could see the charge.
“Have you been stealing from me for months?”
“Stealing? Of course not. That was in our contract.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m your COO. I’m doing work for you. That means I get a salary. You agreed to it.”
“When? At Karlsson Barrow? The room was melting and I’m pretty sure I spent at least forty-five minutes staring at a projector, thinking it was a dark overlord controlling my mind.”
“How is that my fault? No one forced you to come to the party or get drunk or drop acid. You decided to do all of those things. And then you decided to offer me the position and the salary. You amended the contract yourself. And now it’s suddenly my fault?”
My face was hot and my hands were trembling. I felt so flustered that I could barely think. “You knew how much money I had in that Vault. You knew I could only afford this for a few months.”
“Yeah, and then we’d get funding, and it would be fine. That’s the whole point.”
“The point is that you knew this would suck me dry.” I said it so loudly that I startled a pair of birds nearby, who scuffled out of the birdbath.
“If your account is dry it’s not because of me,” Mitzy said, her face hardening. “It’s because you rejected the Vilbo offer and then spent the rest of it, and that is definitely not my responsibility. You should be keeping better track of your finances. I would start by looking at your Vault every so often so you don’t find out months after the fact that you put someone on payroll.”
Though I felt she was inherently wrong, I couldn’t identify which part of her argument was incorrect, which made me even more frustrated. It wasn’t fair. She was the one who was supposed to be taking me under her wing, so why was I the one left with no money, terrible grades, and an app that I could no longer recognize as my own?
“What have you even done for me?” I said. “I’m months behind in all my classes. My Vault is empty. All of my friends have turned against me. Wiser just vomits ads now. You keep promising me we’ll have more VC meetings, but where are they? You barely even return my calls.”
Mitzy’s eyes grew cold. “I got us a million-dollar offer and you turned it down. You did the rest on your own.”
She slammed the door in my face, the force of it knocking the wind from my chest.
I spent the week in the back of every class, my head down, my eyes averted. I tried to focus on my homework, the most pressing of which was, ironically, a financial statement analysis for Corporate Finance, but I felt too wound-up to focus. In a moment of weakness, I opened Façade and hate-scrolled Mitzy’s account. How could I have been so stupid? I couldn’t believe I’d painstakingly cut out all of those newspaper clippings of her for years and taped them over my bed like she was some kind of religious figure. I vowed to tear them all from the wall until it was bare.
It was Friday evening and I was in a study room on campus when I noticed she’d made a new post. She was in her house, which looked spectacularly clean considering its normal state of existence, and was popping a bottle of Moët & Chandon by the couch. In the background was a fully stocked bar.
The caption read: Someone has to do quality control on the drinks before the guests arrive.
I couldn’t believe it. She was having a party. Without me.
The more I stared at the photo, the angrier I got. We were only a third of the way through the month, a month in which I had unknowingly paid her to be my employee. Didn’t that warrant an invite to a party she was having, paying for using money from my Vault?
I stuffed my laptop into my bag and called a car. On the ride to Mitzy’s, I opened up BitBop and composed a new message.
SENT MESSAGE FROM U/ARRAYOFLIGHT:
You have a lot of nerve writing to me all these months about how you feel bad for doing shitty things, before standing me up and posting all of my messages online.
I got into a fight with Mitzy. She isn’t the person I thought she was. Or maybe she’s always been this person and I just didn’t see it, kind of like you. She’s having a party tonight and I’m crashing it so I can give her a piece of my mind. I’m done with being used and then discarded. I guess this is me saying goodbye, to her and to you.
The car pulled up in front of Mitzy’s house and idled by the curb. I clicked send and opened the door.
Twenty-Eight
Mitzy’s mansion twinkled with lights. Cars were lined up outside, and a swell of voices pressed against the windows and drifted into the garden. I took a breath, then walked inside like I was supposed to be there.
The party was packed with astonishingly good-looking people: trim haircuts and expensive eyeglasses, sleek business casual and tailored day-to-evening dresses. They sipped amber concoctions from delicate cocktail glasses and ate canapés that caterers passed around on trays.
I wandered through them, feeling suddenly self-conscious. I’d been hoping to blend in, but now saw that everyone seemed to be eyeing me. It was true, I wasn’t looking my best in my jeans and sweatshirt that I’d been wearing to study in, and my ratty backpack that I’d promised Mitzy I’d never be seen with in public again, but I didn’t care.
When I finally found Mitzy, she was lounging in the pool on a float in a white-and-gold caftan while people around her drank and splashed in the water. In all the time I’d spent at Mitzy’s house, I’d never seen the pool without a thin layer of leaves and dead beetles floating on top, but now it was pristine and blue, with underground lighting that made it glitter.
Electronic music blasted from a speaker.
“Hey,” I shouted. When she didn’t respond, I said it louder. “Hey!”
A few people noticed me, but Mitzy remained on her float, drifting carelessly on the other side of the pool while she chatted with people in the lounge chairs above her, her hair fanning out in the water.
“Look at me!” I shouted.
Frustrated, I grabbed an ice bucket from the drink table and threw it in the pool. Everyone turned to me. Though the music didn’t stop, it felt like it had. I hadn’t intended to make a big scene, but I didn’t care. At this point, did any more negative publicity really matter?
The last to look was Mitzy, as though she’d been expecting me. She glanced over her shoulder, finally gracing me with her attention.
“Xia,” she said, feigning concern. “Is everything all right?”
“What the fuck is this?” I said.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“This,” I said, gesturing to the party. “This party. These drinks. These fancy appetizers. You threw a party with my money and you didn’t even bother telling me?”
Mitzy looked embarrassed for me.
“Did you know that she’s paying for this with my money?” I said to a group of people standing nearby. “All of this.”
“I don’t think you’re feeling well,” Mitzy said. “How about I get you some water?”
I didn’t want water. I wanted to go back in time. I wanted to figure out where I’d gone wrong and fix it. “I’m at the Foundry,” I explained to a group of chastened guests. “I got offered over a million dollars by Vilbo and I turned them down. And apparently I’ve been paying Mitzy a paycheck of ten thousand dollars every month to throw parties and not invite me.”
“This isn’t really the appropriate venue for this conversation,” Mitzy said, her voice annoyingly calm.
“What? Am I causing a scene? Am I embarrassing you?”
Mitzy sighed.
“Is my outfit not fancy enough? Does it not fit with your brand?”
“I never said anything about your clothes.”
“Is it my hair? It’s not sleek enough? Not clean enough for you?”
<
br /> Without thinking, I grabbed a pair of shears from the bar cart nearby and held them up to the left side of my hair and cut. Everyone around the pool gasped as locks of my hair fell to the ground. “Is that better?” I shouted. “Do I fit the part?”
“Put the scissors down,” Mitzy said carefully.
“What, you’re worried I’m going to hurt you? That I’m going cut your hair off, like you made me cut mine in Veronica’s house?”
“I think you should go home.”
“Why would I go home when there’s food that I paid for right here?” I took a canapé from a nearby plate and stuffed it into my mouth. “Now that tastes expensive.”
Mitzy nodded to someone behind me, and suddenly there were men prying the scissors out of my hands and trying to force me toward the door.
Startled, I wriggled out of their grasp. “Don’t touch me,” I shouted. “I paid for you. I paid for this entire place.”
They tried to subdue me, grabbing at my sweatshirt, my backpack, which flew off, its contents hurtling into the pool.
“You’re all fucking fakes,” I shouted as my computer sank to the bottom of the pool, the wire undulating behind it like a snake. I didn’t care. I’d get a new laptop. “Everything here is fake.” I turned to Mitzy, my eyes wild. “Our contract is over. We’re not partners anymore.”
“Okay,” she murmured, sharing a look with one of her guests as if I were the one being unreasonable. I resented that look.
The bouncers picked me up and dragged me toward the door.
“She’s just a kid,” I heard Mitzy murmur to another guest as they pushed me back into the house, through the party, and out the front door.
I steadied myself on the railing, realizing that I’d just alienated the only person I had left. I bent over, feeling suddenly sick, and heaved. When I caught my breath I saw a figure walking toward me through the garden.
It was the last person I’d expected to see: Mike Flores.
He was walking through the garden path, the leaves parting like he was a mythical creature. He looked more beautiful than ever, his skin glowing in the dim underlighting. I blinked, wondering if I was hallucinating.