Virtual Mode

by Piers Anthony

  A week later, wee Sunday morning, she read to him again. The marker was well forward of the place she had left it, but that didn't matter; plot was the least of this story. This time she read about man, woman, and animal, and it was a further education. It was as if God were rewarding her for her good work by sneaking in this secret information she so valued.

  The third week the man was gone; he had recovered enough to be moved to another ward, along with his book. A new patient was in the bed: a perfect young man with a bandaged head. He had shot himself, trying to commit suicide. This, too, fascinated her. She offered to read for him, but the nurse told her not to bother. "He's in a coma. He'll die soon. He's a vegetable. We are waiting for him to die."

  "But he's so handsome!" Colene protested, as if that counted for anything in this ward.

  The nurse laughed. She was old, with decades of grim experience; she had seen death hundreds of times, and was calloused. She lifted one of the man's legs and let it drop with a thud onto the bed. "Look, he is as good as dead. He can't feel, see, or hear. Don't waste your time." She went on about her business.

  But Colene lingered, unwilling to believe that such perfection of body could simply die. Why had he shot himself? What reason could someone this handsome have to want to die? It was a mystery that lured her mothlike to a candle flame.

  She bent over him. "Don't die, elegant man," she whispered. "God loves you—and I love you too. You are too beautiful to die!"

  Suddenly his eyes opened, focusing on her. Colene was startled and frightened, for it was the first motion he had made on his own. She ran from the room and told the nurse. "He's conscious! He looked at me!"

  The nurse returned with her. She checked the man's pulse and eyes. There was no reaction. "You are mistaken," she said gruffly. "There is no change in him."

  Colene couldn't believe it. She knew the man had looked at her. She went to the bed and took the patient's hand. "Please open your eyes," she pleaded.

  His eyes opened. But when he saw the nurse, ftis eyes closed. Tears trickled down his cheeks.

  The nurse was staring. In all her decades of experience, it seemed she had never before seen this happen.

  Next week the man remained, undead. It seemed he had not moved a limb or an eyelash in the intervening time. But when Colene took his hand and spoke to him, his eyes opened, and his mouth tried to smile.

  He began to recover after that. Week by week he improved, most dramatically when Colene was present, until he was well enough to be taken home. He could not speak or walk without help, but perhaps that would come.

  Two weeks later came the news: the beautiful man had gotten his hands on another gun. This time his shot had been all the way true, and he was dead.

  What had she accomplished, by interfering with the natural course? She had thought she was doing so much good; instead she had hastened the man's death. She should never have done it. She should have had the humility to know that she could not change another person's destined course.

  Suicide. What was its attraction?

  She continued with the wee-hours Sunday shift, but the heart was gone from it. What was right and what was wrong? She had no sure answers.

  Then there was an emergency. A bus had been involved in an accident, and there were horrendous injuries. The call went out: all available personnel report to assist in the emergency room.

  Colene went down. In the throes of it, no one challenged her. She carried bandages and ran errands for the harried doctors. There were so many bodies to deal with all at once, they were doing triage.

  A teenager not much older than Colene herself was hauled in on a stretcher, his legs crushed. Colene passed the bandages as the doctor tried to stanch the flow of blood; as he said, succinctly, the legs would have to wait because they would do the kid no good if he bled to death. A woman was almost unmarked on the body, but she had been struck across the face and her eyes gouged out. Colene held her hand while the doctor gave her a shot to abate her screaming. A man was sitting, waiting his turn, coughing lip blood, helpless, bewildered, and in despair. Colene went to him and put her arm around his shoulders. "The doctor will be with you in a moment," she whispered in his ear. He turned his face to her, started to smile, and slumped. Now at last the doctor came, performing a hasty check. "He's dead." And he was; they could not revive him.

  Now a nurse recognized Colene. "Child, you don't belong here!" she exclaimed, horrified.

  "Yes, I do," Colene said. But she left, knowing the nurse would not report her if she got out before anyone else caught on. Most of the injured had been classified by this time anyway.

  But it was enough. She asked to be relieved of her job, saying the night hours were interfering with her sleep and her homework. The hospital administration, covertly aware of what had happened, gave her a fancy Certificate of Merit and let her go. It was their secret. Colene was learning about secrets, learning well.

  Now Colene's interest in death, a sometime thing before, became dominant. The last man had smiled as he died. Death had been a relief. The way those people had been suffering, death would have been a relief for all of them. What right did she, an undistinguished girl, have to be healthy and happy?

  But she told no one of her experiences, and indeed she wasn't sure what significance they had. Was death the proper destiny of man? If not, what was? Until she knew the answer, she hid her feelings and acted normal.

  She started dating. Her mother thought she was too young, at mid-thirteen, but her mother didn't want to quarrel about it. A quarrel could lead to a discussion of her mother's drinking habits. Secrets—Colene was learning how to borrow against their power, how to finesse them, to get her way. So she went to the movies with a boy she hardly cared for, and let him kiss her, while in her mind ran the scenes from the dirty novel of twining bare bodies. What would it be like, actually?

  An older boy asked her out. He had a car, but he didn't drive her to the movie. He said it would be more fun at the party his friends were having. There would be great entertainment. Colene didn't care about the movie either, so she didn't object.

  There were three other boys there at an apartment, and no other girls. They were drinking. They gave her a drink, and she tried it, curious. This, too, was a new experience. Soon she was pleasantly dizzy. She had another drink, and another, reveling in the feeling.

  Then she was in the bedroom with her date, and he had his trousers off. Suddenly the descriptions in the dirty novel registered, and she knew what he was after. She started to protest, but he pushed her down on the bed and got her dress up and her panties on" and rammed into her with a whole lot less art than the novel had described. By the time she realized that it was rape, it was done, and he was getting off.

  Rape? Even tipsy as she was, she realized that no one would believe her. So she played it cool, and pretended she had liked it. That way maybe she would get home safely.

  But the other boys came in, and she had either to continue the pretense or make a scene, and if she made the scene she feared she would not only get raped, she would get beaten up and maybe killed. That wasn't the way she wanted to die! So she smiled and said it was all right, and one by one they pressed her down and jammed in, and it was so slick and messy now that it didn't hurt the way the first time had.

  She did make it home safely, and her mother was so drunk she couldn't smell the liquor on Colene or see her condition. Colene went to the bathroom and washed and washed, but she couldn't get the awful feel of those men out of her. The novel had been wrong; it was no fun for the woman.

  She never told, and neither did the boys. Not where it counted. They knew the trouble they would be in if news got to the authorities, considering her age. So the secret was kept, to a degree. But Colene stopped dating. Her reputation in certain circles was shot. Her mother, ignorant and relieved, did not question that decision.

  Time showed that she was neither pregnant nor infected with VD. She had gotten away with it, such as it was. But she was
saddled with a deep, abiding disgust. The worst of it was that she couldn't really condemn the men; they were what they were, opportunists. It was herself she condemned, for being such a fool. She had indeed asked for it, by her nai'vete. How could she have read all about it in the dirty novel, and not caught on that to such men a girl was nothing more than a walking vagina waiting to be unwrapped and plunged? Fool! Fool!

  Why was life such a grubby mess? She hated every aspect of this, but still didn't know what to do about it. There seemed to be no justice, only opportunity and coping. Opportunity for the men and coping for the women.

  After that her double life had come upon her. She was bright and cheery in public, suicidal in private.

  Did you share your feeling with anyone?

  She had forgotten that Seqiro was tuning in. Well, not really; she had gone through it all for his benefit, buoyed somewhat in the fashion of her nude display before criminals at the time of the bleeding contest. In that she had in a devious manner made up for her disastrous date: instead of getting raped by four men and having to pretend to like it, she had tempted them and beaten them in sheer nerve, and they had had to pretend to like it. They weren't the same men and it wasn't the same situation either, but it also aligned: instead of baring her fascinating body (it had to be fascinating, or there was no point) she was baring her fascinating mind, and there was a dubious glory in it, a thrill of release, almost of expiation.

  No, this was not parallel to the physical business, she realized as she reviewed it. It was parallel to mental business. She had shared her feeling with a friend, once before. And that had been another bad mistake.

  It was this past summer, at camp. Naturally her folks got her out of the house when they could, not because they disliked her but because they were more concerned with their own problems than with hers. Camp wasn't bad, actually. There was swimming and hiking and dancing and woodwork and nature. She liked all the events, yet her depression remained. It was as if she were a mere shell going through the motions. What was real was the blood on her wrist.

  But her roommate Mitzi spied the scars. Things could be hidden from parents, teachers, friends, psychologists, and the man on the street, but roommates were deadly. Rather than try to bluff through, which was a bad risk, she was frank, telling how she secretly wanted to die but didn't quite have the courage to do it. So she flirted with it, and the flowing blood relieved something in her, a little, and one day she would get up the nerve to go all the way and truly be dead.

  Mitzi expressed sympathy and promised to keep her secret. She watched out for Colene after that, as if afra'id she would keep her head under water too long or eat poison instead of dessert or throw herself off the precipice instead of admiring the view from it. It was fun for a while, having this constant attention. But soon it became annoying, and then oppressive. For one thing, the roommate was alert at night too, and the toilet wasn't sufficiently private. Colenejust couldn't cut herself, and was getting restive.

  She tried to distance herself a bit, to go on events without the roommate, so she could get the necessary privacy to do what she hated to do. Otherwise she was afraid she really would hurl herself over a cliff, having been unable to alleviate her need in a lesser and more controlled manner. The problem with the cliff was that she knew she would be unable to change her mind in midair, and that the job might not be complete; she might survive, broken and ashamed. But mainly it would be messy. Instead of lying pale and beautiful in her coffin, she would be bruised and battered, with her nose broken and teeth staved in. That was no way to die.

  It came to arguments, not about anything in particular, but about what wasn't said: Colene's need to do her own thing, even if that was self-destructive. First they were private, then they spilled over into public. Finally, in the last week of camp, the roommate blew up: "I'm sorry I ever tried to stop you from killing yourself!" she cried.

  There was an abrupt silence in the mess hall. Then, studiously, the other kids resumed eating and talking, not looking at Colene. Colene got up and dumped the rest of her meal in the trash and left. She went to her room and bared her arm, but couldn't do it; she was too humiliated and angry to focus even on this.

  That night the roommate came, but they did not speak to each other. Camp life went on as usual. But something had changed. Colene realized that people were speaking to her, about nothing in particular and everything in the ellipses—and they weren't speaking to Mitzi.

  A girl approached her, seemingly by coincidence. The girl was younger and seemed perky. But she showed Colene her arm, and it was scarred where the sleeve normally covered it. "I thought I was the only one," she murmured, and moved on.

  A boy approached at another time. He was handsome, and Colene liked his look, but had had no personal interaction with him. "I, ah, she shouldn't have done that," he said. "I didn't know. I didn't ask you before, but now, ah, maybe there isn't much time. The last-night dance, will you, ah—?"

  "Because you're sorry for me?" Colene asked witheringly.

  "Ah, yeah, I guess. I guess I'd be mad too, if—"

  "Okay."

  "What?"

  "I will go to the dance with you."

  He seemed stunned. "Ah, okay, then."

  They did go. He gave her a small corsage of wildflowers he had made himself. He held her very close as they danced, and suddenly she realized something. She halted on the floor. "Was that the truth?"

  He knew what she meant. "Ah, no. I lied. I just didn't have the nerve to tell you I liked you. Are you mad?"

  "Furious," she said, and pulled his head down and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

  There was applause from the other couples and those along the sidelines. A counselor forged her way to them. "Go to your rooms," she said severely. "You know that's not permitted."

  "See, I got you in trouble already," Colene told him as they separated.

  "Yeah. Thanks," he replied, looking stunned again.

  Mitzi was there in the room. Colene looked at her, surprised.

  "No one asked me," the girl said. "No one would dance with me." She was near tears.

  She was not suicidal, but she was suffering worse than Colene was now. "Maybe I can fix that," Colene said.

  "No! I don't deserve anything from you. I'm sorry I—I said what I did. I knew it was wrong the moment I—Colene, I'm sorry!" She buried her face in her handkerchief.

  "I know. But I guess you did me a favor."

  The head counselor arrived. "Colene, whatever possessed you to let him kiss you like that?" she demanded. "You know I shall have to report both of you to your families as well as apply demerits for discipline."

  "You kissed him?" the roommate asked, astonished.

  The counselor glanced at her, startled. "Why aren't you at the dance?"

  Colene spoke before Mitzi could answer. "We had a quarrel. I got back at her. I got her date to take me instead, at the last minute, so she was frozen out. He didn't kiss me; I kissed him. Ask anyone; they all saw it, except the chaperon, who only looked when she heard the applause. So I fixed them both good."

  The counselor stared at the roommate. "Is this true?"

  "Why do you think she's been crying?" Colene demanded.

  The counselor was at a loss for only a moment. Then she acted in the decisive fashion of her kind. "Colene, I am appalled at you. I will deal with you later." She turned to Mitzi. "You come with me. You will attend the dance with your date."

  In moments they were gone. Colene lay on her bunk bed, gazing at the ceiling. She was proud of herself. She knew her date would play along. Not only would it get him out of trouble with the counselors, it would make him a celebrity for the night. Two girls had fought to date him!

  Next day the buses came and the kids went home. They were from all over the country and had no contact with each other apart from the camp. The counselors were busy keeping things moving, and there wasn't much chance for any talking. But every time a camper caught Colene's eye, he or she smiled and ma
de a little gesture of a finger across the throat. It was a temporary camp convention, signifying credit for getting punished for doing something daring or decent. It had special meaning in Colene's case. They all knew, and all were pleased. Naturally no one told the counselors. Secrets—secrets were the stuff of life.

  That was it. When Colene's mother received the discipline report, she was perplexed. "What did you do?"

  "I kissed a boy in public."

  Her father burst out laughing. "About time!"

  Colene wondered what he would have said if he had known about the rape. Her world was such a schizoid place, where a gang rape went unnoticed while an innocent kiss got a girl in trouble. For all that, the last week of camp, betrayal and all, had been a high point in her life.

  Why did she want to die anyway? Now she felt far more positive. It was because of Darius, she knew: even the hope of him made her want to live, for she had to live to love, and she did love. Even the notion of sex, which had pretty much turned her off, now turned her on. With him it would be beautiful, she knew.

  But it was also Seqiro. She had loved horses from afar. Now she loved one from up close. Very close. Right-inside-her-mind close. She could tell him her secrets, and he would not betray them. That made her feel much better about living.

  "Seqiro!" she exclaimed. "Are you helping me? I mean, messing with my mind, making me forget the pain or whatever?"

  I could do this, but have not, because I see that it was that pain that caused you to embark on the Virtual Mode. Without it you might give up your quest.

  "You mean you're selfish, Seqiro? You want my company?"