When Barrow dared to open his eyes again, the world around him had shifted.
He was inside Otherlife at last.
HALFWAY THROUGH
the break-in, Rigel began to have serious doubts about agreeing to come along.
“Hey, hurry up,” Misha urged him. “We’re almost there.”
“I’m coming,” Rigel said, squeezing through a narrow shaft that was barely wide enough for him to crawl through. “You said this would be quick.”
“Just a little bit farther. Don’t chicken out on me.”
Rigel’s foot snagged on one of the hundreds of cables that snaked through the underside of the ventilation shaft they were traversing. He cursed softly and yanked it free.
“What was that?” Misha asked him from up in front. Rigel could only see her feet.
“Nothing. Just some stupid cable.”
“Watch it, Aaron. If we screw anything up, then they’ll know we’re here. And not even my dad will be able to get us out of prison if we’ve damaged anything.”
“I told you, I’m Rigel now. Stop calling me Aaron.”
“And I told you that insisting on a weird new artistic name is stupid.
Aaron
. Now hurry up, or they will lock us up.”
“They can’t put us in prison,” he protested. “We’re only nineteen. Emphasis on the teen.”
“Yeah, right,” Misha answered. “And they’ll go extra easy on me because I’m a girl.”
“No,” Rigel grunted, turning to the left when he saw Misha’s legs disappear in that direction. “But your dad works here. If they catch us, he can get us off easy.”
Misha chuckled up ahead. The sound echoed in the narrow confines of the never-ending ventilation duct. “You don’t know my father very well, do you?”
“Just that one time at our graduation. He seemed like a nice guy.”
“Uh…. Nope. Honestly, Aaron, sometimes I think you have it easy now. No parents to boss you around, being strict all the time and trying to convince you not to pick an Art major.”
If anybody else had said that to him, Rigel would have probably punched him. Misha was different, though. Rigel knew she always said whatever was on her mind, and that’s why he valued her as a friend. His best friend.
Besides, making jokes about it made it easier to accept that he would never see his parents again.
“I hope this is worth it,” he grumbled. “We should have just paid the trial fee like normal users. Doesn’t your dad have an employee discount or something?”
“You haven’t seen the prices, have you?”
“Obviously not.”
“I did,” Misha told him. “Otherlife subscriptions are crazy expensive, even the trials. And besides….” Rigel saw an opening leading down up ahead, finally. Misha launched herself through it in midsentence without the slightest hesitation. Reluctantly, he followed her down. He fell a surprisingly short distance and stood up next to her, brushing dirt off his clothes. “Here we are.”
Rigel looked around. He was in one of the famous user rooms for Otherlife. The interior was nice, decorated with fancy furniture and expensive-looking paintings. A plush carpet muffled his footsteps as he approached one of the three chairs that dominated the room. They reminded him of the ones he normally sat on when he visited the dentist, but these were larger and had a lot more cables protruding from them in every possible direction. An intimidating set of what could only be ankle and wrist cuffs glinted in the halogen light.
“These are the VIP rooms,” Misha was telling him, walking over to the door to make sure nobody had seen them coming.
“Which just makes it more likely that they’ll detect the intrusion right away,” Rigel complained. He looked up at the ceiling, and sure enough, there were at least two security cameras that he could see. By now they probably were in every security surveillance monitor they had.
Misha turned around and rolled her eyes. “I told you I used my father’s card to get us into the building. It’s got major clearance; he’s a senior scientist here. Besides, these VIP rooms disable surveillance as soon as you swipe the card to gain access. I guess it’s due to privacy issues from paranoid people who don’t want to be recorded while they are helpless inside the virtual world. But while we’re inside here they will not monitor us.”
“And you swiped this card when?”
“When you were busy gawking at the chairs like they were going to eat you, Aaron.”
“Rigel.”
“Whatever,” Misha said, flicking her dark hair out of her face.
“How does it work?” Rigel asked her, turning his attention back to the nearest chair. “Is it painful? I mean, I’ve seen the commercials, but….”
Misha walked closer. “Not from what my father tells me. He says you just sit down and hit start, basically. The computer does everything else. There’s these microscopic needles that drill into your head—”
“Excuse me?”
“Relax. They don’t do any damage. They connect your brain to the virtual world.”
“And in there you can do anything you want?”
Misha shrugged. “Pretty much. My dad hates it. He says that the majority of people only use it to have sex with strangers or fight with strangers. There’s supposed to be some pretty neat hubs in there, too, though. Places to meet interesting people. We could try starting at the Art hub, see if we meet anyone from Uni.”
“I just don’t get what the point is,” Rigel said. “I’ve seen some of the videos they’ve posted online. Inside it looks like that ancient movie,
TRON
. It’s just drab rooms with virtual furniture or whatever. You can meet people for real out in the city in nicer environments and without having to pay a small fortune to do so.”
“Oh, Rigel. Sometimes you’re so naïve.”
“Why?”
“Because the whole point of having a virtual world is that you can not only do what you want, you can
be
whoever you want. And nobody will know it’s you unless you tell them.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Come on. Let’s log in. I have no idea how much time we have. You remember my mother’s access code?” Misha asked him.
“Yeah. When do I use it, though?”
“Duh. When you’re inside Otherlife.”
Rigel approached the wrist cuffs on the right side of his chair. They were solid metal and at the moment were clamped shut. He reached for the nearest one and pulled, trying to open it.
He let go almost immediately, crying out from the sharp pain that raced up his wrist.
“You okay?” Misha asked.
“Fine.”
“Your hands again?”
Rigel nodded. The pain was already receding, but the weakness was still there. As it would always be.
“Let me do that for you,” Misha said, reaching over. She opened the two sets of cuffs easily. “There. And next time tell me, Rigel. You know you’re not supposed to use your hands unless you have to.”
“Like I could ever forget,” Rigel answered, rubbing the underside of his wrist. He hated his injury.
“Be bitter later, okay? Right now we have to get going. Just sit down, and start the program. I’ll see you on the other side!”
Misha sauntered happily over to her chair. Rigel shot an anxious glance at the door, but it remained shut tight. Nobody had come in yet, and it looked like Misha was right. If they were careful, nobody had to find out they had ever been inside this place. Misha would complete her little act of defiance against her father, they would leave CradleCorp unnoticed, and everyone would win. Rigel was still not sure this had been a good idea, though. If they were caught….
But he had said yes already, and now he was here. Nothing to do but log in.
So he did. He approached the empty chair and sat down. It was soft and comfortable. He called up the input panel right above his field of vision and typed a complicated series of characters to gain initial access to the machine. Then he slid a small memory stick into one of the slots and crossed his fingers. The stick had the fake access codes and biometric overrides that would be necessary for him to log in without an account of his own. He was essentially pretending to be Misha’s mother for the night.
His chair whirred to life. It had worked!
The interface helmet above his head descended softly and molded itself to Rigel’s cranium even as the restraints around him came to life, clamping about his limbs and securing his body in a fixed position. Rigel closed his eyes briefly as the helmet covered his upper face and tensed up, dreading the next step. He had seen it online, but he never actually experienced—
“Ahhhhhhhh!” Rigel yelled as the microscopic connectors drilled into his skull. He wanted to yell some more, but the pain was gone too quickly for that. As if from far off, he heard Misha’s cry as well. The helmet had good noise cancellers. The sound was faint, and he could see nothing.
Then he felt a surge of… something.
Rigel opened his eyes to a virtual world.
He looked around in wonder. It was exactly as he had seen on the videos. There was a black environment, crisscrossed by glowing lines that marked the confines of the room he was in. Hovering next to him was an avatar selection screen, and Rigel quickly chose the closest resemblance to himself that he could find. He was thin but well proportioned, with only the faintest hint of gauntness around his cheeks and in the way his Adam’s apple stood out clearly against his throat. His eyes were a sharp blue, a pleasing contrast to his raven-black hair. He wore it buzzed down to black fuzz except in a neat line that ran from his forehead to the back of his head in a vaguely Mohawk style. His cheeks were smooth most of the time, with only occasional hints of the beard that Rigel thought he would never grow fully—not that he minded. He preferred to be clean-shaven all the time. His jaw was angular, giving his face an edgy look that was emphasized whenever Rigel grinned. He was naturally broad shouldered, but he never did any exercise, and so his big frame made him look like a gaunt model instead of a fighter. He actually liked the way he looked. Everything about him was good enough, except for his hands.
Rigel debated a little bit with himself on whether to include the braces on his avatar. In the real world, he had to wear medical supports around his hands that stabilized them and gave him a little bit more strength. They looked a little like metallic gloves, except they only covered the back of his hands and fingers, leaving his palms free. Complicated biomachinery in twin cuffs around his wrists regulated his movements and attempted to minimize the damage that Rigel did to himself simply by moving his hands in his daily life. They worked, but Rigel’s condition was too severe for them to be any real help in the long run.
Rigel frowned. It was a virtual world; he could be normal in here. No braces on his avatar, then.
He ended the customization sequence and went through the slightly disconcerting repositioning of his conscience into the virtual avatar. He looked down at himself, and it felt just like his real body.
“Nice,” he said aloud, and he was pleased to hear his voice sounded just the way it usually did. “I’m beginning to see why people like Otherlife so much.”
A door opened in front of him, and Rigel walked forward through it with only a slight moment of disorientation. Then his mind accepted the avatar fully, and he crossed the threshold. Misha was already waiting for him.
“Rigel!” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands in the air. “Isn’t this awesome?”
“Yeah, so far so good.” Then he had a closer look at Misha’s avatar. She looked older, and she had been decidedly generous with her endowments. She was taller, her breasts were bigger, and her hair was glossy and an altogether different color. Her legs were longer and her hips fuller. She looked like a supermodel. “Uh…. Misha? Why do you suddenly look twenty-five?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Duh. This is Otherlife, Rigel! It’s supposed to be different. You can be anyone you want in here! That’s kind of the whole point.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he answered sarcastically. “It’s just that I didn’t think you’d… never mind. What are we going to do now?”
Misha grinned mischievously. “I thought we could try out the dating rooms.”
Rigel had heard about those. Some of them made even the most depraved fabled Roman orgies look boring and conservative by comparison.
“Um….”
“Come on, Rigel! Live a little.”
“I don’t know, Misha. You know I’ve never…. I don’t want my first time to be with some random guy and his fake avatar.”
Misha stomped her foot. Rigel noticed she was wearing the exact pair of designer shoes that she said her father had refused to buy her last Sunday. “Fine, be boring if you want. But can’t you at least come with me? As moral support? You don’t have to do anything.”
“I….”
“Please?”
“Um….”
“Great! Let’s go!”
Misha called up some kind of virtual interface and selected an option. Another door opened to Rigel’s left immediately. It was clearly labeled, “Singles Dating.”
Misha grabbed Rigel’s hand. She dragged him into the new room.
There was a brief blur as they crossed, the shimmer of reality changing.
Rigel felt a jolt.
I see you.
Darkness.
Rigel lost Misha. He was suddenly nowhere. His avatar was gone.
Welcome, Rigel.
He tried to move but couldn’t. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t feel a thing. There was only the voice. It was huge, reverberating and awe-inspiring as if to encompass all reality within itself. Rigel wanted to cower from it. The voice felt as if it were too big to comprehend.
I see your sadness. I sense your despair.
Rigel wanted to make himself small, invisible, but there was no hiding from the voice. It reached easily into the core of Rigel’s being.
I can see….
Reality shifted. Rigel was suddenly standing in the desert, the merciless midday sun burning in the sky. Heat rose from the barren dust-covered landscape in waves, and the air shimmered, stifling him. He looked around. Aurora was a small cluster of skyscrapers dozens of kilometers away. He was out in the wastelands beyond the city. Rigel had only been outside the walls once, when he’d had to identify his parents’ bodies after the crash.