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A few years?
“No chance,” I said. “I’m already wealthy. What could you possibly offer me to live in your box?”
“Sandra is free of her aspects,” Kyle said.
Ivy looked at me sharply.
Kyle smiled. “You’re interested, I see. Yes, she asked if we could stop the hallucinations. Construct a reality where she was free of them.” He hesitated, and I caught what I thought was a sign of discomfort from him. “It … didn’t work like we thought it would.”
“When we put her into the simulation,” a techie said, “she added to the programming, making her aspects appear. And they interacted with the world we created—Sandra layered another reality on top of our virtual reality, and adapted the code. But she wanted the aspects gone … and turns out, we could help with that.”
I shivered. Something about the tone in his voice.
“Anyway,” Kyle said, “Sandy’s been very helpful. She’s showing us how the brain alters its own reality. We aren’t really sure exactly why or how our programs interact with her aspects, but they do—we’re getting all kinds of interesting interactions between our tech and her brain. One thing is certain. We can help you be free of them, like she is. No more aspects—no more nightmares. No more voices.”
Ivy looked aghast. J.C., though, met my eyes and nodded. He’d never wanted to be an aspect. He could understand how part of me just wanted things to be … normal.
“Let me talk to Sandra,” I said.
Kyle winced. “Now, see, here’s the problem. She’s my only chip in this particular bet. Surely you see I can’t give her up without something in return? Look, let’s do a quick deal. Handshake. Give me a few days of data, and let me prove to you that I can create a reality where you don’t have aspects. In turn, I’ll let you talk to Sandra.”
“He’s a snake, Steve,” Ivy said. “I can’t believe you’re even considering this. Why are we listening?”
I closed my eyes. But it was strangely tempting. Last time I’d tried to get away, Joyce had come complaining that I never took her on missions, Armando had phoned me seventeen times, and I’d found Ivans in the closet drinking the bottle of hotel wine. On top of it all, J.C. had shown up “just in case.”
My life was so stuffed full of fake people, I didn’t have room for anything or anyone else. But that look in Ivy’s eyes. And this offer … it would only give me another layer of fakeness. I wouldn’t be normal, because none of it would be real.
“No deal,” I said, turning to walk away. My three aspects joined me as I strode toward the front door of the large, hollow room.
“Very well,” Kyle said with a sigh. “Gerry, try the isolation program on him.”
I spun. “You can’t—”
“Steve, you broke into my offices. You’re the trespasser. I’m perfectly justified in holding you a little while, to be certain you aren’t dangerous. Until the authorities arrive.” He smiled. “Next time, maybe don’t screw with the guy who literally owns the prison.”
I lunged for him, but the room flashed white.
I stumbled over a rock and hit the ground. A sandy beach, with waves softly lapping to my right, a jungle to my left. My aspects stumbled around, J.C. with hand on gun, Ngozi gasping—horrified—to be suddenly outdoors someplace so wild.
A deserted island.
TWELVE
“That rat!” J.C. shouted. “That slimeball. He’s getting free time studying us!”
Ivy helped me to my feet, but I had difficulty meeting her eyes. I sat down on a rock by the water, feeling exhausted. I was so tired. Tired of being a test subject. Tired of imagining a world where everyone lived—had friends, fell in love, visited family—except me.
Tired of being the middle manager of my own existence.
“I can’t believe this!” J.C. shouted. “I can’t … Yo, Ngozi. You okay?”
She shook her head. “No. This is horrible. Where are my gloves?” She fished in her pockets.
“Yeah,” J.C. said, “but—like—there’s no people, right? So no germs.”
“Except for the fact that we’re not really on a beach!” she said. “We’re in that smelly warehouse, next to a table full of six old Chinese delivery containers. I’m going to end up touching one by accident.”
“So what do we do?” Ivy looked toward J.C.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “All I know how to do is shoot people and make clever wisecracks.”
“Oh please,” Ivy said. “Your wisecracks are not clever.”
I put my head in my hands, looking at a wave roll in, feeling a pounding headache come on.
“I think Steve is going to be indisposed for a little while,” Ivy said. “We might need to solve this ourselves. Ngozi, ideas?”
“Well, there are footprints in the sand over there,” she said. “Might be one of those ‘quest lines’ the tech people were talking about.”
I watched the wave roll in, deposit some sand, then die off. It would all just get sucked out again when the tide changed. Then return. A thousand little versions of Sisyphus, repeating until the sand wore away to nothing.
“Steve,” Ivy said, stepping up. “We’re going to follow those footprints. We’ll be back in a minute. You’ll be okay?”
I didn’t reply.
“Just stay here, all right?”
They walked off. A part of me noticed that they were acting a little strange. They almost never left me. But now they went off exploring?
Maybe, I thought, maybe they’re excited to be able to actually interact with a world. In here, everything is fake. So maybe it’s better for them.
Or … was Kyle going to do something to them? To prove he could leave me here alone? How long would he hold me here? How long could he?
A strong hand gripped me on the shoulder. I jumped, turning, and found Lua standing behind me. Lua! He’d vanished from the mansion, becoming a nightmare.
I screamed and scrambled off the rock, pulling out of his grip and dropping into the rolling surf. I splashed, climbing to my feet, soaked wet and holding out my phone—for some reaso
n I would never have been able to articulate—as if it were a weapon. Only then did I realize something was wrong. Lua didn’t look like a nightmare—he didn’t have the dead eyes or the sunken face. He looked just like his normal self.
“Sorry, boss. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” The large Samoan man folded his arms. He was wearing jeans and flannel, with the sleeves rolled up. He inspected the sky, then the woods, then the rock I’d been sitting on. “A deserted island. Of all the places for you to end up.”
“It’s … it’s not real.”
“What is?” he asked, then chuckled. He never laughed loudly, but I’d also never known him to be angry. In fact, it was hard for me to imagine him as a nightmare, like Armando had become.
“They got all the clichés at least,” Lua said. “That bay is right out of a freaking Disney movie, complete with—yes—the mast of a sunken ship. Tribal drums in the background. Mysterious footprints. What you want to bet that if we start digging, we’ll find a treasure chest somewhere on this beach?” He started toward the woods. “Well, let’s get you out of here.”
“Out?” I asked, scrambling across the beach behind him. “How?”
“They implied earlier they couldn’t re-create more than a small space,” he said. “A building at most. So I figure, if we get you out into the water—away from the actual island—the thing will fall apart.” He started pulling at some vines dangling from a tree.
“Lua?” I said. “How do you know what they said to me earlier? You weren’t there.”
“I know what you know, boss. And you know what I know.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I said. “Because that’s the way I stay sane. That’s the way Sandra set it up.”
Lua grunted. “How did that work out for her?” He knelt down, twisting the vines to strengthen them, then wrapping them around the edge of a small fallen log.
