The Japaneseness of the house instantly made sense. Rory was selling her on something: Mecha. She was, in a very roundabout way, trying to prove to Amy how great a foreign place could be. But Amy hadn't needed convincing on that score. It wasn't leaving her country behind that frightened her. It was leaving behind the people still living there.
"Look, I know you want me to go to Mecha, but what I really want is to call–"
"It's a wonderful place!" The table's light dappled into a map of the city. "Just look at it!" The map on the table magnified five times, and suddenly the street unfolded before them. Food stalls with grey blobs of vN dumplings on sticks loomed large on the table. Bottles of electrolytes sweated condensation in the hands of smiling synthetics. Humans laughed. Common video popped up: the Mecha Matsuri, marshalled by the stars of Project Aiko and the other shows on the dorama feed.
"They've made room for us there," Javier said. "Not just room, but a whole environment."
"You told me it was a zoo," Amy said.
"You can watch every channel there!" Rory said. "And every movie in every theatre, and play all the games. They're all safe for vN."
Rory showed them happy scenes of cheering vN in gaming parlours, dancing and waving their arms under projected light, the configuration of which changed with each movement so that their hand motions remixed the visible environment from supernovas to English countryside and dairy cattle. Then the view flipped over to a girl carrying a white lace parasol. The stats on it appeared as soon as the camera zoomed over: where the plastic came from, how many computer shells it was made from, and so on. Then their view merged with the parasol and suddenly they were in it, watching the street click by in brief but regular still shots.
"They really love you!" Rory added. "Check out these games!"
Rory showed them four different Mechanese gaming channels. Various game skins of Amy and Javier battled orcs and giant spiders and demons summoned from other dimensions. Whole armies of Amy and Javier formed. Then they attacked each other. They built fortresses and teleport stations and liberated small villages. One channel showed them having sex. It was in-game sex, though, so it was all fuzzed out and surrounded by twinkling pink lights so the other players couldn't see anything unless they had a special membership.
"These look handmade." Amy knew for a fact that her chest couldn't possibly be that big.
"You should see the porn!" Rory brought them an image of a very real-looking Javier bent over a human woman in a nurse's costume. The more Amy looked at the man, the more he seemed exactly like Javier, down to the creases on his hands and the set of his teeth and the glow coming off his skin. But it also wasn't him: the eyes were too bright, the smile too sweet. It was him, but it wasn't.
You know what that means, don't you?
Amy did. "Turn it off."
"But–"
"That's his son, Rory. Turn it off. Now."
The table winked out. The room seemed dull and dim without its light. Amy was glad of the sudden shadow. Beside her, Javier continued staring at the table as though its images were still playing. Abruptly, he stood.
"I think I'll give that soaking tub a try, after all," he said, and left the room.
12
The Lies My Daddy Told Me
Amy wandered. She liked the house. It was the kind of built environment she would have obsessed over, once, mapping it and rendering it and redesigning it a hundred different ways. A distant and objective part of her enjoyed running her fingers over its surfaces: reclaimed wood, soapstone, privacy paper screens whose permeability altered under heat. The space's best feature was the way it could be altered so easily, how the barriers meant nothing if you were patient and willing to rearrange them. She had modified places like this in Edo period games, when she played Nobunaga or Ieyasu or someone else with a castle to keep. She recognized the layouts.
She closed every wall behind her as she moved ever deeper into the house. Then she slid each one along their respective rails until each seam was in an entirely different location, first on the left and then the right, alternating. She made herself another room, a tiny one with a low table and two matching chairs, and a scroll-style display hanging from the wall. As she entered, it glowed to life and gave her images of old temples and ornate castle towers whose curlicued dragons now breathed moss. Then she closed the wall until no light sliced through its seams.
Closing the doors behind her did nothing to hide her from the house, however. "You seem upset, Amy."
"I am upset, Rory." She tried finding a camera to speak to, but couldn't.
"Why?" Rory sounded genuinely puzzled "You've been saved. You'll never have to return to Redmond ever again, and you'll get to start a new life in a really fun city!"