Jane did as she was told. The caps on the net and gloves stuck onto her skin real tight. It was weird, but not bad. She picked up the goggles. ‘And these?’
‘You should lie down before you put those on. You won’t be able to see out of them.’
Jane lay down on her bed and put the goggles on. Owl was right – they made the whole room go away. It wasn’t scary, she told herself. Owl said it was okay. Owl said it was okay.
‘I’m going to upload the sim to the kit now,’ Owl said. ‘And don’t worry, I’m right here. You can still talk to me, even when it’s playing.’
Jane relaxed into her pillow. She heard a little click as something activated in the goggles. The net pressed very, very softly into her scalp, like it was grabbing it. The gloves hugged her fingers, too. Her skin tingled. Owl said it was okay.
The darkness started to go away. Then . . . then it got weird.
She was standing in an empty space, lit with soft yellow light. She wasn’t standing, not really. She was still lying down in bed. But she was also standing in the yellow place. Lying down felt more real; standing felt like a memory. But it was a memory that was happening right that second.
Nothing. Here. Made. Sense.
A glowing ball rose up out of the ground with a hum. It stopped right in front of her face. ‘Tek tem!’ it said, pulsing bright with each word. ‘Kebbi sum?’
Jane swallowed. Owl had taught her tek tem. Those were Klip words for hello. But she didn’t understand anything else the ball said. ‘Um . . . I’m . . . I don’t understand.’
‘Oh!’ the ball said. The sound of its voice had changed. ‘Am sora! Hoo spak Ensk! Weth all spak Ensk agath na. Ef hoo gan larin Klip?’
She frowned. Some of those words were almost like normal words, but the rest . . . weren’t. She felt tired already. ‘Owl?’ she called.
Owl’s voice appeared all around her, as if there were speakers everywhere. ‘I’m sorry, Jane,’ Owl said, ‘I didn’t think about the language packs. Give me just a minute. There must be a module for Sko-Ensk, this franchise got a grant from the Diaspora – ah, here we are. Things may go dark for a second, don’t be scared.’
‘I’m not scared,’ Jane said.
Things went dark, just as Owl had said. Okay, fine, it was a little scary. She was all the way back in bed, but she couldn’t see anything. She didn’t like that at all. But only a second or two went by before the warm yellow space returned, and the ball of light came back. ‘Hi there!’ it said. ‘What’s your name?’
Jane relaxed. The ball spoke with the same weird kind of voice sound that Owl had (accent, Owl had said – it was called an accent), but Jane could understand it now. ‘I’m Jane,’ she said.
‘Welcome, Jane! Is this your first time in a sim, or have you played others before?’
She bit her thumbnail (or the memory of it, anyway). This whole thing made her feel a little silly. ‘First time.’
‘Awesome! You’re in for a treat! I’m the Game Globe. I help make the sim fit you just right. If you ever need to change something, or if you need to leave, just yell “Game Globe!” and I’ll help you out. Okay?’
‘Um, okay.’
‘Great! So how old are you, Jane?’
‘Ten.’
‘Are you in school?’
‘No.’ Owl had explained school. It sounded like fun. ‘But Owl’s teaching me.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t quite understand that. Is Owl a grown-up?’
‘Owl is an AI,’ she said. ‘I live with her in a shuttle and she helps me be okay.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t quite understand that,’ the ball said. ‘What’s—’
Owl’s voice cut in. ‘Just tell it I’m your parent, Jane,’ Owl said. ‘It’s easier. That thing isn’t sentient.’
Jane didn’t know what parent or sentient meant, but she did as told. ‘Owl’s my parent.’
‘Got it!’ the ball said. ‘I’m going to ask you a few questions, just to see what kind of stuff you already know. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Great!’ The ball wiggled, then dissolved into shapes – reading squiggles, like on the boxes in the shuttle. There were a lot of them. A whole big lot of them, much more than on boxes. ‘Can you read this back to me?’ the ball said.
‘No.’
‘Okay.’ The squiggles changed. There were less of them now. ‘Can you read this?’
‘No,’ Jane said. Her cheeks felt hot. This was a test, and she was failing it. ‘I can’t read.’
The squiggles melted together into the Game Globe. ‘That’s okay! Thank you for telling me. Do you know how to count?’
‘Yes,’ she said, sighing.
Owl’s voice came back. ‘Jane, hang on just a minute. I’m going to tweak this thing’s protocols. This is supposed to be fun, not an interrogation.’
‘What’s an intro—’
‘It’s when somebody asks you too many questions. Here, I’m going to configure the educational parameters for you. Let’s see . . . starter reading, starter math, starter Klip, starter species studies, starter science, starter code, and . . . I’m going to go ahead and say advanced technology.’