“I thought you were in class,” said Marisa.
“And abandon my best friend?” asked Sahara. “I stepped out—I’m hiding in a custodial closet.”
“I can’t wait to watch the replays of that,” said Anja.
“This is starting to freak me out,” said Marisa. She felt small and vulnerable. “What if he’s . . . got some sort of control over NeverMind? What if this is a trap?”
“It’s three-on-one,” said Sahara. “We’ve got you.”
“Four,” said Omar. “What can I do?”
“Hold her,” said Anja. Marisa and Omar both looked at her in shock, and Anja laughed. “What? She’s about to go into VR—her real body will be completely limp.”
Marisa looked at Omar, their knees practically touching in the small cab, and rolled her eyes. “Oh, please no.”
Omar sighed. “What am I going to do? I’m not the bad guy here.” He stood up, awkwardly, and moved across to Marisa’s bench. She moved her SuperYu arm self-consciously, as if it were too gross for him to touch. Omar tried to maneuver his arms around her, eventually just leaving them in the air like he didn’t know what to do with them. “Maybe lean on the door?”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” said Sahara, “just put your arm around her. Mari, lean on his chest. Omar, hold her upright, and know that if you do anything you shouldn’t, I’ll publish video of it to the entire city.”
“I’m not going to do anything,” Omar growled. “What do you think I am?”
“I think you’re sexy,” said Anja with a wicked grin. “Marisa, don’t get any ideas.”
“I’m going to be unconscious,” said Marisa dryly. She paused for a moment, then settled into the crook of Omar’s arm, propped up by him and the door. He smelled wonderful, and she rolled her eyes at herself. She took a breath. “We can do this.”
“Yes we can,” said Sahara. “Everybody ready?”
“Check,” said Marisa.
“Check,” said Anja.
“Let’s do it,” said Omar.
Sahara’s voice was firm. “Go.”
Marisa read the message again: My name is Grendel. Meet me in NeverMind. The last word was hyperlinked, and when she opened it she found a NeverMind portal, with the simple tag xNeeLO. She’d seen such portals a dozen times, and never dared to follow them—too often they were tricks, used to force people to experience something horrible: porn or snuff or worse. Once she was in, how did she get back out again? Would it be obvious? Would she be trapped?
She was doing this for her friend, and her friends were watching out for her.
She opened the portal, and the world disappeared.
Darkness.
Marisa panicked, feeling her body come into existence only as she thought about it: she reached with her arms, and suddenly her arms were there, and as she grasped with her fingers they appeared as well, curling out from her hands in a desperate need for—something. Anything. There was nothing anywhere. She looked down, seeing her chest, waist, hips, legs, feet, unfurling like smoke, wearing the same clothes she’d put on that morning. She felt her face, and it was solid; her hair moved around her shoulders like it always did. Almost. Everything felt familiar and distant at once, like a memory.
She was standing, but on what? It was too dark to see. But no, she thought. It’s not dark—my mind is interpreting it as darkness because there isn’t any other input. I can see myself just fine. The reason I can’t see anything else is because there’s nothing else to see.
In the instant she realized she wasn’t standing on anything, she felt herself falling, plummeting through the nothingness at breakneck speed. She screamed, and the sound seemed to fill the world—the only sound this world had ever known. She flailed wildly, terrified at the sheer vastness that surrounded her—she could fall forever, never landing, because there was nothing for her to land on. She could grow old and die and still be falling, a tattered skeleton in ragged clothes. But no, she thought again. It’s only limitless because that’s how I’ve imagined it. NeverMind is a reflection of my own thoughts. Anja said there’s nothing here but what I put here.
So she put something there.
She imagined the autocab, and suddenly there she was, sitting inside of it, with Omar holding her side and Anja studying the tablet screen intently.