“Are you real?” Marisa asked.
“We’re manifestations of your subconscious,” said Anja, “but you know that already, or I wouldn’t be able to say it.” By the end of the sentence it was Marisa speaking, not Anja, and Marisa couldn’t help but shudder at the sensation—these were her own thoughts, reflected back at her through an Anja she had imagined out of nothing. Marisa looked out the windows and saw Anja’s high school, but only in vague outline—it wasn’t a building she knew well, so her mind filled in the gaps as best it could, extrapolating the specific shape into a broad generalization of other buildings pulled from Marisa’s memory—red bricks, wide windows, and tiled roof covered in solar trees. She studied it, looking for pieces she recognized, and saw bits of her own school: a corner here, a lawn there, and suddenly it was her school, more familiar than Anja’s and thus more clearly rendered, as solid in NeverMind as it was in the real world. She focused on the school, unnerved by the fluid way the world kept redefining itself, willing it to stay here, to stay one thing just for a moment. The wind blew in the trees; the sun glinted from the glass in the windows. She smelled flowers.
“Not bad for a first-timer,” said a voice. Marisa spun, searching for whoever had said it, feeling the whole of reality seem to lurch with the realization that the speaker was Someone Else. A brain that was not hers had entered NeverMind, and with that sense of invasion her control shattered, the school physically splintering like a cracked mirror, bright shards of a false reality spinning off into the void. She felt herself falling again, only to be caught by a soft leather couch, black and smooth and gleaming faintly from a light source she couldn’t identify. The rest of a dark red room seemed to fly at her from all sides, walls and floor and ceiling and a low black table assembling themselves into a simple box with her in the middle. A glass bowl appeared on the table, filled with white stones, and the voice spoke again. “Not bad at all. I always thought that table needed something on it.”
“Are you Grendel?” asked Marisa. Her voice was coarse, like she was out of breath, and she tried to force herself to calm down. Her body wasn’t even here—she could sound like whatever she wanted. Her heart rate—her imaginary heart rate—seemed to slow, and she breathed deeply, filling her lungs.
“I am.”
Marisa nodded. “What are you doing?”
“I’m building a room,” said Grendel. “It’s the same room I always use for these meetings, but the bowl is new. You added that. I like it.”
“We’re creating this reality together,” said Marisa, trying to sound more sure than she really was. She almost said That makes sense, but stopped herself. She needed to look more certain than that, more experienced. She crossed her legs with what she hoped was a stylish flair. “What makes you think I’m a first-timer?”
“Because you fell,” said Grendel, and she could feel his amusement rippling through NeverMind. “Everyone falls the first time.”
Marisa winced. “How long have you been here? I thought I was alone.”
“I’ve been here ever since I sent the invitation,” said Grendel’s voice. “You just didn’t see me because I’m . . . very good at not existing.”
“Do I get to see you?”
“Trust me,” said Grendel, “I’m the last thing you want to see,” and as his voice grew angry the room grew dark, the red walls seeming to fester into the dark purple color of a bruise. The stones in the glass bowl hatched into maggots. Marisa clutched the arm of the couch, but even that was fake, another construct of this warped mind, and the armrest shrunk beneath her hands as if shying back from her touch. She stood up just before the couch shriveled in on itself and disappeared completely. She felt her skin crawling, and desperately started counting, concentrating on the numbers, one-two-three-four-five, praying that the single-minded focus would help her regain control before her subconscious mind converted the skin-crawling feeling into actual insects wriggling through her clothes. She breathed deeply, ignoring the stranger’s angry voice, the twisted images that oozed out of his mind, the fierce unreality of everything around her. Soon the numbers gave way to computer code, and she recited the commands in her head, calmed by the familiar words and cadences of programming. She opened her eyes and the room had returned to normal.
“You said you had information about that code,” said Marisa. Her voice wavered, but didn’t crack. “Do you know what it is? Do you know who made it?”
“I’ve seen that code twice before,” said Grendel. “The first time was in Japan, in a Dolly Girls program.”
“That’s what the guy on Lemnisca.te said,” said Marisa, leaning forward.