“A little.” She gestured to his. “Sit down.” She lowered her voice. “We can talk more freely once we’re in.”
“Good idea.” They sat down and plugged the cords into the jacks at the base of their skulls. Marisa adjusted her vest, making sure it was straight—there was no sense in her body looking sloppy while her mind was in the game. Saif pulled up the list of games on their shared screen. “What are you in the mood for? Highway 1? Muffin Top?”
“You play Muffin Top?”
He grinned. “There’s nothing wrong with Muffin Top; those things are delicious.”
Marisa laughed. “Are you seven years old and forgot to tell me?”
“Is that a problem?” Saif made a look of mock concern. “Wait, how old are you? Nine? The other seven-year-olds are going to be so jealous.”
“Overworld,” said Marisa, tapping the screen. The entry button for Overworld expanded to fill the monitor.
“So you’re an athlete,” said Saif. “This one’s tough—are you sure you can handle it?”
Marisa debated whether to tell him now, or make it a surprise. “You follow the game?” she asked.
“Not really, I’m more of a movie guy than a sports guy.”
“Let’s give it a try,” she said.
“Okay. But you’d better bring your A game.”
She tapped the button again and lay back in her chair. The real world disappeared, and the Overworld lobby appeared around her with a subtle frisson of shifting sensory inputs.
It was similar to NeverMind, but more stable—more solid, though she knew that it was just as illusory. Everything she saw and touched was a construct put into her mind by the virtual reality program, but at least she could rely on it staying the same from moment to moment. She looked down at her body, seeing the same stealth suit avatar she’d been wearing the last time she played. It was one of her favorites, and she’d set it as her default; the body style wasn’t a perfect match for her physical body, because there were parts of her physical body she didn’t like. Why had she worried so much about what she looked like in the real world, if they were going to spend all their time in this perfected one? A moment later Saif appeared beside her, though of course he didn’t look like Saif; he wore one of the game’s starter avatars, a random assemblage of face and body options, under a mostly featureless jumpsuit. He looked around in surprise, and Marisa wondered if he’d ever played Overworld at all.
“Okay,” he said, taking a moment to study the lobby. “This is about what I expected, but . . . why do you look so much more awesome than I do?”
Marisa laughed, all the confidence she hadn’t felt in real life flooding into her now that they were safe in the virtual realm. “I can’t help it,” she said, “I’m awesome in every version of reality.”
“My skin is blue,” he said. “Not even a cool blue, I’m like a robin’s-egg blue.” He felt his face. “And kind of . . . doggish? Am I a baby blue dog man?”
Marisa laughed again. “The game randomizes all the variables when you enter without a defined avatar. You can design your own, or I can just give you one of mine.”
“I’m getting the impression you play this a lot. This interface says your name is Heartbeat? That’s your username?”
“We call it a call sign in Overworld, but yeah. You can set yours to whatever you want—if it’s not taken.”
“I’ve tried ten different ones already—everything’s taken. How’d you get Heartbeat?”
“There . . . may have been some slight hacking involved,” she said. “The previous owner of the username canceled their account.”
“On purpose?”
She shrugged innocently. “Who can say? They started a new one the next day, so maybe not.”
“I think this one works,” said Saif. “Bh4s4d. I had to go Hindi and Leet just to find something that no one else had used before.”
“I like it,” said Marisa. “I’ve heard Jaya say bhasad before, but I don’t know what it means.”
“There’s no good translation,” said Saif. “Kind of like a big mess?”
Marisa laughed. “That’s what you chose?”
“Well, I mean it more like chaos, which is on the more awesome side of its spectrum of definitions.”
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.” She opened her inventory menu. “So: for your avatar. You want to be a man or a woman?”
He grinned slyly. “Are those my only options?”
Marisa raised her eyebrow. “You want to go nuts? I’ve got a dragon, a snake—though that one’s tricky to get used to, because there’s no arms—a zombie, a statue—”