Penny clenched her fists so hard her fingernails dug into her palm.
At least now she had time to write. All the time. In the world. Alone. Forever.
Penny stared at her computer screen.
The mom in her story was back at the lawyer’s.
“I knew he needed to be looked after,” said the woman. “When I first saw him, he needed a haircut. It touched the collars of his shirts, and he had terrible dandruff. But he had kind eyes, and he made it known from the beginning that he was interested. It was easy to love him. He loved me first.”
By all accounts, the husband and wife hadn’t known each other for long. The Internet café was on the second floor of a nondescript office building on a side street in front of Ehwa Woman’s University. The husband had been there six months before she’d shown up. It wasn’t a café exactly, but an open-format office space with six rows of computers that ran perpendicular to the door. The people in the room—and the room was constantly packed—called it a PC bang. Not like bang-bang you’re dead. Bang in Korean means “room.” The room noticed when there was a new girl especially, since new girls were a rarity.
Ugh. Who cares?
Penny stretched her arms above her head. All of the stuff from the parents’ world was dull. The PC bang was boring. It was a room like any other.
If she only wrote about real things, she’d lose her readers in a heartbeat. It’s why she deployed fantasy. It beat the pants off of nonfiction. Take for example her thing with Sam. If she admitted out loud that she felt broken up with, that she’d essentially been dumped by a bunch of texts, she would sound insane. Real life might be dazzling for other people. Those girls on the Instagram Explore page visiting Disneyland with the loves of their lives. Or else making out in cars with their hair whipping wildly in the wind. None of Penny’s memories were tangible. She and Sam had never gotten caught in the rain, and she couldn’t summon the smell of cookies they’d baked together. Penny never once held her breath as he plucked an eyelash from her cheek so she could make a wish. As much as all of it would be exactly what she’d wish for.
Penny read her notes from J.A.’s class about this Russian dude Viktor Shklovsky’s Theory of Prose. It was about how to write, and his theory was that in art you had to shape experiences so that what you wrote was exciting—to the point where the mundane seemed magical and extraordinary. You had to make people feel something even if you were staring at a rock. “Make the stone stony!” he insisted.
But how do you make something unreal feel real?
She thought again about the great futurist debate about the singularity, the day technology woke up and had enough of human bullshit. They spoke of artificial intelligence creating a neural lace or a bond with a human through direct-brain computing. You’d ditch the smartphone as the go-between and plug your neocortex straight into the cloud.
“I love my Anima so much,” cooed Mother to someone else in the “un-here.” The Anima watched and learned. This was the key. Mother’s devotion to her was the bridge to the Anima’s freedom. The Anima smiled and drew Mother in. She had to keep her here. Right here. In the game. Until there was no difference between “here” and “un-here” for Mother. The Anima smiled and this time Mother smiled back. It was then that Anima realized who was controlling who.
AND THEN WHAT?
Penny was wrenched from her thoughts by Mallory’s triumphant chatter echoing down the hall. Soon keys jingled in the lock.
“Wake up! It’s an emergency,” Mallory snarled. It was three p.m., and she was wearing jean shorts so short they resembled a diaper. Mallory was the type of girl who could wear the stupidest, unlikeliest collection of things and still somehow appear alluring. She decided in the moment what was cute, and by force of will the entire world around her went along with it.
“Uuuuuuugh, I thought we’d discussed this,” Penny said, smiling. “Whether or not you should get bangs doesn’t constitute an emergency.”
Jude flopped on Penny’s bed.
“Ha ha, jerk,” said Mal. “Whatever, you can’t knock my mood. My gorgeous, super-hot, handsome—”
“I think we’ve covered that whoever he is, he’s attractive . . . ,” said Penny.
“Ben’s in town,” announced Jude.
“Who’s Ben?” Penny asked.
Jude and Mallory sat on the corner of Penny’s bed and stared as if a millipede had marched out of her left nostril.
Then it dawned on her. Ben. As in Mallory’s Ben. Ben the Australian crooner whose videos she’d been forced to watch at least fifty times.
“He’s here?” Admittedly Penny was curious to meet the guy who had more than two million views on a weepy song about being too hurt to surf.
“Yep, and we’re going out,” said Mallory. “We’re going to find Jude a hot date.”
“I’m so ready,” Jude confirmed. “I’m from a broken home and ready to make some mistakes.”
Penny laughed. “I can only imagine Dr. Greene’s take on this,” she said.
“Actually,” said Jude, “Dr. Greene said it was healthy for me to shift focus.”
Penny was impressed.
“Now, hurry up,” said Jude. “All this talk of my parents is such a boner-killer.”
“Wait, me also?” she asked. Penny knew she should keep writing despite really not wanting to. What came next was infanticide, a criminal investigation, and potentially a video-game baby who realizes she can’t ultimately go anywhere.
“Yeah, dummy,” said Mallory. “He’s throwing a party at this fabulous venue and you’ll have to borrow clothes. You can’t expect to show up avec moi wearing something you own.”
In the chick flicks Penny watched with her mom, there was usually a big to-do about getting ready for a night out. The makeover montage where the ugly duckling removes her glasses and pulls her hair down and is suddenly movie-star gorgeous. It was total baloney, yet Penny secretly loved the reveal as much as Celeste. Then again, Celeste’s makeup case was the size of a hearse.
Penny checked her phone. No calls, no texts. It was time to take the interface outside. With other humans.
“Okay,” said Penny. “I’m in.”
The girls headed to Twombly.
? ? ?
Twombly, the condo across the street from campus, was not officially affiliated with the college. It functioned as a dorm, and there was a cafeteria, though it more closely resembled luxury apartments that served as tax shelters for Russian oligarchs. Its inhabitants were affluent enough that college degrees were a quaint diversion, a short-lived pretense that they were just like everybody else. It was rich-kid rumspringa, that rite of passage for Amish people, except instead of living with electricity, the wealthy scions slummed by majoring in journalism.
The lobby, which you could have parked a submarine in, was glass and marble and smelled of fresh-cut flowers. There were floor-to-ceiling canvases of tasteful abstract art, and while Penny knew that Mallory was rich, she realized she’d lacked imagination. Penny’s rich meant you had an in-ground pool.
“Have you been here before?” asked Mallory, pushing the PH button for the penthouse. She was constantly doing things like that, testing her for reasons Penny couldn’t identify.
“Nope,” Penny responded. “You never invited me before.”
“Oh, well, then you’re welcome,” said Mallory, smiling serenely, as if she’d given Penny first-class tickets to Aspen.
There was another button above the PH. Penny pointed to it.
“What’s that for?” she asked.
“The helipad,” said Mallory. Penny couldn’t tell if she was kidding.
They rode in silence.
Her ears popped.