Page 6 of What If It's You?

“Oh, right. Good. You don’t need to actually move your arms, by the way. Just…imagine your arm moving.”

I did as he said, and for a split second I could feelbothof me, the one sitting in a chair in the Pixel offices, motionless, and the one whose arms were lightly trailing the tips of the vivid green leaves. But as soon as I stopped focusing on my physical body, it seemed to melt away.

“Why can I feel the cornstalk?”

“I told you, the device is interacting with your brainwaves. Your neurons have to interpret touch like anything else.”

“Right. Of course.” I swallowed hard—there was something exceptionally eerie about knowing that this headset wasmakingme feel the leaf. If I wanted to walk, could I…

And then I was walking.

“Okay, so, when you get to the fork, go right.”

I did as I was told, moving through the field at a comfortable pace, aware that my physical body was still stationary but nonetheless feeling the motion of my legs, the tips of my fingers grazing the stalks as I moved past them. Before long, I reached the first fork in the maze and turned right. After about fifty feet, the path spiraled to the left, and at the end of the corn nautilus was a towheaded boy in jeans and a rugby shirt, maybe eight years old, sitting cross-legged on the dirt, crying softly.

“You okay, bud?” I asked. He looked up, startled.

“You found me? I thought I’d be lost in here forever.” He sniffled and wiped the back of his hand roughly across his snub nose, coating his freckles with a smear of dust.

“I bet we can find our way out. We’ll do it together, yeah?” He nodded, pushing himself up and reaching for my hand. I was just turning to go back the way we came when the screen went dark again.

“Drew?”

“One sec. Just let me…Okay, there.”

I was back in the middle of the same corn maze, surrounded by the same rosy evening light.

“This time turn left,” Drew said. I nodded and started down the path again, turning left this time, then continuing through the maze, stopping at the intersections to read the laminated signs posted on stakes, subtle hints likeDon’t get LEFT behind this Halloween!hand-lettered onto them. Someone must have forgotten to place one at the first juncture. After a couple minutes I saw the end of the maze, a bored, floppy-haired teenager sitting on a stool at the exit with a half-eaten apple in his hand. He glanced up as I emerged, clicking a counter nestled in his other palm.

“I hope you enjoyed Wilkington’s corn maze. Cider and baked goods are available for purchase at the country store,” he rattled off rapidly, then turned to yell at a girl sitting twenty yards away, near a gap in a rustic split-log fence. “That’s the last one!”

The fence watcher jumped off her stool and started tugging a gate across the dirt path.

“Wait…I’m not the last one,” I said, frowning.

“Excuse me?”

“There’s a little boy in there. In the maze,” I said, pointing back at the cornstalks.

“You left your kid in the maze?” He frowned at me.

“Not my kid. Just…There’s a little boy there, he got lost.”

“I’ve done the count.” The teenager narrowed his eyes at me, raising one long, skinny arm to show me the metal device. “It matches the entries. Besides, we only let kids go in with an adult.”

“Maybe he snuck in, or…I don’t know, I’m just saying he’sthere. He’s still in the maze, and he’s scared.”

“If you say so,” the teenager muttered, grabbing a walkie-talkie off his belt loop. “Mary? There’s a lady here who says she saw a kid in the corn maze. Is anyone looking for a kid?”

“Oh thank god, I’ll tell the mother we found him,” came back over the walkie. The teenager’s eyebrows shot up and he turned to me, blushing slightly.

“Uh…thanks.”

The screen winked out again.

“Okay, that’s it for now. Take off the headset.”

I tugged the cap up, blinking as the Lightning offices came back into focus.

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