Page 135 of Coldwire
38LIA
“Hello?” I bellow.
I spin around the room, searching desperately for hidden cameras, for some indication that I’m being made victim to the world’s worst prank. I find nothing. Everything looks as it should—like the stale, undecorated house that Dad owns in downcountry Haven State. The same house I always come to for my reset days.
There must be a logical explanation. Someone must have hacked me. They must have changed my automatic routing, and instead of safely logging out, I was pulled into another layer of upcountry where they re-created my house. Where they have trapped me.
But how could someone possibly have encoded everything with such specificity? How could they have known about these details I’ve grown up with, the softness of the carpet threads and the way they turn slightly rough on the stair landing where I once spilled a carton of yogurt? The house has always been like this.
So,a small voice says,maybe it has never been real.
“Come on,” I say to myself. It’s an instruction, a plea. Maybe I’m deep in the throes of Wakeman Syndrome right now. I’m only questioning the nature of my reality enough to vividly hallucinate a blockage over my door and upcountry’s display over my eyes again.
Hesitantly, I try to control my display. It responds as quickly as it would when I’m in regular upcountry. When the messaging panel opens, though, it’s empty. The contacts are similarly blank. As much as this resembles my usual display, I can’t connect to a thing; nor can I find my usual shortcuts. I’m cut off entirely.
My local downloads are the only section that stays accessible. I open the files one by one, locating where I was last reading. I don’t know if I would be capable of hallucinating this.
“No. No no no—”
I close everything in a hurry, not wanting to look at it. The moment I go back to my general display, I realize there’s a new sidebar to this version, with far more options in the core function panel. They’re listed like they would be on a computer.
System Settings
Recent Items
Sleep
And at the very bottom…Force Wipe.
“This can’t be happening,” I insist aloud. “None of this is actually happening!”
Haven’t I seen the front door open? Haven’t I watched Dad come in before?
The harder I think, the more tenuous my own memories feel. I recall Dad coming up the stairs in earlier years. I recall occasions when I was sitting at the alcove and Dad poked his head in to see how I was doing. But I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve spent time with him in this house, and I have never stepped foot outside to greet him. Since I started at the academy, our hours downcountry never overlap anymore. He’d visit me on the virtual campus and take me to lunch in Button City. If there was some event he wanted me to attend with him, I logged out of schoolwithout leaving my Pod, then logged into upcountry again by selecting the District of Melnova on the map, appearing at the Capitol’s landing station, where he would be waiting to greet me. Then we would go to his office or the Melnova apartment near the Capitol. Of course I haven’t once used this door to leave the house.Why would I?
In a panic, I start to run, needing to return to my Pod, go somewhere there will be people I know, even if it’s Nile Military Academy. I take the stairs three at a time, moving with such haste that I stumble on the last one. My knee bends, striking down; my palms land hard to catch myself, but it doesn’t stop me from sliding back against two of the steps, my whole body dragging on carpet. At once, the friction burns harshly on my palms, and when I look at my hands, there is blood beading to the surface.
I freeze where I am. Slowly, I raise my left hand only an inch in the night’s shadows, watching the droplets form.
I thought that drawing blood in the bathroom on my last reset day was evidence to contradict my paranoia. I thought it meant that I was flesh, organic matter, made of something real. Foolish of me, I suppose, to think that it would be that easy to peel apart the facade. As though an engine as adept as StrangeLoom would be clumsy enough not to hide the seams.
I don’t register that I’m crying until I see the tears landing on the carpet in front of me, staining a picture into the threads. I remember being five years old. I remember crying on the playground of elementary school because I felt so overwhelmed, eight years before I would start at Nile Military Academy, before I received the highest score possible in the entrance exam. I have memories of an entire childhood. I’ve lived so many years being real.
So how can thisbe?
“Please,” I sob. “Please, there has to be an explanation.”
Nothing comes. No clarity, no relief. There is only me in an empty house, in the middle of an empty world.
I must spend hours lying there on the stairs, waiting for something to happen.
The moonlight fades. The sun rises. A new day seeps through the windows I haven’t broken, and I am too afraid to shatter more in case there is nothing behind them all. Stuck forever in a house is one thing. Stuck forever in a house of perpetual darkness is another.
At some point when it seems rather silly to be sprawled on the stairs in the middle of the day, I get up. One slow step after the other, I finish climbing the stairs and return to my room, stopping in the doorway. I made such a big fuss about logging out; I need to do something with this time. Even if I’m not actually logged out.
This room has never been a space that felt like mine, but now the sight is more foreign than I thought possible. The bed I do not sleep in. The floors I do not walk. The room wasn’t supposed to feel like a place for living because Ididn’tlive here, but how was I to know it wasn’t real at all?
I try not to look at my Pod initially, intent on investigating the house and pinpointing exactly where I am, what has occurred. I can’t keep my gaze averted for long, and I gravitate right back toward the urge to step in, flee to what I know, pretend none of this happened. The Pod brought me here. No matter what plane of reality we’re in, it must have the ability to take me away again.
