He gave me a look.

“I’m serious, Jeff.”

“And I’m serious when I say, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ The docs aren’t even around.”

“You said it wasn’t dangerous.”

“I did.”

“Did you lie?”

Jeff’s face twisted into a snarl. “I’m not turning one of Osmark’s protegés into a vegetable when I’m supposed to be packing the place up, man. It’s just not happening.”

“I bet I could last 30 minutes.”

“You wouldn’t last half that.”

“Done. Fifty bucks for fifteen minutes,” I said, pulling my billfold from my pocket.

“Ten grand, and the keys to that piece of shit car you drive so I can park it at the junkyard.”

The number made my breath catch, but that was just instinct. I let the emotion play over my face. Jeff smirked. I saw his heart laid bare in the dimples. He got ignored as a kid. He’d made more of himself than most of the people he grew up with, and proved his worth to himself with his wallet.

“Done,” I said, slapping the billfold and my keys on the table. I didn’t have 10 grand in my pocket, but I was good for it. I’d lose at least that much in job hunting and moving expenses if Viridian failed, and make it twenty times over if it didn’t.

He scowled. “Fine. I was sick of your shit anyway, always walking around like you own the place. I don’t even—”

I tuned out the rest of what he said, just turned a knob in my head like a radio. The cussing, the disdain, blaming everyone but him… He was scared. I felt for him, in as much as I didn’t think anyone should have to live like that, but Jeff had a tendency to be more of a jerk than he needed to be. Someone other than Jeff, I might have built them up and taken a cooperative approach, but Jeff had been living with fear for so long he’d built his life around it.

“—sit your ass down and don’t complain when you puke all over your cheap ass clothes.” Jeff pulled a jet injector out of a drawer and snapped a single-use cartridge to the front of it. The slender glass ampule looked like it was filled with liquid mercury.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A thousand dollars’ worth of military nanites. They’re going to burrow into your veins, swim up your bloodstream, and send tiny electric shocks into your brain. Still want to do this?”

No, definitely not. “They cost that much?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll pay the company back for wasting them with your money.” He pushed my sleeve up and dosed me. It clacked and felt like getting punched in the shoulder. “If we ever enter mass production, they’ll be cheaper. You can go lie down on one of the beds.” Jeff sat at his workstation and spun to face the screens.

“Don’t I need a headset?”

“Nope.”

I stood there, watching him bring up a new cluster of readouts—mine—on his monitor. “I just thought there would be more wires involved.”

He looked at me. “Bluetooth, dude. Welcome to the 21st century.” He started typing commands into the control console. “If you’re still standing when I turn these on, it’s going to dump you on your ass.”

“Right.” I walked to the nearest hospital bed, raised the headrest so I’d be sitting most of the way up, and climbed in. I could feel the nanites working their way from my shoulder to my heart. It felt like someone was squeezing my chest. I tried to stay calm. “How do my stats look?” I asked, unable to see his screens.

“Like you’re about to lose 10,000 dollars.”

The tightness was migrating from my chest to the side of my neck. My tongue tingled. Suddenly it didn’t seem like such a great idea to mess with my brain for 10 grand and a job. I mean, Rob was an asshole most days. A brilliant, visionary leader who’d given me an incredible opportunity, but still an asshole. Sandra will like it, though, I thought. I’ll be her knight in shining armor if I pull this off. Forget awkward questions about where she’s from when we’ve worked together for two years. It’ll be like skipping straight to the second or third date.

“I’ve got a good link. Everything’s normal,” Jeff said. “Try not to freak out on me.”

I winced as my jaw spasmed, but I gave him a thumbs-up. He rolled his eyes.

The nanites were in my head. It felt overheated and tight like I had a bad fever. My eyes felt too big for their sockets, and little flashes danced in the air in front of me. Then my eyes cut out like someone turned off the TV and everything was dark. “Jeff!”

“Take it easy...”

I swung my legs out of the bed, almost sat up, then realized I had no sense of what was in front of me or how far down the floor was. Pins and needles shot through my arms and legs. “You fucking take it easy! I can’t—”

My sight came back. Jeff was grinning at me.

“Damn,” I said, pulse pounding. I blinked several times, then looked at my hands and flexed my fingers. The pins and needles were gone. The stuffiness in my head was still there, but it was fading. “Is it always that bad?”

“Define ‘bad.’”

“I went blind.”

Jeff shrugged. “Normally we drip-feed the bots in slowly while the testers get everything explained to them by a doctor from DARPA. There’s also an aerosol version, which is probably what we’ll go for with users, but it doubles the cost. Mr. Shooty, here,” he said, waving the jet injector, “is how soldiers get it. I’ve never given someone an IV, but I figured that since you’re going to do what no one else has before, you could probably handle the pro version.”

“You’re an ass.”

“I’m an ass on a timetable. Look up and to the right without moving your head.”

I did. VERIDIAN v0.01.16a floated in black, block type at the top right of my field of view. “Funky.”

“That lets you know the bots are still there. I’m required to tell you that for legal reasons; if you’re within signal range, I can see what you see.”

“How long do they last?”

“Until I turn them off or you get hit by an EMP.”

Holy privacy invasion, Batman. I bet the US government had other uses for that than overlays for the troops.

“You ready for this?” Jeff asked, finger poised over his keyboard.

“Yeah.” I laid back in the bed. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jeff hit a single key. I thought there would be a transition of some kind. There wasn’t. I blinked, and I was somewhere else. A neutral, female voice announced, “You have entered Viridian Alpha.”

#

A full-body shudder passed through me. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. I tried to take a deep breath, but it didn’t work the way it should. My chest moved, but I couldn’t feel it. Everything was muted. It was like I was a passenger in somebody else’s body, and I wanted out. I wanted out right now. A prompt popped up at the bottom of my view:

<<<>>>

Log out: Yes/No?

<<<>>>

Man, I wanted to. Have you ever been in a situation you wished you could close out of? Just rage quit to the desktop, then and there? Your father screaming at your mother again. Your best friend screwing your ex. A Jar Jar Binks standalone Christmas special. It was all those things while drowning in lukewarm vegetable oil. I’m not sure what let me hang on. Maybe I wanted to prove myself to Robert. Maybe it was how much I liked Sandra’s legs or hated Jeff’s stupid face. I flicked my eyes to “No,” and the prompt went away.

I dropped to my hands and knees and dry heaved, I think, except that didn’t feel right either. It caught in my throat. I blinked my eyes. There were olive trees all around me. It should have been scenic, but everything was too bright, blurred in places. The world glowed. I knew what the problem was from tweaking the graphics settings on The Ancient Rolls, I’d just never expected to have to use that knowledge in real life. “Jeff!” I yelled hoarsely.

There was a sound like God in heaven scrambling to put on his headset. “Umm, yes? I mean… holy shit, Alan. How’s it going?”

“Not great, man,” I said. The blur was making me nauseous. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Okay, yeah. Anything, man. What—”

“I need you to turn off the bloom and the FXAA.”

Jeff paused. “Are you sure? Because—”

“Just do it!”

“Okay.”

I fell over on my side and went fetal. I squeezed my eyes shut. This had to stop. Please, someone, make this stop. I felt like I was dying. The prompt popped up again, even with my eyes shut. No, damn it. It went away again.

“How does it look?” Jeff asked.

I cracked an eye open. The glow around everything had gone out. The textures weren’t perfect, but it looked more like a shitty version of real than an acid trip gone glam. A little bit of the wrongness I felt subsided. “Better.” I let my head roll back a bit to look up at the sunlight filtered through the green and silver leaves of the grove. That felt right, from the color to the winks of light and shadow. Ray tracing was a beautiful thing. The thick, gray trunks bent and twisted their way to the ground, rough bark discolored by patches of moss, especially near the roots on the right side of the tree. Was that north? Did the game engine push the simulation that far?

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“How you doing, buddy?” Jeff said.

Buddy? I almost laughed in his invisible face. “Fine. Not up to moving yet, but at least I didn’t puke and shit myself, right?”

“Well, about that.”

“Seriously?”

“Just the puke, but like Exorcist level projectile vomit. It’s, uh… Starbucks?”

“McDonald’s. Good thing I didn’t get a McMuffin.”

“I think we’re all grateful for that.”

I closed my eyes because just laying there was wearing me out. Then I opened them again because I felt dizzy. I didn’t have a great sense of where my body was unless I was looking straight at it, and it was tripping me out. “Hey, Jeff?”

“Yeah, bro, I’m here. Getting some really good data, man. This is going to—”

“Could you shut up for a second?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”

“I can’t feel my arms and legs. Can you turn up the sensitivity or something?”

“I can’t do that without exposing you to pain. You cool with that?”

“I’ll try anything.”

“Okay, how much?”

“Just… whatever I would be feeling if this was real.”

“That’s pretty much the opposite of what the doctors—”

“Jeff?”

“Got it.”

Pain and nausea came flooding into my world. My gut heaved and I doubled over, rocking on my side. I could feel my abs cramping. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and my saliva felt thick. I spit. It stuck to my cheek, but that was better somehow. It was an honest kind of pain, not the pervasive nothingness I’d felt at first.

“You puked again,” Jeff said from somewhere in the sky.

“Yeah, I got that,” I answered. I wiped my mouth and rolled onto my back. The sky was a clear but faded blue, striped with wispy clouds. The ground was warm beneath me; blades of grass tickled the back of my neck. I could feel air passing through my lips as I breathed, and the scratchiness of my throat made me cough, which sucked because my stomach and ribs ached. I felt drained, but it was completely different from the revulsion for the world I’d felt before. “How long have I been in?”

“Just over four minutes,” Jeff answered. “Listen, Alan, forget the bet, all right? I’m sorry I was a jackass. We’ve got enough here to prove the system works and bring the testers back in.”

He didn’t get it. Osmark had to go tell the Board that Viridian had failed. He’d made concessions and lost face. We needed more than a recording of me curled up and covered in vomit. We needed a positive user experience. “It still sucks in here, man. It’s like the worst hangover I’ve ever had. I need you to tweak the settings. I get the feeling that the more real the simulation is, the less crappy I feel, but you’ve got all those graphs out there. Can you fix it?”

Jeff didn’t answer for a few seconds. I raised my head to ask him if he’d heard me, but he finally answered, “Yeah, dude. I’ll get on that.”

I laid my head back and closed my eyes again. This time I wasn’t dizzy. I could feel my hands resting on my stomach. All the little clues my brain needed to convince itself it was lying on that hill, near the olive trees, started falling into place, and my muscles relaxed. I focused on my breathing. My mouth tasted sour, and my body was a little too big, like I was swollen, but that seemed fixable. Everything was fixable. It was going to be okay.

It reminded me of afternoons spent napping through the summer heat at my grandfather’s house in Spain. It was the same dryness in the air, the same loose, rocky soil and brittle grass beneath my heels. I’d spend my mornings in bed, reading Pops’s old paper books, or hide from him in the fields of wild buckwheat. Once a year, the gardeners would spread their nets at the feet of century-old olive trees and beat the branches, harvesting the olives before taking them to the press. Pops always sent me home to the states with a bottle of oil for my mother, to remind her of home.

The smell of the sea made me open my eyes again. It was faint, just a trace of brine under the hot, slightly dusty feel of the breeze passing through the grove. I rolled up into a sitting position, still sore but not hurting in a significant way, and I noticed a thin line of blue on the horizon. I wondered how far that was. Jeff must have increased the draw distance. A bumblebee droned past, landing on a small, purple wildflower hiding in the grass. A gust of wind made the leaves rustle.

Jeff spoke from the sky. “That’s about as good as I can get it on the test server. How do you feel?”

I blinked. I’d forgotten I was in Viridian for a moment. “I feel good. A little tired, but good. How much time left?”

“Dude, you’ve been in for 18 minutes. I think you fell asleep.”

“Huh.” I took one last look toward what my heart told me was the Gulf of Roses, near Empuriaba. I hadn’t realized how much I missed the old place, but the feeling was definitely there, a slight ache in my chest near the top of my sternum. Maybe I’d go back there, once all of this was done, and make sure they were taking care of Pops’s grave.

<<<>>>

Log out: Yes/No?

<<<>>>

Yes.

#

I squinted against the artificial lighting. I felt like I’d lost about 20 pounds and an inch of height, and I shivered from the chill of the air conditioning. The world looked just a tiny bit fake, like I was still in the test server. Switching back and forth was going to be a problem if we didn’t do something to smooth the transition.

I looked down and saw that my shirt and jeans were damp but cleaner than expected. I still smelled, and the bedding was stained, but Jeff had wiped off most of the gross bits and chunks. There was a trash can full of wadded up paper towels next to the bed.

“Dude,” Jeff said. “You’re going to be famous. Like, crazy stupid for trying, but famous for pulling it off.”

I chuckled. “Think I’ll get my own parking spot?”

“You can have mine,” he said. Then he thought about it and grinned. “For a month. I’m already out 10 grand because of you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“No, man. Don’t even be like that. I was a jackass, like I said. I can own up to the consequences.”

I wrinkled my nose at the idea of him handing me money. I knew most of the team leads were well off—some even rich—but it was still a lot of cash. “Would you consider throwing a party for the team instead?”

Jeff tugged on his ponytail. “I mean, yes? If it’s between handing you a check and throwing an epic bash, I’m going to throw the party. You sure?”

“I’d prefer it.”

Jeff shrugged. “Whatever floats your boat, dude. So how was it?”

“Awful.”

Jeff smiled. “Yeah, I got that much, but after that?” I could see the eagerness in his eyes. This wasn’t just professional curiosity; this was the passion of discovery, of having created something new. It was stronger than drug cravings and just shy of Dwarven gold-madness.

I thought about how to answer. “Good, I guess? I forgot it wasn’t real, for a second, until you chimed in. You said I fell asleep?”

“I think you did. Your pulse and breathing smoothed out; brain waves were a 60/40 split between theta and delta waves. Did you dream?”

“I’m not sure.”

Jeff shook his head and laughed. “That’s wild, man. Freaking wild. I can’t wait to try it, once we get the kinks smoothed out.”

I sighed. “Yeah, about that. I need to get cleaned up, and then you need to send me back in.”

“What?”

“To the real thing this time. I want to try full Viridian Gate Online experience, and do a longer run.”

“How much longer?”

“A day or two.”

Jeff frowned and crossed his arms. “Why would I do that? Why would you want me to do that? I mean, no offense, man, but you look like shit.”

I crossed my arms right back at him. “You’ve got fifteen different readings on my body and brain, Jeff. Am I hurt? Have I been damaged in any way?”

“You’re dehydrated.”

“I’ll drink water.”

“And fatigued. There’s a lot more data running through VGO.”

“But it’s the same amount running through my head, which is still less than the real world. Am I right?”

“I have zero confidence that hooking you up to the server farm won’t blow your brains out through your ears. You know what the troops call a nanite aneurysm?”

“No, and I don’t want to know.”

Jeff pouted. I could tell he really wanted to lay that bit of knowledge on me.

“You remember Osmark saying he was going to San Francisco?” I said.

“Yeah, so?”

“So Viridian’s shut down. It’s a Board decision, so even Osmark doesn’t have the authority to start it back up. We need hard evidence that this is something that will sell, and as you just pointed out,” I said, pointing at my wet and malodorous clothes, “I look like shit.”

“We’ll bring testers in.”

“Shut down. I don’t know how else to say it. No testers, no docs, and definitely no Robert Osmark. We have the weekend to make this work.”

Jeff shook his head. “Screw that, man. It’s your brain. Don’t be an idiot.”

I clenched my teeth. The worst part was, we were both right. I shouldn’t do more, and what we had wasn’t enough. I ran the tapes back on our conversation in my head, looking for an angle, and then I found it. “Look, if I stay in for 24 hours, I’ll have to sleep, right?”

He shrugged and made a face. “So?”

“So if I get a full night’s sleep in the game, and you can see everything I can see, you’ll see my dreams. You could be the first person to record someone dreaming.”

His eyes widened. He stroked his beard, shifted his weight from foot to foot. I could feel him teetering. He just needed one last shove. “Twenty-four hours?” he asked.

“Twenty-four hours.”

“And I pull you out if something looks off.”

“Sure. I’m not looking to be a hero here.” I was absolutely looking to be a hero—impress the boss, get the girl? Yeah. I liked my brain, though. I’d settle for being Spider-Man with a safety net.

“Okay.” He shoved his hands into his pockets.

It was Dwarven gold-madness, all the way.

#

I stepped under the steaming hot water and exhaled, letting some of the tension from the morning wash away. I’d done it. Even if the full VGO run failed completely and the project got downsized or delayed, I’d have earned Osmark’s respect, as long as he didn’t fire me for putting the Company in legal jeopardy.

I was mostly sure he wouldn’t. Rob didn’t build Os-Tech from scratch without taking risks.

With the pressure off and the water on, it was almost tempting to call it off. Maybe Jeff was right. I could walk back in there and tell him I was wrong, and we’d bring the testers in next week. He could have done a better job of reasoning me out of it, for sure, but instead, he’d tried to stonewall, and I went for the win on principle.

It’s a character flaw. I’ve known it for years. The knowledge hasn’t helped me change the behavior.

Instead, my mind wandered back to my grandfather, and how things had fallen out between him and Mom. He’d been a strong man in the old sense of the word. He’d lived through the war in Korea, he’d kept going when his high-school sweetheart finally left him, or “Went on ahead,” as he liked to say. He’d had these big old hands with thick, flat fingernails that made me think he was a giant when I was small enough to believe in fairy tales. He never made eye contact when he gave me that bottle of olive oil for my mother, wrapped in packing paper with a three-turn twist above the neck. She never talked about it when she pulled it from my bag; she just put it on the shelf and used it for the next few months until it ran out. Looking back, I should have seen the sheen to her eyes while she cooked, but you’re so busy trying to figure out your own thoughts as a kid you don’t bother to wonder.

It made me think of missed opportunities. Of little gestures I’d ignored because I didn’t want to be wrong, to be exposed. I didn’t want to miss out on things because of that. And I didn’t want to die alone.

I shut the water off. Where did all that come from? Maybe it was the game. The nanites mapped the player’s brain and stimulated it. It wouldn’t be impossible they’d dredged up old memories, or that those neurons had caught a stray volt or two. It didn’t make those memories wrong, just… unexpected. I’d have some more thinking to do when this was done.

I toweled off, put on my damp but cleaned off jeans and a Ms. Pac-Man t-shirt I’d borrowed from Jeff. It was the right fit around the chest, but too long, so I tucked it in. It looked every bit as dorky as you’re imagining.

I went back to check on Jeff. “Hey man, I’m heading out to grab supplies. Need anything?”

“I’m good!” Jeff said, flashing me a thumbs up. “Feeding your test data to Kronos.”

Kronos was the AI, or “Overmind,” who governed time and physics in the game. During testing, Jeff had to tweak each of the settings one by one as best he could. In VGO, Kronos would do it all at once, better and faster.

“Actually, coffee and donuts?” Jeff said. “We’re going to be here a while.”

“I’m on it,” I said, and left.

As I was leaving the building, Frank snickered. “You know, I never took you for a tucker.”

“A tucker?”

“Anyone who’d tuck in a t-shirt.”

I sighed. I had to squash that kind of stuff all the time; Frank just hadn’t seemed the type. “Is that supposed to be some kind of homophobic humor, Frank?”

“Oh, no sir, perish the thought. Without getting into stereotypes, the LGBTQ community usually dresses better than that. I’m digging Ms. Pac-Man, though,” he said, pointing at the shirt. “You done for the day?”

“No, I’ll be back. Can you do me a favor?”

Frank rocked his head from side to side. “Maybe?”

“Jeff Berkowitz and I are working on a final project in testing before we shut this thing down. It’d be better if we weren’t disturbed.”

“Not a problem,” Frank said. “They’re not scheduled to touch the back room until Sunday; she’s all yours.”

“Thanks, Frank.” I headed for my car.

#

I walked up to the drug store register and started pulling things out of the basket. Two big bottles of water, ready-to-drink coffee, a bag of generic powdered donuts—Jeff had apologized, but you have to earn Krispy Kremes—a couple Powerades, wet wipes, and a pack of adult diapers. I tried to be real casual about the last item.

The teenage clerk called my bluff. “These for you?”

“Yeah,” I said, deadpan. “I’m stalking my girlfriend, and I don’t want to miss a thing.”

He smirked. “There’s bungee cords and duct tape in the automotive section.”

I rolled my eyes. “Nice upsell. Can I pay?”

“Sure thing.” He rang me up. “So who are they for, really? Your grandfather or something?”

The memory of Pops hit me too soon after what happened in the test server. It jarred me so bad I told the truth. “I just have a project at work, and I won’t be able to leave the office.”

The kid’s mouth dropped open.

I grabbed the bag and shot him with a finger gun. “Stay in school, kid.”

I got back into the Spyder and hit the road.