When Rick detailed his first training with Alex to Ditto, the bot stared at him blankly.

“I’m nowhere near ready to compete, and my boss isn’t a patient man,” he said.

The weather in the garden was beautiful, as it always was when he came. Rick stared over the rolling hills that gradually descended below him, looking like photos he’d seen of Tuscany. There were even cedar trees aligned in rows that hinted at roads, or at least trails. Was it all for show? Was he in a skybox?

“What’s over there?” Rick pointed down toward the lines of cedar trees.

A queer smile rose on Ditto’s lips. “What would you like to be over there?”

Rick grimaced. “The fights are hard enough for my brain right now, okay? Just tell me what’s over there.”

“I did, Rick—” Ditto pulled himself short of saying Rick’s entire name, then said, “It’s strange for me to stop at half a name. It’s like having only half the location coordinates for a necessary memory access function.”

“Huh?”

“Like half a—”

“No, I mean”—Rick spoke slowly, as if Ditto were a child—“what the hell is over there?” Rick pointed again.

“What would you like to be over there?”

Rick opened his mouth to protest, then remembered he was dealing with a stunningly intelligent AI program. “What’s over there is whatever I’d like to be over there?”

Ditto nodded. “More or less—or rather, more the further you go.”

“I don’t—”

“The simulated reality environment is a guided lucid dream of sorts. Images and sensations are bulk dumped into users’ brains. Their reactions are recorded, then subsequently transmitted into the brain boxes of all the other players in the match.” The bot pointed at himself. “I’m a sanctioned part of that process, and though my role is large, it isn’t singular.”

“Okay?”

Ditto pointed. “That way lies the direction of your natural dreams. If the lightning ring were active, you’d never see it. It’s blocked off, because the game falls apart if people can recede into their own minds.”

Rick contemplated what he’d heard, then Ditto motioned him toward the ring.

When they came to the stairs to the box on the dais, Rick stopped. In response, Ditto also stopped, then faced him.

“Can’t I have that yet?” Rick gazed at the box.

Ditto’s expression looked remarkably like that of a parent relenting to a child’s constant requests. He nodded.

Rick climbed the steps two at a time, and on reaching the top, opened the box.

Ditto’s laughter was soft, but it still, it jabbed.

“Box is empty, you fuckin’ criminal.” Rick called.

“You’re in a training environment. If the designers put all the Easter Eggs in every training module, what do you think dedicated players would do?”

“They’d search every section of the game without having to worry about the competition or the lighting ring…” He trailed off as a thought occurred to him. “But even if it’s empty, wouldn’t they still be able to figure out how to find them?”

“I had to add this to your environment. We’re here so we can train undetected.” Ditto spread his arms wide. “This Easter Egg is relatively well known. In a month, it’ll be relocated.

Rick frowned. “So if I can get back into competition before then, there’s a chance I can find this for real?”

Ditto frowned and nodded. “I suppose that’s true.” The bot flashed him a grin, which looked deranged on the man’s old kung fu master-like face.

“What’s in the box?”

Ditto grimaced. “It can’t help you yet, but it’s a particular family style of kung fu.”

Rick rolled his eyes. “Kung fu. Great.”

Ditto smirked. “The most important part of the style is the stance. It may seem like a small thing when you discover it, but it can make quite a difference.”

Rick joined the AI bot in the same green circle as always, but the bot didn’t take a position on the other side. He cast a curious look at the bot.

“Oh, you won’t be fighting me today.” Ditto stepped behind him and put him in an arm lock as a high resolution opponent bot—this one looking perhaps middle eastern or latino—materialized opposite them.

“Uh…” Rick stammered.

Ditto whispered, “The bot is aggressive. I’ll make sure you can’t flee.” In a louder voice, Ditto commanded the other bot. “Begin!”

“Wait!”

But there was no waiting. Ditto held him in a lock from behind, and the bot came in fast with a vicious double-hook that knocked Rick’s head back and forth, then kneed him in the solar plexus, knocking out his breath. His vision swam, and he vomited, sending a cascading wave of multicolored blocks to the ground.

Ditto didn’t let go until Rick shook so hard he could barely stand, and even when the AI bot did let go, the other bot took no mercy on him. In came another knee, then the darker skinned bot locked his arm.

Rick couldn’t find the ground, as it seemed to move from left to right, then up. He chased it, crawling for whatever direction led away from the beating.

Ditto barred his path. “Fight through it. Defend yourself.”

Rick tried to get to his feet, but when he did, Ditto restrained him again and the aggressive opponent resumed attacking.

“Stop!” Rick yelled to no effect. The bot continued to attack until Rick lost track of where the blows were coming from. In a timeless moment, buffeted by fists, feet, and knees, there existed only varying intensities of terror. That terror was the crystalline color of sunlight filtered through teardrops of glass, a sharp thing that stabbed him and made him numb everywhere. His face pushed into the earth, he choked on the dirt, his every sense amplified by adrenaline. The entire language of the world became one spoken in sharp instruments, like he was trapped inside a pincushion being squeezed.

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Minutes later—who knew how many—the attack abruptly ended. Rick floated in space and time, like a bobber cut loose from a line cast in turbulent water, the sensations of claustrophobic horror transformed utterly into sensations of free-falling terror. The world had become so vast, so dreadfully vast, and it spun, leaving him feeling weightless.

Ditto grabbed him and he startled. On wobbly legs, with the AI bot’s assistance, Rick rose to his feet.

“I… ” He blinked, trying to put words back in logical order, but his words had been scattered like marbles into a frozen void of anxious insecurity.

“Take your time.” Ditto’s voice was paternal, smooth like warm syrup. It blunted the sharpness of Rick’s fear.

On rubbery legs, he stepped awkwardly, trying to make sense of the sensations coming back to his body. “You fucker.” He waved his flat hand in the air, trying to process the subtle feeling of the air as he pushed through it. He swallowed and glanced back at Ditto.

“How do you feel?” the bot asked.

Rick froze and studied the kung fu bot’s face. “I feel quiet.”

Without warning or provocation, Ditto attacked, leaping with such impossible quickness that it was all Rick could do to block the incoming kick. After blocking the kick, he blocked Ditto’s fist, then, without thought, Rick struck back, pulling his elbow in tight before leveling it at the bot’s unprotected face.

Ditto staggered back from the blow, then shook his head, causing his white hair and beard to wave. The bot smiled.

At the sight of Ditto’s smile, fear broke through Rick’s quietude, tilting his sense of balance. He staggered, desperate to stay on his feet, but the earth leapt up to meet him. He crashed into it, like a meteor fallen from orbit. The smell of grass cluttered his nostrils and he coughed.

He crawled for the edge of the ring but didn’t make it before the retching started. When it was over, he panted and spit.

“That was promising,” Ditto said.

Rick spat again. “Promising?” He groaned. “In what way was that promising?”

The bot extended his hand. Rick refused it, getting up under his own power instead, spreading his legs wider than normal to maintain his balance.

“For a moment, you were free. That’s unexpected.”

“What does that mean? The reCon took over again almost immediately.” Rick’s balance came back; the world swayed less impatiently than it had before.

“Yes, it took hold,” Ditto said. “But it only had to take hold of you again because you’d gotten free of it. The important part is that you can get free of it.”

“For ten seconds at a time?”

Ditto snapped his fingers, then waited a few moments and snapped them again. “Ten seconds.” He said nothing, but after an interval, snapped them again. “Ten seconds.” Again, he waited before snapping them a third time. “Ten seconds.”

“I don’t—”

“Your whole life happens ten seconds at a time, and from the first second to the last, when you were free, that freedom was depthless, formless, and timeless.”

“I still don’t understa—”

“Eternity has no bounds. What lasts ten seconds lasts forever. As long as you remain in the center, the hurricane around you won’t touch you.”

Rick squinted at him. “What kind of woo-woo bullshit is that? Are you fucking bonkers? Are you a rogue AI designed to sell me soap that smells like a vagina?”

Ditto squinted. “Human psychology—”

“Has nothing to do with emptiness in a storm. It’s chemical—” He stopped. Every nerve in his body had become pleasantly ticklish, and he grinned. “That’s… wow…” He snorted. “I feel like I’ve taken five pain pills at the same time or something.” Rick gazed at the beatific majesty of Ditto’s compassionate face.

“How do you feel?”

Rick’s eyes were wide as he lolled his head. “I feel good, man. Really good.”

In a blink, the sensation was gone. Ditto smiled. “Was that your brain or your mind?”

“What the fuck?” Rick stared at the bot. “How did you—”

“Was that your brain or your mind?”

Rick shook his head. “What does that matter?”

“Your brain has been altered,” Ditto said. “There are no known safe ways to reverse an official state-ordered reconditioning procedure, and any who’ve so much as looked into research on the clinical viability of such a reversal have faced severe professional consequences.”

Early on, Rick had looked into ways to reverse his reCon. Even black market surgeons balked at it. “But?” he asked. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ somewhere here.”

Ditto’s face took on a guarded expression. “The workings of my consciousness are much more transparent than yours. I have some limited ability to directly change my own programming within certain parameters, though because of this, I’m not allowed to leave the game environment, barring the loophole I exploited to colonize your implant.”

Rick nodded.

“My inside and outside are roughly similar,” Ditto said. “Your neurochemical changes can only be observed clinically from the outside, and though they’re correlated with external processes, your internal experience is not wholly reducible to externally visible functions.”

“Huh?” Rick couldn’t make sense of a single word of what Ditto had said.

“Your brain isn’t the sum total of your consciousness,” the bot said.

“Huh?” Rick repeated.

Ditto rolled his eyes. “Changing my consciousness is a matter of changing my programming. Do you understand that?”

Rick nodded.

“All my processes change according to obvious, if complicated, inputs of code.” The rogue AI studied him, as if trying to gauge whether Rick understood what he’d said, before he continued. “Human consciousness is still a mystery. Obvious changes can be made by modifying your physical brain, be it by changing your neurochemical production, release, clearance and the like, or by mechanically altering your brain.”

Rick nodded again, but slowly this time.

Ditto sighed. “Those options aren’t open to us, but even if they were, they’re too dangerous to try.” The kung fu bot raised a single finger, as if emulating a Zen master. “However, human beings are able to change their internal experience, and by extension, change their external brain in some small, but not insignificant ways.”

Rick furrowed his brow. “And that means?”

Ditto slipped behind him and put him in a double arm lock again. “It means we have to force your mind around the obstacle. If you have no way to avoid the stressor, your mind and brain will try to find alternative ways of dealing with it.”

Rick swallowed. “Oh God.”

“Would you like me to abandon the attempt?”

“Is there any other option?”

“Were there another option,” the bot said, “I’d have employed it first.”

Rick nodded. Ditto signaled the bot forward and the terror began anew.

************************************

On unsteady feet, Rick rose from the SR array. His sleeping body had been crying, which had worried Kristina, who’d frantically contacted Alex looking for a way to disconnect Rick from the array.

This he’d only learned from his wife upon his abrupt awakening. In-game, he’d been in the middle of his third beating in the training session when his world went black for several seconds. He’d tried to make sense of it before he woke in his chair.

Kristina jumped forward as soon as he stood. She held him close and cooed in his ear, “You’re okay, baby. You’re okay.”

The action awakened a strange nostalgia within him. Many times in those first months back from reCon, he’d screamed, cried, or walked in his sleep. Kristina had been there for him through it all. She’d said the same thing. You’re okay, baby. You’re okay.

He squeezed her back, and though she didn’t see it, he smiled. It was a tired smile. An uncertain smile. A smile that signaled change.

Wordlessly, she led him to the kitchen table and set a hot bowl of fish soup before him.

She sat opposite him and grabbed his hand. “What the hell is going on in there that you’re crying in your sleep?”

He ladled a spoonful of soup into his mouth, both because he was hungry, and to give him a moment to consider an answer to his wife’s question. The soup was amazing. He sipped another spoonful, then said, “It’s the only way I’ll be able to fight again.”

Kristina didn’t say anything at first, but her worried eyes spoke for her. Then, she asked, “Why do you have to fight at all?”

He looked at her, then sighed. He couldn’t tell her, not because she didn’t deserve to know, but because he didn’t have the resources to be who he needed to be when she reacted. Someday. Soon.

Instead he said, “This is our best chance.”

“What kind of chance is it if you’re”—she gestured at him—“like this?”

Working with Ditto, he’d stretched his quiet time to an entire minute. “I’m progressing quickly.”

“We can do other things, make money some other way.” Her expression was plaintive, imploring.

“This is always what I’ve been best at,” he said. “Even with the reCon—” He cut himself off, then whispered, “Even with the reCon, I’m best at this and it pays.”

She nodded. “What can I do to help?”

He smiled and raised his eyebrows, and she smiled too. “Besides that, you perv.”

He reached for her other hand, so that he had them both. “You’re drawing again. You’re sleeping through the night.” He wiggled the spoon back and forth. “You make an excellent fish soup.”

“I can get a job,” she said.

He shook his head. “No. You’re not… I don’t want to risk losing you again. I can do this.”

She nodded and they changed to talking about less serious things. She told him about a new grocery service she started using since they had more money while he listened and finished his soup.

Exhausted, he flopped into bed without showering and was snoring in fewer than five minutes.