Which is how we arrive at the outskirts of The Within, a place where only the most desolate and defeated go. I’ve never even rode the line this far. There are scattered sex shops, janties, broken down peds, all these gooed-out junkies twitching off recalled drugs bought in the vacuum, the drugs liquidized and mainframed straight to the dome, the stained jumpsuits all glitchy and mal, slumped against walls like forgotten dolls. Fires burn in black steel cans, the junkies and the dispossessed huddling around the warmth. Yide leads me past a cracked pixelated panel which is streaming an ad for high-interest doseMoon loans.
“We’re almost there,” she says, edging up a curved strip of vonnWay.
The incline verticals treacherous. I slip, regain my balance. I hear yelling coming from the domed shanties that litter the vonnWay – babies crying, men and women shouting, synths pitter-pattering. All the poverty makes me feel guilty about my affluence. We curve upward, then reach a narrow corridor that slants down, curves, and opens into a skyless domed bazaar. Vendors scream their wares. The smell of grilled goo hangs in the air. A woman bumps into me with her cart of knock-off jumpsuits.
“Hey!” She yells. “Watch where you’re sloothing!”
A child runs by, his kicks clacking.
“Glass your pockets,” Yide says. “These kids will use their vertical to pick you clean if you’re not careful.”
We come to the end of the bazaar, then turn through an arch.
“This way,” Yide says.
We slither down a corridor so narrow that we have to turn sideways to pass through, our jumpsuits scraping against the worn plastic.
“I could really use some claustroPhilia right now,” I say.
“We’re almost there,” Yide mutters. “It’s just to the left here.”
And then, sure enough, at the end of the corridor, we turn left and come to a cavelike network of vaulted ceilings that look like ribs, a circle of archways punctuated by doors, the doors each containing a number, one through twelve, like a clock, and there’s the sound of water dripping on something solid, echoing, and shouting coming out of Door 8.
“This is the place,” Yide says. She stops in front of Door 11. “Are you ready?” She eyes me sidelong, mouth curled.
“Um…” I hesitate, my hands wringing in their gloves. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Vonn…” Yide drops her eyes. “We’ve come this far. Don’t you want to know?”
“Know what?”
“If there’s another way to live. If there’s something…” Yide raises her head.
I know what she wants to say. It’s something I’ve wondered about before. Whether or not we’ve been lied to about The Without.
“Vonn,” Yide says. “I need this. You need this. We need to know, for better or worse. They can have my followers. All I want is the truth.”
There’s a fire in Yide’s eyes that I’ve never seen before, and that makes my sensors tingle.
“So what do you say, Vonn? Are you with me?”
“Yes,” I say, without another thought. “Let’s do this thing.”
And I nudge around her and pound the clickety-clacker against the unsensored stucco door.
But there’s no answer. And we’re standing there for, like, what feels like a long time, and then footsteps rattle, and I turn, but there’s no one there, and I hear a ding and look at my messages.
It’s Yide. unGlassed Middle Manager, you think?
Idk, I respond. Do we hang back?
I move beneath an awning overhanging one of the vaginal arches, and I change my skin to hoodie, and Yide follows me. We watch, in silence, as a simulCart wheels through an archway and dissipates into another, beeping along the way, its little red lights flashing. Binaural tones pulse from somewhere above. A woman cracks the door to Room 7, peaks outside, her blur growing wide at the sight of us. She closes the door and dissipates. The tones stop.
Eerie vibes, I type. Was it like this last time you came?
Like what?
Shady, tense.
Yide sends a shrug emoji. It’s a shady part of town.
That woman in Room 7 didn’t like the looks of us.
She probably thinks we’re just a couple Fortune 500s looking to score some Gopher.
I’m sure we wouldn’t be the first, I type.
And then we stand there for a while, listening. I don’t hear any more phantom footsteps. Synths from the bazaar float lackadaisically through the narrow passage we squeezed through. simulRain starts dripping down from the panels above our heads.
Another minute passes, what feels like forever, and I start craving some safeUp, but there aren’t any pubTubes around, so I push the thought of pharmas out of my mind, watching, waiting.
What’s that, Yide types.
What?
Wait a second. Do you hear that?
What?
Synths in the corridor. Sounds like X. And…Ginger..
And I turn my gaze to the corridor just in time to see X’s bulging muscles slide awkwardly through the tight squeeze, and then Ginger is next, and she’s looking gaunt and famished, a little frazzled.
Yide steps forward, arms flailing, all like, “what the hell, you two?”
And X, loud as usual, is all, like, “I have to hear about Vonn’s discharge from a simulNurse, and then neither of you answer my messages?”
“I have literally millions of unread messages,” I say. “I haven’t gotten to yours yet. In fact, I haven’t gotten to anybody’s.”
“Except hers!” X points a finger at Yide. “I thought it was bros before simuls.”
“I’m not a simul!” Yide screams. “You’re the simul, X. You fucking…” Yide’s jumpsuit is steaming hot, like, literally smoking from overload. “You…you…you… simulation.”
X snorts. “Good one, Yide.”
And Yide, all fuming and fried, runs toward X, collides into him, taking him down to the ground, their sensors clanging. Standing above them, Ginger isn’t even paying attention, because she’s too busy flashing selfies, and so I move toward the scuffle, trying to find a way to slide between X and Yide, but they’re all, like, rolling around with old plastic dust rising above their intertwined forms, and that’s when Ginger is all, like, “guys, I posted a selfie, like, ten seconds ago, and nobody has liked it yet!”
And then, being all brave and shit, I dive into the scuffle and feel a fist slam into my jaw, and then a heavy boot steps on my wrist, and I hear Ginger above the scuffle going, like, “yo, yo, what’s the prob? Is my synth muted? Is my gaze filter cringe or something? What are we even doing here? This place is so…poor.”
And I’m rolling and rolling, X on top of me, and then Yide on top of me, and then I finally get a hold of X’s wrist, and Ginger is going, like, “seriously, y’all, this is the worst place for an orgy roll. Unless you’re going for, like, squalor chic or something, in which case, well, I would be very particular about my hashtags.”
And I lose my grip on X’s wrist, who slides over me, lands on Yide, and then somehow starts levitating, like some kind of magic puppet on a string, and then he lets out a yelp, X does, as he slams headlong into a wall and crumbles into a ball. Something drags him by the foot. A ghost. And the door to Room 11 swings open, and he dissipates inside.
“Hey, wait up,” Ginger says, not looking up from her swipe as she walks into Room 11.
Yide and I look at each other, all shocked and confused, but before either of us can say anything, Yide goes all topsy-turvy, her avatar glitching, and then I feel like I’m on Jaz again, the way the deja-vu hits real hard as I watch her sail across the ground, legs up in the air, getting pulled just like X by some invisible force.
I run after her, screaming.
I pass through the threshold to Room 11.
And that’s when everything goes megaMal and ultraGlitch. My gaze fragments into a spiderweb of shapeless neon. And there’s only one explanation: Room 11 isn’t sensored, which means it can’t interface with dNet.
I swing around hopelessly. And Ginger is wailing because she’s lost her swipe. And Yide and X are shouting at each other about what constitutes an acceptable response time to a DM. And I’m just trying to follow their voices, but there’s a loud booming echo in the room that makes it impossible to locate my colleagues. And I’m spinning and spinning so dervishly in the widening gyre that I lose my balance, stumble backward, and run into what I think is a wall.
A hand grips my wrist. Then two more grip my ankles. I heave forward, up into the air.
I flail and flail, but it’s no use, the grips are too strong.
Wheels hiss toward me.
A mechanical crank sounds.
I’m shoved onto a padded something.
My wrists and ankles are locked into iron restraints.
And then I hear a suction sound.
But first the world unGlasses.
The world unGlasses as I hear the suction sound.
It all happens so quickly, the way my gaze crumbles, and I find myself in some kind of dome, the ceilings as tall as cathedrals, and all my colleagues are strapped to dollies, long tubes flowing out of the backs of their heads.
Something beeps.
“I’ll keep watch outside.” It’s a man’s voice. “We’ll recon in an hour.”
I turn my head and catch a glimpse of an absolutely swoll shoulder slipping out the door, and then the door slams shut.
I turn toward scurrying footsteps.
Claudette sweeps across the room and steps onto a ladder. I follow her ascent upward, her calf muscles flexing through a pair of black leather pants.
She dissipates through an opening at the top of the dome.
And thus we’re left alone, my colleagues and I, to make sense of the situation.
I push against my iron restraints, but I’m hellaStuck, and the beeping sound just keeps echoing off the walls.
“What is this place?” Ginger asks. “Some kind of escape room? Where are all the clues?”
“Here’s a clue,” X says. “Go kill yourself.”
“X!” Yide’s unsynthed voice is squeaky. “Stop it. You know Ginger struggles with suicidal thoughts.”
X rolls his eyes. “Ginger’s suicidal thoughts are just a common side-effect of all the Elysium she takes. They’re not real.”
“What does real even mean in this context?” Yide asks.
“You know…” X turns his neck back and forth, as if trying to loosen a muscle. “Real.”
“Well,” Ginger says, “I don’t care if it’s real or not, this escape room is pure squalor, and not in a good way. I mean, it isn’t even glassed. And as for these contraptions…” She nods toward the dolly. “I’m all for a little BDSM, but that guy wasn’t even hunky, and I’m pretty sure he’s at least ACDC, which isn’t really my thing. Am I a bad person for saying that? Please don’t repost that, guys. I can’t afford to get cancelled again, not when my content ban just got lifted.”
“You got a content ban?” I ask.
“Oh my efficiency, yes, Vonn, I forgot you were, like, all AWOL these past couple days. Apparently, I wasn’t enough of an ally in one of my reposts because I didn’t include my pronouns, so I was banned for, like, three hours, and let me tell you, it was hell on glass.”
“Right,” X says, “well, as traumatizing as all of that sounds, Ginger, I think we should talk about how we’re going to get out of here.”
Ginger swipes reflexively on nothing, out of habit. “Thank you for acknowledging my trauma,” she says. “For once, I feel seen. And speaking of, how can I reGlass? I don’t remember giving my consent to be unGlassed in the first place.”
“We can’t reGlass,” X says, “without unplugging from that COM over there.”
“COM?” I ask. “As in, dot com, from the olden times?”
“Nah,” X says. “COM stands for contentOverrideMainframe. It’s that big hunker of a machine over there.” He nods toward a cabinet-shaped computer in the corner. “That’s what we’re plugged into.” I see our tubes curling, like snakes, into the back of the machine. Green lights flash on the front.
“So that’s what’s beeping,” I say.
Yide says, “I actually read about COMs in the vacuum forums. They’re hellaExpensive. And hellaIllegal.”
“So what then?” Ginger asks. “We’re, like, deInterfaced?”
“That’s exactly what we are,” X says. “deInterfaced. unGlassed. offLine. However you want to put it, we’re not on dNet anymore.”
“But…” Ginger looks helplessly around. “Won’t Middle Management see we’re unGlassed and come rescue us?”
“Sure, but it could take days for anyone to even know we’re offline. And who knows what these Withouters will have done to us by then.”
Yide turns to me. “Speaking of Withouters, was that Claudette?”
“How would Vonn even know?” X asks. “Isn’t he, like, suffering from major memoryGlitch?”
“Good point,” Yide says. “I don’t even know why I asked.”
“It was her,” I say. “My memory is coming back, bit by bit.”
“Sure,” X says, “whatever you say, Mr. Memory. Anyway, it was so lol watching the two of you get dragged in here by that woman. Like, the way y’all were squirming around all helpless, like worms or something.”
“Fuck off, X,” Yide says. “You looked the exact same when she dragged your skinny ass in here.”
X sticks out his tongue. “Well, at least I know how to respond to DMs in a timely manner.”
“You have to be kidding me,” Yide says. “I didn’t respond to your DMs for, like, three hours. Get over yourself, X. The Within doesn’t revolve around you. I’m allowed to hang out with Vonn without telling you, ok? You’re not my work family or something.”
“And it’s not even that I’m, like, scared of dying or anything,” Ginger says, as if she’s been carrying on a conversation with herself inside her head. “It’s that I don’t want my death to go unGazed. We all know that deathGazes get hellaLikes. I mean, can you imagine my profile without a gravestone post? How…unresolved.” She starts sobbing again. “My last post was just a selfie. Not even a good one. It wasn’t even getting that many likes.” And now her voice cracks and she’s absolutely hysterical. “I’m just so young, guys. I have so much more content left in me. I have so much more to…like.”
“We’re not going to die,” Yide says. “At least…I hope not.”
“Very reassuring,” X says.
“Did anyone get a good look at the man who was in here?” I ask. “Was he, like, a Withouter, too?”
“Nah,” X says. “He looked hella roided.”
“That’s what I thought,” I say. “So if he wasn’t a Withouter, who was he?”
“Who are any of us?” X asks, mock-philosophical.
“Good point,” Ginger says. “I feel like I was just finding my brand voice. And now I’m going to die.”
“We’re not going to die,” Yide says again. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
And then, from above, the ladder creaks, and a boot appears, followed by a muscular calf, and we all wait, silently, for our fate to unfold.