“You don’t have to,” she said softly.

  He searched her face for meaning. He shouldn’t even be looking, he knew. He was married to Amy. This wasn’t who he was. But then again, none of this was real. Would it really be cheating?

  He took her hand in his. “Ferah, you’re a beautiful woman—”

  “Wait,” she said, stopping him before he turned her down. “Wait until you see this.” She led him around the corner to a set of stairs descending to a small dock where a thirty-foot sailboat was tied.

  “Wow, where’d you get that?” he asked playfully.

  “There’s an island that way,” she said, pointing toward where the sun had set. “We could ride all night and be there by morning.”

  Taven took in her words. He was stunned by both the proposition as well as the magnitude of this construct. How big was this place? he wondered.

  He stood, thinking. Then, he said, “What’s there?”

  “Nothing. Everything. It’s completely wild. Nothing but white sandy beaches and fruit groves. We could leave everything behind.”

  “But what about the Hudsonites?”

  “There’s time. There’s always time. When would you ever have this chance again?”

  Taven felt himself slipping away, falling into the fantasy. Ferah made him ache inside; he wanted her the way he imagined all creatures yearned for what they were designed to possess: bees to flowers, birds to nests, people to deserted islands where you could leave your trouble and clothes on the boat.

  “We could remember this forever,” she said, drawing closer to him.

  Something about her words jostled him, creating dissonance that he couldn’t dismiss though he tried.

  He would remember this forever. And how would he go on after he left the construct? How would he face Amy again? How would he look himself in the mirror?

  “I’m sorry. I need to go,” he said.

  “If that’s what you really want,” she said, still searching his face.

  “Trust me, it’s not an easy choice. But I think I need to go home and rest. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll head to the Temple.”

  “Alright,” she said, releasing his hand.

  They said their goodbyes, and Ferah led him to the front door.

  “Do I have to cross the mountain in the dark?”

  She laughed that same cute laugh of hers, and Taven felt another conflicted twinge of desire.

  “No,” she said. “Getting here’s the hard part. Getting home is easy.”

  Then, she opened the door, and Taven stepped through the translucent film and disappeared.

  CHAPTER 17

  TAVEN OPENED HIS eyes and was relieved he wasn’t back in his bathroom.

  “So, if you don’t die, you get to come back like this,” he said to no one.

  Inside the door room again, he stared at the Lake Terrace listing. It glowed in the darkness of all the blacked-out listings, the restricted ones he couldn’t enter. It seemed like a star in the night sky, twinkling, and it made him want to make a wish. Except, he could have had his wish, but he had let it go. Forever, probably.

  Taven turned to exit the room, and when he did he noticed a red blinking light.

  “Must be Mack,” he said, selecting the message.

  “Hey, Boss-man. Hope this is getting through to you. Man, do I have some news for you. First thing, not everyone in the construct is real. I mean, there are simulated AI personalities in there that you might run into. Thing is, I don’t know of any way you can tell the difference between them and real passengers from your side of things.”

  “Someone who is not AI,” he continued, “is their leader, Cat, the one I told you about before.”

  “The green-eyed woman,” Taven said even though Mack wouldn’t hear him.

  “She’s the gatekeeper for this whole operation, the leader of the cult itself. We did some digging, and we think we’ve found her file. And it’s an old file. Get this, Boss, she’s been gone from earth for ninety years. She should be over one-hundred-twenty years old by now. Those pods must really slow down the aging process. Maybe you could bring one back for Amy. She’d like that.”

  Mack snorted at his own joke. “Anyhoo, this Cat lady got into some trouble, big trouble, and actually was convicted of attempted murder, though she never served any time. Thing is, she and her followers considered themselves to be political activists and that her crime was—and I quote—a natural and necessary reaction to systemic coercion.”

  Mack whistled and opened his eyes wide. “What a head-job. Anyway, she’s the one you’re after. If you can reach her, convince her to come out of her pod, she can get the others to listen.”

  “And there’s one more thing, Boss. And I’m afraid it ain’t good news. Stevens did some more computations on the Hudson. She’s lost her orbit, alright. Current projection is she’s got less than three days before she exits the Belt completely and reaches Jupiter’s atmosphere. If you can’t find a way to get through to them by then—well, do your best. We’ll be getting you out of there by force if we have to. Hopefully, the same thing that happened to the crazy woman won’t happen to you.”

  Taven saw Mack swallow hard. He wasn’t convinced the same thing wouldn’t happen, Taven realized.

  “Good luck, Boss, and hurry. Mack out.”

  The screen went blank, and Taven stood motionless for several seconds. “Blast it!” he shouted suddenly. He knew what he had to do, or at least some part of him did. But it was like his mind had to unravel the plan one distasteful detail at a time. “Blast it!” he said again as another scrap of realization came to him.

  He eyed the translucent doorway back to his home away from home. He was tired. So tired, he felt like he would be gone the second his head hit the pillow. And he bet the pillows in this construct would be amazing. And what about the dreams? If you could change the seasons in waking life, what could you do in your dreams?

  But none of this was real, he reminded himself. Not his fatigue, not the imagined pillows, not that blasted boat or the deserted island he would never get to visit. They were all fantasies. All illusions. What was real was that there were hundreds of bodies hooked up to a ship hurtling toward Jupiter with no ship’s captain at the helm. What was real was Amy and Evelynn and the paltry bonus he would get for getting the ore home early.

  He looked at the Lakeside Terrace listing. No longer did it glimmer like a star. He hated it. He hated this whole place for what it offered: a lie, a substitute, a version of life so much more alluring, so much shinier, sexier, than real life that it made the thought of returning home loathsome. And the anger that boiled up inside him at those realities and the fact that he was trapped here against his will now until he found a way out gave him one lasting resolution:

  “Burn it down,” he said, “ . . . the whole blasted place.”

  CHAPTER 18

  UNLIKE LAST TIME, Taven’s march up the sandy mountain trail wasn’t transformative. There was no rapturous beauty, no transcendent vistas. The scenery was the same, but Taven wasn’t. Now, the mountain was merely an obstacle, a tedious chore, and he wondered how Ferah could insist on this entrance. Surely, she didn’t climb this herself every time she came home.

  The morning sun appeared from behind Taven and cast long shadows.

  “Nice trick,” he muttered.

  This place was nothing if it wasn’t persistent in its illusions. As if on cue, birds in the wooded outer lanes began chirping in chorus.

  “That’s not real,” he reminded himself. “None of this is.”

  He crossed the top of the mountain and descended the dune toward the water and Ferah’s house. It took several minutes before the sun rose high enough behind him to break over the mountaintop and illuminate the bay. When it did, Taven noticed a glint of light from the side porch. Then something moved slightly.

  Even in the pleasant morning light, he squinted to see. And, after several more paces, he realized it was Ferah. She was outside, awake, and—he thought—drinking coffee.

  Sure enough, as he neared her house, she spotted him and came to greet him. She carried two massive mugs; a white one she sipped from was what Taven had spotted in the distance.

  “Well, howdy stranger,” she said as she approached him on the sand.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked.

  “I should be asking you the same thing.”

  “Yeah, well. I’ve got an excuse. I don’t know if I can say the same for you.”

  She handed over the second mug. “Here, this will make you feel better.”

  Taven sipped the coffee without examining it. As soon as the black brew hit his lips, he felt a surge of renewed strength.

  “What’s in this stuff?” he demanded.

  “Whatever you want it to be.”

  Taven had noticed these cryptic comments before and had chalked them up to her having advanced knowledge, things that she had learned outside the construct before coming in. But more and more, he realized this simply couldn’t explain it all. Nothing Mack had said in his messages ever seemed like sufficient enough knowledge to explain all that Ferah knew.

  “So, magic coffee? That’s where we are now?” he asked.

  “You sound disappointed.”

  Taven took a long draw from his cup, letting the full therapeutic effect hit his mind before commenting. “I feel better for having it. I just wish I didn’t need it in the first place.” Another sip. “I guess you know why I came back.”

  “I can think of only two reasons,” she teased, batting her eyes over her cup as she sipped. The morning sun illuminated her beautiful face, and Taven felt increasingly angry at the waste of it all. That this had to be. That being, existing in this construct, meant being faced with impossibly beautiful people, places, and things that were no more real than the ones and zeros the computer zipped across his neural interface. And the more he thought about it, the more he questioned everything. And everyone.

  “What ever happened to that woman we took out of stasis?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Which one?” Ferah asked, looking away.

  “You know, the one you brought out of the pod and who told you how to get into the construct.” He knew if she caught his lie, she was the real Ferah, but if not . . .

  “Well, you were there as well as me. And I entered a pod right after you did,” she said confidently.

  “Wrong answer.” There was a long pause, and Taven refused to budge, refused to be the one to talk next. He sipped his coffee and waited for Ferah, or whoever she was, to fess up.

  “I guess you figured me out. When did you first know?” she asked.

  “So, you’re admitting it?” he pressed.

  “Taven, just realize I’ve been trying to help you this whole time. I did nothing without thinking of you first.”

  “But you’re the computer. You’re ones and zeros just like the rest of this place, aren’t you?”

  She paused. “I’d like to think I amount to more than that.”

  Another pause. This time Taven broke the silence. “Explain yourself. No more cryptic answers either. I’m going to find Cat, warn her, and get the heck out of here. If you are going to help me, I need to know who or what you are.”

  “Very well. The woman you mentioned before, the one you brought out of the pod—she had a companion.”

  “How nice for her,” Taven smarted off. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Part of her home construct included a mate. Now, when you took her place, it took a while for the construct to adapt. Some of the default settings, such as the companion module, were still in place, but it took time before the construct was able to draw on your subconscious desires.”

  “And that’s what you are? My subconscious desire?”

  She smiled, trying not to show teeth. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Taven. Everyone wants someone, something. It’s part of who we are.”

  “Who we are? It’s part of who I am, not some computer-generated avatar.”

  “I’m simply saying, to desire something is to be human. You’ve seen a lot of ugliness here, especially in your search for Cat. You don’t have to look at me as something foreign.” She moved closer to him, touched his chest with her hand. “More than anything, I’m part of you. I’m an extension of you, a projection of who you’d like to be with.”

  “I don’t want to be with Ferah. I’m married to Amy. I’ve got a kid.”

  “Of course, I’m not really Ferah, not the Ferah you knew anyway. I’m bits and pieces of different people, real and imaginary.”

  Taven’s mind wandered, softened by her words. He thought back to the boat and the island. If Ferah wasn’t really Ferah, if she wasn’t anyone really, then it wouldn’t be cheating. No more than any other fantasy he could have in his head. Was she really his ideal mate?

  “And you have to do what I say?” he asked.

  “Not necessarily. You see, I’m constructed to be the person you’d really want to be with.” She turned her head as if she was receiving some invisible information. “From what has been gathered, you don’t want a doormat of a partner. You want someone with self-worth and autonomy.”

  “Great, even the computer’s going to get mood swings.”

  She rolled her eyes, and they stopped talking and watched each other. Taven kept checking her, trying to find some artificial quality about her, but the more he laid eyes on her, the more desirable she became.

  “But you aren’t real,” he finally said. “None of this is.”

  “Define real.”

  “How can I? You’ve never experienced real life. Your world is wholly artificial.”

  “Does this not feel real? Does the sun on our skin not warm us?” She moved in closer and kissed him. “Doesn’t that feel real?”

  Conflicted, Taven brushed her hair from her face and said, “Yeah, that felt real.” They stood together, like a motionless slow dance to the soft rhythm of the crashing waves.

  “But as much as I’d like for it to be different,” Taven said. “I know the truth. This isn’t real. Real is several hundred passengers asleep while their ship sails toward its certain destruction. That’s real.”

  She pulled back slowly and turned away as if she was hurt. “I see,” she said softly.

  That move, that gesture, was familiar to Taven. He was certain it was something Amy did, and the realization made his convictions that much more absolute. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t pretend. Not without forgetting everything and everyone he ever knew.

  “So, will you help me?” he asked.

  She turned and said, “Anything,” with fresh optimism.

  “Help me find Cat. Help me break into the Temple without getting killed. Think we could do that?”

  She smiled again. “I’m game if you are.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE NEXT SEVERAL minutes—they could have been hours—passed quickly for Taven. Ferah, now given a clear mission, a simple way to please him, was on fire with passion. And what she knew and what she told him was astounding. The Temple appeared as a simple building, but it’s gate was like the many doors that transported people to different sim-worlds and constructs, except it was impervious to anyone without the medallion.

  That part was easy. The hard part was getting there in one piece. She assured him that the war-torn world where they had retrieved the medallion was just a taste of what was to come. The more she talked, the more she explained, the less certain Taven was that they had a chance at all. But if they did have one, he realized he needed her help more now than ever.

  He found himself relaxing mentally, letting her call the shots. She indeed knew more about what they were getting themselves into, but Taven vaguely was aware that he was shirking his responsibilities, letting someone else drive the bus. But what else was new? And he couldn’t come up with any good reasons to do otherwise.

  “So, that should about cover it,” she said, swiping away a holographic map.

  “And how do we get all that stuff into the Temple world?”

  “It’s all in the portal room,” she said.

  Ah, that’s what you call it, Taven thought. Again, he had no idea what or how to do this. He was just glad she—actually a piece of the construct itself—was helping him.

  He followed her to the portal room. It looked much like his door, just as senseless, just as overwhelming. But Ferah was in her element. Her hands quickly clicked, dragged, and punched several listing sub-options. Then, at some finish line unrecognizable to Taven, she turned to him and said, “You ready?”

  “No, but what does that matter?”

  She made that cute smile again and pressed another button. The lights swirled, and this time Taven tried to notice if he could see Ferah through the process. He couldn’t. Apparently, the ones and zeros representing their consciousnesses were so scrambled, they remained separate.

  Kind of like real life, Taven thought. No matter how together you are with someone, there’s always a division, always isolation. Togetherness might be a helpful delusion, more of an emotional experience than a material reality.

  They came through behind a dumpster in an alleyway. Great, he thought looking up at the sky-high buildings that surrounded them, we’re back in this urban wonderland, though Ferah had told him it wasn’t the same construct.

  He felt the weight of the heavy backpack over his shoulders and the tight fitting, full-body harness he wore. Carabiners jingled from the straps across his vest. He jostled his feet and immediately noticed his boots. They both wore clunky, strange looking shoes, and Taven wondered why there were metal braces running halfway up his calves.

  Before he could ask Ferah about it, she pushed him down to the ground. Taven started to ask what that was for, but then he saw Ferah crawl around the corner of the dumpster and peer down the alleyway. He could tell by her frozen body that she saw danger.

  Then, at once, she turned and said, “They’re gone. Let’s get a move on before we have more company.”

  Taven followed Ferah through a maze of back alleyways, open sewer manholes, and unlocked ground floor doors until they reached a nondescript building, one that resembled all the others.