Chapter 8: 08 Unreal City, Part One

Two months after impact

Angharad watched Jin pace up and down the barrier for at least fifteen minutes. He seemed like he was thinking deeply about something and, okay, she didn't want to interrupt anyone's thinking time but she felt like she should finally meet him. Maybe help with whatever he was doing. It would give her something to do other than make coffee for Dr Yeoh who, frankly, should switch to decaf – not that they had any.

Maybe he was trying to figure out how the barrier worked. Someone should. How else were they going to get out of there? Everyone else seemed to be too busy trying make life work here, which, okay, also important, but she needed to believe she'd get out some day or she'd go crazy.

So, all she had to do was go up to the guy who carried a gun half the time, and who Tabitha told her was crazy and she needed to stay away from. Simple.

She'd been completely sure that wearing sneakers meant she might actually be sneaky while she sneaked up on him, but he turned and looked straight at her before she even got close.

"Hi!" she said, and waved.

He looked kind of confused, like he wasn't sure if he should turn and walk away or not. She skipped up close before he could make a decision.

Tabitha had talked like he was some big action guy, but up close his hair was kind of messy, his face was softer than she'd expected, and he wasn't that much taller than her. If it weren't for the ugly camo he would look like any of the boys she went to school with.

"I'm doing very important barrier research," he said. "You wouldn't get it."

"I can help!"

"How?"

"I don't know how I can help. You have to figure that out. Help me help you."

"This is annoying," he said, and scoffed.

"Please! Josephine said you looked like you needed the help."

Josephine seemed to think Jin was a really cool guy, though Angharad didn't remember much of what she'd said, because Josephine had been saying it all while stretching, running, then doing pull-ups on the door frame, her body gleaming wet with sweat. It was intense. Angharad spent a lot of time wondering where she got the energy. She had maybe swooned a little while watching Josephine's muscles work, but she tried not to be obvious about that.

"Josephine told me about you, too," he said. "She said you like shoes and stuff like that. I don't care about any of that."

"I'm not here to give you a makeover. I'm here to figure out if there's a way to get out of here. The barrier has to be generated by something, somewhere. At the very least I can help figure out if it's maintained by some kind of barrier maintainer person secretly living in here or pre-programmed or something."

Jin rolled his head around for no apparent reason and said, "Fine."

He turned in the direction of the supply shed and she followed.

"I feel like we should name this place so I don't have to keep thinking of it as just 'this place'," she said.

"I said that to everyone! The colonel kept shooting down my name ideas." He swung open the supply shed and she tried not to cough at all the dust it dislodged.

"Like what? What did you come up with?"

He went into the tiny, unlit shed and she stood at the door, waiting for him to get whatever he was looking for and get out.

"New West Garbage Scow," he said.

"Wow, that really is terrible."

"I grew up in West Garbage Scow!"

"I'm so sorry. It must have been tough for you to grow up in the part of the Created Territories with the worst name anyone ever came up with."

He looked at her and scowled, then looked back at the shelf. "My parents are buried there."

She stepped into the shed, anyway. What was a little dust? "That's sad and all. Really, I feel for you." Should she put a hand on his shoulder? He was basically a stranger and some people got weird about touchy stuff during feely stuff, but he definitely needed the consoling. "But it's still a terrible name. Sweet, but terrible. I mean, I'm not wanting to name this place after the cemetery where we buried my mother."

"How did she—?"

"Car accident when I was really young." She leaned against the metal shelves as he sorted through things. "I barely knew her."

"Oh."

"I mean, I like to think her ghost watches over me, but last time I said that Tsuyoshi said something weird about no unquiet dead hanging around me, like that means anything."

"He thinks he can see ghosts."

"Oh." That was kind of weird, honestly.

Jin grabbed something and marched out, so she hurried to follow.

"Maybe we could call it Shiny Domeland," she said.

"Zapville."

"Unreal City. Depressing Electronic Narnia."

"I like Zapville," he said. They stopped in front of a part of the barrier that at strange intervals flashed rainbow colours, before straightening back to an almost-clear grey.

"I don't hate it. I could run with Zapville. Maybe Zapton. New Zapshire."

He still stared at the barrier, as if just looking would hold any answers.

"Do you think it's a seam or just a glitch?" she asked.

"I've seen it do this in other places."

"Yeah, me too. There's a bit behind the hospital where it flashes in some kind of pattern, and I tried to note it down to see what it mean, but it was too chaotic for me to get anything from. I meant, like, too complex. My puny human brain couldn't figure it out."

"I got it."

"What do you even have in your hands?"

"A bunch of bolts."

And then he threw one straight at the barrier. Somehow it bounced off, and the barrier wobbled around the place of impact like water hit by a stone. He threw another, and there was a shrieking noise, like the sound of metal scraping against metal, accompanied by an arc of electricity, racing close to them and not quite reaching.

"Stop doing that! Are you crazy?" she asked.

"I was testing a theory."

"Was the theory about how crazy you are?"

"It doesn't matter. I was wrong. The barrier reacted like it was alive, like an animal or something."

She looked away from his crazy face, back to the barrier as it smoothed out its final ripples before going almost flat again. It went back to its regular low hum, broken only by that strange shiny rainbow ripple that appeared at indeterminate intervals at what might be a seam. The ripple came with that strange noise she couldn't describe, like something halfway between a crackling noise and a dripping tap.

"It's like the robots," she said, remembering.

"The robots here aren't that complicated."

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"No, the ones we have at home at the Silver Group headquarters. They act kind of like they're alive. They squeak when they're hurt, like they're in pain. I guess it's just sensors and stuff.

"Don't throw anything more at the barrier, or it will probably kill you, like it did those kids Tsuyoshi told me about."

"They weren't kids. They were our age," he said.

"Whatever. That's not my point."

"I'm keeping the bolts," he said, and put them in a trouser pocket.

After that, they looked at each other for a moment, and she wondered if he, too, was as unsure about the next step as she was.

He shook it off. "I'll walk you back to Downtown Zapville."

"Cool."

It wasn't far, but it wasn't like she wanted to be alone at that moment. She crossed her arms and buried her hands in the pushed up sleeves of her cardigan. Breathed deeply in and out.

"I think I've heard that sound before. Like, before I came here? There was this robot that the cleaner we used to have found somewhere, last year, and thought would be a good idea to take to work, and I think it sounded like that. I mean, I don't know, I could be imagining things."

"What happened to it?"

"It was, like, riddled with viruses or whatever. It got a bit frisky with the wall and floor cleaning bot and infected it, and the poor little bot couldn't work any more. I used to call it Henry. It was really cute."

"Nobody cares what you called a fancy vacuum cleaner."

"Yeah, well, anyway, then the in-house cleaner freaked out and tried to beat Henry to death. Or, I guess he wasn't alive, just functioning. And then not." She remembered the way the little Henry bot had squeaked and squeaked, its screens flashing red and black under attack. It had probably been foolish of her to try and rescue it. The woman nearly broke her arm. Angharad had held the little bot close and stroked its crumpled surface, as if her touch could console in its last moments of functioning. James told her she had to stop treating them like her pets, but daddy let her have a small memorial service for it in the lunch room after they took its battery out, anyway. "And then we fired the cleaner and replaced her with a robot maid."

"I was at war watching my friends get killed last year, so I'm not sympathetic to your sad robot story."

Ugh, he was so annoying.

She looked up and around them. They had reached the cafeteria again. There was a new sign on the side of the building next to it – 'GOOD DOING IS REWARDED. WRONG DOING IS PUNISHED.'

And underneath it, added to the list of rules: '3. No coffee.'

"Great. Thanks," she said, glaring at him.

He scowled at her and yelled, "None of this is my fault."

"We're in a prison camp in the middle of who knows where, controlled by some secret intelligence, and you had to aggravate it by throwing rocks at the barrier."

"No, we're in an experiment, and we're the test subjects."

"Well," she said, waving her arms about as if they'd help the message get into his thick head, "on behalf of a lot of people's ancestors, let me tell you that tons of horrifying experiments happen in prison camps. Either way, we're probably not getting out."

"I am going to get us out. You can help or not help, but stop yelling at me."

She threw up her hands. "I'm going back to the hospital."

But as soon as she turned, she could hear him following her, anyway.

They nearly bumped into Tabitha at the door, and Angharad thought maybe she could have girl talk, but instead Tabitha straight away glared at Jin and told him the hospital was neutral territory, whatever that meant. And when she looked for Tsuyoshi, the door to his room was open, but he and Zelko were definitely preoccupied, smiling at each other the way lovers do and whispering things.

"What are you, a voyeur?" Jin asked, and grabbed her elbow to drag her away.

"So what if I am? If they didn't want anyone to see, they would close the door."

"Tell the doctor about the coffee situation, not that guy."

"Fine!"

Dr Yeoh was not impressed by their detective work, especially when she got back to her office and discovered the coffee pot was empty.

"There's always tea," Angharad said, trying to be optimistic.

"Tea doesn't go as well with whisky," Dr Yeoh said, and Angharad thought, so that's what that bottle was.

"Go, before you ruin anything else here," the doctor said.

"Um, okay."

Jin walked out, sulky-faced, and Angharad followed.

"We're still going to investigate the barrier," he said.

"Of course."

"Bad things might happen."

He leaned against the wall and looked down at her. Maybe he was testing her resolve. She leaned against the wall next to him and looked up, as sure as she ever had been of anything.

"I'm pretty sure bad things will happen, anyway, whether we do this or not."

"Yeah," he murmured. He looked away. They'd stopped across the hallway from Tsuyoshi and Zelko's room, and she could still hear the slightest murmur of the sounds they were making through the partially open door, even if she couldn't see through the gap.

"Why do you like that Tsuyoshi guy? He's really annoying."

"He's been really sweet to me. And we like the same stuff."

"But all the..." He trailed off and pointed at the door. "That."

"Come on," she said, smiling at the uncomfortable look on Jin's face. "It's romantic. If you had someone, wouldn't you be the same?"

"I do have someone," he hissed, "and if she weren't under a different barrier we still wouldn't be touching in public all the time." And then his eyes got big, as if he realised he'd done something wrong. "Tell no one."

"Is it a secret? I love secrets."

He scowled and banged a fist against his leg.

"I mean, I love keeping them. They're very safe with me. I can't give you examples, like, obviously, but I am the spirit of keeping it confidential."

"Whatever." He looked away.

Through the door drifted the surprisingly loud sounds of Zelko, hissing, "But we can't," and Tsuyoshi, who obviously didn't understand the concept of thin walls, replying.

But they didn't hear any more, because Angharad grabbed their door and slammed it shut.

She looked back to Jin, who looked thankful for her decisive action. "Let's go investigate the cafeteria again. I'm still trying to figure out what's in the sludge."

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