Unplugged (19 page)

THE WORLD WAS
still dark, the only sound our footsteps in the grass as Rain and I stole across the lawn. The moon was a lonely slice of light in the sky. We headed toward the city center, the streets becoming narrower, the buildings rising higher and higher like a stairway reaching for the stars. It seemed as though Rain and I were the only two people in the Real World.

“It's so quiet,” I said.

Rain glanced at me, his face in shadows. “It won't be quiet for long. This way.” He beckoned me down another street.

Eventually we came to a stop before a staircase that led underground. We walked through a tunnel to an
abandoned-looking floor beneath one of the city's buildings. It was so eerily empty it reminded me of Loner Town. The only sound was of water dripping from the ceiling into a puddle. I slowed my pace and shivered. The air was cool amid so much concrete. We turned another corner.

I halted with surprise. “We're taking a car?”

“This place is an old parking garage.” Rain walked up to a small black car and knocked on the hood with his fist. It was all right angles and peeling paint. A long cord connected it to a charging station in the wall. “And yes, we are. Where we're going is much too far to walk.”

I peered inside the windows. The seats were tan and torn, the stuffing pushing up through the gashes. The car looked like it might fall apart. “Does it still work?”

“Yup,” Rain said. He sounded proud. He unplugged it from the charging station. “Real sun and wind is pretty amazing at powering things. Even cars.”

“How did you find it? I didn't see any in the city.”

He opened the driver's side door. It creaked in protest. “There aren't many left.”

I eyed him skeptically. “And you can drive it.”

Rain nodded. He took a deep breath and looked at me over the top of the car. “Honestly, I didn't even think to try until I saw what you could do that day on the cliff.”

I eyed him back. “What does that”—I knocked on the top of the car with my fist, the metal cold—“have to do with this?”

“Well, there are a number of theories out there about how the plugs are changing our brains. Some of them are pretty doom and gloom, but not all are,” he said. “I recently started to test one of them out on myself.”

In the silence, the water dripped and plopped from the ceiling into the puddles. I started to put two and two together. “Before I unplugged, Lacy mentioned something about how living virtually might alter brain chemistry, and have an effect on the body. What else do you know?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Think back to your time in the App World for a minute,” Rain hinted. “Think about all the skills you learned, and the kinds of things you do when you're gaming.”

I nodded, remembering all the things I used to love to do, especially things like swimming. “Sure, but in the App World, we do everything with our minds.”

“Yeah, and that mind is connected to a real brain in a real body.”

I shook my head. “You think the skills we learn virtually are transferrable to the Real World?” On one level it sounded impossible, but the more I thought about it, the more it also made sense. It would account for so many things that until now seemed mysterious. On the cliff that day, I'd even imagined I was in a game, and acted accordingly—as though all the skills I'd had when I was playing in the App World were skills I still held and could apply at will. It would account for how I could find my way
around New Port City without seeming to know where I was going. I ran my hand along the top of the car, over the rough spots of paint and the smooth metal, seeing it with new eyes. “So you can drive here,” I said slowly. “Because you could drive in the App World.”

Rain's hand rested on the open door. He nodded. “As it turns out, all those racing games prepared me well. Gaming especially seems to prep your brain so that once you learn to connect your mind to the body's movements, you simply know how to do things here that you thought you could only do in the App World. Or at least, that's the theory,” he added.

The possibilities were stunning. And exciting. If this were true, it meant that all that time we spent in the App World had an actual effect on the real body, and how it connected with the brain. It meant that Apping could change us—all of us—and in ways that could be wonderful, or awful, depending on which body, which mind was in control of those skills. “If your theory is right, the implications are huge.”

Rain's eyes were alight. “I know. Though I'm not sure if it applies to everyone evenly. The brain is a complicated part of the body.”

Then I remembered the guard I'd stabbed. All that blood. “Virtual experience doesn't replace Real World experience, though. The stakes are different here. And so are the consequences,” I added. In a game, no one got hurt
for real. No one died. I felt my body slump a little with the sheer mental weight of it.

Rain watched me solemnly. “This is true, but don't be too hard on yourself. Now let's go.” He got in the car and shut the door.

I shook off thoughts of the guard and slid into the passenger side.

Rain put the key in the ignition and patted the dashboard lovingly. Then he turned it.

The car roared to life.

Rain stepped on the gas and suddenly we were moving. My knuckles were white from gripping the handle on the door. Even though Rain's theory made sense, it was another thing to test it out in a vehicle that could end up killing us. He maneuvered through the underground parking garage until we reached a ramp that led up to the street. We got to the end of it and rounded the corner. The city was still dark as we headed down the boulevard that cut across the island and ended at the cliff. There were no other cars and no one else out so we sped along, block after block, until we reached what looked like a giant gaping arch over the ocean.

A bridge.

“Are we leaving New Port?” I asked.

Rain glanced at me. Bobbed his head once.

It was still pitch-black outside. The only glow was from the car's headlights, two pools of light stretching out
ahead and cutting through the darkness as we rose up, up, up over this ribbon of concrete and metal that stretched across the water. Eventually we came to the other side of it and I breathed a sigh of relief.

I turned around and looked behind us.

Through the back window, the skyscrapers of New Port City cut a series of shadows across the darkness. A few lights were on in the buildings, proof that there was still life in the city's midst. Somehow, those tiny sparks were comforting. The sun was just beginning to lift, the warm glow of red burning along the horizon. We raced along the empty road, Rain swerving occasionally to avoid a pothole.

“You really can drive,” I said.

“You could, too,” he said quietly. “Though you'd have to practice first, somewhere safe, where there isn't anything to crash into.”

“Right,” I said. “What about piloting an airplane? Or a helicopter?” I went through the list of things I'd learned to do while I was gaming.

“If you could get your hands on one of them, sure,” he said. “But I wouldn't want to be on board for the test flights.”

The gears of my mind were turning. “So what does this mean for other App World citizens? You mentioned you weren't sure if the way the plugs change our brain chemistry would affect everyone in the same way.”

The car leaned hard into a sharp curve in the highway. “That's what I'd like to figure out.” Rain shifted the wheel expertly. “In theory, sure, the brain and therefore the body would have the same instincts and skills a person developed while in the App World. But you also have to remember: the real body is vulnerable in ways that the virtual self isn't. So, for example, if a tiger ripped off someone's arm, it would be gone forever.”

“Well, that's disappointing,” I said. “I liked the idea of those transferrable skills including the one where I can regenerate a limb.”

Rain laughed and I joined in. “No kidding,” he said.

The sun became a great ball of fire in front of us. Rain put on a pair of sunglasses and handed me a second pair that he pulled from the glove compartment.

I put them on. “How do you think we make all those skills work?” I asked, remembering how when I woke up at the Keeper's, I could barely focus my eyes, how I had trouble speaking, how my legs struggled to hold me up. “Is it always adrenaline that makes them kick in?”

Rain rested his hand on the gearshift. “Adrenaline will do it, sure. But from what I've gathered, you don't always have to be in danger. It's more like, you have to let your body take charge and get your mind out of the way. You have to
not
try so hard, stop thinking about it directly. Just let go into whatever it is you're doing and suddenly”—he snapped his fingers—“your brain and
your body start working together and your arms and legs simply know what comes next.”

I tried to understand this. “Sort of like the Protection Apps built into our code at home?”

He nodded. “That's a pretty good analogy, actually.” He glanced at me. “What do you turn into when you're afraid, Skylar?”

His question surprised me. It was so personal. I took my eyes off the road, staring at my hands clasped in my lap. “A panther. You?”

Rain hesitated. “A tiger.”

My mouth opened. “But you were always killing tigers when you were gaming. I saw you do it just before I unplugged. You didn't even flinch. I could never kill a panther, not even if it attacked. It's like, when I look at one, I almost see myself.”

“I know.” He shrugged. “It was the same for me with tigers.”

“But—” I started, then stopped as it dawned on me what he was saying. “Oh.” I felt a pang of sympathy for Rain. Thought about him sitting on that ice ledge, his legs dangling over that vast abyss. He really wasn't as carefree—and careless—as everyone thought.

Rain got quiet. I let the subject drop.

The scenery zoomed by outside the window. It wasn't the same as flying on the Apps, or traveling on a train at home—not as fast or quite as free—but it was better
in a way. There was something about watching the Real World at this speed, seeing how the sun made its way over the horizon and across the sky, that I didn't want to spoil with any more words. Doing these things in the real body made everything different. More whole. More vivid. More alive.

“Being in this car is pretty great,” I admitted after a while.

Rain's eyes were still on the road. “I'm glad you like it.”

I started to relax. It was ironic: the farther we got from the city, the closer I felt to finding my family. Joining Rain's cause was taking a giant step toward getting to them by enlisting his help and his resources. Hiding in the Keeper's mansion got me nowhere, and to allow myself to be shut away because a few politicians thought I was pretty enough to sell was ridiculous.

I glanced at Rain and caught him looking at me. His admission that he saw himself in a tiger, yet his impulse was still to kill it, almost made me want to reach out and take his hand. I turned away instead, staring out the passenger side window. After another few miles, Rain pulled off the highway and wound down a narrow lane, walled in by tall, dense, leafy trees. By now, the sun was high. Nothing but green and the road stretching ahead of us. Rain rolled down the window and stuck his left arm outside. The wind struck my face and twisted through my hair. His hand seemed to rise and fall in the air as though
it kept rolling over some invisible object.

“Go ahead,” Rain said when he realized I was watching him. “Try it.”

I rolled down my window and pulled the hair away from my mouth. Then I stuck my arm out, mimicking the movement of Rain's hand.

I started to laugh.

It felt as though my hand was moving over and under bubbles, the air pushing it up and then letting it down again. I decided to stick my head out next. I couldn't help it. The warm wind struck my face and my ponytail flew outside the car, trailing behind me. A feeling of pure joy flooded me. The smell of the air was green and humid, heavy with the scent of summer flowers and grass, and I loved it. I shifted position so only my arm was outside, resting along the bottom of the open window.

Rain smiled. “It's good to see you enjoying yourself.”

“I am,” I admitted. “But are you ever going to tell me where we're going?”

“Almost there,” was all he said.

Soon the landscape changed, becoming more barren, the trees spaced farther apart. Instead of dirt among the plant life there was sand, its grains spilling across the road. The ocean was all around us in New Port City, but the elevation was so high the ocean felt far away, inaccessible. But sand meant it was close. The potholes in the road got worse and worse until the car was bumping over
them nearly constantly. The street widened into a parking lot. Dunes reached up in front of us, sea grass growing along the hills. “Are we near the beach?”

“Yes,” Rain said.

My heart grew wings and I thought it might fly from my body. “You're taking me to the ocean?”

Rain parked the car and turned off the engine. “In part.”

I threw open the door and got out. I'd always thought that if I ever saw the beach again it would be with my family, that I'd be holding the hands of my mother and my sister as we walked along the sand, like when I was small. Even though they weren't with me, that didn't quell my excitement. “How far away are we?”

“Over here.” Rain beckoned me up and over the sloping dune.

I took off my shoes.

My feet sank and slid into the shifting grains, and I remembered my game of Odyssey with Inara. Real sand and real dunes were different. Each grain was so clear to my eyes, the heat from the sun burning the bottoms of my feet. The hurt was strong but not unwelcome. As we climbed higher, I caught the sound of crashing waves. “The ocean,” I cried, and went faster. “It's right here!”