Chapter SixGhost

By February, Soph had stopped opening the course files her professors sent. Atom was at The Lab, recovering from the implant. Max brought back short messages dictated a word at a time, mostly complaints about the calibration. Soph wrote long answers and deleted half of them before handing over her phone.

She thought of her father then. She didn't remember him very well, but she tried to recall a memory of him now.

Max had told her about him once, when Soph was old enough to ask and not yet old enough to understand the answer. "He was a great artist. I've never known anyone like him. He wasn't for this world, unfortunately. It was sad, watching him go."

There was a painting of his in the hallway, a lake that wasn't any particular lake, in a blue that didn't exist, and she had walked past it every day of her life without looking at it. He lived now in a facility in Napa with a garden. Soph never went to see him. If she ever had a dark secret, that was it. She was terrified of the thought of insanity, terrified that if she went to see him she might catch his disease, terrified that she'd caught it already. She looked up at the ceiling, tracing the lines of the tiles. She traced back the other way, trying not to let her path of tracing overlap itself. She closed her eyes. Opened them. Closed them again. Traced the lines. When she felt happy and whole such quirks weren't bothersome, and she hardly noticed them. She knew illness was not something you caught by visiting. Knowing did not get her out of bed.

A week later Max called from The Lab with the promise of good news.

"What is it? Is it about Atom?" Soph asked.

"Yes."

"He's okay? He can walk and talk?"

"I'll be home in a few hours, we'll talk then."

Soph was immediately hopeful and excited for a moment. Then she fell back into her fog. Better not to expect too much. If he could walk, he'd probably come see me. Or maybe Atom wants to surprise me. But could he have recovered so quickly? No, not possible.

Hours passed and Soph heard a car pull into the driveway. She got up, put some pants on and turned on her lights. Don't want them to think I've been sleeping all day. She wanted to believe it was Atom. She heard the rustling of keys in the door, and she opened it. Max was alone.

"Oh, hey mom."

"Hi." Max gave her a hug, and held on a little longer than usual. "Put on your suit and frames, I've got a surprise for you."

"Atom?" Soph asked, surprised.

There he was, standing in front of her in the living room. She took her frames off– he wasn't in the room. She put them back on. "Where are you right now? I mean, it's good to see you."

"You too. I've missed you so much. Oh, man. It's so good to talk to you. I'm at The Lab right now. Or, my body is at least. I've been cooped up learning how to speak with my mind. But I'm here now, with you."

He looked exactly like Atom, thin and blond and standing with his weight on one hip, and he was faintly transparent, so that she could see the bookshelf through his shoulder.

"So you're connected with the Link?"

"Something like that, this one is way more advanced. I'm hardwired in. Hey, don't be sad babe. I'm here now!"

"I'm… I'm not sad. I mean, I'm really sad. But I'm also really happy that you're alive." Soph fought back tears, lost, and wiped her face with the back of her glove.

"Are you okay with this?" Atom asked.

"Yeah, it's just, it's weird. I want to touch you, I want to kiss you so badly."

Atom walked over to her and hugged her. Electrodes in her G-Suit fired. Vibrators vibrated. Actuators tensed her joints. It was a good, long squeeze. She squeezed back.

"Can you feel it when I hug you?" she asked.

"Yeah. Oh, wow. It feels so real. Way better than the suit. What about you?"

"Well, I've never hugged someone virtually. It feels good. It's just good to see you."

Atom held her by the shoulders. "So, what are you up to?"

"Honestly, I've just been waiting for you to come home."

"Well, I'm here, aren't I?" Atom smiled. "Hey, let's go find some mobs, I have to practice moving around."

"You can do that? I thought you could only ghost around."

"Nah, I've got a bunch of cool new tricks."

Max had been standing in the kitchen doorway the whole time, watching her daughter hug the air. Now she came in and sat down on the arm of the couch.

"Before you two go anywhere. Atom, you've heard this already. Soph, I need you to hear it too."

"Okay," Soph said.

"You understand he's still at The Lab? The implant stays in all the time. The frames are just for his eyes."

"I understand, Mom."

"Good. The medical team knows what we're doing and Jeff has the game logs, but most people at the company don't. I'd rather not have to explain it to them through a video somebody posts."

"I'm not going to tell anyone."

"Ordinary ghosts can cast spells out here. They can't pick things up or hug somebody in a suit. Atom can do those things because Jeff has given him permission to test them."

"So can we fight stuff or not?" Atom asked.

"On Ring Mountain. Jeff's reserved a private test layer for you. He can see what you're doing, but other players won't see the fight. Stay inside it. If you go outside it, Atom gets the same permissions as anybody else."

"We'll stay inside," Atom said.

Max looked back at Soph. "He's still hurt, honey. His body is still in the chamber. I don't want you to think we've made him better just because he looks like himself."

"I know."

"Alright. Go and get ready. You haven't been out of this house in a month."

Max drove Soph to the entrance to a trail that led up to Ring Mountain. Atom sat in the back seat. Soph was amazed to look back and see him there, and he waved at her every time she did.

"Alright, I'll leave you two here. Give me a call when you want me to come pick you up. Before it gets dark, okay?"

Soph opened her car door. "Okay. Thanks, mom."

"Say goodbye to Atom for me. Tell him I'll see him tomorrow."

"Okay, I will."

Atom sublimated into a ball of mist and rematerialized beside her on the gravel. "Pretty cool, right? No need to tell me, I can hear her through your audio feed."

"Oh, right. Can you tap into anyone's audio?" asked Soph.

"Just the people that I'm bound to, which is you. I spent a lot of time with Jeff, that guy we met at the party. We worked on a whole bunch of new features together, and he gave me some new items. Some of them came out with the Link patch, some of them are stuff he made just for me."

"Cool, like what?"

"I don't want to spoil the surprise. C'mon, let's go, we only have a couple of hours of daylight left."

They started up the trail. The bay came into view behind them as they climbed, and Soph turned to look. The game had made the sky a little bluer than it really was. There was something flying over the next hill, too far away to make out. She glanced at Atom. He had his hands in his pockets and looked as though he could walk all day.

"Does it hurt?" Soph asked.

"What?"

"The implant. Or being like this."

"No. It's weird. I can't feel my real body at all. Max says that's what it's supposed to do."

"Do you like it?"

"I like being out here. I don't know about the rest of it yet. I've only just learned to walk around."

Three orcs were in the grass below the summit, arguing over a bag. Soph drew her dagger and began to recite a spell.

"Wait. Let me try," Atom said.

"Are we in the test thing?" Soph asked.

"The marker's green. Jeff's watching."

Atom went down to them. The shaman lifted its staff and he caught it and pulled the creature toward him, then hit it in the face. One of the raiders charged straight through him and fell over. The other tried to swing its axe. Atom stopped it, took the axe away, and finished the fight before Soph had got her spell off. He came back up the slope looking very pleased with himself.

"Pretty good for a ghost, eh?"

A message opened beside his head. TEST INVULNERABILITY ACTIVE.

Soph pointed. "Pretty good for the settings."

"Fine. Next time with damage on."

She looked at the sky, and at the far ridge, checking. Nobody. Just a hawk that might have been real.

"So where do you go when I log off?"

"Back to Alius. I've gotta make my way up the Great Mountain and fight the dragon at some point, but I don't feel like it tonight. I've got some coding projects I'm working on."

"Oh, like what?"

"Well, part of my new life is that I can taste and smell everything in the game. Except most things don't have a taste or smell yet, because nobody ever needed one. I'm working on an intelligent way to create tastes for every food and drink in the game. And some things that aren't food or drink."

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

Atom kissed her passionately on the lips. She felt his embrace through the suit, but her face didn't have any kind of senses for it.

"I'm going to have to work on that one. The real thing is way more delicious. Come on, let's go home."

They held hands as they waited for Max at the mouth of the trail. The sun was going down behind Tam and the bay had gone the color of a nickel.

"Soph," said Atom.

"Yeah?"

"When Max approves a tasting prototype, you get the first turn."

"That'd be great."

"It'll get better."

"What do you mean?"

"You should see what they're working on at The Lab. In a year, we'll be so much closer to the real thing. All of the senses, everything."

"Well, I look forward to it."

"Soph."

"Yeah?"

"Do you still love me?"

"Atom, I love you no matter what. I'll love you forever."

"You too. I mean, I do too, you know. Just… thanks, thanks for, you know, being here."

"Even if we didn't have all this stuff, even if I couldn't talk with you like I'm talking with you right now, I would be there for you, by your side, you know?"

"Yeah." He looked out at the bay. "I know."

Max's headlights came around the bend. Atom turned to mist and went into the back seat and Soph got in the front. When she looked in the mirror he was there. When she took off her frames to rub her eyes, he wasn't. She put them back on quickly, before her mother could see.