Just great. My cover is blown, my eyes need to adjust to the brightness, and the Holo girl is certainly aware of me when my brother says, “Hi, Gēgē!” He greets me like it’s any other day and he hasn’t been kidnapped by birds. Man, kids adjust fast.
“Welcome our first volunteer to the stage— what are you doing?” The girl says as I throw the chair leg at her then pick up my little brother in a fireman’s carry. Time to go! I sprint towards the edge of the stage. “Wait! That’s—”
My momentum stops and my brother and I fall in a heap onto the floor. I spring back up and get stopped by…nothing? I start to kick the air in front of the stage and my foot bounces off something.
“—the barrier I set up for the demonstration. We wouldn’t want anyone in the crowd cheating with the contestants,” Holo girl walks calmly up to me while twirling the chair leg. Thankfully she hasn’t pulled out that long sword. I seriously doubt she can, but you’ve got to appreciate small favors.
“Isn’t it cool,” Lee excitedly asks me. “Tara made amazing stuff from the Holos’ cores! Remember my game? She’s making Terra Tamers real!”
I keep kicking at the barrier. “That’s great, Lee. Why don’t we go home and let Mom and Dad know? I bet they’ll be excited to see it too.” My words are punctuated with kicks against the barrier. I start to see something like glass become briefly visible as my foot impacts again and again.
Lee grabs my sore arm from behind. Again. “Not until you show everyone what it’s like to use a Rayment! It’ll be like being a superhero! Oh, and how to tame a Terror.”
“A what?” I continue focusing on kicking.
“Tame a Terror!” my brother repeats and pulls harder.
“Ow, Lee, stop!” I finally turn around and see the Holo girl sigh. She looks pityingly at Lee.
“Siblings, huh? Always a chore to get them to listen. Well, let me help his arm.” She snaps her fingers and a Holo mouse, or large rat, scurries from the stage onto my leg, up my shirt and settles warmly against my arm. She looks briefly at the chair leg in her other hand and tosses it away. A Holo grabs it and scurries off.
“What is this?” I start to shake my arm but the girl grabs me firmly.
“Stop it, baka, or Jerry cannot help you heal! Cold lasers help energize your mitochondria so you can heal faster, but your fidgeting is going to waste Jerry’s energy.” I don’t see any hostility in her eyes. Just annoyance. Like Ms. Emily back at Sojourn when the little kids ignore her lessons. I look deeper and I swear I can see yellow stars in Tara’s dark brown irises. Not like real stars, but five pointed ones like in some of the children’s books Sojourners have salvaged. The stars come and go, as if they drift off, calmly roaming deep space. Also, now that I’m literally standing next to her, I’m pretty sure she is older than a teenager. My mom is similar. The men of Sojourn always joke she looks ageless. The women giggle with envious eyes. It’s little things like the youthful woman’s nose and ear sizes being a little larger in proportion to her face, the confidence she holds herself with, and the way she has a few crow’s feet appear when she’s squinting at Jerry glowing against my arm. Plus, she called me an idiot in Japanese. She’s at least trying to appear somewhat Asian. “Jerry, do not waste energy glowing like that! You have to direct the light to the injury.” I hear a small squeak in response and the light fades entirely.
I stare at her and can’t stop myself from asking the obvious, “Did you just command a Holo?”
“Jerry is no Holo. I guess he has a core like the rest of them. But I have been tinkering with it, making something new. Something better. Freer! Or, well, not murderous at least! And then your brother arrived, I quickly scanned his notebooks, and it just clicked! Why not make a game? Turn Holos into tools and friends at the same time! I realized two heads might be better than one for game design. I cannot believe I thought Holos programmed with literal bird brains would intuitively understand kidnapping was a no-no.” She sighs.
“A core?” I haven’t learned everything Sojourn has about Holo engineering. Most of us kids and teens don’t waste time learning information beyond our daily duties and Sojourn’s functions for daily living so we can efficiently use daylight for algae farm work, fishing or whatever other work the adults can’t do while stuck inside. If she can command Holos…maybe it’s worth it to miss a check-in to gain some information.
I try to ask her about cores but she interrupts, “Jerry’s done! Now quick put on your T-quip!”
“Wait my what?” Jerry climbs down my arm and leaps onto her. It’s then I get a good look at Jerry. He’s closer to the size of a rat. A big rat. But no rat has such cartoonish eyes and green fur. It’s like watching a cartoon come to life as Jerry’s whiskers twitch at me. Jerry is different than a normal Holo. Clearly. And my brain grasps for why I feel like I’ve seen Jerry before.
“Tara, it’s a Rayment! It’s my design after all,” Lee pouts at her. Wait this sounds familiar…
She thrusts a jacket of some sort into my chest. I look at it. It seems normal. I interject, “Could you all slow down for a second?”
“But everyone is waiting for you! They’ve been listening to the lecture for like half an hour. Just look at their faces!” Tara urgently whisper-shouts at me.
“They look fine to me, Tara. Maybe a bit sleepy,”
“No, it is much worse than that, Matt! They are getting…” She fearfully bites her bottom lip.
“Hungry?”
“Bored! Did you know psychologists found humans prefer pain to boredom? Just imagine what they will do if you leave them to their own devices!”
Quick as lightning she pulls the jacket out of my arms and puts it on me. I don’t even have time to struggle. I start sweating. We’re in way over our heads if Tara decides to stop acting nice. I swallow.
A screen lights up in front of my eyes. It asks if I would like to see my stats. I blink at the Yes by accident, and it opens a wall of text. I spot things like calculated dead lift, jump height, quantum variability ratings, and other esoteric data fields. I look for a simplify option at the top of the window like I would for any Sojourn-made application. It funnels the information like so.
Pablo calls out from his cage, “Cobarde! Let a real man show you how to wear one of those coats, eh pretty lady?”
I blink. Wait, is he really stupid enough to flirt with a glorified robot? Tara glares at him, but her expression transforms so quickly to batting her eyelashes I could have imagined it.
Tara drifts over to the cage, “I like this attitude much better than rude threats, uhm…”
“Pablo. Mi nombre es Pablo, bonita.”
“Pablo, you get to leave the cage. Come on out and wave to the crowd!”
Pablo smirks back at his crew and gives them a thumbs up. The bars on an entire section of the glowing cage disappear. Pablo saunters out waving to the crowd. The bars instantly pop back into place, a clinking sound follows half a second later than reality would dictate.
Tara and Pablo discuss a jacket design. Tara continues addressing the crowd and playing up the wild superhuman capabilities Rayments provide for the traveler and the fashion conscious as Pablo’s leather jacket warps and waves like a reflection on a turbulent pond. Eventually Pablo’s jacket grows a fur lined collar and sleeves. Doesn’t look comfortable for the Southern heat, but then I realize I barely feel the jacket on my back at all. It’s practically a second skin.
I barely pay attention to anything else as I scan for possible exits until Lee whispers to me, “Get ready for the coolest obstacle course ever, Gēgē!
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