Carey woke up.

Wait, I’m still… Oh, you gotta be kidding me.

“There you go. Open those eyes, kid. You’re alive and well.”

Those words jolted him awake. He recognized that voice.

“It was just a dream,” the man said.

That evil, murderous voice.

Can’t be.

When Carey opened his eyes, all he saw was an expanse of blurred light—the clinical sort of illumination one might see in a hospital—and a dark shape that eased itself gradually into his field of vision, observing him with the calm manner of a priest giving a dying man his last rites.

Carey blinked several times to clear his vision.

“That’s it,” the man said. “Your eyes have been shut for several days now. It’ll take a minute.”

His vision sharpened.

And then he saw him.

The man standing over him.

Roger Solsteim.

In a mad frenzy, Carey struggled against his restraints—only to find that his arms were free to move. He tried to punch the son of a bitch, but Roger easily grabbed his wrists and shushed him.

Carey was too weak to break free.

Too weak and too tired.

Too fucking tired of it all.

What else could Roger do to him?

What else could he take away from Carey?

Why not just give up?

And why the hell did everything beyond the open pod look so different?

Finally, he let Roger help him sit up.

“It’s okay, son. I’m not who you think.”

“You!” Carey spat, pushing him away. “You killed my friends! You—You killed me!”

“Did I? You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“Let go, old man. Let me out of here.”

“You’re free to go, Carey. Remember, you applied to be here. To be a part of this. Remember?”

“App… Applied?”

Fractured memories came back to him. Filling out the online application. Having several video calls with Roger. Getting the necessary check-ups with his doctor.

Why was he remembering all this now?

No. They were fake memories. Implants.

“But… can’t be…”

Carey could trust his eyes, though—couldn’t he?

Something about the CEO of Ample VR-Tech was very different. Gone was the arrogant smile, the imp-like nature, the quick, flitting movements of a maniac with an overly active brain. No tropical outfit, either. No seashell necklace or Bermuda shorts or sunburnt face.

Now, dressed in a collared shirt and a V-neck cashmere sweater, Roger resembled a professor at a quaint, New England university.

He almost looked like he wanted to hug Carey, not kill him in a sinister experiment.

“You met me in person once before,” Roger said. “The memories will come back to you. We had to temporarily wipe them, of course, so the conditions around the simulation would seem real. Do you remember me now?”

Carey studied the man’s face. Yes, they had met before—but not on a tropical island, with Sam and his bodyguard ready to tase, shoot, or beat Carey at a moment’s notice. It was somewhere else…

Carey studied his surroundings. He was sitting in a pod inside a vast, brightly lit room. But this pod wasn’t black and ominous. Rather, it was made of glass and a beige material that shone like plastic. It seemed more like a pod for cancer patients to heal rather than a prison for unwilling test subjects to die. There were other pods like his, all closed, all showing men and women slumbering peacefully inside.

“This isn’t Ample VR-Tech, is it?”

Roger shook his head, smiling warmly now. “And I’m not a CEO. Actually, I’m CTO—Chief Technology Officer, not that it matters. What does matter is that you’re in the headquarters of ResponsVR, located in sunny Palo Alto, right in California’s Silicon Valley. You are not a prisoner, Carey. And your life was never in any danger, though I must say—the amount of danger you created for yourself was impressive… and a little disturbing.”

“That I created? Wait, you mean…”

Roger gave him a friendly, almost fatherly, pat on the shoulder. “Your mother and father are here. We flew them out to see you at this crucial moment, in hopes of making the transition back to reality easier for you.”

A door opened behind Roger. Led by a smiling young woman in corporate attire and carrying what looked like a shopping bag, Carey’s mother and father hurried into the room, obviously eager to see him.

Carey’s mother ran to him, her embrace as tight and engulfing as he remembered it being from early childhood, when their relationship had been warmer, more filled with affection.

“Carey, I’m so proud of you. I can’t believe what you did.”

“What did I do, exactly?”

Then his father was standing there, a bit awkwardly as usual. Gently, the old man nudged his wife aside. Then he made a fist and playfully jabbed Carey’s shoulder.

“I knew you could do it,” he said. “We were watching the whole time. Roger sent us VR headsets so we could follow along. That last battle with the three-headed dog and then the blood-wizard guy… Geez! I haven’t been that thrilled since I watched Braveheart in theaters!”

“I cried when you held Min-joon and he was dying,” his mother said, her lower lip trembling. “Such a beautiful moment, the love between you two. I didn’t know you had such love in you. You never show it, Carey.”

Carey could only gape at his mom and dad, utterly confused.

“What the hell?” Carey said. “What the hell is going on? Someone needs to explain this to me right now.”

Roger took the place of his father and calmly inspected him.

“Let’s see if you can walk first.”

***

Helped by the smiling young woman, who introduced herself as Melanie Watts, senior project manager, Carey got out of the pod and attempted a few steps. He felt weak and his coordination sucked, but over the course of a few minutes, walking became easier. Thankfully, the room was nice and warm. Carey was dressed in a medical smock consisting of a single piece of fabric, though Melanie was kind enough to pull a pair of moccasins out of her bag so Carey could slip his feet into their fuzzy warmth. They were all treating him like some sort of war hero back from the battlefield.

“Follow me,” Roger said, once Carey assured everyone he felt okay and wasn’t dizzy.

His parents were asked to wait in the lounge. Carey kissed his mother, then awkwardly hugged his father.

“I’m proud of you, son,” his father whispered in his ear.

Carey felt moisture dampen his eyes.

“Thanks, Dad.”

Roger and Melanie led him out of the pod room and into a hallway that bustled with what seemed to be a whole enclave of engineers, scientists, technicians, analysts—you name it. There was cutting-edge technology everywhere, behind nearly every glass door he passed. It reminded him of the imaginary basement of Ample VR-Tech, except that these people didn’t scurry around like frightened mice, all part of a criminal conspiracy. These workers walked with their chins up, proud and determined and full of vigor, dressed in bright, expressive colors and sporting everything from conservative business suits to full-on sleeve tattoos, pink hair, dreadlocks, nose rings and jeans torn at the knees.

The room to which they led Carey was some sort of lounge with plants everywhere and a kitchenette in back with a coffeemaker that gave off the pleasant aroma of hot coffee. A strip of windows that took up almost the entire wall showed an elevated view of a gorgeous, sprawling nature preserve and the ocean beyond it. ResponsVR must have been perched on a hill to have such a magnificent view. He could see the ocean in the distance, a sparkling blue expanse that immediately calmed him.

When Carey was seated in a comfy armchair, he finally let his questions spill.

“What about Will and Beatrice and Min-joon? If they didn’t die, then they must be here, too, right? Right?”

Roger gestured at Melanie, who smiled, patted Carey’s knee, and scurried happily out of the room. Like a mother rushing out on Christmas to get a surprise puppy for an overeager son.

Carey’s heart swelled, its steady beat quickening.

Was he going to see his friends? Were they really here?

“Listen, Carey,” Roger said. “There are details about this place, this experiment, that weren’t made totally clear to you when you arrived. You filled out an application for a very special role within our company. We had over three hundred thousand applicants around the world, but only a few were selected—first, by our artificial intelligence, then by our panel of psychiatrists and engineers. Our virtual-reality program is still in alpha, and even though it isn’t dangerous, there’s potential there for trauma. You might even be slightly traumatized by the emotional turmoil you experienced. We’ve arranged for top-notch psychological counseling for you—at our expense, naturally.”

“Whoa, hold on,” Carey said. “I understand the island wasn’t real, but Sam came to my apartment. Your son, he… he tased me and kidnapped me.”

Roger was shaking his head. “I don’t have a son. There was no Sam, you see? The VR dream began with you waking in your apartment, feeling hungover. Then you had your encounter with Sam. The whole time you were—”

“I was in the pod,” Carey said, breathless. “That entire day at the office when Sam first stalked me on Reddit. It was all a dream. But— But how did your engineers know what my apartment looked like? How did they know I owned a Glock? And when I went to work—how could they code and design exactly what my office and my cubicle and my manager looked like?”

“They didn’t design that,” Roger said. “You did. That’s why we call ourselves ResponsVR. Because ours is a responsive technology, meaning it—”

“It automatically adjusts,” Carey finished for him. “Like responsive web design, but instead of adjusting to different devices and screen sizes, it responds to… to my dreams. My emotions.”

Roger’s eyes seemed to blaze. “Exactly. It’s officially known as User-Responsive Virtual and Augmented Reality, a cutting-edge—and I mean cutting-edge—technology that is not available to the masses. In fact, no one else in the world is using it because we invented it. We wanted to create a VR experience where your subconscious mind plays a part in creating the reality. Almost like a dream where you feel like you’re awake, and you can alter the dream in some ways yet remain a passive participant in others. Have you ever had one of those?”

Carey nodded. “A dream you can sort of control.”

“Correct. But this is a thousand times more complex and takes an amount of processing power that you—if you knew the true extent of it—would marvel at. You literally wouldn’t believe me.”

“But why?” Carey asked. “What’s the point? To make gaming—”

“No,” Roger said, sternly. “I mean, yes, maybe. At some point, it could be used for gaming, but that’s not our purpose. We want to heal people. Imagine if instead of going to a psychologist, you could be your own psychologist—create your own waking dream where you could fight your demons with actual weapons and magic spells and what-have-you. Conquer your pain by participating in a story that is not only built around you but partially built by you.”

“Jesus.” Carey shook his head. “That’s incredible. I didn’t know…”

“You didn’t know the half of it,” Roger said. “That was one of the conditions. We still need to fix a few things. For now, those going into the simulation can’t know how it truly works, or their brains fail to respond. We’re still tinkering. But your involvement has helped us tremendously already.”

Roger sighed and looked away, as if a sudden thought pained him. “I have some good news and bad news. I’ll start with the good. As I mentioned, my son, Sam, was never real. You created him as a projection of your feelings, sort of the reason behind your urges to troll people online. Sam was modeled after a boy who bullied you in grade school, a boy named Michael—”

“Mike Tomlinson,” Carey interrupted. “Holy shit, Mike Tomlinson. He used to call me fatty and push me around. He told everyone I still wet the bed. Everyone called me ‘fatty wetboy’ throughout the entire fourth grade.”

“Children can be cruel,” Roger said. “Adults even worse. The pain from that experience caused you to make Sam the villain you needed to conquer—the quintessential bully not only from your past, but one who represented what you eventually became. A bully yourself. The human mind is fascinating, isn’t it?”

“And the bad news?”

“The bad news is you also created Min-joon. He was based on your aunt’s adopted son, Chung-Hee. According to our conversation before you went into VR, I was able to learn a bit about him. You used to bully him until he cried. He ended up becoming the accomplished Ivy League achiever you always wished you could be, the sort of person your father would be proud of. Yet he stopped speaking to you years ago. Psychologically, it’s quite complex, but you always felt guilty about the way you treated him. And so…”

Carey finished for him, his heart sinking with each word. “Min-joon was my way of dealing with that guilt. He was a figment of my imagination. A projection.”

“Very good.” Roger smiled warmly at him. “Yes. A way to confront and release that guilt, that pain. And I’m proud to say, it worked. We saw everything, Carey. You thought Min-joon was a thief and a pain in your butt, but over time, you started to love him like a little brother. You showed him the kind of love and affection you always wished you had shown Chung-Hee. I’ll be honest, when we watched you hold that young boy in your arms, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. First time I’ve cried since my daughter’s death.”

“Your daughter?” Carey asked, wonderstruck. “You mean, it was true? The story about your daughter’s… about Calliope’s suicide?”

“You remember her name,” Roger said softly. “You really are quite something, Carey Walsh. We talked about her during the application process. I was very frank about my goals with this technology. But the way you worked it into the narrative… just incredible.”

Carey blinked. Tears slid down his cheeks.

“I don’t know why I did it, Roger. All that pain I caused. All those people I bullied.”

Roger embraced him and rubbed his back as naturally as if they were father and son. “You were driven by pain and misery. But I watched you overcome those feelings, Carey. You finally put DrollTroll to rest and became something else—something wonderful. A hero.”

Roger pulled back. Carey wiped his nose and gazed at the old man. “If you could see everything, then you saw… I mean, do you know? About what happened the night my friend, Ben, died.”

“I know,” Roger said, nodding. “I know about the drugs you bought, the lie you told the police, how your friend overdosed and died.”

“I’ll save you the trouble of telling them,” Carey said. “I’ll confess.”

“That’s very noble of you. But I have a better idea.”

“What?”

“Come work for me. Help me design new worlds. Help me bring this tech to the masses, so we can help people who need it.”

“But… why me?”

“Young man, I’ve never seen a level of responsiveness like what you displayed inside my world. Most people respond in subtle ways—their subconscious mind may create a literal phantom that floats around haunting them, or a monster boss they need to kill that represents some childhood trauma. But you, Carey…” Roger stroked his chin, nodding, apparently still deeply impressed. “You created two characters, Min-Joon and Sam, who I’m told were indistinguishable from real-life players—and both with their own complex backstories. You have an incredibly creative mind, my friend, not to mention your high IQ, which the system tested at the very beginning. I’d say that makes you more than qualified.

“But there’s another perk to consider. You’re still looking for a way to honor your friend, Ben. What if I told you that you could build Pixel Revenant on the side using our system? Put Ben’s name on it. Give his memory what it deserves. You couldn’t do that from a jail cell, could you? Honor him like that?”

“You’re a hell of a recruiter,” Carey said, grinning at Roger.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes. I’ll gladly work for you. I assume you guys offer a relocation stipend? I’ll need a rundown of the benefits package, too, when you get a chance.”

Carey cracked a smile, and when Roger saw that he was joking, the old man threw back his head and barked out laughter.

The door opened at the other end of the room.

“I think they’re here,” Roger said, twisting around to look.

When Carey saw who it was, he threw himself out of the armchair and ran across the room.