6. Field of Vision

“Fucking got ‘em.” Sonnet does a jig over the totems of our opponents. Somewhere, the Chaff maven cowers in a corner, hoping for a chance to pop a defib and drag his team back into the fray. I tag the two stalwart graves with gas mines. Let him try.

Our first cashout fizzles out of this dimension and into our accounts. We’re sitting pretty, about three thousand MultiBucks ahead of the Vogues in second. The discrepancy isn’t their fault. The Tough Shells have hogged all the action. As predicted, the Groove came after us right off the bat. While we dealt with that, the Chaff took the box we fought over and ran with it. Maybe they figured it was better to pick a fight with a known quantity than go for the station held by the Vogues. They picked wrong. Guess we did more homework. We move for the next box, leaving the legislature district courtroom in ruins.

The next box spawns at the peak of the colosseum’s dome. A jump pad gets us onto the slope. Sonnet grapples the rest of the way while Barley and I make up the distance. We find the Vogues there already. One has placed an Active Protection System to counter our grenades, and the whole maven trio crouches in its field of protection. Barley slows her pace. Until the APS turret down, her launcher is useless. I focus on dismantling the APS first while Sonnet carefully sets breach charges outside the turret’s range. This draws the attention of a Vogue maven with a launcher of their own. I fire back, outgunned. After taking out the APS, I quickly spend the ten rounds left in my mag. Reload takes too long. Won’t be able to get a turret up and running in time. No cover. Bullets from a burst rifle riddle my torso. I watch my hands slot another magazine into my weapon and I watch my HP dwindle, mostly helpless. No way to reposition up here. Sonnet tosses out his last breach charge before turning to coin.

Barley drops a dome shield around me. I’ll live a little longer. Her grenades hit the dome panels. The first two dent glass and bounce away, impacting nothing but air as they detonate. The third goes off level with the Vogue grenadier’s chin, taking a chunk of health and half their face. The fourth grenade tumbles through a hole in the glass and rubbles an L-shaped support beam beneath us. The fifth and sixth grenades trigger Sonnet’s charges. The Vogues go tumbling down. I pluck Sonnet’s totem from the vacuum and start to revive.

“APS is going to be a problem,” I say.

“Yeah.” Returned to the arena, Sonnet rolls his shoulders. The Vogues make their escape east on a zipline far below, taking the cashbox with them.

Barley sighs. “Do not follow.” The Vogues seem to be moving for Station A. Barley pings Station B. “We will have a better opening here. We do well in the dorm tower.”

“Could look like we’re gunning for the WAYV squad,” Sonnet murmurs in gentle rebellion.

“The Groove are wiped,” I beat Barley to the punch, “that box is moving with the Chaff. Watch your killfeed.” I look to Barley for backup. She is gone, sliding down the dome and toward the academy district. The quiet speaks for her. Sonnet and I follow.

We intercept the box before the Chaff can plug it in. With two stalwarts, they’re just too slow. Sonnet grapples through a window to meet them in the third-floor hall of the dorm tower. The station stands across from bunk beds in a room at the far end of the hall. I know this before I enter the building. We’ve drilled this scenario more than once. I sprint up a stairwell, cursing the cooldown on my jump pad. Above, Sonnet opens with a flashbang. I enter the floor behind him and follow up with a full thirty-two round magazine. The Chaff hold their ground. They’ve barricaded the other end of the hall. Wounded, but they’ll recover. Trouble is, they’re on the wrong end of the hall. Sonnet scoops up the box they dropped to defend themselves and takes it to the station. Our two minutes begin. Barley does not come. She’s stopped at the second floor. Beneath us, she is ready to shatter the whole room. Sonnet ducks through the window and drops to her level. I stay, installing my turret in one corner of the ceiling. I set up gas mines around the cashout station. I sprint as I move through the room, though I’m in no rush. My heavy footfalls echo down the hall. They send a message, they say this room is occupied. If I let it get too quiet, they may suspect a trap.

Another trap springs first. The stairwell ignites on the Chaff’s end of the hall. A submachine gun spatters. A fizzling red mesh shield materializes. The upper landing of the stairwell falls to meet the steps below. Dust escapes from the space between, rolling out like a carpet down the hall toward me. I duck back into the shelter of the cashout station room.

“Got a third party down here,” I report.

“We did not see them going up,” says Barley. They came down from the rooftop, then. “Keep us updated.”

“Will do.” I risk another peek into the hall. The Chaff are inching closer, but they’re not looking at me. The two heavies have their shields up. Facing the other way. The gambit is clear. “The Groove are pushing in. They want to shove the Chaff into us, get us scrapping while they cinch a steal.”

“Stay put,” Barley commands, “We have the second floor secured. Ready to drop you. Sonnet, get behind them. The Groove maven is a healer. Take him out first.”

Crouching behind the door, I feel alive. My fingers do not grasp recycled air. They wrap around the bakelite grip of my rifle. Powdered drywall coats my lungs. This is the world. This matters. I take a deep breath, count to four, and hear two water droplets fall into a deeper body. My heart finds a steady rhythm. I am fluid, slipping halfway into the hall to see one of the Chaff let loose her rocket launcher. The rocket finds its target instantly, consuming the Chaff stalwart and their zephyr opponent in the same blast. The floor swallows them both, along with the other two Chaff contestants.

“On you now,” I tell Barley, but it’s not just her. Backed by their healer, the Groove stalwart moves forward on my level. They’ve got another minute left to steal. Plenty of time. Barley can bring the station down if they get me, but then she’ll be delivering the cash to the Chaff. I count out another breath and dive into the hall. I concentrate everything on the approaching Groove stalwart. Landing mostly headshots brings their health down to a couple chunks, but it starts to come back the moment I start my reload. Return fire comes from the barrel of the stalwart’s shotgun. The first two blasts go wide, the third hits like a train. Intuition throws me back into the cashout room. Can’t let them take me down. Every frag credited to the Groove will earn a tailored reprimand from Edmondo, I’m sure. Besides, I’ve got an idea. The Groove stalwart didn’t deflect my shots with a mesh shield, which means they’re probably running a different specialization. The roar outside my room confirms my suspicion.

The stalwart breaks through the wall with their arms and screaming face first. I’m familiar with the move. Barley favors the same berserker charge. My gas mines go off first. Then my turret finds its target. As gas fills the room, melting my health and the stalwart’s, I fire again. Their healer can’t outheal three sources of damage. The stalwart goes down. Their totem is unreachable, surrounded as it is by toxic gas. When I fall to coins a moment later, the killfeed proclaims that I have died at my own hand.

After coining, I am transferred to Sonnet’s perspective in time to see him nail the maven healer. I try switching to Barley, but Sonnet’s the only option.

“Careful,” I say, “you’re it.”

He is not careful. With the Groove wiped, he swoops through the hole in the floor. Beaten down by Barley, the two surviving Chaff regroup. The maven moves for his fallen teammate, the victim of her own RPG. His defib paddles connect with Sonnet’s chest. Staggered, Sonnet narrowly dodges a slug from the living stalwart. He cuts through the maven first, stabbing so fast his hands seem to be in several places at once. The next slug lands in Sonnet’s gut.

“Get out,” Barley says. He can rezz me a floor up, then I can defib Barley. No need to risk a wipe.

He does not get out. He bolts right for the stalwart, sliding between their legs. His knives carve through their calves. He stabs again and again, keeping to their back as they swivel in frantic motions. In seconds, Sonnet is cutting through coins.

“Hang on,” he says, “I’ll bring you back.”

Barley doesn’t say anything, so I do. “That was stupid.”

Before I’m back in my body, I watch Sonnet watch himself shrug. “The fans have got to eat.”

We are face to face. Upstairs, our cashout finally completes. Sonnet turns away and rushes for Barley’s totem. When she returns, she pings the nearer of two freshly spawned cashboxes. We tag the box without resistance. About eighty meters down the avenue, fighting breaks out. Going by the killfeed, it looks like the Groove have engaged the Vogues, which is exactly what we want. Ideally, we can ignore the Groove and push them out through pure earnings. All we need is for the Vogues or the Chaff to pull their weight. As it stands now, the Vogues are firmly placed in the other qualifying slot. None of us have enough of a commanding lead to abandon caution, though. These last two boxes are worth twenty-two thousand each, which is enough for the Groove or Chaff to usurp a qualifying spot. The simplest solution is to keep the boxes out of play and run the timer down. That’s why, when our box unlocks, Sonnet doesn’t grapple over to the cashout station sitting in the nearby legislature district fountain. No, he punts it onto the lowest of three rooftops around us. Together, we climb to the highest of the three and fix our sights on the box.

No one takes the bait. In the northern section of Century Stadium, a box is deposited by the Chaff. Doesn’t bump them past the Vogues, but it puts them closer. The match timer gains sixty seconds.

“What now?” Sonnet asks, his eyes on the cathedral dividing the horizon.

Barley pings the cathedral. “Leave the box. Move in slow. We will hold back unless we see an opportunity to steal. For now, we’re safe. Wiping could push us down to third.”

“Sounds good,” I say, searching for a good slant on our rooftop. When I find the right spot, I drop a jump pad. The pad takes us just outside the cathedral cemetery. Barley takes point through a wooden side entrance.

Inside, the pews are rubble. Behind the seating, the cashout station sits below a gargantuan and remarkably intact organ. We watch the Vogues and Chaff tear each other apart. Despite the constant sound of gunfire and the detonations that shake the brick walls, neither team seems to gain a decisive edge. When a Vogue goes down, another defibs. The Chaff only have one defibrillator between them. Still, they’re holding ground with their dome shields and pop-up barricade walls.

The Groove explode into the room. Emboldened by their healer, the Groove stalwart closes the distance and tears into the Vogues’ nearest maven. Smart move. Half-expected them to go for the Chaff, seeing as they’re holding the cashout at the moment, but that would have been a mistake. The Vogues are a bigger threat. With forty-five seconds on the clock, the Groove stalwart eliminates one Vogue and pushes the other two out of the main sanctuary. The Chaff don’t interfere.

“Holy shit.” Sonnet twists. He stares through the walls behind us. “The other box is moving.” I see it too, the box icon in my HUD changing coordinates. It’s closing in fast. Real fast.

The stained glass above the pulpit shatters. A cashbox enters through the jagged space first, followed by an airborne zephyr. Sonnet does not wait for permission. He grapples to intercept. His body slams against the other zephyr midair. Only one makes it to the ground. The one without knives in him. Sonnet holds the box. On the other side of the room, the other two Groove contestants have begun their assault on the cashout station. Can’t tell where the Vogues are. Too much going on.

“Do it,” Barley says, and I cannot tell which began first: her command or his throw. The cashbox slides into place. Across the net, live gambling odds violently shift. The Chaff stand to make their last victory the start of a streak.

Barley and I move in behind Sonnet. I drop a turret. A dome shield surrounds us while Sonnet initiates a steal. I go down first, taking a maven from some team with me. My turret lasts for all of three seconds. Barley is next, making herself a shield once the dome melts. She rolls a frag at her feet before she coins. It doesn’t kill anyone, but it forces them to move back for maybe two seconds. With his smaller zephyr health pool, Sonnet goes down the quickest. We are wiped.

Doesn’t matter. On my screen, the cashout is blue. The Vogues manage to clear the room with just enough time to watch the station fade. My field of vision burns to red.

---

Barley paces the colonnade. She’s quiet, which isn’t odd in itself. What’s odd is that she called me here. I look out across the wide-open concrete square before us. Amidst the smog in the square’s center, a petrified man on horseback is forever nearing the crest of a rocky bluff. The place feels as though it could be a headscape, a virtual creation. That doesn’t jibe with what I know about Barley, though.

“What’s up?” I make my words light to lift the gloom, because Barley looks at the ground like it’s covered in headstones.

“Sonnet is becoming a problem.” She looks up at me. Her face is blank, so I fill in the details, the furrowed brow and the sternly clenched jaw her meat surely wears “He does not know how to carry success.”

“Hey, you’re telling me. Can’t believe how Edmondo was praising him after the game last night. You know it’s only gonna puff up his ego. Nothing for us, no, nothing about how we maneuvered around the map and managed to be in the right place at every right time. He gets the kills, so he gets all the glory.” Whining to Barley feels good. Between her messed-up facerec and her taciturn manner, I almost forget I’m talking to someone else.

“The spectacle,” she says, “is the point. For them. For us, it is a game. For others, a show. Sonnet is right. He gives them what they want. And he has nearly enough skill to warrant his arrogance.”

“That’s the problem, right? He’ll keep going until he pushes too far.”

“Yes.”

“So talk to him,” I roll my eyes, “Chew him out like last time. You’re the captain.”

“I am not sure he knows that.” She falters. No more words come, only a long exhale passing into faint white noise. I hope my surprise doesn’t show. This is Barley begging.

“I’ll give him a call to set things straight,” I say, “Make sure he knows how this team works. None of this happens without all of us on the same page.”

“In another world, he could have been a great warrior.” I can’t tell if she’s joking, but it reminds me of another thing.

“Last time we met—outside of work, I mean—you were saying something about your mother.” So long ago now, that reprieve by Sonnet’s river. Intentions for another such meeting have continually met with the hard facts of a thankless training schedule and increasing media obligations.

“I remember. Why do you bring this up now?”

“Making conversation,” I say, “Didn’t get what you said last time, and I was curious.” Half-truths. I do recall what she said, though the net was no help in finding an explanation.

“She was called a peacekeeper. She was a fighter.”

“Seems like you take after her,” I say.

Barley actually laughs. “I do not know about that. We are entertainers.”

“I mean, we do fight.” I don’t expect the defensive edge in my voice.

“Yes?” Barley cocks her head. “And why do you fight, Google?”

Ordinarily I would roll an easy answer off my tongue. Love of the game, maybe, or enough money to keep my Pops comfortable. Barley will not accept these answers, and with how long we’ve worked together now, she deserves more anyway.

“I need to.” The truth in its simplest form.

Barley nods. “My mother fought for order. She cut every attachment to pick up the gun. She believed she had found something worth burning for.”

A minefield of questions enter my head. I go for a risky one. “Had she?”

“Many days, I ask the same. We must be sure of our causes.” Barley twists fast, as if to face a threat behind her. Something in meatspace, maybe. Whatever happens, it must not be a big deal, because her posture relaxes as fast as it had tensed. She turns back to me with a thin smile. “You are clever, Google. Do not settle for easy meaning.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Our scheduled training starts in fifteen minutes. “Think I should go ahead and buzz Sonnet?”

“No. Do it after.”

“Sounds good,” I say. We port out of the call. I peel my headset away from my face and shuffle to the sink. The water comes down cool on the backs of my hands, numbing the pinch in my tendons. On the countertop, my phone notifies me of six missed calls since yesterday. Two spam, three from Pops, one from Rahmat. She has also sent a short message: “CONGRATS!!! CHAT LATER?” I will call her back first. Just gotta get through today’s training. And deal with Sonnet. I groan and turn the sink pressure down so that the water falls in patterned drops. With each droplet, a dull thud. Nowhere close to the crisp, round sound I have come to depend on. It is sometimes hard not to think this is the reflection. 

I slide back into the bleed only slightly lightheaded. A dolphin jump this early in the day is usually fine. As Barley queues us up in public lobbies, Sonnet babbles to his invisible flock. I keep my words strictly business. He doesn’t include our private comm channel on his cast, but he does stream his own mic output, and I don’t want anyone else hearing even half of this conversation. I do my best to put human thoughts aside altogether. My brain fires on a million different fronts. At its core, the game is not so different from doomsuckling. Immersed in either, my brain presses endlessly deeper toward an impossible conclusion, an imagined blankness after everything has been experienced. Depth comes with pressure that builds and builds against my aquarium glass skull. What Barley said keeps bubbling to the surface. I think I envy the conviction of our mothers.

The Bank It! session ends, eventually. My system clock says it’s 19:03 SNT, which means it’s just past two o’clock for the people in Sparks who live by the sun. I shoot a message over to Sonnet, asking him to hop on a call. He says he has already begun another round, but he’ll pause the stream when it’s over.

I have not yet felt the excitement of last night’s victory. I have not even felt relief. It’s funny how that works. These moments are always meant to change things, when I rehearse them in the long dry-eyed stasis before sleep. Then a big moment comes, and it is only a flicker in the mundane. Life returns to old cadences. Yesterday was the biggest victory of our careers. As of now, we have progressed further than we did last season. Last night, we entered new territory. Today, we are back on the same stomping grounds, a carousel of arenas we have memorized.

Sonnet says he’s loose. I invite him to a call in the Ready Room. Don’t want any fancy backdrop distracting him. He enters the call in seconds. The cloudy purple shapes of his uniform take on a redder hue in the ambient light of this place. Taking a seat on the air, he inclines his head in my general direction.

“How’s it going?” he asks.

“Alright. You?” I am eager to get through pleasantries.

“Never better. Did you see the numbers I pulled today?” Before I can check his profile, he tells me. “Fifty thousand new viewers. Peak traffic completely broke my record. We clocked seventy thousand unique runes at the same time.”

“Glad you’re pleased with yourself,” I say, “Shame it’s a team game.”

“Oh, this.” Sonnet slouches further in meatspace. On my end, it looks like he’s hovering on his back. “Barley put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“Don’t bring her into it. Right now, this is between you and me. When you pull one of your stunts, you jeopardize all of us. There’s more on the line than your rotcast or whatever.”

“We’re here, aren’t we? We made it.”

“For now.”

“I’m good and you know it. How many other zephyrs do you see in the finals? We get thinner at the top for a reason. We’ve got the highest skill ceiling.”

“Good isn’t enough.” I get closer so that he has to look straight up at me. “I’d take a second-class mate who can follow orders over a first-class asshole who can’t.”

Sonnet pulls himself back to his feet. “Hey, I’m a team player. Nine out of ten times, I’m right there with you, doing exactly what Barley says. That other time is when she makes the wrong call.”

“Justify all you want,” I say, “the transfer window’s coming up.”

Sonnet laughs, but it’s a little shaky. “No one actually does that. You’d have to jump through a lot of hoops, and it’s a PR disaster. Edmondo would never go for it.”

“It’s been done. The ‘83 Revenants made it work. ‘96 Warlocks nearly won the finals after a trade. Last year the Old Hands had that guy die and—”

“Wow, you can list off trivia. Come on, Google—”

“I found you,” I say, lowering my voice. “I pushed for this team. Edmondo will go for a change if I make him understand we need one.”

He curses, I assume, in Thai. But when he looks me in the eye, I see respect. Maybe it’s me projecting, or maybe his body language gives it away. In any case, he doesn’t say anything else, just hangs up the call and leaves me alone in the red light.

---

Days do not hold enough hours. After the Bank It! grind, I am exhausted. I want to lie on a firm rug and not move for a few hours. But responsibilities pile atop one another, inside and outside of my headroom. Ranzio’s interim DSP engineering lead keeps poking me with messages asking to schedule a check-in call. Knowledge only I possess, which has been a crucial bit of job security up until now, is at this point becoming a hassle. If the politely panicked messages are to be believed, half the team is unable to work until I show them how to clear their current roadblock. Showing would be easier. Instead, though, I’ll spend the next three evenings doing the fixes myself.

Then there are the demands of meatspace. I decide to call Rahmat the moment I’m done eating. Halfway into my microwaved noodles, Pops rings my phone. Against my better judgment, I pick up. After three prior missed calls, I can’t ignore the possibility that something is wrong.

“Hey.” My voice is muffled by half-chewed pasta.

“The cave dweller speaks! It must be a miracle.” 

I kick myself for almost worrying. “What’s up?”

“Why does anything gotta be up? Can’t I see how my kid’s doing?”

“Sure you can.”

He’s moving. I can tell by the heavy breaths blowing into the mic before he finally says, “When you coming by?”

“Couldn’t tell you, Pops. Maybe next Tuesday?”

“I ain’t gonna be around forever.” He sounds tired. I’m not falling for it.

“You’ll be around next Tuesday.”

“You know what I’d do for another day with your grandpa?”

That’s my cue. I make an excuse and hang up to finish my noodles. Next up, Rahmat. She doesn’t pick up. I spend the next fifteen minutes writing and rewriting a message. With each revision, the intention changes. The final edition is simple, scraped clean of any embedded subtext that could lead to misunderstandings. I don’t know what I want. I do know that it would be nice to have another friend.

---

The frog hums down a dirt road. Low sun pierces my vision sporadically as it slips in and out of the treeline. We twist and turn headed west for a roadhouse where Rahmat is apparently a regular.

“Did I tell you I found a guy to cut the noisebreaker?” she shouts over the false engine. I shake my head. “Yeah, he’s stopping by the greenblocks early next week.”

“That’s great,” I tell her, probably sounding overly enthusiastic. Hard not to when you’re shouting. “Hey, thanks for picking me up. Definitely need the break.”

Rahmat looks incredulous. “Are you kidding? We have to celebrate. That game last night was unbelievable. Drinks are on me, by the way, so go to town.”

“Probably shouldn’t drink too much. Got a strategy session tomorrow morning at ten.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“Ten, uh, SNT.”

“Oh, damn.” Rahmat pulls into the roadhouse parking lot. “Hey, we don’t have to do this if you’re not feeling it.”

“No, that’s alright. I’ll be fine.”

She frowns at me, and my abdomen clenches. “Come on, let’s go somewhere else.”

“It’s really OK,” I say, “I’ll manage.”

“Trust me.” She puts the frog in reverse.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to screw up your plans.”

Her face softens. “Hey, no. You’re totally fine.” Rather than turning back the way we came, Rahmat pulls out of the parking lot heading farther west. “I have an idea.”

The dirt road gets bumpier and curvier as we continue on. Nausea starts to set in after maybe ten minutes. I’m nearly ready to ask Rahmat for a break when she stops the frog. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing around us. I get the uneasy feeling that I could die here and no one would be the wiser. A silly feeling. Rahmat is probably the most normal, well-adjusted person I’ve known in a long time. Still, it’s hard not to worry a little when you’re this far from civilization with no way to get back on your own.

“We’re here.” She climbs out of the frog, comes around to the passenger side, and beckons for me to join her. I follow with the sense that I’m a captive. “Relax. There’s no one else out here.”

An open field greets us. Chickweed and bittercress invade the plain. The weeds remind me of my father cursing in the garden. In one spot, a massive patch of bamboo rises high. Farther out, the forest returns, trees growing along a distinct boundary. I realize the field is a divot carved through old growth. The sky will soon be too dim to see any of this, adding to my puzzlement.

Before we get too deep into the weeds, Rahmat stops and looks down at my feet.

“Oh no, I didn’t think about your shoes,” she says, apologetic. Her weathered brown boots contrast with my practically luminescent orange sneakers. “Here, follow me. I’ll do my best to keep us away from mud or anything like that.” She takes my hand to guide me. I’m painfully conscious of how much drier her palm is than mine. “Oh, and watch for snakes. Last year I nearly flattened a garter here. They’re always out in August.”

“They like the heat, don’t they?” I say, trying to get us both thinking about something besides my sweaty hands.

“Yeah, I bet they’re loving it right now. Hottest summer on record again. We’re going to need better cooling systems for the autotractors, I think. Oh, here we are.” I have been watching my feet so closely that I hadn’t noticed where we were going. When I look up, we are at the bamboo patch. There is a part where the stalks grow denser, and a ladder, also made from bamboo, leaned against it. “Don’t worry,” Rahmat says, “It’s safe.” She ascends first, vanishing from view maybe four meters off the dirt. I see now that many of the vertical stalks are lashed together with a thick rope. Some are pale and dead, held in place by gravity. Others are still green with life.

I follow, and at the top, Rahmat sits on a sort of fibrous carpet. She beckons me over. I crawl, wary of concentrating my weight on one spot by standing. I’m surprised by how even the surface beneath me feels. It’s comfortable, actually.

“You made this?” I hope my disbelief doesn’t offend her.

“It’s a work in progress,” she says, beaming, “I think I started when I was like, twelve. Used to hop the train by the greenblocks in the morning and come home with the first one after dark. Worried my mom sick, but she was too busy to stop me.” The carpet begins to rattle. I feel myself slipping. The thought of being gored on broken stalks below drops my stomach. I flatten, my hands clawing for purchase. The world rumbles. “Hey, Quinn, we’re OK. Look.”

A hulking locomotive bursts into the field perhaps fifteen meters distant. It cuts through the terrain at full speed, each car blurring into the next. Even at this height, we have to look up to see the train’s upper rim. Displaced air ripples through us. After a few seconds, I get used to the gentle rumble. I feel the train more than I hear it.

“Wow,” I muster.

“You like it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you might. You relaxed way more once it was just us outside last time.”

“I guess so.” I’m impressed. My assessment of Rahmat is changing by the moment. “This is nice. I like when people have special places.”

“Do you have one?”

I hesitate. “Not really.” How to explain the depths of Naturata, bleeding deep enough to strike bone? That is not a place. I do have a happy place, somewhere my consciousness can hide from howling, bitter thoughts. But none of this is second date material, if that’s even what we’re doing. Time to change the subject. “I know it’s been a while since last time. How are you?”

“Pretty much the same. The greenblocks have gotten hotter, but the work hasn’t changed. Sunny weather has been great for the solar, at least. Anyway, enough about me. I so want to hear about the game. I need details. How did that happen? Did you plan that steal at the end?”

“Not exactly. It wasn’t completely unplanned either, though. When you play with the same people enough, you get a kind of intuitive understanding. At that moment, when the box broke the glass, we all knew what to do next.”

“So cool.” Rahmat leans in, hunched over her crossed legs. “You must get along really well, spending all that time together.”

“You’d think,” I say in a way that makes us both chuckle. “No, I think we’re around one another too much.”

Rahmat nods. “Ah, it’s like that with my siblings.” She watches the train, and so do I. Seems to me she has more questions and she’s only trying to pace herself. Doesn’t bother me. With the sun gone, the air cools to a reasonable mid-eighties. My senses are enough to sink my attention, digging into the varied stimuli humming at the borders of my skin. The train’s light clatter draws circles in my earlobes. The smell of green envelops me, infused with the smell of us, an animal scent which is not quite an odor, scarcely enough to overpower whatever fresheners we both wear.

“About your teammates,” Rahmat begins, “What’s the deal with Barley?” She’s found plenty of details on Sonnet, presumably. He has enough content out there to satiate anyone’s curiosity. Barley, though, is another story.

“She keeps to herself. I don’t know anything about her life outside the game. She’s Mongolian, she uses a piece-of-shit headset even after we shipped her a new one with equipment funds last year, and she’s definitely smarter than the rest of us.”

“You’re all great players.”

“Thanks.” We have to be great. No room in the finals for contestants who are only good.

“Sometimes I think it would have been fun to be a remote. Working in the air conditioning, meeting people from all over the world. I mean, I love the family business, but it’s fun to imagine.”

“I get it.” The train’s still coming. In the dark, there are no segmented cars, just a long, unified whole. Can’t tell the start from the middle from the end. It will be here until it isn’t. “I think the game is changing me,” I say, the words coming out wobbly, “I don’t know how to be there and also be here. When I get out of the bleed, I feel like a stranger in this world.”

Rahmat looks at me sideways. “You never leave this world, though. You’re looking at a screen, but you’re still here, you know?”

“I’ll have to remember that.” We watch the train until it is gone and cicadas fill the silence left on the vacant rail. Rahmat brings up lighter topics after that. We talk food and weather and music. It’s awful, how quickly the next hour passes. My phone rumbles on schedule to remind me of my routine. As we ride back into Sparks, Rahmat asks when we can do this again. I say, “Soon,” and don’t dare to be more specific than that.