The bozos did not like our plan, but they didn’t kick up the stink I thought they would. They darn near seemed to like the fact that Dan was trapped down there with them, because I guess it was someone else to share their time with. They didn’t even mind cleaning up after him. We passed a mop through for the pee, and every crap he had was picked up and flushed down the toilet, and considering he was old and overweight, that wasn’t too pleasant. “Your dog takes bigger shits than I do!” Number 3 said one day. If Dan had been even a few years younger I dare say they would have been drove off their heads, because he would have had nowhere to work off the energy. As it was, he didn’t seem to mind much. Except in the day when he sometimes whined and scratched at the basement door. There was a door to the basement from upstairs but the stairs that led to it were steep, and he couldn’t climb them with his hips like they were. When he scratched at the basement door I would go talk to him.  It broke my heart, even if it was just for a few weeks. Poor ol’ Dan, he didn’t understand. If I could have got that door open without making any noise I would have, but it was screwed shut with eight three-inch decking screws. There was no way of quickly getting that door open without the other two bursting through it.   

As for their meals I was almost jealous. My cooking was slowly getting better, I guess, but they were eating food fit for a king. Occasionally I would nick a little bit from the Tupperware before I brought it down. You know, just a taste test…sometimes a little more than a taste test. I mean there was enough in each meal to feed the both of them and Dan, so why not? Melvin caught me one day, and literally for hours on end, poked fun at me, and called me the cheapest man that ever walked on Newfoundland soil. So I told him he was the most wasteful man that ever walked on Newfoundland soil. Park said if his father and I ever bumped into each other really hard we would cancel each other out of existence, like matter and anti-matter. Then he spent the next ten minutes trying to explain to me and his father what matter and anti-matter was. Sounded like magic to me. When he started talking about E=M32 I tuned out.  

So anyway, Pepe was given facial recognition every day, and the first couple of days I actually did have to reconvince Melvin that killing it was not a good idea.

Lig says it’s MC squared. Whatever. I still don’t understand it.  

Meanwhile Reverend Tom was working so hard trying to get their IDs straightened away that he was barely getting any sleep. Of course this world being as contrary as it is sometimes, things weren’t going as smoothly as usual. The Devil is always up to no good. Apparently, the hackers were demanding double the price because they said the CSIS was hunting them harder than ever, and the church didn’t want to pay it. Then to make things worse the ID forgers couldn’t actually make fakes until they got the right kind of photographs. So even when we did let them out, they wouldn’t really be ready. 

I hadn’t heard anything about the “wild dogs,” but there were so many tracks in the mud outside my house one morning that it looked like a pack of wolves had been snooping around my shed. I’m no tracker, so maybe it really was wolves, but I don’t believe it was. I think it was those creepy dogs.  

But they weren’t the only ones snooping. I was too, but not in reality. In Yi. We would soon be a wanted band of murderers if we didn’t find out what to do with the blood-soaked body of the old fortune teller. 

“What are we going to do with him?” Mabelle asked. 

Park was staring at the body. “It looks so real. It’s disturbing. This verse is the next level. You have any suggestions, Bob?”

“No,” Bob said, from the other side of the door. He had left the room when the fog cleared away, but he was still at the door. “I can’t look. It’s disgusting. I almost puked. I think you should leave him alone anyway. He’s broken code as far as I’m concerned.”  

“Really though?” Mabelle said. “Aren’t you, well, supposed to be able to help us in these situations? You are invisible after all.”

“Help how? All I can do is be invisible, fly, and make rain clouds.”

“What do you mean by ‘broken code?’” Park asked. 

“I can’t explain it, but I know it when I see it,” Bob said.    

I couldn’t look at the body at all. I glanced at it once. His eyes were half open, and his tunic was dark and slick with his blood. I couldn’t understand why they felt the need to make it all so realistic. Wasn’t this supposed to be fun? I had never seen anyone get killed before, but I certainly knew what a freshly dead body looked like. And I’m not even talking about Amy. I found my father dead in the driveway when I was in my early forties, and that was enough to never forget the stillness. 

“Can we move it?” Francis asked. 

“Where?” Park asked. 

“No, I mean does the verse mechanics allow us to do that?” 

“I’m not picking him up,” Park said. “It looks too real.” 

“I’ll try,” Francis said. He moved forward, and sure enough, he was able to put the old man on his shoulder. 

“Is he heavy?” I asked. Everyone looked at me, and I smiled at my stupid question. If I was just standing there, not moving, it was still hard to not get confused with reality sometimes. So why did I feel so bad about murdering (killing? Ending?) a character made by a computer? Judas. God didn’t make him, a person made him, some young fella punching in letters and numbers on a computer screen. Although God did make everything under the sun, so in a way God did make him. It. I don’t know.  

So anyway, Francis asked, “Now what do we do?” 

“We can’t bury him, there’s too many people around,” Mabelle said. 

“Throw him in the river? He’ll get washed down a long way maybe until someone finds him,” Park said. 

“Did you see how many boats are out there? There’s a boat just behind this restaurant.” 

Throw him in the river? It was bad enough that I killed him, let alone throwing him in the river like a bag of garbage. But he wasn’t real. He was not. Real. 

“Will he float?” Park said. “Outside he would, so I assume it’s the same. Unless we weigh him down. None of us have rope and I don’t see much around here to weigh him down with.” 

“Fuck it,” Francis said. “We throw him in the river and head into the city as fast as we can. Someone could come here any second. We don’t have time to argue.” 

So that’s what we did. Bob, and Park and I stayed on the lookout, and Francis carried him down to the brown river with the other two following him. Then they rushed back up and we headed down the street, trying to be quick without looking suspicious. Most of the boats were past us, heading upriver, but it was a fairly slow current, so it probably wouldn’t take long before someone saw the body. 

“I’m going to scout up ahead,” Bob said. “See how close the city is.” 

“You’re leaving us?” Mabelle said.

“No, I’m just checking things out. I can fly after all.” And then he was gone. 

“I’m starting to think adding Bob to our troop might have been a mistake,” Park mumbled. 

“Well, you don’t even know him,” I said. “A grown man walking around naked…”

“It’s not his body,” Park said. 

“I got a feeling it is,” I said. 

“So do I,” Mabelle said.

“Well, we’re stuck with him,” Isaac said. 

“Are you guys that dumb?” Francis said. “You know he’s a bot, right?”

“A bot?” Park said. “No way.”

“Yes way. He is good, but you have to be blind not to see it.”

“Have you lost your palm?” Isaac said.  

“Why?” Park said. “Why are you so sure?”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Francis said, “but I’ve encountered enough bots in my life to know one when I see one. There’s just something about him that’s off.” 

“The two-foot dragon penis?” I asked.

“No, that’s normal. Look, I’m a shadowbaby okay? I know bots. Bob is a bot.”  

“I’ve been around a few bots in my day as well, good sir,” said Park, “and he is no bot. He’s just a lonely middle-aged dude  —probably an incel— with some money and nothing to do.” 

“Other than hang out with teenagers,” I said. “A bit creepy I figure.”  

They all stopped and stared at me. “Yeah, but I’m spending quality time with my grandson.” 

The closer we got to the city the busier it became, and the easier it was to blend in. After all, we didn’t look white to the characters in the game, we were Chinese like them, and we were wearing the same clothes.

Before long we got to a rainbow-shaped bridge that spanned about sixty feet across the river and looked too flimsy to be holding the hundreds of people, vendors, and animals that were on it. I looked down over the side and all that seemed to be holding it up were interwoven beams. I’m no engineer so I didn’t have a clue how it actually worked. A boat with its stern swinging around was getting closer and closer with its sail still up, but the men on the deck were in a mad scramble to get it down before it crashed into the bridge. People were yelling, ropes were being thrown here and there, and the sail came down a few feet before it touched. Meanwhile a man leading a sedan was screaming at two men on mules to get out of the way for his master. They seemed as if they were going to yell back at him until the man in the sedan peeked out and gave them a stern look. They quickly moved out of the way. 

“Excuse me, who was that?” Park asked one of the men on a mule. 

“You must be from another province if you don’t know him,” the man said. “That’s Wang Anshi. He’s a great man, but don’t cross him.” 

“Wang!” Mabelle whispered loudly. 

“Bang!” Park said, looking back at the sedan. 

“Wang?” I said. 

Clang-clang went the bells from a vendor selling them next to us.

“Gang!” Francis said to us all. “Stop staring back at him, you’re making it too obvious. We can’t meet up with him now. We’re a band of murderers, remember?” 

“Murderer,” Mabelle said. 

“But he’s right there,” Park said. “We could have been forever trying to find him. And now we just run into him. What are the odds?” 

“Probably one hundred percent considering this isn’t the real world,” Francis said. 

“We have to make a decision,” Isaac said. “He’ll soon be out of sight.” 

“I can’t see how we can go back in the very direction where I killed that man,” I said. 

They all turned to me as if they forgot I was there. It was a reaction I was used to since I was a boy. 

“He’s right,” Park said. “It’s suicide. We have to continue on and hope for the best.” 

As we continued on we passed a wine shop, toy vendors, and Inns and restaurants on both sides of the street.

“So do we just keep running forever?” I said to the gang in a low voice. “If we can’t do the original mission, what’s the point of this?” 

“Well, if we get away with this, we might be able to,” Park said. 

“There’s no way we’re going to get away with it,” Mabelle said. “Someone will see his body, and then we’ll be on the run until we’re caught.” 

“And what happens then?” I asked. 

“Thrown in prison, maybe tortured, and then executed,” Park said. 

“All of us?” Francis asked. “Dogshit. I wonder how detailed it is.” 

“I’d say very detailed,” Isaac said. “It sucks that we failed at the main mission, but this is fun too. More like the verses from Gil’s generation. Hiding and violence, but without the repetition.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Park said. “There’s still lots of violent verses out there.” 

“Yes, but most of them are black market, and even the commercial ones aren’t that popular.” 

“What about Fist Fuck Stab?” 

“Oh come on, that was a niche verse.” 

“It got a million downloads!” 

“What’s a million these days?”

“There was a commercial verse called Fist -called that?” I said. “What in the name of God were the black-market ones called then?” 

“You don’t want to know,” Park said. 

“You’re right,” I said. “I daresay I don’t.” 

“I got my hands on a black-market verse a few years ago,” Francis said.  

“Oh boy, what was it about?” Park asked. “Or should I ask? Or should you even be talking about it in here?”

“Nah, it’s off the market now. I don’t think I’d get in trouble. Anyway, it was called Revenge of The Commons.” 

“Oh, I heard of that. Is that the one where you can torture historical figures?” 

“Yeah, that’s it. It was kind of sloppy and repetitive, but basically the point of it was to see how long you could keep your victim alive without killing them, by torture. You have to start with historical figures and work up to modern day. Also you can only use torture tools of the victim’s period in history. Or even rape them if you want to.”

“Dogshit,” Mabelle said. “I’d like to watch Hitler scream.” 

“Nah, too obvious. Each era had different figures you can choose from, and when I got to the mid-twentieth century I chose Stalin instead of Hitler. Didn’t do well though. Every time I tried to take it up a notch he had a stroke. Although I did have the highest score for two weeks straight with Nero. Kept him alive for days while I tortured him with a lyre string. Spent a day giving him paper cuts with the edge of the papyrus that he had one of his shitty poems written on. Papyrus was really thick back then, so it was like a jagged knife. Then I crucified him. But honestly, the verse was fun for a while but it got kind of repetitive.” 

“Was it realistic?” Park asked. 

“Oh yeah. Ultra. I mean, it was just a simple single-room verse, so they could put a lot of detail in. It fucked me up for a while. Probably one of the reasons I stopped playing it.” 

“I’m assuming it was only bad guys you could torture?” Isaac asked. 

“What? Fuck no. You could crucify Jesus over and over if you wanted.” 

I stopped. “What?” 

“Oh yeah. Whip him, crown of thorns, crucify him, the whole shot.” 

“Please tell me you didn’t crucify Jesus,” Mabelle said. “I know all the miracle stuff is bullshit, but I’m sure he was a good guy.” 

“Nah, I just went with the bad guys.” 

I was too shocked to speak. What in the name of God was the world coming to when you could torture our Lord and Savior in a VR game?

“That verse made me realize something though,” Francis said.  

“What’s that?” 

“You know when you sometimes fantasize about torturing someone?” 

“No, can’t say I do…” 

“Not just anyone, but torturing someone who has hurt someone you love? Or maybe torturing someone who hurt a lot of people, like Stalin? Is it really about justice, or is it about how good it would feel to have an excuse to make someone scream?”

No one responded.  

“What about modern day?” Park asked. 

“I didn’t really get to modern day. By the time I got to Bush I was already bored. Or traumatized. Both maybe.”

“Which Bush?” I said. I might not know much, but I knew that. 

“There was more than one?” 

“There was W. Bush and his father was president before him.” 

“Really? Bang.” 

“So which one was it?” 

“I don’t know. I’m not up on modern American politics. It gets boring after the second world war until Trump came along. Whichever one he was he squinted his eyes a lot.” 

“W,” I said. “What could you use on him?” 

“Waterboarding. Car battery. Metallica. Half the reason it bored me was because I didn’t know much about him. I had to look it up. Iraq War, so what? More allied soldiers died in a day in the Battle of The Somme than the whole Iraq War combined. It was a meat grinder.”

“What about civilian deaths?” Park asked. 

“I didn’t bother.” 

“Metallica?” Isaac said. 

“It’s a band from my day,” I said. “Had some good songs, but I wasn’t really into them. My favourite song was probably Whiskey In The Jar.” 

“Isn’t that an old folk song?” Park asked. 

“No,” I said. “It’s a Metallica song.”

“Probably a cover.”

“How is Metallica torture?” I asked Francis.

“Have you heard St. Anger? Anyway, you just strap someone to a table, put a pair of high-end headphones on their head turned up top blast, and play Sweet Amber over and over for days on end. And if that didn’t work, you take it up a notch and play Lars Ulrich interviews on repeat —he was the drummer. Bush wasn’t doing too bad until I started playing the interviews. Then he went insane in a few hours. But for some reason insanity didn’t score such high points as physical torture. Or as Bush called it, “enhanced interrogation.” He did agree, however, that torture was a more accurate word once he experienced it. And I have to say the AI in the verse was phenomenal. Even little details, like how the victim would start to develop a relationship with you. But like I said, too repetitive. As strange as it sounds, violence is boring. That’s probably why I’m bored now. We’re on the run and the authorities are trying to hunt us down. Who cares? It’s like some of those bad action movies I’ve watched from the nineties. I’m tempted to go back and turn myself in.”

“Why would you do that?” Park asked. “You’ll be executed and then you won't be able to come back.” 

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to ruin the game for everyone. What can I say, the fortune teller struck a nerve. And it scared me because I thought the game —the verse, wasn’t supposed to know those kinds of things.” 

“It’s not,” Mabelle said. “It scares me too to be honest. What’s it reading in my mind.”

“This isn’t the real world,” Francis said. “There’s no reason to think any of these AI are actually looking for us in the sense that they genuinely don’t know where we are in the verse. The verse probably knows exactly where we are at all times, and it’s just creating some lame story around us. In other words it will probably have the A.I find us when it wants it to.” 

“As long as it’s fun I don’t care what it’s doing,” Isaac said. 

“Can you talk to Jesus in that black market game?” I asked Francis. 

“Oh yeah, you can talk to any of the historical figures. It’s an independent verse obviously, but they put a lot of work into the characters. I spent an hour talking to Bush about politics before I started torturing him. Obviously like all AI, there’s only so much depth it has. If you get too abstract it just gets confused and starts spouting template phrases, like the verses from your day. And you can only talk to them about things from their period of history. Like, if you ask Jesus what he thinks of computers he’ll just probably shrug and say he doesn’t know what a computer is.”

“You don’t want to fool around with black market verses,” Park said to me. “They’re not safe, and you can get in a lot of trouble if you’re caught with them. We shouldn’t even be talking about this here.” 

“Or even thinking about it,” I said.

“Have we decided what we’re doing yet?” Mabelle said. 

“Can we hop on one of those boats and go upriver?” I said. “Will we get to the city faster?” 

“We keep saying let's head to the city, but how is that going to solve anything?” Francis said. 

“It will keep us anonymous,” Park said. 

“And then what? We just stay there forever?”

“When the body is found then we’ll know how likely it is that we’ll be caught. Or how many witnesses there were.” 

 So we kept walking. 

“Our avatars need to eat,” Park said when he started passing by more restaurants, “but we can’t stop yet.” 

“What happens if we don’t eat?” I asked. 

“First you get tired, then you starve to death and die. Sound familiar?” 

“What’s that place?” I asked. It had spiked walls to the entrance, and armed guards were sleeping outside. 

“I think that’s a jail,” Park said. “We might be looking at it from the inside soon.” 

“Let's have a closer look,” Francis said and walked over. 

“Are you crazy?” Park whispered angrily after him, but Francis ignored him. 

We walked a little way ahead while Francis talked to the guards for a few minutes, and then they joined us. 

“It’s empty,” they said. “Have you ever seen a jail that’s empty? This place isn’t historical. I’m starting to think it’s some idealistic bullshit. I mean, just look around. We haven’t seen one urban nomad yet.”

“Bullshit still means bad, right?” I asked.

“We’re not actually inside the city walls yet,” Isaac said. “It could be filled with urban nomads. Or maybe back then the cops didn’t put up with the nomads.”

“There always has been, and there always will be nomads,” Francis said. 

“Even back in the days of homoerectus?” Park said. “Some nomad standing next to a well-worn trail with his hands out, begging for berries?” 

“I wouldn’t say it’s impossible. If some poor bastard got one of his legs chewed off by a saber-tooth tiger he wouldn’t have much choice than to beg for food.” 

“No he wouldn’t. They’d just let him die.” 

“You don’t think their mates and offspring might not have fed them if they were crippled or wounded? I bet they did. I bet there’s apes in the jungle now that do that.” 

“Maybe for a little while.”

“This place is just historical propaganda,” Francis said. “It never existed.”

“Yeah really though. I mean, were there really invisible, 300-pound, naked sales reps that could turn into invisible dragons with 2-foot schlongs in ancient China? We’re going to have to do some hard-nosed fact-checking on this me thinks.”  

“You mean the bot? Well, he can’t interact, so it’s sort of like he’s just a figure of our imaginations anyway.”  

“I don’t care if it's historical brainwashing as long as I’m having fun,” Isaac said. 

“Seriously?” Francis said. 

“Francis, why do you always find a way to surgically remove the fun from any event?” Park asked. “Yi is a great verse. Okay, the mission got sidetracked. So what? Everything isn’t historically accurate. Who cares? This world feels real to me. Who cares if it’s historically accurate, as long as it feels real right now.” 

“But it doesn’t. That’s the problem. Screw this, I’m reporting us to those guards. See what happens.” 

“I really like this verse, Francis,” Mabelle said. “I’ve never played a verse before where you only get one life. Please don’t do this. Don’t ruin it for us. If you don’t want to play, just opt out.” 

“No, fuck that,” Francis said, walking towards the guards. 

“Wait!” Mabelle said and caught up with him. “How about this, you wait until we get to the city at least? I want to at least see the beautiful city before we get thrown in jail. I want to see how detailed it is.” 

“Fine,” they said, shrugged, and turned around. 

“You’re being a selfish troll,” Isaac said. “I don’t know why you want to ruin the verse for us.”

“Oh stop being a sulk. I just want to up the ante. See what happens. It’s obviously not a historical simulator like we thought it was going to be, so who cares?” 

“We care,” Park said. “And he’s right. You’re being selfish.” 

“Whatever. When we get to the city and Mabelle has a look around, I’m having some fun.” 

So we kept walking, but now everyone was quiet. I could feel the anger, even through my headset. Francis wanted to break the game, and he just didn’t seem to care what the rest of us thought about it. I still felt like I was at fault for all of it. If I had not killed the fortune teller they probably wouldn’t even be in this argument. 

It wasn’t long before we could see the open city gate in the distance. We crossed another bridge, although this one was flat, and on all sides of us vendors were selling their goods. 

“Grandfather!” a young vendor called out to me. “Would you be interested in some seeds?” 

I walked over. “What kind of seeds?” 

“Well, they’re not dirty seeds, grandfather,” the young man said. He looked familiar. Which didn’t make sense. 

“What do you mean?” 

“I sell clean seeds. Apple seeds. Dirt cheap.” He stared at me, grinning. 

I turned from him and caught up with the gang. 

“I think the game is doing it again,” I said to Park. 

“Doing what?” 

“Reading my mind.” 

“Why?” 

“That young vendor back there. He was saying strange things, that rhymed with things from my past. The same kind of things that the fortune teller was saying. He looked familiar too.” 

“Well, if the verse is too much for you, you can stop playing,” he said, but he didn’t talk that way before, so it made me wonder if he just wanted me to quit. 

When we finally got up to the wall and a massive square gate, it was about fifty feet tall and thirty feet wide with a sentry building on top that was open, and no one was in the building. There was one person walking around the top, but he didn’t actually look like a guard. I had to admit it was strange that there wasn’t any guards at the gate. 

Three pack-camels with their owners passed going the other way. It was the first large animal I had seen since the donkeys. A man was getting a shave in a small barber shop near the inside of the wall, and on the other side of the street another man was testing the strength of a bow he was probably considering buying. 

Unlike outside the gates, there were no thatch roofs. Every building had tiled roofs, and some of them were three stories high, and about six or seven thousand square feet. Huge restaurants and hotels, painted in bright red, orange, and white. 

“I wish we could overlook the whole city better,” Mabelle said. “Let's go back and go up to the top of the gate.” 

No one wanted to, but we went along with her anyway. Walking didn’t feel like walking, although it was still a bit tiring, because you had to mentally concentrate to walk, and the speed was the same as walking in real life. I figured it might be like learning to use one of those prosthetic legs they have these days. 

The person that had been at the top of the gate was gone, so there was no one up there at all now. There was a little kitchen and living quarters that I figured was for the guards, if there had been any around. I figured they must be gone on break or something, but wasn’t there always supposed to be a sentry to replace a sentry on break? But what did I know about old China? All I knew was that the view was amazing. 

“I have to say this is the most beautiful verse I’ve ever played,” Mabelle said, leaning on the rail. “Just look at that view. Don’t you want to see more of this Francis?”

“It’s nice,” he said, with a shrug. Then he climbed over the railing. “I didn’t know if the verse mechanics would allow me to do this. Bang.” 

“It’s called Yi for a reason,” Park said. “You better be careful.” 

“Careful shmareful,” Francis said and kept deliberately letting go of the railing and catching himself again. I found it hard to watch them. It felt like we were three stories high. Mabelle was standing next to them, and shaking her head and laughing. Then they let go of the railing again, and she stopped laughing and pushed him. As they fell she turned and ran down the stairs. The rest of us just stood there in shock as they rolled over backwards in the air and landed on the ground on his chest. The wet thud made me nauseous. Maybe the game would have let him survive that fall, except that then a donkey walked over them. Then two camels. Also a manure cart, towed by three more donkeys. But this was all before a half dozen pigs strolled by and started feeding on what was left of him. Then another cart ran over the pigs. I thought I was going to throw up. 

“You killed me!” they said. We were in the pause screen now, but we could see each other’s faces in our headsets. “I can’t believe it, you fucking killed me.” 

“It’s your fault,” Mabelle said. “Who gave you the right to ruin the verse for us?” 

“That didn’t give you the right to kill me!” they shouted at her. “You glitch!”

“Woah, young them,” I said. “Tone down the language.” 

“Oh fuck off old man. It’s your fault we got in this mess anyway.” 

“Don’t talk to Pop like that,” Park said. 

“Just calm down,” Isaac said. “Relax. It’s just a verse.” 

“It’s just some bullshit Chinese propaganda anyway,” Francis said. “You’re all fucking dummies if you like this stupid verse.” 

“So why do you care then?” Mabelle asked. 

“I don’t care you idiot. But you still didn’t have the right to do that. I cannot believe it. Who gave you the right? Glitch!” 

“I’m not the idiot,” she said. “You’re the one who fell for it.” 

Everyone was silent for a moment, and all you could hear was Francis breathing hard into their headset. 

“You guys planned this didn’t you?” he said in a low voice. 

“What? No Francis,” Park said. “We had no idea she was going to do that.”

“Well, kill her then. It’s only fair.” 

“We’re not killing anyone,” Park said.

“You know what?” Francis said. “Fuck you guys.” Then they ripped off their headset and threw it across the floor. Well, that’s what it looked like from our view. The crash was hard on our ears too, and his screen went blank. 

“They're pissed,” Mabelle said. 

“He should be,” Park said. “You shouldn’t have done that.” 

“Why should we let them ruin the verse for us? They don’t say a word in the real world, and then when they jump in a verse they turn into a monster. I’m sick of it.”

“Come on, you know he’s a shadow baby. Now we’ve murdered two people. One avatar, and one A.I. Anyone else feel like murder? If so please restrain yourself. I’m looking at you, Isaac.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. But it’s going to get really interesting when we go back in there.”