He doesn’t run. Just calmly turns in a circle so we can take it all in.
“Where is this place?” Delphi says, almost breathless. “I want to go here.”
“I think it’s fake,” I say. “I’ve never seen animals like this before. Especially all in one place. No planet I’ve ever been on had anything like this.”
“Well, I have to hand it to the Mighty AI. It’s got quite the vivid imagination.”
“Hmmm,” I say. “Yeah, it really does.”
The pack of hunting beasts walk around us like we’re not there and yeah. I’ve never seen anything like this before. They sure as fuck look real. One even stops to sniff the air just a few meters away and I swear to the sun, he looks me dead in the eyes and licks his lips.
The steed begins to walk forward and that’s when it hits me. It’s not just a screen in the sky feeding us images to make us think we’re on another planet, but now the watering hole and the wildlife is all around us. Like we’re really there. Then suddenly there’s a great trumpeting sound and over a ridge comes a herd of gray beasts with long trunks out in front of them, bellowing their arrival with grunts and roars as they approach the small, muddy lake in the middle of the savannah.
“What the fuck is this place?” I whisper.
Delphi says nothing. Just looks all around us, the steed still slowly circling so we can get a complete view.
Then, without warning, we’re lifting up in the air again. Only, we’re not, of course. We’re still sitting on the back of the Boss Steed. We pull away backwards, then the steed turns and we’re facing forward as we exit the planet’s atmosphere and go back out into space.
“No!” Delphi laughs. “I want to go back!”
But we don’t go back.
Well, no. We do go back. The way we came, that is. Back into the vortex of the black hole, out the other side into the unnamed solar system, and then we’re here.
In the meadow surrounded by forests on Mighty Minions Resort.
“Holy shit!” Delphi says. “That was amazing!”
I make a mental note to ask ALCOR if he’s ever seen a program like this because we could sell the fuck out of this experience on Harem—but then I realize ALCOR is gone and there’s no one to ask.
Sad. How it hits me now. Kinda hard, if I’m being honest.
“Do it again,” Delphi says, patting the steed’s neck. “Please!” she begs.
But the Boss Steed just snorts smoke out of his nose and begins to walk forward. Shaking and bobbing his head with a very firm, and not-so-polite, no.
“Huh,” I say, looking up at the station ceiling. The sun is back now. And for a moment I wonder if I just hallucinated that whole thing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR – DELPHI
Jimmy and I are quiet for a long while as we continue our ride through the meadow. It goes on for thousands and thousands of meters, and when we finally get to the other side, I look over my shoulder and realize I can’t see the edge of the forest behind us.
“It’s fake,” Jimmy says, for like the billionth time.
“Of course it was,” I say, agreeing with him, just like I did every other time. But for some reason that experience has left him unsettled. It did feel pretty real, but lots of things feel real and aren’t. I’ve been in some pretty amazing virtuals, but never while I was conscious.
So yeah. I don’t get it either. But of course it was fake. There’s no other explanation for it. We didn’t just… leave the resort and fly through the galaxy to some real far-off planet and then come back.
That’s ridiculous.
“Holograms,” Jimmy says. “That’s all it was. Just holograms.”
“Pretty damn good ones, though,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says, just as we enter the woods again. “Pretty damn good. Like ALCOR good. Maybe even better.”
“Why does that bother you?” I ask, genuinely curious. Because he’s really upset by that experience back there.
“Because ALCOR is supposed to be the best, ya know? And this station is starting to freak me out. I hope Luck gets here soon. I feel… I dunno. Disconnected or something. Like I need to go home for some reason.”
“Maybe it was just a nice gift?” I say, trying to pull him out of this funk. “I mean… the whole point of this place is to immerse yourself in a fantasy world, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“And that’s all it was. A very cool fantasy.”
“I know, but—”
“Oh, look! There’s the cabin!” Perfect timing, if you ask me. Jimmy is really distracted by that whole meadow experience. It’s starting to freak me out too, and honestly, if this station is doing something weird to us I’d prefer to stick my head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening for as long as possible.