It felt like busywork for a prisoner, and I knew that was exactly what it was. No one yelled at me or called me a traitor; in fact, no one said anything to me at all. I just didn’t get to do anything useful or see anyone, and I never got to go outside.

But in my off-hours, I was allowed to go into the Premium Space. It’s a little upsetting how quickly I caved. I went from thinking I would never go back into the Altus Space again to using it every chance I got. But it was the only way I could get out of the high-security wing. In the Space, I could go outside and feel my fake legs running my fake body around in sandboxes created by other clients. I experienced strangers connecting with each other and it was almost like talking to someone. And so, ironically, the Altus Space became my only respite from the prison that Altus had put me in.

It was infuriating, but I had no choice but to just chill and handle it. If I could just keep pretending I wasn’t in prison, I wouldn’t feel like a prisoner.

That was only going to carry me so far, but maybe it would carry me far enough.

I had become obsessed with learning more about what was happening at the end of the hallway. How were they taking care of those people? Where did they bathe? When did they eat and go to the bathroom? How were they being compensated? Did anyone have any idea what the impact of such long-term and unrelenting exposure to the Altus Space meant?

Peter Petrawicki had gone from stoking terror about the invasion of our minds that the Dream represented to sending people into it without rest or respite. I still got to control my own schedule at least, so I started to time my breaks once every hour. During that break I would walk myself down the hall to see if I could spot anyone moving in or out of the room.

Every day, I staggered it so that I would break five minutes later than the previous day. Over the course of two weeks, I’d been in the hallway at every time of day and had never seen a single person enter or leave the room. They must have been watching me, I thought. They were watching me to make sure that I was never in the hallway when they did a shift change. Maybe that was also the reason why I hardly ever saw anyone in the little cafeteria. There was nowhere for me to go. I had the cafeteria, my sleeping room, and my working room. If I didn’t have the Altus Space to find refuge in, I would have broken.

I found myself blaming everyone. I blamed Peter for being a truly awful person, but my brain couldn’t stay focused on one person forever, so I blamed Andy and Professor Lundgren for saying I should come here. I blamed all of these people who worked for this terrible company. I was isolated in my powerlessness, and skipping through all of the reasons I had ended up here. Usually, I just blamed myself.

So, basically, what I’m trying to say is that I thought I had it pretty rough during those weeks. I thought what they were doing to me was kidnapping and imprisonment.

And then, one day, I was in the cafeteria, eating microwaved ramen noodles when, in the middle of my field of vision, a very large tube of ChapStick appeared. It was about a foot long, unopened, and the diameter of my upper arm. It very clearly said “ChapStick” on it, so it at least wasn’t a knockoff. I walked to it, placed my hand on it, and felt it, cool and slick, but it didn’t move; it just hung there, locked to its position in the air. Then it vanished from existence just as it had appeared. No noise. Nothing.

I pulled out a chair and sat down, knowing without a doubt what had just happened. I knew where I was … where I had been for weeks now. I understood why I’d never seen that door open, why no one ever talked to me, why there were no books to read. Giant ChapSticks don’t just appear … unless you’re in the Altus Space.

“Exit,” I said as calmly as I could. Nothing happened.

The powerlessness welled up inside of me, and for a moment, just a moment, I felt like I was drowning … plummeting through the ocean with weights tied to my feet. It was one of my greatest feats of will to not scream and cry and tear at the walls.

But I didn’t know if they were watching me somehow. I needed to be calm. I needed to act like I didn’t know. I didn’t know how this kind of surveillance would work, but if I had any chance of acting on my own behalf, it would be best to hide the fact that I knew that I was not sitting in a cafeteria.

I was never in my bed. I was never in my workroom, never in the hallway between them. I was in the Altus Space. I had not left in weeks. When had they put me in? Or had I put myself in, and they just faked me waking up one day? When was the last time I’d talked to a human being? Was it Peter? Was it all the way back to Peter?

It had been weeks! How was I eating? How were they cleaning me?! When had I gone to the bathroom?! What … what were they doing with my body?

Worst of all, there was no way out. I could not pound my fists on the door of my own consciousness. I was locked in a room inside my mind.

A new flash of rage came, this time at myself for not having figured it out sooner. But that didn’t matter now. I was in a prison like no one had ever been in before. That was bad. But it was also good. Brand-new designs always have flaws, and I was already starting to work the problem.

MAYA

Andy didn’t even text me about his screwups. I wish I could have been there to help him work through it, but April, Carl, and I were having our own drama.

Living with a monkey during those weeks was actually fine. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it was weird. But it wasn’t like living with a normal monkey. They fed themself and cleaned themself, and they went to the bathroom in the bathroom.

My bigger problem was that, as I had promised, I had not forgiven Carl.

They were affectionate with April, occasionally riding her shoulders or nuzzling up to her on the couch, but they knew not to try that with me. One day, Carl was curled up on the opposite side of the couch from me and I asked, “What are you thinking about right now?”

The little monkey head raised from where they had been lying on their hands and they said, “That is not a simple question for me to answer. I have parallel processing streams, so I am thinking about a lot of things.”

“Well, then what is one of the things you were thinking about just then?”

Carl turned their head to the side, as if pondering the question. “Around 20 percent of my processing power, at any given time, is currently devoted to an ongoing dispute I am having with my brother over control of sensory capacity on the Altus campus. So I am always thinking about that dispute. It’s a war of a kind, though he has far more resources, so I am basically just keeping him annoyed while trying to glean information about Altus. I’ve got little things, some access codes, some locations. I know where Miranda is.”

“Is she OK?” I asked immediately. There was so much going on that I kept forgetting that Miranda was in such a precarious, even dangerous, position.

“Yes, at least the last time I was able to check on her, which was around twenty-eight hours ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell us? We’ve been so worried about her!”

“I would have told you if anything was wrong.”

“Can you check on her now?”

The monkey sat up, leaning back against the leather of the couch, and said, “I can try.”

And then, within a moment the little animal flinched. Carl’s eyes closed tight and their mouth opened wide, showing a massive set of teeth, including two giant fangs. The monkey spasmed, every muscle clenched, and then they screeched and, at once, collapsed, limp and unmoving.