The pincers yanked at pins, some of which slid out easily, others of which could not be budged unless he used two or three nanobots at once.

The pins came out, though, one way or the other. And as they came free, trailing a few scattered cells, the nanobots shoved them into their back-mounted quivers.

The wire was simply ripped up, like pulling up a half-buried garden hose. Rip and tear, rip and tear, and oh, that definitely brought the white cells pulsing and oozing. But what to do with the wire? It was spooled out from within the nanobot when it was laid, but there was no procedure for retrieving it.

So Bug Man set two of his nanobots to the job of collecting the used wire, spooling it, stacking it in a central location, a deep fold where the cerebral–spinal fluid current wouldn’t carry it off.

“I feel,” Jessica said. “Do . . .”

“What? What do you want to ask me?”

“Do you want sex?” It was a plaintive voice. A confused voice. “No, babe. Not now. Maybe later,” Bug Man said.

“Those goggles scare me. You look like a monster.”

He hesitated then. The nanobots all froze in place. What if she utterly rejected him? What if she was disgusted by him? What if she said, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’ve been with you. You!”

You toad.

You nobody.

He sucked in a deep breath. It wouldn’t be like that. Probably. But anyway, it didn’t matter anymore, because he was doing it, and whatever happened happened. This was the game, for now.

“Can we go out now? I want to go out,” Jessica said.

“What if I don’t want to go out?” Bug Man asked as he ripped up a long strand of wire that pulled a few cells loose as it came up.

Jessica hesitated. The hesitation went on for quite a while.

“What if I say no, we can’t go out, Jessica?” He was pulling an encrusted wire, like a robin pulling an earthworm from the dirt.

“I want to go out,” she said.

Bug Man pulled off the goggles and set them aside. He took off the gloves.

He stood up and said, “Okay then. Yeah, let’s go out.”

SEVENTEEN

Here is what Plath knew about Vincent after what felt like a lifetime sticking pins in his brain: that he was anhedonic; that he once stuck a pencil into a boy’s arm when the boy called him a wuss and shoved him from his place in the elementary school lunch line; that he didn’t understand why people liked animals; that he experienced drunkenness in an extraordinarily self-aware way; that he had been slapped by his mother for failing to appreciate the cake she made for his eleventh birthday and then had watched helpless and lost as she broke down crying.

Plath knew about the mild allergy to cashews and mangoes. She knew that the combination to his locker in tenth grade was 11-41-23.

She knew that he once became furious watching a film in school about atrocities in the Congo and vowed to kill the bastards responsible. He was suspended for three days for inappropriate language.

Once she had touched the spot where he first experienced the nano world. But the memory did not lead her anywhere. “I’m tired,” she said. She had eyeshades on. She had her feet up.

She had a soda with a bendy straw within reach at her side. “We’re all tired,” Wilkes snapped. Wilkes had taken over for

Nijinsky. He had gone with Anya to observe Vincent, the actual physical Vincent, upstairs in the church. “Ophelia’s dead tired.” That hadn’t made any sense, but it caused Plath to fall silent. After a while Plath began to confuse Vincent’s memories with

her own. Was it Vincent or her who had ridden the pony? Was it her

or was it Vincent who had gotten poison ivy? Was it Vincent or her

who had recruited Nijinsky?

First bloody nose.

First bath as a baby.

First time he had slid his hand up a girl’s leg.

First time tumbling out of his crib.

First time eating popcorn.

Then, suddenly, she was seeing herself through Vincent’s eyes.

He had found her attractive. In the macro she blushed. He had first

met her when she was in a bathtub.

She saw Kerouac, Keats’s brother, as he was in Vincent’s memory. He wasn’t much like Keats. He was more athletic, not larger but

muscular, tough. His eyes did not have Keats’s tenderness. She would

never have wanted to run away with Kerouac.

She had never pictured Kerouac smiling, somehow, laughing,

but Kerouac had enjoyed life. He was telling Vincent a story about teaching his little brother to play goalkeeper. And laughing. And Vincent had wondered what it was like to take vicarious pleasure from

another person.

Suddenly Plath saw images that could only be digital. There were

stunted game creatures with swords.

And then, a thrilling ride through a bizarre alien landscape. Digging into a sort of Lego-like world.

Passing through magical doors.

Games. Games, a dizzying array of them. Game controllers,

touch screens, racing and leaping and …not joy, not for Michael Ford

who would later be called Vincent. But a suspension of the strangeness that was always with him. And a rush. Very much a rush. There were people—just names on a leaderboard, but with

humans behind them—and Vincent knew them, knew their strengths

and weaknesses, and they knew him.

He was somewhere rather than nowhere.

And he was someone. MikeF31415.

“Wilkes,” Plath said. “Google MikeF31415.”