Chapter OneThe Canoe

The sun sank over the treelined horizon as they sat together on the dock, on the precipice of a friendship that had blossomed into romance. For the first time, it occurred to Soph that she was no longer a child.

The lakehouse that Atom's father owned was buried in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, just a few miles from Yosemite, where dusk was heralded by the songs of wolves. Atom and Soph had encountered tracks on hikes up into the foothills, but they had never seen a wolf up close.

Atom kissed Soph on the neck and pulled her in closer with his arm. It was strange how they had come so close so abruptly, stranger still that they had not realized their love earlier in life. She had long harbored feelings for him, but the complicated rivalry of being raised like siblings had kept romantic inclinations too close to her heart. She had never considered that he might feel the same way.

A bottle of wine pillaged from the cellar had lowered inhibitions to the level of truth, and Atom's skiff had wandered aimlessly in the lake all day as they kissed. Soph couldn't bring her feelings into the realm of language, but Atom's arm around her now said everything. It felt as though a dam had broken and the valley between them had been flooded by a great reservoir. There was no longer anything to hold back.

They were both exceptional children who valued quickness of wit and mind, but they were also very different. Where Atom was headstrong and boisterous, Soph was patient and discreet. If he skipped a grade he would certainly brag about it, only to be surprised when she was sitting beside him the following semester. Most of the children in their quiet coastal enclave did not begrudge intelligence or ambition, and Soph and Atom were treated well by their peers, albeit at a distance– their friendship was singular and impenetrable, even when they were giving each other a hard time.

They had graduated together from high school a month before coming to the lake, both at the age of fifteen. Having traversed the grounds of lower education with such speed, they escaped ever having to go to a dance or a party or any other high school social function of significance. Graduation wasn't a ceremony Soph cared much for– she had spent the last two years driving to the local college twice a week to take courses. Receiving a slip of paper to stilted fanfare was a gentle unburdening at best.

In the picturesque sunset, floating gently on the lake, school was terribly far away now. After an eternity delicately exploring each other's eyes and mouths they had given in to nightfall and rowed to shore. Atom lashed the skiff to the dock, and now they sat at the edge of the water, watching the light fade. It was the end of the old and the beginning of the new.

"Here, I got you something." Atom produced a small, smooth stone and put it in Soph's hand. "It's a canoe."

It was an homage to the first time they had met, when they were five years old. It brought back one of Soph's deepest and oldest memories, and she replayed it in her head now the way she always did, with the boy's face at the same height as her own.

"It's a zebra," he had said, and handed her a smooth gray stone. She took it and examined it.

"No, it's not." Stupid boy. She handed it back to him.

"Thank you." He handed it back to her. "Here. It's a river."

"It's an ocean." What was the game?

He shook his head, and she gave the stone back to him.

"Thank you. It's an ocean." He handed the stone back to her.

"Thank you, it's a canoe."

He put it in his pocket. "Yes, it's a canoe. What's your name?"

"Sophia. What's yours?"

"Atom Blaster."

Atom Blaster was a nickname he'd chosen for himself when he'd first discovered Asimov, and for a couple of years he refused to respond to any other name. Even his teachers acquiesced eventually, after a barrage of complaints were ignored by Atom's father, who refused to rebuke him. His given name was Adam Lee, son of the billionaire innovator Richard Lee. Richard had nurtured Atom's independent spirit and saw his early development of self as a sign of intelligence. Thus he became Atom, and even now he would sign letters and documents as Atom B.

Soph had tried to follow Atom's lead and force the name Arwen upon the world, fancying herself a character from Tolkien, but she wasn't as stubborn as Atom in her insistence and so it never stuck. Her mother Maxine, who everyone called Max, had named her Sophia after her own grandmother, and after wisdom, in that order. Only her parents ever used the whole thing. To everyone else she was Soph.

It is easy for intelligent children to feel out of place and uncomfortable in their own skin. Soph was not exempt from this peculiarity, but in her teenage years she had grown to love her name, just as she had learned to love her too-thick brown hair, the slight gaps in her teeth and her imperceptibly crooked nose. She supposed that the kind of boy who would love her would look through all of these things, into her mind, and she wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

When they were still very young Atom had told her that he thought she had the nose of a princess. It was an innocent compliment, stored now in her vault of prized possessions. He was a fidgety boy who had yet to master the art of eye contact, but he always paid her compliments freely, and his words became many of the bricks of self-confidence that protected Soph through a fragile period of pubescence.

As solar embers gave way to a wide expanse of black, punctured here and there by stars, they walked back towards the house, holding hands in appreciative silence. The path between the house and the lake was marked by large, flat stones. Soph would step on one with her right foot, then the next with her left foot. Then she shuffled her feet a bit so that she could switch the order and step on the next stone with her left foot and the next with her right. It was a compulsive habit, a side effect of always thinking, always looking for patterns. Atom would usually giggle or imitate her when he noticed. Tonight he held her tight and kissed her on the temple.

They released their embrace as they approached the house and walked side by side, resuming their separateness. The wine was wearing off and a full day in the sun had painted their skin red. Soph wanted to sleep in Atom's bed, but she felt like that might be breaking some unwritten familial rule. They had slept in the same bed many times when they were younger, but it was different now, no longer so innocent.

She lay in her own bed with the window open and listened to the wolves. On the other side of the wall, she was fairly sure, Atom wasn't sleeping either.

Soph rolled over on her side to see Atom standing in the doorway. Her mouth was dry and the light was painful. She'd never had a hangover. Atom, on the other hand, seemed entirely unaffected by the events of the night before.

"Are you awake yet?" he grinned. "Come on, something really cool just came in from the office!"

"What time is it?"

"Ten. Come on."

"I hate you."

"I know. Come on."

The house had been built upon a small, natural cavern– Richard had taken the idea of a "man cave" quite seriously. The smooth rock walls were adorned with Paleolithic paintings, carefully replicated from European and Asian petroglyphs, bison and handprints and long-legged deer. The floor was made of dark, smooth concrete. In the center of the room was a computer workstation and a table cluttered with various testing equipment and power strips. Mannequins lined the room, dressed in various iterations of Second Skin, Solenoid's flagship haptic suit, which everyone inside the company and outside of it called the G-Suit. Some of the mannequins wore ancient Manipulator arm pieces and SS-series eyewear, pieces that Richard had built by hand back in the day. It was Soph's mother Max who had helped turn Richard's crude, 3D-printed designs into the slick, cyberpunk-styled body suit that became Second Skin.

Richard had founded Solenoid Experiential Games as a passion project, experimenting with haptics as a hobby. He had coined the name as an homage to the small electromagnetic actuators that he used liberally in his first prototype for the Manipulator, a device that attached from the shoulder down to the fingers and gave the user the sensations of grabbing, pushing, pulling and picking up in virtual space.

"Morning, sunshine." Max beamed as Soph came down the stairs. She held a silver helmet, a shock of cables growing out of the top of it like hair.

Soph grunted, still groggy. Atom was right behind her, goading her along.

"Okay, she's awake. So what's the new toy?" asked Atom.

"It's a Dense Array EEG Neuroimager," said Max. "It reads brainwaves and turns them into actions. This is just a prototype, but it's still pretty cool. Do you want to try it?"

"Soph does," Atom chimed in. "That thing looks dangerous."

Soph punched him in the arm. "How chivalrous."

"Don't worry, it's perfectly safe. Sit in the chair over there and I'll hook you in."

A set of Second Sight LX3s rested on the chair that Max was pointing at. The LX3s weren't available to the public for a couple more weeks– getting the latest frames was definitely one of the perks of being family. Soph put them on as Max placed the skullcap on her head and adjusted the chinstrap.

"Okay, this part might feel a little strange." Max pressed a button and the helmet made a clicking sound. Soph felt tiny needles jabbing her temples and the back of her neck. She winced.

"Does that feel okay?" asked Max. She might be a scientist, but she was also a parent.

"Yeah. It's a little weird. I don't mind."

"Just let me know if it's too much for you and I'll unhook you. I'm going to run the calibration program. Just do what it tells you."

Red text appeared in front of her and she did as it instructed.

Look to the right, then back to center. Think of the color red. Raise your eyebrows. Think of the color blue. Stick your tongue out. Look to the left, then back to center. Think of a word. Now think of the word blue. Smile. Breathe in and out through your nose. Frown. Think of the letters of the alphabet as they are displayed. Raise your right hand. Now your left. Good, now repeat the numbers on the screen. Think of the color yellow. Breathe in and out through your mouth...

Another five long minutes of absurd instructions, through most of which Atom snickered. Then, a ding. Calibration complete.

Now Soph was in the same place in the room where she had been, but the room was empty. She looked down at her hands– they were covered by thick leather gloves. "What do I do?"

"Try getting out of the chair without actually standing up."

Soph thought of the words stand up. Nothing happened. She tried to imagine it, like someone trying to levitate by imagining themselves floating in the air. Still, nothing. Atom snickered more.

"It's based on motor control," said Max. "It takes a lot of getting used to, and more calibration would be helpful, but I didn't want to bore you with the two-hour test. It's subtle, like you're moving your legs but not enough to actually move."

Soph focused on her legs and tried to feel what it would be like to get up. She leaned forward a little, almost imperceptibly, then engaged her leg muscles as though she were about to stand. And suddenly she was standing in the virtual world and sitting in the real one.

"Whoa, this feels so strange!"

"We can see you on the monitor. Try walking forward."

She thought of what it would be like to walk forward. First one leg, then the other. She tensed her muscles and her character moved forward.

"Now turn around."

Soph imagined herself turning around, and she turned.

"This is so different! Are we in The World?" By The World Soph meant Altered World, the game that was the heart and soul of Solenoid Experiential Games.

"Yes, although you're in a sandbox environment. We haven't quite worked out player interaction yet."

"So what else can it do? Just walking around and stuff?" asked Atom.

"Actually, it can do a lot. EEG has been around for a long time, the real work is in the software. The calibration algorithm is far more accurate than anything else out there, and we can read biofeedback very precisely."

"Can it turn our thoughts into words?" asked Atom.

"That would take a lot more calibration, but yes," replied Max. "You can train the software to learn words that you visualize. It would be gibberish at first, but as it learns you would be able to communicate in complete sentences. It's always learning and recalibrating, so as you communicate with other players it will make the connection between your brain and speech outputs."

"I don't get it. I mean, what makes The World so different from other games is that you are there, physically. Wouldn't it be weird if you were playing with someone and you took off your frames and they weren't really there?" asked Atom.

Richard had come down the stairs without either of them hearing him. He put his hand on Max's shoulder. "Yes, we're still trying to work out the details for it. I don't know how we're going to market it yet, but it's one hell of a piece of tech." He looked at the girl in the chair, sitting perfectly still with her hands in her lap, and at the girl on the monitor, walking in circles around an empty room. "I've always said heaven was going to be the ultimate video game. We just haven't worked out the controls."

"Yeah," said Soph, from inside the helmet. "Atom, you've got to try this. It's pretty cool."

"Fine. Get out of the chair."

"I'm trying. How do I sit down?"

After Soph and Atom had had their fill of walking around an empty room with their minds, they were pushed out of the house by Max, who was steadfast in making sure they got their fill of nature. Aside from the workspace in Richard's cave there were no computers in the house, and barely a bar of cell reception if one stood on the right rock. Back home they might be preparing for college, listening to a new album and playtesting the latest patch, but for the three weeks every year that they came to the lake, Atom and Soph lived in a bubble where technology didn't exist.

They spent their last week swimming, making out in the skiff and sitting in the hammocks at the side of the house, reading books and talking about the future. Soph was secretly concerned that she had made a terrible mistake– and yet Atom assuaged her fear by continuing to kiss her neck and rub her back, and to hold her hand under the table when the parents weren't looking. He didn't talk about it. He all but danced around the issue, but he never failed in his affections.

On the last night she found the stone in the pocket of her shorts and turned it over and over in her fingers until it was warm.

I'll love you forever, Adam Lee.

Even with your stupid name.