In my ear, Dr. Pretorius coughs and says, “Coordinates set to place you outside the hospital at midday, exactly one year from now. Got that? From here on in, you’re on your own. Ramzy—the addition of your prefrontal cortex waves is an unknown quantity. We’re sailin’ in uncharted waters, my friends. Excuse me,” and there’s another burst of coughing.

Then, as before, the shapes begin to appear in front of me—only this time they’re accompanied by Ramzy going, “Whoa! Awesome! Hey, look at you!”

I turn to face him, and he looks the same, more or less. Up close, some of the edges of his body, at the shoulders, for example, are a little pixelated. But it’s Ramzy: he’s in the same dirty Real Madrid top and school shorts; he’s wearing a bicycle helmet. I look beyond him, and the world is coming into focus. Trees form before my eyes, the road, the grass verges, the hospital building.

“Take a sniff, guys. You’ll notice I’ve fixed the smell thing,” says Dr. Pretorius. Then she coughs again. “Oh, and…by the way…the, ah…the scorpion. Li’l ol’ Buster. He may have, kinda, ah…”

I stop marveling and feel a chill come over me. Why is she being so hesitant? “What is it?” I say.

“With me in the hospital, the whole program has been left running unchecked for the last three days. The artificial intelligence has probably had some effect on the scorpion that may not be altogether…desirable, but then again it may be totally fine and dandy. Just, you know—keep an eye out.”

I can’t swallow. Not only am I as scared as heck, but there’s something not right.

“Are you sure the date is right?” I say through the microphone. “There’s…I dunno…”

Dr. Pretorius replies, “Accordin’ to this, Georgie, it’s dead right. Midday on July twenty-seventh one year from now. What’s wrong? The video feed to the control room is down: I can’t see anything.”

“Can’t you see what I see? It’s empty. There are hardly any cars.”

Ramzy looks around. “You’re right. There’s nobody about. It’s really quiet.”

A tide of litter is banked up along the little wall, and the grass on the verges is higher than my ankles. The flower beds where we picked flowers only an hour or so ago are choked with weeds. I sniff: there’s an unclean smell everywhere, like old trash bags.

But it’s when I turn to look at the hospital building that I gasp in shock. A chain-link fence three or four yards high, topped with vicious razor wire, has been erected all along the perimeter. The parking lot is empty apart from one or two dirty-looking cars and some green army vehicles. The main entrance has been converted into a military checkpoint, with uniformed soldiers guarding a large metal gate and carrying big guns across their chests.

We’re on the other side of the road, and no one has noticed us yet.

“Can they see us?” asks Ramzy.

I think back to my encounter with Norman Two-Kids. “Oh yes,” I say. “While we’re in the program, they’re as real as us. But I don’t think we should make ourselves conspicuous.”

“But what’s happening? Why all the soldiers? I don’t like this, Georgie.”

“Me neither. Dr. Pretorius? We can’t get in. Can you see the fence?”

Dr. Pretorius clears her throat and rasps, “I can see bits of it now. It’s pretty low-resolution, but yeah: soldiers, barbed wire. Seems to me that the hospital’s become a military zone, as would be expected if a disease gets out of control. Faced with a plague, people are gonna get pretty angry, and desperate, and so…” She breaks off to cough, and by this stage I’m getting very scared.

“And so,” she continues, “be real careful.”

“But how do we get into the hospital? That’s where the cure will be. There’s soldiers and guns and everything. And a huge fence.”

“Like I say, don’t take risks,” says Dr. Pretorius. “So long as you’re in there, they’re as real as you are.”

“This is too weird,” says Ramzy, shaking his head, but I’ve had an idea.

“Follow me,” I say. “And act natural.”

“Yup. As natural as two kids in a 3-D virtual future with bicycle helmets on can act,” he says, but he follows me anyway, up the road, past more of the hospital, till we’re looking at the big old building that houses the Edward Jenner Department of Biobotics. There are no soldiers here, although the wire fence looks just as solid. There are some stacked-up metal crates and oil drums that could offer some cover for what I’m about to try.

“Dr. Pretorius, what would happen if we just ran at the fence, full tilt?” I ask. I’m forming an idea, but I have no clue if it’ll work.

“Well, ordinarily, when you touch something, the MSVR tricks your brain into believing you’ve touched it. So the fence would feel real.”

“But it’s an illusion, right? There’s nothing actually stopping us. The fence isn’t really there. So, if we ran at it, what could stop us?”

Ramzy pipes up: “Remember the deck chair I threw at the scorpion on the first day! It went straight through it!”

“I don’t recommend it, kiddo. This is totally untested.”

“The whole thing is totally untested,” I say. “In fact, we’re testing it right now. And, right now, we have no choice. Come on, Ramzy. Now!”