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Maliek raced across the bullet train’s roof as it ascended the mountain slope. Trees whizzed by in a blur. Wind buffeted him, roaring in his ears.
Igata would not beat him this time.
A few paces ahead, the Bazij leapt from the end of one train car to the next. Her slick gray skin reminded him of a dolphin. With each jump, the tips of the three short orange horns on Igata’s forehead caught the sunlight and shone like embers.
Maliek jumped after Igata, determined to catch up with her. As he landed on the next car, his right foot slipped. He fell to one knee. Pain vibrated through the tendons down his leg to his ankle. His magnetic gloves locked onto the bullet train’s roof, holding him in place. He clenched his teeth and breathed through the pain before rebounding to his feet and resuming the race. Igata had extended her lead to more than a half car’s length.
As the bullet train neared the mountain’s peak, its roof began blinking red. Maliek skidded to a halt, his arms extended wide to maintain balance. Igata hurdled to the next car and froze before the blinking roof turned solid red.
“You won’t beat me again,” he shouted.
She half turned her head back toward him, though he couldn’t be sure if she’d heard him, or was gauging her lead. Tiny indentations on the side of her head served as ears and she lacked any hair. A couple of hoop rings protruded from the right side of her lower lip.
The train crossed the peak, one of a half dozen mountains grouped together to form a roller-coaster chain. Two other bullet trains raced along other slopes.
Beyond the mountains, a dozen flying saucers fired laser beams at each other in a mock battle. Beside them, large log boats plunged down one kilometer water slides into ocean waters. There they transformed into submarines that took their riders on scenic tours of the deep. On a nearby low-gravity moon, guests rode bouncing dune buggies through craters. The shielded buggies collided with each other, knocking their riders in all sorts of directions.
The train started its descent. Its roof blinked green and red for a few seconds before going all green. Maliek charged ahead once more, intent on making up ground. It was a pleasure to run again, something he hadn’t done since before the outbreak.
As he neared the front of his car, Igata dove off the side to a hover car that paced the train. She veered away.
Advancing to the next car, Maliek peeked over his right shoulder. Another hover car shot out of a tunnel and approached.
The bullet train jolted. Maliek froze again, crouching with arms wide. This time he didn’t bang his knee for which he was grateful. The hover car reached the front of his train car and maintained pace alongside it.
Knowing it wouldn’t stay for long, Maliek vaulted off the side into the hover car. Clamps rose from its floor and locked around his ankles, while a steering wheel emerged to waist height. He grabbed the wheel and steered the hover car sharply down a side pass into an eight-lane tunnel. It’s walls, ceiling, and floors glowed with neon graffiti. Thousands of pictures and messages lit the way through the five-kilometer-long tunnel. Maliek accelerated to the hover car’s max speed: one hundred fifty kilometers-per-hour.
He loved the Bazij sims—the energy and heightened alertness he felt whenever he entered them. Much better than the real world where, at the moment, he couldn’t walk more than a quarter mile before he had to rest. His recovery from the Azymi fungus remained slow. His mother ensured he attended every physical therapy session and did more than his allotted daily exercises. She had already raised the possibility that he wouldn’t be physically ready to participate in the Games this fall, at least the early part of the season.
But here in the Bazij sims where he could run and jump even faster and higher than before, he felt like himself again.
Better.
Ahead, the tunnel split into two, the left half rising while the right drilled deeper. Igata chose the latter.
Maliek chased after her. Through this part of the tunnel, sharp turns forced him to cut his speed to around seventy-five miles per hour.
Right turn. Another right. Left, down, right again, up—Maliek faced a dead-end wall a hundred meters ahead with no visible side passages, nor any sign of Igata.
His instincts screamed at him to stop. Rather than brake as he’d done his first time through this tunnel, nearly getting rear-ended, he accelerated. The hover car crept toward eighty then eighty-five. At the last minute, before he crashed into the tunnel wall, the floor dropped, sending him careening into a new, wide open tunnel slick with ice.
Skis emerged from the hover car as he landed. The back end of the car kicked out. Rather than fight the slide, he turned with it. The car straightened from its skid just as he reached a slalom course, Igata ahead.
He steered the car through the series of flags. Each pair he passed between gave him a temporary speed boost. Igata missed a flag pair, then a second, allowing him to close the gap. He neared her rear bumper as light filled the tunnel ahead.
Passing through the final flag pair gave him another short speed burst out of the tunnel. The reemergence into full sunlight forced him to shade his eyes and adjust the tinting on his eye contacts, but he thought he had enough speed to catch Igata over the final twenty-five meters. They could no longer speed up, having to use their momentum to coast to the finish.
About five meters out, as he pulled alongside Igata, she bumped him. His hover car swerved to the right. He jerked the steering wheel left, steadying, but the slue cost him his momentum. She coasted across the line in first place and slid up a steep embankment of snow until her hover car eased to a stop.
“You cheated!” Maliek jumped from his car as it stopped beside her. But his accusation was half-hearted. He loved racing her.
Igata shrugged. “You didn’t try hard enough. I wanted it more.”
Not for the first time, Maliek wondered if Igata looked like her avatar. He’d asked once, but she’d shrugged off the question. ‘What did it matter when we live our full lives in the sims?’ she’d asked. They had long ago cocooned their bodies and left them to AI droids to tend.
As much as he loved the Bazij sims, with millions of worlds, all with amazing designs and unusual properties, he couldn’t imagine giving up the real world and living inside one.
“What are you thinking about, Maliek Johnson?” she asked.
He dropped his eyes to the ground, grimacing as he realized he’d been staring at her. “Nothing.”
She moved over, snow crunching underfoot, and bumped his shoulder with her own. “Come on,” she challenged. “You were absent there for a minute.”
He shook his head. “I just... I thought I had you there at the end.”
She shot him a beatific smile. “You never had me.”
They stood there in silence a moment, Maliek unable to think of a clever comeback. Their breaths puffed out in a milky cloud. The tips of his ears burned from the cold.
“How long until you need to head back?” she asked.
He checked his wrist-comp. His parents expected him home for dinner in an hour. He needed fifteen minutes to get from the sim’s studio on Space City to his home.
“I’m good for another thirty minutes,” he said.
“What’s it like to walk between places?”
“What?”
“Out in the old world,” Igata said.
He shrugged. “About like walking here. We can’t instantly travel anywhere like you can within the sims.”
He wished he could step out of the sims into his home. He’d have more time here with her.
“Is it the same?” she asked. “Moving about in your own body. Your home on Space City. The universe. Do the sims truly mirror it?”
Maliek shrugged. “Some things, yes. Others, no.”
They walked to the top of the snow mound. Overhead, triangle-shaped boats floated through the air. Most held families with little children thrilled at the prospect of flying.
“There are no theme parks close to Miran-silya’s size in the real world. They’d disappoint you.”
“I’d kinda like to see them,” she said. “Feel what the old world is like.”
The statement surprised him. He didn’t know how to respond. Most Bazij scorned those who still lived outside of sims. With their bodies tucked away in their cocoons, protected from disease, accidents, and pretty much any other bodily harm, they never worried about so much as breaking a bone. They spent their lives in perfect health doing whatever they wished. The Bazij couldn’t comprehend how others could, in good conscience, expose themselves and others to harm in the old world. To them, it was pure arrogance and selfishness to do so.
“If I wanted to leave the sims to visit the old world, my world, would you visit me?” she asked.
He hesitated. He longed to say yes; wanted to see her, rather than her avatar. But Melathia, her home planet, was on the Space City banned travel list.
“Are you sure you want to leave the sims?” he asked. “Aren’t you afraid of getting sick or hurting yourself?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t leave for long,” she said. “I just want to experience the old world one time. Understand why so many like you still live out there. Will you come visit me?”
“I’d like to,” he said, his voice trailing off, which embarrassed him.
A coy smile broke across her face. “How about this? I want to see the old world and I want someone to share it with. I’d like it to be you, not some emotionless AI droids. So, if you want to see me again, then come to Melathia.”
With that, she disappeared.