With that, he offers me his arm, and I take it.
After a golf cart picked us up and ferried us to the hangars I saw when we first arrived, we went inside and ended up in this large white room with an egg-shaped chair in its center. I’ve never been to the back lots of a theme park before this impromptu excursion, but I doubt many of them have a room like this. In front of the chair is a single concave wall of glass.
A beautiful, dark-haired woman with striking blue eyes approaches Jim. I recognize her as one of the girls who sat at our table the night before, but I can’t place her name. She gives me a polite smile before pulling him aside and whispering, “Do you really think this is wise?”
Jim waves her off and pulls her closer to me. “Frankie, this is Quinn. She’s part of the project King and I have been working on for these past months. Since she is the subject of our little simulation, I figured it might be good to let her see it.”
Frankie turns and offers her hand, which I accept with a firm shake. “Nice to meet you,” she says. “Has Jim explained what you’ll see?”
“I guess. He said I’d see some predicted outcomes of some events.”
Frankie glares at him. “Right. Someevents. And whateventsdid you want her to see?”
“I didn’t have anything specific in mind.” He rolls his hand through the air. “Maybe show her what would have happened if she’d gone to the roller coaster exhibition.”
Frankie shakes her head and walks off as Jim takes my arm and leads me to the egg chair. When he motions for me to sit, I do. The white cushions practically grab me in a comforting hug as I sink into the pillowy fabric. It’s much more comfortable than it looks.
“Now sit back fully,” he instructs. “Let the seating immerse you, and don’t take your eyes off the screen.” He motions to the curved glass wall. “Frankie just needs to feed the device a little data, and it will spit out some scenarios for you.”
As he steps away, the lights click off overhead. My senses are dulled by the chair, meaning all I hear and see is whatever is in front of me. The concave glass lights up then, and the chair begins drifting closer with a grating whine. I grip the edges until the ride comes to a stop way too close to the screen. While mymother wasn’t in my life for very long, I can still hear her telling me to scoot away from the television before I ruined my eyesight. Which didn’t happen often, as being homeless doesn’t exactly put you in front of televisions very often. Still, her voice fills my head.
Little memories of my mother continue to haunt me in this place, but I welcome her spirit. I feel closer to her now than I have in a long time. A reunion seems an impossibility, but with all this money I’ll make at the end of this, I can probably pay a pretty good investigator to find her.
Speakers in the chair play a soft tone as the screen comes to life. It’s almost like the opening scene of a movie. The camera pans over the park and comes to land behind two people: me and Aven. It looks like it could have been shot while we were walking to the park, but I never saw a camera behind us.
“This is all simulated video,” Jim says through the speakers. “None of that mucky generative-AI mess, though. Our program is state-of-the-art! Spared no expense. You’ll find that all human renderings have the correct amount of fingers, and no one’s head will turn into a cabbage if it’s bitten off by a dog.”
“Is the cabbage thing a common problem? Because that seems oddly specific,” I say, but Jim doesn’t respond. He just keeps going on about how they hired actual artists and used extensive human motion-capture research to feed the sim machine instead of stealing from actual human workers.
On the screen, Aven and I begin walking again. The camera follows us to the roller coaster, where the simulation once again pauses.
“Quinn, at the coaster event, you and Aven would have been required to choose the red team or the blue team. No other information would have been provided. Which team would you have chosen?” Before I can answer, he interrupts me. “Don’t say it aloud, dear girl. Just have the answer in your head.”
I’d pick the red side because it all but promises blood.
I nod to let Jim know I have my answer locked in.
The simulation picks up again. A faceless barker approaches and asks which team we’re on. Sim Quinn answers before Sim Aven has a chance to open his mouth.
“I’m picking red,” she says.
The hairs on my arm stand up. How did it know that?
Jim pauses the simulation again, freezing Sim Aven as he looks at Sim Quinn. Is that really how he looks at me? There’s a hint of admiration in his eyes. And something else. I don’t have time to dwell on it, though, because Jim’s currently getting annoyed with me for ignoring him.
“Sorry, what was that?” I ask.
“Did it get it right? Would you have picked the red side?”
I bite my bottom lip and nod. “Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.”
Despite the egg chair’s soundproofing, I hear Jim’s joyous shout and clapping hands from here, even though his mic is off. I’m glad he’s so overjoyed about this outcome. Meanwhile, I’m just getting more curious—and nervous.
“Let’s try another one,” Frankie says through the speakers, and even she sounds a little excited about this. “You’ll be given the option to ride the coaster. You’ll be allowed to choose where you sit. Each coaster car has four seats—two in front and two in back. There are six cars to a train. Are you riding, and if so, where are you sitting?”
I close my eyes and think about it. “Is it one of the original coasters?”
“The only original I kept in the park,” Jim says. “Steel Tiger, one of the most diabolical hybrid coasters ever created.”
