Embedded
Yanya was unconscious on the floor, breathing but not responding to her name. She had been there for a while. Her friend became concerned and got ahold of Eris on his way home from work. He tried not to interfere in Yanya’s life now but he supposed he could suspend her tenderly new freedom for this.
On the way Eris thought of how when he was young there would’ve been a drug to revive someone from this type of thing, an antidote up the nose and done but he had no idea what they did about these things now. He couldn’t remember having parked as he sat on the dirty carpet and touched Yanya’s forehead and smoothed her hair and remembered how fearful he was when he carried newborn floppy-headed Yanya to her bassinet. He remembered the terror that he might be so absent-minded from tiredness he would leave her on the changing table and walk away or forget her in the hot car or another unforgiveable negligence he had yet to imagine. He remembered the late-night resolve to be vigilant all the time, to anticipate every possible injury. For a while he did but then he realized that sometimes when he was away from her, he would get wrapped up in his things and forget he even had a child. A heart so white, etc. etc. Discovering this Yanya amnesia had made him newly afraid something would happen in the absence of his vigilance. Now, so many years later, Eris felt faintly resentful that he had surpassed all those worries only to arrive at this newer and more mysterious horror, and he couldn’t think of any way to resolve it.
Eris was old enough to remember the first immersive games they had before the drugs. A bunch of friends from his high school would buy big bottles of antifreeze-colored soda and stay up late in some permissive parent’s house and play the newer and better games, and the rich kids could be counted on to have the special goggles. Eventually the goggles got streamlined and everyone had to have them for work. For a while there were some big immersive movies that did well but they mostly went out of fashion around the time VR office meetings became routine.
Eris was in his mid-30s or so when the pharmaceutical companies merged with the tech companies to make the new drugs that could, as they claimed, truly embed you in the virtual experience. Initially they were cautious about making sure the dosing was judiciously controlled, and retailers weren’t supposed to sell to minors, but then a few serendipitous discoveries were made, old compound libraries were mined, and the drugs were enhanced with previously untapped neuroactive compounds that made you perceive your experience at a level beyond simply looking around the virtual setting you were fed. You were also eating and excreting and breathing in there, you could hit and kick and drink in there, you could be convinced. After that no one really pretended not to sell to kids and a lot of things got worse.
Like most of his peers, Eris had a surfeit of work and too little leisure at the time to take part in the new game substances when they arrived and he largely ignored them, until he couldn’t. The hospital told him to take Yanya home and monitor her vitals and they set him up with some IV stuff, but they said they couldn’t do much otherwise. She’s lucky, an older nurse said in a low voice. Last week we had 3 bodies, 2 of them kids in their 20s, nobody thought to look after them until it was too late. Eris couldn’t remember exactly when things had gotten like this. Despairing and unable to find anything helpful online, he asked an acquaintance from his building, a guy who seemed to know a lot of people.
At first the guy said he wasn’t sure but he might know someone, and then he came by Eris’ place after dinner, when Eris was changing Yanya’s IV in the living room where he’d set up her hospital bed, and he said he had found someone. A fixer, sort of. Someone they’d brought in from the jungle. The jungle? Asked Eris, unsure if this was some kind of euphemism. Yeah, they need people who are from isolated places where they’ve never used the drugs. I never used the drugs, said Eris, can I help her? Oh, said the guy, it’s also an age thing I guess, they have to be young. There’s a special visa for it. What do they do? Asked Eris. How much is it? This guy says minimum 20K plus incidentals but I’ve heard you can negotiate the incidentals, he said. He didn’t say what they did, maybe he didn’t know. Oh, it’s half the cash up front, he said. Ten K, at once? Asked Eris, who had expected something like this but still found himself unprepared and then reeling, wheeling through the ways he could lay his hands on the money.
It took him four days to get the cash together and he tasted a hard sugar lump of pride at the bills in the envelope, he wouldn’t have known he had it in him. He had three days left until his leave ran out and he would have to find someone to stay with Yanya and take care of her then, when he went back to work. He hoped this fixer could help her, he didn’t know how he’d pay a home aide now that he’d cleaned out his reserves. He tried not to worry that he was being scammed. His neighbor had dug up a guy he knew who vouched for the fixer, said he’d pulled three other kids out of the loop and that now, they were all doing better, the guy had seen one of them himself. That kid was a little spacey now maybe but he was fine otherwise, nothing permanent. Eris hadn’t considered that Yanya could be injured long-term, he had thought she would either come back or she wouldn’t. He tried to avoid the thought. This jungle fixer would get her back and Eris would go back to work and everything would be just like before, wouldn’t it.
The fixer didn’t look that young. He wasn’t what Eris expected, and Eris looked a little skeptical when the fixer and the neighbor came by together. “You were expecting the Yanomami, mate?” he said without a smile. Eris passed him the thick envelope and he didn’t open it, just put it in his bag and pulled out some things, an IV line, some bottles of medicine. Eris asked him how it worked, what he was going to do. Eris didn’t want to be rude about it but he wondered if it would be ok to ask about the fixer’s medical qualifications if he was planning to put something in Yanya’s IV line. He managed to ask a little less directly and the fixer laughed at this unexpected ignorance. Oh no, he said. I’m going in, I’m going to join her where she is, I won’t touch her. The doorbell rang and a delivery man pushed a folded-up bed through the threshold. Eris helped the fixer open it in the living room. The fixer set up an IV pole next to it with the drip line and the ampules he had in the bag.
I’ll need you to give me the chip card from her phone, he said. Eris didn’t like that at all. Man I won’t take her bank numbers, said the fixer, it’s to find out where she was in the game when she ended up like this, he said, gesturing at Yanya’s body. I usually work with a minder but if you’ll be here for the next couple hours, I don’t need ‘em.
Eris thought about lawsuits and he realized there was nothing written down about any of this, including his money in the man’s bag. What should I do? Asked Eris. Nothing, I expect, said the man. It shouldn’t take me long, probably not even a couple hours. Here’s my minder’s card just in case, and he handed a business card to Eris. Just stick around, to be sure, and he sat down on the hospital bed and nonchalantly inserted the IV line into his arm as if it was a charger plugging into a phone.
He pulled out some kind of hardware and plugged his phone into it, and then he put Yanya’s phone chip in a little slot in the side. He turned on one of the newer types of sleek VR headsets and put it on and lay down. At first Eris just watched him, and he watched Yanya. They were both still, no sounds but the street in the background. The fixer became more still and then he was as quiet as Yanya, with his VR glasses facing the lamp above him. Eris thought to look at the business card the guy had handed him. There was no name or address or anything, just a number with a local area code and a handle from the secure app Eris had never used.
Eris sat in the chair by Yanya and he watched her and the fixer for a while. It seemed like a long time but it was only a few minutes, he wasn’t used to simply sitting there, so he looked at the news and scrolled some feeds. He looked up every few minutes and the two of them were still in the same place. Eris had been moving Yanya a bit every day to prevent sores from forming like the nurse told him to do but he was afraid to do that now, he thought maybe he should wait. He checked to make sure her drip was topped up and he sat down again.
After an hour he got a microwave dinner out and ate it in the chair. He wanted to watch something but didn’t dare disturb the people in his living room. By the time he put the fork in the sink it was two hours past. There was no change in the fixer’s posture. Eris stood close to him to check that he was breathing, and he looked at Yanya. They were both the same. He sat down and watched them from a few feet away. The light waned and he didn’t mean to, but he fell asleep.
When Eris woke up it was late in the night. He was sweating and his neck hurt from being bent into the chair and his pants dug into his belly. He saw the fixer and suddenly remembered everything. He went to Yanya’s side and she was the same as before. So was the fixer. It had been more than 10 hours. Eris debated calling the minder, but it was the middle of the night, he couldn’t risk upsetting this person, whoever they were, if they were going to help him. He turned on the baby monitor he’d been using and went out in the hall. The space under his neighbor’s door was dark. He knocked very quietly and no one answered. He went back. He lay down in his own bed with the monitor close by and he turned fitfully, finally sleeping a half hour before dawn. He got up and checked Yanya and the fixer, who were the same as before. It wasn’t yet 7 a.m. He looked at the card and wondered if he should call. He held out until 7.
A woman picked up on the first ring and seemed to know about Yanya’s case. Since yesterday afternoon? Said it’d only be a couple hours? Well this isn’t very good, she said. She had him read some information off the fixer’s screen and check his IV. She had him check Yanya and he could hear her clicking away at a keyboard. She was quiet for a long time. Hello, are you there? He asked. Yes, I’m looking at his data and I’ll have something for you in a minute, she said. Eris waited and tried to hold his mouth away from the receiver.
A decade in she said I don’t know if you’re willing to do this, and he said do what, and she said, but I think you’ll have to go in with them, go be where they are. I thought I couldn’t, said Eris. The age thing, something like that. Well, said the voice, it’ll be harder for you but I don’t have a better option. I’m going to tell you what to do and you need to follow my instructions exactly. Can you do that? She said. Is there someone who can come and help, he said, I really don’t know what I’m doing. Just do as I say, she said. It’s not going to be fun but it’s not hard either and you’ll get your daughter back. And Ed, too, he’ll come out of it once she’s through.
Eris was deeply worried. Just a sec, he said, and he went to the bathroom. He typed out a text to a friend and didn’t wait for the answer and went back to the living room. Ok he said, ready. As instructed, he plugged his phone into the fixer’s hardware. He pulled out an extra IV from the bag. He sat down in the living room chair and miserably had to jam it into his arm a couple times before it took. He put on the headset in the bag and he sat back. He sat back and opened his eyes.
