Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,15
under his fingers, the big, defiant blue eyes staring at him from a lovely, carefully made-up face. The face she showed the world. But even this morning, here in Dale’s lab, he’d been intrigued by the layers of character and tragedy behind the mask she wore. To say nothing of the intelligence that shone out of her eyes like the sun.
Letting go of her hair, she began to type.
JK: Where are you?
Exodus: Dale’s.
JK: Why? What are you doing there?
Exodus: Don’t know. Don’t seem able to leave.
JK: Who are you? What’s your first name?
Exodus: Call me Adam.
JK: You invaded my computer, I’ll call you whatever I like.
He grinned at that. Fair point. Would she pursue it? Apparently she would.
JK: What’s your first name?
He hesitated from habit, because he had such a ridiculous first name. And because he’d no idea what her reaction would be. Only one way to find out.
Exodus: Genesis.
JK: Aye, right. You’re Genesis Adam? Cofounder of Genesis Gaming? Now calling yourself EXODUS? Please.
Exodus: I was Genesis Adam. I died.
JK: Genesis Adam certainly did.
Exodus: The night of the break-in at Dale’s.
JK: I hate to break it to you. But Genesis Adam died two months after the burglary. In Australia.
It was his turn to stare at the screen in total silence. Such a small thing to be thrown by, but he felt suddenly rudderless, dizzy, without any certainty to hold on to. He thought he’d remembered it all, knew what he was, what he’d done and where. But this, this wasn’t even part of any nebulous thought he ever recalled crossing his mind.
Exodus: I don’t remember that. Why was I in Australia?
JK: You emigrated.
Exodus: I did? Why?
JK: You tell me.
He only wished he could. Right now, this girl was his only link with the present or the past, his only way to any knowledge at all.
Exodus: What happened after I was shot?
JK: This is your story. Why should I do all the work?
Exodus: You don’t believe me.
JK: No, but don’t take it personally. I’m hard to fool. I just can’t see where you’re going with this.
Exodus: Why did you wake me up?
JK: I didn’t.
She did. She must have. She’d been the only one there when he’d arrived… But her lovely face looked sculpted in marble as she stared at the screen, waiting for his response. Her full lips had thinned and set, her eyes were wide and wary. And when she shoved her unruly hair out of her face, her hand shook.
Fuck. She didn’t know anything about him. That was the truth. She’d flicked the switch by accident, copied the wrong file by accident, and now he was stalking her. Frightening her.
Blackness clawed its way up his spine. He was on his own.
Exodus: OK. Sorry. I’ll sort it out. Thnx.
Exodus is offline.
He pushed himself away from the computer, flummoxed, ashamed but not yet defeated. Only his weird sense of unreality kept the panic at bay. He just had to consider the situation logically until he found the solution to his problem. He was used to that. So…
The memories slowly clearing in his mind confirmed his identity. Everything he’d told the girl, JK, was true. So far as he knew. He remembered being shot quite distinctly, in this house, although from whom or exactly where the shot had come from he’d no idea. Yet.
And he definitely wasn’t alive. If he was, he wouldn’t be able to connect to JK’s computer like he just had, to see her through her webcam when she hadn’t even switched it on. Part of him had remained here in Dale’s lab, typing, while, bizarrely, another, nebulous part of him had seemed to be swirling around the circuits of JK’s laptop. That was not natural, or even possible, even in a VR program.
But God, the girl was even more beautiful without the mask, without the tough edges she affected in her speech and mannerisms. Although her typed words were direct enough. Her eyes were still defiant, but she hadn’t been hiding tonight. Her unglossed, natural mouth had seemed to reveal unexpected vulnerability. He wanted to taste the softness of her lips… An odd desire for a dead man.
Why had she been here this morning? She’d wakened him by accident. She was curious, but not, it seemed, investigating his death. Which she said had happened in Australia.
So why had his ghost popped up in Dale’s Scottish home five months after his death? And why couldn’t he leave this room except via a computer connection?