“Please put on your wristband,” Patrick instructs us. “There is no need for earbuds or a visor. Sound will be provided through the speakers. Just bear with us for a minute while we set everything up.”
A murmur floats through the crowd as the house lights slowly dim again.
I flop down in the seat, my bag firmly in my lap. I gather my hair and put it in a messy bun as Patrick’s larger-than-life presence appears on the screen. The moment I slip on my wristband, earsplitting guitar chords come barreling through the speakers. As the music crescendos, a milky haze forms on the screen. When it fades into a sheet of pitch black, a million dots of white appear and glow with fierce intensity. I duck for cover when a streak of flames bursts from not only the screen but the walls around me. Balls of fire ricochet across the room, exploding in midair.
My heart is in my throat. It’s as if the auditorium itself is careening through the galaxy, narrowly avoiding collisions with gigantic asteroids, orbiting planets, and crescent moons at every turn.
I wince as a round ball of fire heads straight toward me, veering off to the right at the last second. This isn’t real, I remind myself. But it sure as hell feels real. There is no pretty fairy dust here, and this is not the serene Elusion that my father introduced me to—this is something more terrifying and exciting and bewildering and enticing. Then I feel a shred of something I’ve felt many times before but have forgotten these past few months. A tiny surge of electricity rises in my chest, and within seconds it spreads all the way through my arms and down to my fingertips.
This ghost of a feeling is enough to take me back to when my father first brought me to Elusion, but then a shimmering, warm glow fans out in front of my eyes, distracting me from my thoughts completely. The hard-rock music disappears, and soon a soft murmur of a sound—almost like the white noise one might hear on an antique radio—radiates through the air. A large constellation comes into view, twinkling in a soothing, rhythmic pattern that loosens all the tension in my neck and shoulders. In fact, I feel every muscle in my body unwind.
One of the stars lights up brighter than the rest, hues of neon yellow and shades of orange and magenta flashing in the most radiant spectacle I have ever seen. I can feel the power pulsating at the core of the star. I inhale deeply as I stare at the unreal beauty of the universe around me.
For the first time in what seems like forever, I think . . .
Everything is going to be okay.
TWO
WHEN THE SCREEN GOES BLACK A FEW minutes later and the only sound I can hear is my pulse pounding in my ears, I sit back in my seat, staring straight ahead but seeing everything as a faint blur. I shake my hands out and roll my shoulders forward, trying to snap myself back to normal.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Patrick says to the crowd. “It might take a minute to regain your equilibrium. It’s to be expected.”
My gaze shifts around the room. Other people seem to be rubbing their eyes, blinking as they fight to readjust to the real world once more. I join in the pockets of applause that are emanating from different corners of the auditorium.
“What you just experienced was a sneak peek at another new feature of Elusion,” he continues. “It’s called the Exhilaration Setting, or ExSet for short. Now users can control the amount of brain stimulation they experience inside Elusion, and the intensity of their destination will change accordingly. CIT was truly amazed by this.”
So am I. At least, I think I am. The thoughts in my mind and my eyesight are still a little bit fuzzy. I squint to see if that helps anything, and luckily it does.
“Whenever you’re ready, I’d like to open up the floor to questions,” Patrick says as a podium made of translucent material rises from a secret door in the floor of the stage.
“Mr. Simmons, will this universe-themed Escape be a standard dimension along with the World?” a bespectacled reporter says into the ladybug-size Orexis-issued microphone that’s attached to his jacket.
“Yes, it will, and I really hope that users enjoy traveling into these uncharted destinations together,” Patrick replies. Then he points over my shoulder. “You in the gray blazer.”
“Is it true that Elusion will be released with higher trypnosis settings that will allow you to stay in your Escape longer and with less Aftershock?” a tall man with a neatly trimmed beard inquires.
Patrick shrugs. “Not exactly. Instead of the five minutes in the prototype, Aftershock will only last a minute, but the amount of time allowed in an Escape has not changed. It’s still an hour.”
Wow. The symptoms of Aftershock now only last a minute? My dad would be really impressed. He hated that users had to suffer through Aftershock and struggled to figure out a way make the symptoms less severe.
Patrick gestures to a woman in a red suit toward the rear of the room. “Ma’am?”
“Mr. Simmons, my followers are in Ohio, where Elusion hasn’t been available. Could you please explain the technology used in the Equip and the app? It’s still foreign territory for a lot of us.”
“Absolutely. To put it simply, the Equip and the Elusion app work together. Kind of like an EEG machine, but operating in reverse.”
A hint of a grin forms on my face. This is the exact analogy my dad used when trying to show me why the project he was slaving over was so groundbreaking.
“Instead of measuring all the rhythmic changes and patterns that occur in our brain waves, the computer hardware in the Equip components redirects them through the use of trypnosis, so that we experience a deep level of consciousness called trance. The software in the app acts like a remote control, giving us plenty of channels or settings we can visit while we are in a trance state.”
My father would be so proud of Patrick right now.
“Fascinating,” the reporter says, typing notes furiously on her tablet. “So how does trypnosis work, exactly?”
I can recite the answer to this question in my sleep. When my dad was alive, Patrick would often come over for dinner, and they would discuss trypnosis for hours on end. It had been hurtful then, watching my father and my best friend bond over something I didn’t fully comprehend, but today I’d give anything to have one of those nights back.
“Trypnosis is a combination of hypnosis techniques, created by three distinct computer-generated tools, which make up the Equip components,” Patrick responds. “The visor has microlasers embedded in the lenses, which tap into the cerebral cortex and create an imbalance of brain-cell activity. The earbuds utilize aural symphonics, like humming sounds and voice triggers, to lull the brain into an even deeper level of consciousness. Lastly, there are two raised pieces of plastic on the inside of the wristband that apply pressure to nerve endings connected to the meridian centers of the body.”
Patrick pauses to clear his throat and then steals a happy glance at me. In this moment, everything about him is so self-assured, and so . . . adult. Sometimes I wish I could leap forward with him and go straight to being in control of my own life.