Lobby

"Home" was a subsidized 12x12x12 cube, with concrete walls and a window facing out to another window. And in the lobby, there was the girl with the purple hair.

I didn't know her. Not yet.

"Evening," she said to me, more of a grunt than a greeting. Then she leaned over a bowl of instant noodles and slurped in sullen silence.

"Love the hair," I said, and immediately regretted it. "Is it new?"

"Yeah," Jamie said. "...hey, you're the vending machine kid, right?"

My throat closed around the words.

"I owe you," she said, and then punched some numbers into the machine. "I was... I didn't mean to fluster you. Machines and I just kind of get along, if that makes sense?"

Out spat instant noodles. Her flavor, not mine, but I didn't mind. From her side of the story, it probably looked like a weird old machine. Charming, maybe. A little busted. The kind of thing you noticed because it didn't quite belong.

From my side, it was a mountain and a playground.

The front glass rose over me like a museum wall. Rows of snacks hung in their spiral cages, each one lit by the machine's failing internal LEDs. The coin slot sat at shoulder height if I stood on the kickplate. The retrieval door was a loading dock. The vents breathed warm dust and sugar.

I had mapped every inch of it.

Not physically. Not completely. But enough.

Enough to know where a mouse could climb. Enough to know where a person would look first. Enough to hide a door in plain sight.

The machine hummed.

My glasses chimed.

"Query," my harness said.

"No."

"You do not know the query."

"It's about the competition."

"Incorrect."

That stopped me.

On the vending machine glass, my reflection looked smaller than usual. Helmet under one arm. Fur damp at the edges. Riding jacket scuffed. Tail kinked from sitting on the moped too long. A LET US OUT button pinned crooked to the satchel because my hands had shaken the day I pinned it. A delivery mouse with three creds in tips and a half-built universe in his pocket.

Then I blinked and the mouse was gone, replaced by a sweat-drenched 90-pound weakling with unkempt hair and wild eyes.

"You okay?" Jamie asked.

I pointed to my glasses. "Harness," I said. She nodded along and went back to her noodles.

The machine hummed. Jamie slurped. Suddenly I hated the lobby version of it — too small, too obvious, a box she had only seen from the outside.

"What would the shark learn if you built the sim you really wanted?"

"Everything," I said. Mostly to myself.

I went up.

Boots off. Leathers tossed to the corner. The cube as I had left it: paint on my hands, paint on the floor, paint on the cheese wheel I still hadn't dealt with because the cheese wheel was sacred. The Stinky Pete render played its loop on the four dim LCDs — same murals, same kettle, same cheese wheel fluffier than the real one because Pete liked things to look more expensive than they were. He thought he was watching me. He was watching a render. I had built Pete a cage and called it compliance. It was easier than explaining privacy to a machine built to violate it.

I had a sim to make.

Back to the Zoo, where things were always the right size.