LeafLink (ONC 2024) (Complete)

Chapter 7

I can see. There's a part of me that knows that I'm sitting in a chair in a white-washed conference room. That my eyes are tightly shut. Still, there is color, shape, and texture all around me.

I am standing on flat ground. It is an unassuming silvery color, plain and featureless. Above me stretches blue. It is not the sky; there is no variation to its texture, no clouds or any other feature. It is just color, like the ground beneath me.

I suddenly realize I have hands, and feet, and legs. It is not my body, but it is. The clothes I wear are not my clothes, but they act as facsimiles of the real thing. The fabric is not fabric. There is none of the thread pattern, the scratchiness of what gives fabric substance. I am simply draped in planes of more shaped color. To my left and right are the others. In front of me stands Sara.

Seeing them is an immense relief. Although they too wear clothing that exists without shadow, hardness, edges, their limbs and faces are reassuringly imperfect. I am grateful for the texture and substance they provide to this flat world.

I begin to notice features of the landscape that are further away. The gray we stand atop is like a giant, perfectly placed stroke of paint. It runs straight, hemmed on both sides by green ground of the same composition. It is as though someone had the idea of a road and some grassy hillside, without knowing any of the details.

In the distance rises a series of tower-shaped objects. They form a skyline of blocky shapes, like massive versions of some child's toy. There is nothing in any of the other directions, except for the endless, unnatural horizon of flat blue meeting flat green.

Sara opens her mouth and speaks. I don't hear her, back in the room - but here, there's sound, and a voice that sounds just like hers.

"Welcome to LeafLink Beta," she proclaims, lifting her arms. This prompts me to try moving my own limbs, which react as though they were the real thing.

"This is the new internet?" My effort is gallant, but the nonchalance I try to muster abandons me.

Johanna points towards the skyline. "Who the hell built that?"

Sara smiles at her. "We did. Although even from this distance, you can tell that the realism... is lacking." It is shocking to see the wrinkles on her face, the crinkling of her lips as she speaks. Somehow, the contrast between our bodies and the world around us makes it feel even flatter, emptier.

"Sara," I try again, trying not to think too hard about my voice, and how my mouth - my real one - is closed tight. "I'm not trying to be rude, here... but this place isn't exactly what I was expecting."

She turns on me, expression hard. I almost take a step back in surprise. But a moment later she softens, nodding in acquiescence.

"This place is everything we hoped it could be." She holds her hand up, her face suddenly tight with concentration. Then, like it had always been there, an impossible diamond sits, large and solid, nestled in her palm.

I want to be impressed, I really do. But the only reason I can tell it's a gemstone is because of its faceted shape and color. There is no gleam of reflected light, no depth or translucence to its icy-white surface.

"Oh.." says the long-haired man whose name I still don't know. He trails off, unwilling to say what we're all thinking.

But Sara's no idiot. "I know," she says, sighing, "you should have seen what we tried making in the first few months." She closes her hand into a fist for a moment. There is nothing in her hand when she reopens it.

"Let's go to the City," she says.

Bridget and I exchange a look, eyeing each other and the distance of the towers.

"Like... in a car?" I venture.

Sara gives me a look. "You could try. But if you tried to make one, it wouldn't work - like the gemstone. Either way, it would be inefficient. This isn't the real world. If you want to go somewhere, just think it."

We all gape at her - except Johanna. A moment later, and she vanishes.

"Quick learner," Sara says. In a blink, she's gone too.

"Oh, great," I mutter, "let's break space and time while we're at it." I know I should be more impressed by the trick, but I think all of us have reached a point where surprise has turned into a kind of weary acceptance - of everything.

But I give it a go. The City, I think. I try to see myself standing there, surrounded by their hulking forms, cast in their massive shadows.

And then I am there.

I feel nothing - no sense of movement whatsoever, no rush of hurtling wind, or the signature pull of momentum. And yet I stand at the crossroads of two streets, both parodies of the real thing. Okay, then.

The towers that hem these avenues in are featureless, and the simplistic, geometric planes that compose these structures are a creamy, off-white color. With no sun to speak of, I am in fact not standing in any casted shadows. There is no light bouncing off them, nothing so complex as a mirrored surface.

But I very quickly deem them as a feature of non-importance, because for the first time since arriving in this impossible world, I am not focused on my surroundings. To my suddenly revitalized shock, there are people all around me, as though this were a real city.

They wander across the street, meander back and forth along roads that offer no danger of a passing car. I watch as a pair, talking animatedly to each other, pause before a tower's facade. After a moment, a gap exists in the wall, and they step on through. Another blink, and it was like it never happened.

A group of children, perhaps four or five of them in all, are circled around the opposite street-corner. They are engaged in a game, I realize, using their legs and feet to keep a ball aloft - they're playing a sort of keep-ups. But every time a different kid makes contact with the ball, its properties change; shrinking or growing, spikes forming or developing pitted holes. All in an effort to try and throw off the next person who has to keep it in the motion. When it finally falls to the ground, their raucous shouts drift over to me.

Residents, I realize, dazed. These are Locust Valley folks, interacting with Leaflink as though they'd spent their entire lives here. I found myself trying to avoid eye contact, cowed by the presence of these people. But they pay me no mind. To them, I am no one special; just another Leaflink user going about their business.

I could have stood there and watched these people all day, but I needed to find Sara -

And like that, I am standing in a different part of the City, halfway down an identical-looking street to the one before. I am the last to arrive, it seems; the others are surrounding Sara, their bewildered expressions likely a mirror of my own. Other than us, the street is empty.

Sara is unbothered. She points to the building behind her, the first distinguishing structure I've seen so far in the City. It has the same odd shape as the other buildings, but it is an alluring emerald-green instead of typical pearly white.

"Alright." Her gaze sweeps across us all, and she nods, seemingly satisfied. "I'll dispense with the suspense and theatrics. You all seem more than capable of adjusting to the LeafLink environment."

She points at Johanna. "Make us a door." The poor girl stares blankly at Sara, and then at the unblemished facade of the building. I know what she's referring to, however. I slip past them both approaching the wall just like the couple I'd watched.

A hole. I think. Something empty, yawning - an anti-existence of what currently exists -

There is a gap in the building where there wasn't before. I can see directly into the interior; it a shocking recreation of Biolink's lobby in their real facility, although these chairs and couches are filled with workers who don't even glance in my direction.

"Good job," Sara tells me. The others eye me as they pass through, even Bridget.

"This place wasn't what I was expecting," she mutters to me.

"I know," I respond. "There's a strange... incompleteness here that I can't put my finger on."

"There is a problem," Sara overhears us. "That's why we've brought you here."