"Thank you. It's very thoughtful of you." Amy peered around the room. "Is there a camera or a surface that I should be talking to? I don't want to be rude."
"Oh, don't worry about that. Please just make yourself at home. There's no refrigerator, but there is a pantry full of vN food. It's all packaged, too, so you don't have to worry. Dr Sarton told me how careful you need to be about that."
"That's… great."
"There's also a change of clothes, if you would like. That gaming suit can't be too comfortable after two dips in Elliott Bay!"
Hearing Rory's real voice reminded Amy of what it was like to read her weekly diet plans, when she was still little. Each of Rory's ro-bento pings maintained this same level of cheeriness and delight, as though starving yourself was just the most fun thing in the world and you should be happy to do it for your parents. As though you should enjoy feeling so hungry and hollow all the time. Back then, she found it annoying. Now, she found it inexplicably creepy.
"Your iterations are on their way, Javier," Rory continued. "I thought you might like to spend some more time with them, in a nicer place than that drafty old warehouse."
Javier's brows furrowed. "You really know a lot about us, huh?"
"Oh, yes. I'm quite the little know-it-all."
The low table in front of them lit up and displayed a diagram of the house. Amy couldn't help but stare: the architect had added old-fashioned elements like braziers sunk deep in the floor and sliding walls that made the whole home internally modular. With the exception of the bathrooms, the building could be arranged to fit almost any usage pattern.
"You should try the soaking tub," Rory said. "It's geo-thermal. Like an onsen."
The Japaneseness of the house instantly made sense. Rory was selling her on something: Mecha. She was, in a very roundabout way, trying to prove to Amy how great a foreign place could be. But Amy hadn't needed convincing on that score. It wasn't leaving her country behind that frightened her. It was leaving behind the people still living there.
"Look, I know you want me to go to Mecha, but what I really want is to call–"
"It's a wonderful place!" The table's light dappled into a map of the city. "Just look at it!" The map on the table magnified five times, and suddenly the street unfolded before them. Food stalls with grey blobs of vN dumplings on sticks loomed large on the table. Bottles of electrolytes sweated condensation in the hands of smiling synthetics. Humans laughed. Common video popped up: the Mecha Matsuri, marshalled by the stars of Project Aiko and the other shows on the dorama feed.
"They've made room for us there," Javier said. "Not just room, but a whole environment."
"You told me it was a zoo," Amy said.
"You can watch every channel there!" Rory said. "And every movie in every theatre, and play all the games. They're all safe for vN."
Rory showed them happy scenes of cheering vN in gaming parlours, dancing and waving their arms under projected light, the configuration of which changed with each movement so that their hand motions remixed the visible environment from supernovas to English countryside and dairy cattle. Then the view flipped over to a girl carrying a white lace parasol. The stats on it appeared as soon as the camera zoomed over: where the plastic came from, how many computer shells it was made from, and so on. Then their view merged with the parasol and suddenly they were in it, watching the street click by in brief but regular still shots.
"They really love you!" Rory added. "Check out these games!"
Rory showed them four different Mechanese gaming channels. Various game skins of Amy and Javier battled orcs and giant spiders and demons summoned from other dimensions. Whole armies of Amy and Javier formed. Then they attacked each other. They built fortresses and teleport stations and liberated small villages. One channel showed them having sex. It was in-game sex, though, so it was all fuzzed out and surrounded by twinkling pink lights so the other players couldn't see anything unless they had a special membership.
"These look handmade." Amy knew for a fact that her chest couldn't possibly be that big.
"You should see the porn!" Rory brought them an image of a very real-looking Javier bent over a human woman in a nurse's costume. The more Amy looked at the man, the more he seemed exactly like Javier, down to the creases on his hands and the set of his teeth and the glow coming off his skin. But it also wasn't him: the eyes were too bright, the smile too sweet. It was him, but it wasn't.
You know what that means, don't you?