Dan’s determination in SR earned him a lot of painful bruises and barely enough energy to crawl out of the SR Unit. Despite the soreness of his muscles and the pain of his bruises however, he was happy. He had never given up. He hadn’t let the soulborgs win.

He steadied himself against the side of the SR Unit as Heleer emerged from the one next door. She looked at him quickly, her eyes noting his various bruises.

“What happened?” she asked, a hint of concern in her voice.

“I tried to climb a mountain,” Dan said. “They didn’t want me to.”

He could tell Heleer knew what he meant. She could guess, at least. She looked over his bruises once more, and then moved towards him, standing between him and the camera on the far wall.

“Please stop,” she said, taking his hand and squeezing it gently on the important words. “Please, please stop.”

Dan, however, had spent the better part of a day refusing to listen to more or less this exact message. His anger roused at her words.

“Why?” he said, not bothering to squeeze. “Why?!? Don’t you know what’s out there? Don’t you—”

Dan stopped. Heleer’s look had shifted from one of pleading to something completely different. She had taken a small step back, and was now looking at him… warily. With caution. But also with a hint of an anger Dan felt all too familiar with. Dan had never seen her look that way before.

“What?” he asked.

“My mother once said the same thing,” Heleer said. Her voice had changed. It was harder, colder. It was still her, but she sounded as if she were forcing herself to talk. Dan said nothing. Heleer had never talked about her mother before, or her father for that matter.

Heleer took a step closer to Dan. “Do you know what happened to my mother, Dan?” she asked.

Dan shook his head. He found the change in Heleer a little disconcerting.

“She was killed,” Heleer said abruptly. “Killed because she was obsessed with getting out. She was like you, always talking about what could be ‘out there’, and never realizing what was directly in front of her.” She took a step closer, until she was mere inches from Dan’s face. She looked him right in the eyes. “She always needed more; what she had was never enough. Never. Even though it was right in front of her.”

Heleer held Dan’s gaze for a moment longer, and then left, going down the stairs quickly. Dan was left standing there, looking at the camera. He couldn’t help but notice that it hadn’t followed Heleer at all, but instead remained focused on him.

So that was it. Part of it, at least. Dan knew there had to more to the story, more to the reason Heleer so feared anything beyond the walls. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew now he had hit a nerve with her. He wanted to understand, to know what had happened, but he had to be careful. He didn’t want her to shut off completely like she usually did.

Dan found Heleer sitting on the bed. The light was on in the bathroom, but she was ignoring it. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor, not moving. Dan sat down next to her.

“Is that why you don’t want to get out?” Dan asked. “Because of your mother?” He kept his voice gentle, not wanting to upset her anymore than she already was.

Heleer looked up at him briefly. Dan could see a new emotion on her face: sadness. Sadness mixed with something else, something very close to disappointment.

“No,” she said, looking back down at the floor. “Not really. I might have wanted to leave, once, but my mother’s impatience drove it from my mind. She gave me no time to make up my own mind; everything was about leaving, and leaving now. My mother was reckless, impatient, and obsessed. And I won’t be like that.” She looked up at Dan again. “I’m happy here; trying to get out can only bring trouble.”

That night, long after the lights had gone out, Dan was still awake, watching the outline of Heleer as she slept. What she had said hadn’t been lost on him. Part of him was excited that her mother had been like him, driven to escape. But that was only a small part. Most of him had listened to Heleer, and slowly, very slowly, he was beginning to realize something.

He couldn’t get out. Not right now, at least. He knew how to get into the Shaft, but he didn’t know what to do after that. He still wanted to get out, but Heleer had made him realize that he had to be patient. Until he knew exactly how he would get out, there was no point in being impatient and making a mistake. He doubted very much he would get more than one chance to escape; he couldn’t afford to not think it through.

Patience was a foreign idea to Dan. Until Darren had come, Dan had no experience with patience or impatience, simply because he had nothing to be patient or impatient about. He knew when everything would happen, and the opportunity to be impatient about something had never arisen. He knew the schedule. He knew everything would happen when it was supposed to.

This was different. He didn’t know when he would escape. He didn’t even know if he would escape. Without any promise of when or if it would happen, he had become impatient, wanting it now. But now he realized he couldn’t do that. He would have to follow the schedule and wait. Think and wait. He had never tried to be patient before, but he decided it was worth a shot.

Dan woke while the ceiling was still dark. For the first time in two days, excitement wasn’t coursing through him. His mind didn’t immediately turn to thoughts of escape. Instead, he simply lay there, looking up at the dark ceiling, faintly lit by the blue glow from the Barrier. It was completely silent. The only sound was Heleer breathing next to him, a soft in and out, in and out, its rhythm tempting Dan to close his eyes and go back to sleep.

He did close his eyes, but he didn’t go back to sleep. He remembered what Heleer had said last night, and what he had decided. ‘I will be patient,’ he said to himself. Saying it in his head seemed to make it more real.

He listened a while longer to Heleer breathing, and after a moment remembered something. She had described her mother as impatient, obsessed, and reckless. Reckless. Dan had no trouble believing that if Heleer hadn’t said anything, he would have taken the first opportunity to escape. And he probably wouldn’t have gotten very far.

Dan realized that Heleer had probably saved him. He knew how to get the Shaft open, and maybe he could get the hatch open somehow, but then what? The soulborgs would find him and bring him back.

Dan opened his eyes. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Hadn’t Heleer said that her mother had been killed because of her obsession? Dan watched the ceiling, thinking. What would the soulborgs do if he tried to escape? Surely they wouldn’t outright kill him? Dan didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He didn’t have enough information. Whatever the soulborgs would do, Dan doubted it would be good.

He turned his head and glanced at Heleer. She had undoubtedly saved him. She had kept him from making a mistake, possibly a deadly mistake. And what had he done in return? Nothing. He had been obsessed with escaping.

‘Just like her mother,’ he thought to himself. He remembered the look on Heleer’s face when she had told Dan about her mother. He remembered the sadness. ‘I won’t be like that,’ he told himself. ‘I won’t be obsessed and reckless. I’ll get out. I will. But when I do, I’ll have a plan. When I do get out, it will be for good.’

Dan began to see Heleer differently after that. The realization that she had kept him from doing something reckless made him pay more attention to her, and listen to what she said. He greeted her with “good morning” when she got up and told her “good night” when they went to bed. He listened to what she said when they ate, and by letting her talk, began to learn more about her.

Heleer must have noticed the change. It was obvious that Dan was paying more attention to her, and almost none on trying to get out. Eventually, she asked him if he still wanted to leave.

Dan had to reply that he did. Heleer’s face fell, but Dan wasn’t finished. He tried to choose his words carefully. “I do still want to get out, Heleer, but there’s no point in worrying about it. I don’t know how to get past the hatch, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do after that.” He remembered what she had said about her mother. “Until I have a plan… I might as well enjoy what I have.”

Heleer glanced at him. She looked like she wanted to frown, but a smile still escaped her. They both knew it was what she wanted to hear, but it was true. Dan would wait. He would be patient, and wait for an opportunity to escape.

And when it came, he would be ready.  

For the first time since they had met, Heleer didn’t speak to Dan when she got up. She answered Dan’s questions, but always in as few words as possible, and with no hint of wanting to continue the conversation.

Dan knew she must be formulating how she would convince him to stay, but she was too late. He had made up his mind. He was going to escape, and he was going to do it soon. Once he knew how to get into the Shaft and past the hatch, he wouldn’t wait any longer.

During breakfast, Dan could see that Heleer was displeased. He caught her frowning at him several times, though she quickly looked back down at her food whenever he glanced up. Occasionally she would take a breath, as if she were about to say something, but no words ever came.

Dan wondered why she didn’t want to escape. He knew she was content with her life here, and that must be because she had never known anything else, but there had to be a reason for her reaction. She was afraid, afraid of anything beyond the walls of her home. That must be it. She had said she didn’t know what was out there… maybe the idea scared her. It had scared Dan, at first. Maybe if he could just show her… somehow let her know there was nothing to be afraid of…

No brilliant ray of inspiration struck, however. They finished breakfast in silence, and then went up to the SR Units. Heleer stepped in and closed the door without a word. Dan looked at where she had disappeared. Maybe something would occur to him during SR. He hoped so. He wanted to convince her. He wanted her to understand, to see what he had seen, to feel the same drive he felt. He didn’t know why. The most he could say was that it felt important. She had to know.

All that the SR Unit did for Dan, however, was further convince him that he needed to get out, to escape. It was almost as if the soulborgs were playing with him. At first Dan was in a desert, with a massive dune towering above him and a hot wind throwing biting sand in his face. He struggled up it, finding easy purchase in the sand. It didn’t shift or slide like real sand; Dan knew that now. The memory of real sand filled him with anger at the soulborgs, and a burning desire to get out. He surged forwards, clambering up the dune. But just before he reached the top, the ground vanished from beneath him.

Dan fell in darkness until he landed in water. Sputtering and coughing, Dan broke the surface to find himself in a small pond. It was daylight, and now he was in a green valley, grass and trees all about him. Birds were singing, bees were humming, the air was slightly warm and carried the scents of a hundred flowers with it. The grass came up to Dan’s knees, waving back and forth in a lazy wind.

Dan saw none of it. His eyes were immediately drawn to the edges of the valley, where two great mountains rose up, higher and higher, until their peaks became lost in clouds. The trees gave way to dark pines on their slopes, and a shadow hung over them.

Dan didn’t think twice, but made his way towards them, pushing through the tall grass as quickly as he could. Once he entered the pine forest, the birds stopped singing. The air got colder. A new scent was carried on the chill wind, the scent of pine and old, rotting wood. It was much stronger than it should be. Dan’s nose itched at the pungent odor. But he pressed on all the same.

Much too soon, the pines ended, leaving only bare rock. The mountain face went almost straight up, forcing Dan to climb. There were virtually no hand holds. The sun beat down on his back, no longer warm and gentle, but now fiery and cruel. Dan didn’t care, however. He needed only the smallest purchase with his metal gloves, for unlike his old hands, they never seemed to cramp or tire. They could hold onto something indefinitely, as long as his arms didn’t give out.

Dan pulled himself upwards, bit by bit. The mountain seemed impossibly high. Dan looked down at one point, and was surprised to find that he had only gone up a short way. That wasn’t right though. He knew he had climbed much more than that. He glared at the ground. What were the soulborgs trying to do? Convince him that he could never escape?

Scowling, Dan threw himself into climbing faster. No matter how high he went, though, the clouds got no closer, and the ground always seemed just a short drop away. But Dan refused to give up.

After a solid hour of climbing and getting nowhere however, Dan’s arms could take no more. They gave out as he reached up for the millionth time, and he tumbled, landing much too quickly on the rock below. Except that it wasn’t rock as it should be. It was soft, long grass. Dan blinked. He was back in the peaceful valley.

Dan lay there for a while, glaring at the full blue sky. It wasn’t the same as the real sky. Dan could tell the difference. Having seen the full night sky, having felt like he was going to fall into its unreachable depths, Dan realized just how flat the SR sky really was. It was a good imitation, darker at the center and lighter at the edges to simulate depth, but Dan knew better. It was just a wall; just another barrier keeping him from seeing the real sky.

Dan was exhausted, but anger was coursing through him. He wouldn’t let the soulborgs tell him that he was stuck here and might as well accept it. He knew what they were doing with the soft grass, the calming bird songs, the distant sound a brook somewhere nearby. They were telling him that his life here was perfect, and that trying to get out was pointless. But that was where they were wrong.

It wasn’t pointless.

The next morning Dan woke excited. His mind launched into thinking about the Shaft, and how to get through the hatch, the moment he woke up. He was fairly sure he had dreamt about it too.

He didn’t wait for Heleer to wake up, but got out of bed. If the soulborgs really were watching – which he had always assumed they were – he wasn’t stupid enough to start examining the Shaft right in front of them. But he couldn’t just lie in bed. He was too excited. This could be it. This could be the day he got out.

By the time breakfast arrived however, Dan was beginning to realize that he couldn’t think of a way to get past a solid bolted hatch. He didn’t even know what it looked like or how strong it was. He wracked his brain all day, but nothing came to him. Nothing aside from just running at the hatch, and he doubted very much that would work. There wasn’t enough room in the Shaft anyway.

The Shaft. Dan didn’t even know how to get in it in the first place. He remembered how he had tried, and how he hadn’t even gotten close to moving the panel which hid it. That was the first thing he needed to figure out. How could he get into the Shaft? Then he could worry about the hatch.

It was time for bed again before he remembered Heleer. Of course! She was the one who had been in the Shaft. If anyone knew how to get in it, she might. Once they were in bed, Dan turned to her, found her hand, and asked her.

Heleer took a moment to reply. At length, she squeezed: “SR Units. Damage them, the soulborgs send someone through the Shaft.”

Dan was surprised. “How do you know that?” he squeezed.

“Happened,” Heleer replied. “SR got cracked, few moments later a soulborg arrived in the Shaft to repair.”

Dan had to control his excitement and think about how to word his next questions. “Did you get in the Shaft? Did you—”

“Dan,” Heleer suddenly said. She had spoken without squeezing, and the single word caught Dan off guard. “Stop. Stop thinking about this.” She paused, then took his hand and began talking very quickly, squeezing on every important word.

“I don’t want to leave; I don’t want you to either. We have everything we need; why can’t you be content?”

Content? How could he be content? However, Dan knew she hadn’t seen what he had. In fact, he realized he had never even told her that he had gotten out at all. She had never let him.

She wouldn’t understand unless he phrased it right.

“Because of you,” he finally squeezed back. “You are here; I know there is more out there. I know there is…” he paused, trying to find the right words. “There is something beyond.” He waved his free hand at the walls for emphasis. “I want to know what that is,” he squeezed. “To experience it.”

Heleer replied far too quickly. Dan realized she must have been playing this conversation through in her head all day long. She had been planning this for a while. “You don’t know what is out there,” she said, squeezing hurriedly. “I don’t either. But you know what you have.” She put her free hand behind his head, drawing his attention to her face. “Isn’t that enough?” she said aloud.

Dan had to think a moment before he replied. “Once,” he squeezed after a moment. He looked at her. He’d have to tell her at some point; it might as well be now. She wouldn’t like it, but he had to tell her. “Once,” he repeated, “but not anymore. I got out. Before you, one night I was rescued. I saw sky, felt sand, breathed air… I saw the world beyond.” Dan looked at her, trying to convey some of his fervor. It was difficult when the medium was nonsense and squeezing.

“I know there is more than I dreamed of. Once my life was enough, but not now. There is more to life than contentment. I know. I know there is potential, out there. I don’t know what, but I know I have to find out.” Dan found Heleer’s eyes, trying to tell her through his look how important this was to him. “I have to,” he repeated aloud.

Dan waited. How would Heleer react? He knew enough about her to know that anything having to do with beyond the walls would make her close off and stop talking.

It was hard to tell what Heleer was thinking. For the longest time she just sat there, looking at him. Emotions flickered across her face, each chasing the other and then reappearing. Dan tried to tell what they were: Disappointment? Frustration? Maybe. The most common one, however, was fear.

Fear? Fear of what? Why should Heleer be afraid? All Dan felt when he thought about getting out was excitement.

“Dan,” Heleer said aloud after a minute, and then stopped. She seemed to be considering what to say, or how to say it. She frowned.

After a moment of silence, she lay down and rolled onto her side, facing away from Dan. He doubted she had given up. Dan lay down as the lights clicked off. He hadn’t heard the end of this. He knew it. But as he lay there, looking at the ceiling, thoughts and ideas racing through his head, the only thing he felt was excitement. He felt close. Close to getting out, close to realizing exactly what was out there. He could almost feel it.

Heleer was back on her side of the bed, sleeping soundly, when Dan woke. She was facing him however. That was new.

Dan propped himself up on one elbow and looked around. Nothing had changed. Everything was the way it should be. He, however, felt different. It was as if last night had been some sort of turning point. He glanced at Mother, and saw her completely differently. She was no longer Mother. She wasn’t even a ‘she’. It was just a camera, and nothing more. A camera put there to watch him.

‘I’m going to get out,’ Dan thought to himself. ‘One way or another, I’m going to get out. I’m going to find out what makes that light, I’m going to see what’s past the horizon, and I’m going to find my parents.’ Just thinking about it made him excited.

He glanced over at Heleer and was momentarily surprised when he saw she had opened her eyes, and was watching him. She was frowning, too.

“What?” Dan asked.

She didn’t say anything. Neither did she have any time to. The lights clicked on, and they both automatically got out of bed.

Throughout the day, Dan became more and more convinced that they were prisoners. Now that he was thinking along those lines, he began to notice things, things which when he thought about them, began to appear entirely different.  

For the first time, he realized that instead of offering them several types of food for meals, the soulborgs were actually denying them any choice in the matter. Dan wanted to choose his food. It made no sense, since the only difference was the color (it all tasted exactly the same), but the inability to choose stung Dan. He couldn’t say why.

For the first time he was actually angry that he couldn’t walk further, and that walls enclosed him wherever he went. If this really was a fortress designed to keep them safe, as Heleer suggested, why was he kept in such a small place?

For that matter, why was he isolated? Dan had Heleer now, and she had parents. He knew there were other people. Why would he be kept from them? The only reason Dan could think of was that this was a prison, and they were all prisoners. If one decided to escape, others might follow, unless they were all isolated from each other.

By the time SR was over and Dan stepped out of the Unit, he had realized just how limited his life truly was. Though he couldn’t realize the full extent of it, he was beginning to understand that he had been kept ignorant about a lot of things. The soulborgs had limited his knowledge along with everything else, so that he wouldn’t even know what he didn’t have.

Throughout the day, anger had been boiling in Dan, building up until he saw everything about the soulborgs through a mask of hatred. He glared at the camera, now no longer Mother, as he showered. He glared at the Barrier while he ate. In fact, he glared at everything. It all came from the soulborgs.

It might have been this which Heleer noticed. It might have been the fact that he wasn’t eating. It was probably both. Whichever it was, she put down her food after watching him for a few moments, and asked him what was wrong.

Dan glanced at her. She, at least, wasn’t part of this. She didn’t come from the soulborgs. But she didn’t understand. She thought the soulborgs were protecting them. It was understandable. She hadn’t escaped. She hadn’t seen the horizon. She was ignorant, just as Dan had been. She didn’t know what she didn’t have. Dan would need to convince her, but he didn’t know how. She needed to see what was out there, and he saw no easy way to do that.

“Nothing,” he said. He silently picked up his gray block of food and began eating it.

However, Dan’s reply was not good enough for Heleer. He was surprised when she touched his hand after they had climbed into the bed. He glanced at her. She gave him a meaningful look, and then said something which made no sense: “What is the name of a wrong meal, Dan?”

“The… name… what?”

She repeated herself, but this time Dan realized something else. She was squeezing his hand when she said certain words. He put them together: “What is wrong, Dan?” His eyes widened.

“Where? How?”

She shook her head to silence him. Dan understood. For whatever reason, she didn’t want the camera to hear or see what they were saying. To one who couldn’t see when Heleer squeezed his hand, they would appear to be saying nonsense

“My father taught me,” Heleer said, squeezing at the appropriate words. “He was paranoid soulborgs were watching. Why are you angry?”

Dan had to think for a minute about how to reply. It took a few seconds before he came up with a nonsensical line which used all of the words he needed. “Soulborgs,” he squeezed back. “All this is wrong. They’ve limited everything.” He paused. “I have to get out.” He knew Heleer wouldn’t want to hear that, but she had to sometime.

Heleer’s lips tightened, and she looked down. Dan, however, had just realized something. For whatever reason, he had remembered the first time he saw Heleer, huddled in the Shaft, watching him. The Shaft. Of course! That was a way out!

“Heleer,” he quickly squeezed to her, “can we escape through the Shaft?”

The lights clicked off, plunging them into blackness.

“No,” Heleer squeezed back. “There is a hatch in back, but it is bolted shut. I know; I tried to open it.”

Dan wondered briefly why Heleer had tried to get the hatch open, but the thought fled from his mind. A hatch. A hatch in the Shaft. That had to be it. That had to be the way out. All they had to do was get that hatch open. But if it was bolted shut, how could they open it?

Dan lay down, staring up at the ceiling, thinking. Heleer remained sitting, watching him, but when he didn’t move or say another word, she pulled back her hand, and lay down on her side. She was facing away from him.

Dan however, lost in thought, didn’t even notice.

Over the next few days, Dan’s conviction that they were prisoners grew. He went over and over it in his head, also considering what Heleer had said about the soulborgs protecting them. Sometimes he was sure he was right. Sometimes he thought she was. The only thing he knew for certain was that every time he thought about his parents, his desire to see them grew.

After a few days, Dan decided that Heleer was really here to stay. He was eager to satisfy his curiosity about her, and she seemed to want to know more about him, but unfortunately, they had very little time to talk to each other. They could only do so at meals, and they both knew that if they talked too much, they wouldn’t eat fast enough, and the food would be taken away. For this reason, Dan had to watch Heleer closely, and decide what she was like based off of her actions.

One of the first things he discovered was that she didn’t like to talk about what might be beyond the walls. Her answers always became short, and she quickly changed the topic whenever Dan brought it up. He tried to subtly ask her why, but she wouldn’t tell him. Every time he got close to the subject, she changed the topic. He hadn’t even been able to tell her about Darren, and how he had gotten out.

Although he couldn’t be sure, Dan felt like Heleer began to trust him more. His only indication of this was that she wasn’t sleeping as far from him as possible anymore. It was a small thing, but it was all Dan had to go off of.

He was also quickly finding that Heleer knew a lot which he didn’t. She had grown up with her parents, and they seemed to have told her a lot about what was normal and expected, including what was right and wrong.

Before Heleer, Dan had no concept of what was right or wrong, besides what his conscience and basic instincts told him. He supposed people in the SR Unit had told him at some point, but he had ignored them once he knew they weren’t real. Very slowly, because of their limited time, Heleer began to teach him things her mother had taught her, like how patience was a virtue, and lying was wrong. Dan was intrigued by this. He wasn’t sure if he agreed with it all, but he was intrigued all the same.

They passed several days in this way, following the unchanging schedule one step at a time, talking when they could, observing when they couldn’t. Despite having lived together for at least two weeks, Dan still felt like he hardly knew Heleer. And then one night, things changed.

Dan had been asleep for a while. It was the middle of the night. He was just beginning to have a dream about finding his parents (a common occurrence in his dreams), when he was yanked from sleep by the loudest scream he had ever heard.

Groggy with sleep and unable to see anything, Dan struggled to sit up. He felt motion next to him. He heard heavy breathing. Heleer.

Groping in the darkness, Dan reached out for her, and one of his metal gloves found her shoulder. Even with his dulled sense of touch, he could feel her shaking, almost weaving on the spot. It took Dan a moment to realize that she was crying. She was trying to muffle the sound with her hands, but it didn’t do much to disguise the fact that she was sobbing without restraint.

A nightmare. Dan had had them before. That must be what had happened. He instantly felt like he should do something, but he didn’t know what. He tried to think back to the last time he had had a nightmare. What had he needed? He thought hard. He had wanted his father. Someone there to let him know it was all right. That it wasn’t real.

Dan slid closer to Heleer, moving his hand behind her and resting it on her far shoulder. Her sobbing only increased. Dan wasn’t sure what to do. “It’s all right,” he said. “It isn’t real. It was just a dream.” She was still crying, and Dan realized she was actually shaking too. Just because she was crying, or out of fright, he couldn’t tell. Unsure what else to do, Dan just repeated himself to her, trying to put some calmness into his words.

Eventually Heleer stopped shaking, although she was still crying. Thinking that what he was doing must be working, Dan kept up a steady flow of reassurance, lightly patting Heleer’s shoulder as he did so. Tears still leaked through her hands, but her crying had at least lessened in volume.  

After a few minutes, Dan was just beginning to think that this was slowing too, when she did something he could never have foreseen: she rolled over onto her side, right next to him, and laid her head down on his shoulder.

Dan hadn’t expected this. For a moment he just sat there, wondering what to do. But as Heleer continued to cry quietly, he brought his arm around her and held her close. It was the only thing he could think of.

His fingers brushed something, and looking, he saw that her hair was just touching his gloved hand. ‘Not now,’ he thought. But he did it anyway. Almost without thinking, he found his hand on her head, in her hair. He quickly changed the motion to something Heleer had told him her mother had once done: he began to stroke her hair. He was very gentle, because he knew his metal gloves were a lot harder and a lot colder than a normal hand.

Slowly, Heleer began to calm down. Her breathing slowed, and her crying subsided. She drew closer to Dan, and settled more comfortably against him.

“What was it?” Dan asked quietly.

“SR,” Heleer said. “Something I saw in SR. That and… something else.” She took a shaky breath, but didn’t say anything more. Dan didn’t press her.

After a time, Heleer fell asleep where she laid. Dan was careful not to move a muscle, not wanting to wake her. The only thing moving was his hand, still stroking her hair. Dan stopped the moment he realized he was still doing it.

By this time, Dan’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the faint blue glow of the Barrier. He looked around at the darkness, and then back down at Heleer. There was that calm face again. Gentle breathing, a slight frown; Dan realized she must trust him a great deal to sleep so close to him. He didn’t want to lose that trust. He wanted to protect it. But he looked at her face again, and realized something else as well: there was more to protect than just her trust. Much more.

There was Heleer herself.

Dan sat there for a few more minutes. He was tired because it was still the middle of the night, but he wasn’t in the best position to go to sleep. The most he could do was lean back a few inches. The thought of actually trying to move Heleer to her side of the bed never presented itself. Unable to really lie down, Dan was forced to look straight ahead. He saw Mother in the hall beyond, watching him.

Heleer twitched in her sleep, and Dan instinctively held her closer. He looked at her face, now ruffled with a dream. ‘The SR Unit did this to her,’ he thought. ‘She woke up because of it. She was afraid because of it.’ Dan felt a surge of anger at the SR Unit, which when he thought about it a moment later, made no sense whatsoever. The SR Unit was just a machine.

Dan glanced at Mother. ‘But that machine came from the soulborgs.’ He glanced around. ‘It all comes from the soulborgs. The walls, the Barrier, the schedule,’— he paused as he saw Mother again, still watching —‘and the cameras,’ he finished.

He remembered what Darren had said, about how the walls were keeping him from something, and that there must therefore be something to keep him from. He remembered too what Heleer had said, about trusting the soulborgs, and how they were protectors, keeping them safe from the dangers outside. But as Dan looked at his small home, the place he had grown up in, he suddenly realized something: this was no fortress, designed to keep them safe. This was a prison, designed to keep them content. It was a prison, and the soulborgs… they were the guards.

Despite this train of thought, Dan’s fatigue was beginning to catch up with him. His eyes were growing heavy, but he saw Mother one last time before they closed. In a brief moment of clarity, he realized she wasn’t watching over him. She was watching, always watching, to make sure he never tried to escape.

A flicker of light caught Dan’s eye. The light was back, dancing on the far wall. Dan watched it for a moment, wondering what caused it. He wanted to know. He wanted to see beyond the wall. In the seconds before he went to sleep, he promised himself one thing: he would find out what made those lights. One day… one day he would know.

Dan woke early the next morning. The first thing he did was roll over and see if Heleer was still there.

She was. She was still curled up on the floor, facing away from him. Relief and excitement flooded Dan. So it hadn’t been a dream then. She was really here.

He lay there watching her for a few moments. She was still sound asleep, her breathing gentle and steady. Her hair fell from her head in graceful curves and spirals, looking for all the world like a light brown waterfall, frozen in time. It looked smooth and soft, and Dan found himself itching to touch it, to feel it, to run his hand through it.

She wouldn’t want you to. The cautionary voice was his mother’s. At least, it was the voice Dan had imagined for her. You know that. If she wakes up, she’ll be angry. ‘Yes,’ Dan thought. ‘If she wakes up. If I’m gentle, she’ll never know.’ His mind decided, he slipped silently to the floor and made his way over to her.

It was still dark, but Dan had been in the dark in the SR Unit before, and Mother and the Barrier provided just enough light for him to see where he was going. He knelt down beside Heleer, completely silent, and looked at her hair, soaking it in with his eyes.

Dan knew he had to be careful. Very slowly, he reached out a hand, and traced the line of an outlying strand with his metal finger. He could barely feel it through the glove, but he saw it bend and curve under his touch. The sight intrigued him.

He went further, finding a whole lock which twisted and fell to the floor as one. He traced this too, but found that he still could barely feel it. He looked at his gloves in exasperation. Not for the first time, he wished he had never jumped at the Barrier.

Determined to feel the hair for real, Dan used two fingers. He could see it bend and shift as he touched it, but the touch was too light. He still could hardly feel a thing. Being as cautious as he could, he used his whole hand, inserting it behind a portion of Heleer’s hair and letting it slip through his fingers like so much water. And finally, finally, he felt it. It was smooth. It was soft. Dan was amazed at how supple it was.

Unfortunately, he had gone too far. Heleer woke with a jolt, flipping around to see Dan crouched right beside her. She immediately scrambled to her feet and backed towards the Barrier, staring at him with a look which – while he didn’t understand it – Dan found very disconcerting.

“Don’t do that!” she said, her eyes wide.

Now while Dan had known that Heleer wouldn’t want him to touch her hair, he hadn’t known why. Some instinct had told him she would react this way, but the reason eluded him. He was therefore simply curious.

“Why not?” he asked.

Heleer looked at him incredulously for a moment (Dan found the look fascinating). “Don’t you know not to creep up on someone like that when they’re sleeping?” she said.

“No,” Dan said. “I’ve never seen anyone sleep before.”

Heleer made a sound of disbelief. “Of course you have,” she said. “What about your parents?”

“I never knew them,” Dan said.

There was a pause. Heleer looked at him blankly for a moment. “Why not?” she asked.

Dan shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “The first thing I remember is waking up in this room when I was little. I don’t remember anything before that, including my parents.”

Heleer’s whole demeanor slowly changed. The shock and anger in her face slowly drained away, becoming replaced with what Dan could only describe as sympathy. He found this an odd emotion to exhibit.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I wish I had known them, or at least be able to remember them, but, I mean, it’s fine.”

“Fine?” Heleer echoed blankly. “They’re your parents. How can not knowing them be fine?”

Dan couldn’t really answer this. Growing up without his parents, Dan didn’t really understand what it meant to have them. He knew they had been there at one point, and he often wanted them with him, if for no other reason than to have someone to talk to, but did he really miss them? No. How could he? He had never known them in the first place. He wished he could remember them, certainly, but he had lived just fine without them. So to him, not having them in his life really was fine. It was something he didn’t like, but something he had lived with as long as he could remember. Not knowing how to answer Heleer, he instead latched onto what she had said.

“Did you know your parents?” he asked.

“Yes,” Heleer said, a hint of hesitancy in her voice. “I did.”

“What were they like?” Dan asked. Perhaps by hearing what Heleer’s parents were like, he could catch a glimpse of what his own must have been like.

“I grew up with them,” Heleer said. “They were… They loved me. And I loved them.” She looked at Dan. “I can’t imagine not knowing who they were, or what they were like. Do you know what happened to them?”

Dan shook his head. “No,” he said. “But they’re out there. They’re waiting for me.”

The metal slab extended from the wall, bringing breakfast. Both Dan and Heleer automatically moved towards it.

“How can you be sure?” Heleer asked as she sat down.

Dan thought about it for a moment. “I guess I can’t,” he finally said. “But I feel like they are. I hope they are. They’re out there somewhere, beyond these walls, beyond the—”

Dan had been about to say, “beyond the horizon,” but the expression on Heleer’s face made him stop. On the word “walls,” she had changed, her mouth suddenly going tight, her hand motionless, holding a piece of food halfway from the tray.

“What?” he asked.

Heleer put the piece of food in her mouth and chewed slowly. “I don’t think you should think about what’s beyond the walls,” she said at length.

“What? Why?”

Heleer took another bite. “Well think about it,” she said. “The soulborgs put you here and wiped your memory. There must be a good reason for it. I trust the soulborgs. I wouldn’t go looking for something they made me forget.”

It was Dan’s turn to pause. He had never thought about it that way. Now that he did think about it, why couldn’t Darren be wrong and RR right? Dan had seen the walls, but they could just as easily be keeping something out as keeping something in. Maybe it really wasn’t safe beyond his home after all.

But then, in the hallway beyond the Barrier, on the far wall, Dan saw the same flickering lights he had seen several days ago; the shimmering display of white and blue, dimming and growing against the wall.

Watching those lights, Dan felt a sudden surge of excitement. His parents could be out there. He knew it. They could be just beyond the horizon. Why wouldn’t the soulborgs want him to know them? What harm could there possibly be in it?

Maybe there really was something dangerous beyond the walls of Dan’s home. Maybe there wasn’t. But the longer Dan thought about it, the more convinced he became that his parents could be out there. And what was a little danger compared to the prospect of meeting them?

Throughout the day, Dan kept waiting for Heleer to disappear. He was sure she would soon go back to wherever she had come from, and he wanted to spend all the time satisfying his curiosity about her that he could. She never left, however.

Dan was shocked when, after breakfast, he and Heleer ascended the stairs and found the second SR Unit to be open. Heleer walked over and got in it like it was the most normal thing in the world, closing the door before Dan even had time to say a word. She glanced at him as she stood there, waiting for the Unit to start, perhaps wondering what he was staring at now.

When the walls turned to white mist and Heleer was hidden from view (‘So that’s what it looks like from the outside,’ Dan thought), Dan was sure that she was gone for good. He would step out of his own SR Unit in several hours, and she would be gone.

But he was wrong. She was there when he got out. She showered first just as she had last night. She was still there after he had showered. They ate dinner, and then it was time for bed.

By this time, Dan was itching once more to feel Heleer’s hair. It might have seemed like an odd desire to anyone else, but not to Dan. For one thing, he had never seen hair remotely as detailed as hers (he now knew the SR Unit took shortcuts with such things as hair). The sight of it made him extremely curious. That and the fact that his gloves tantalized him, letting him feel just enough only to know that he wanted more, contributed to his burning desire to feel the softness of the strands flowing through his fingers once more. He knew however that she would never let him, so he formed a plan.

He let her sleep in the bed.

He moved over to one side, allowing her to crawl in and lie down (admittedly as far from him as possible). She rolled over so she faced away from him, just as Dan had thought she might. He waited. It seemed to take forever after the lights had clicked off, but eventually her breathing slowed, and became more even. Dan propped himself up on one elbow to check. She was asleep.

Excitement began to course through him. He sat up a little straighter so that he could use his left arm. He reached out for her hair, so close, flowing over the pillow, but stopped just inches away.

When he sat up, he had seen her face. She was sound asleep. Her eyes were closed, her mouth in a slight frown, and a stray strand of hair lay across her forehead. Dan looked at her face. It was without doubt the calmest thing he had ever seen.

Her eyelids fluttered briefly as her mind slipped into the shadow of a dream (something Dan knew from the SR Unit). Watching her lying there, perfectly calm, Dan realized something: she trusted him. Maybe not entirely, but she certainly trusted him enough to sleep in the same bed. She knew he wanted to feel her hair. She trusted that he wouldn’t do it, and here he was, about to do it anyway.

Dan gently lay back down. The knowledge that she trusted him gave him an odd feeling. It was something he had never felt before, a sort of calm excitement in his chest. Somehow, he knew instinctively that if he betrayed her trust, it would take him a long time to get it back. Maybe he never would.

He tried to define the feeling he had. He finally settled on ‘protection.’ That wasn’t quite right, but it was close. He was protecting her trust. He knew that if he felt her hair, that trust would be destroyed, and along with it the sense of protection he now had. He didn’t want to lose that sense.

Dan turned his head and glanced at Heleer. For the first time since meeting her, he began to see her as an actual person. She was no longer just an attraction or a spectacle, something to be marveled at. She was a person, with her own desires and ideas. She wasn’t like anything dreamed up by the SR Unit. She was real. She was like him.

Dan turned back and stared at the ceiling, thinking. If there was one thing Heleer had shown him, it was that there was indeed a world beyond his home. She was just one person, and Dan knew it would take him years to discover everything about her, possibly much longer. What else could be out there? What else could be waiting to be discovered or experienced?

Dan glanced at the walls surrounding him and the Barrier keeping him in. ‘I am a prisoner,’ he thought. ‘Darren was right. There’s so much out there, and I’m being kept from it. I have to get out.’

He turned back and looked at Heleer briefly. ‘And I will get out,’ he thought. ‘In time.’ There was nothing he could do right now, except be ready when the chance arrived.

He looked at Heleer a moment longer. “Good night,” he whispered.

Then he rolled over and was asleep almost instantly.

Heleer emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, her hair wet. Dan blinked. He had never seen hair wet like that. His own short hair dried almost instantly.

“Why don’t you dry your hair?” he asked as she came into the bedroom.

She looked at him, a hint of confusion on her face. “I did,” she said. “It takes time to dry.” She glanced towards the bathroom. “Your turn.”

Dan obediently got up and went to the bathroom, although he was unable to stop looking at Heleer until the wall separated them. How long would she be here? She couldn’t possibly stay the night, surely. He had so many questions. Dan took the fastest shower he could remember.

When he was done, he found Heleer sitting in a chair, the table of metal extended out from the wall before her. A tray was already there, and she was eating. Dan looked again. There were two trays. One for him and one for her. He glanced at the wall. Sure enough, another chair was there, waiting for him to unfold it. He pulled it from the wall, and sat down across from her, pulling his tray towards him.

For a time they ate in silence. Heleer kept her eyes pointed downwards, focused on her food, but Dan couldn’t stop looking at her. This was the closest he had been to her, and he kept noticing new details.

The first difference he noted was her skin. Dan had light skin, but hers was… darker? Tanner? Dan wasn’t sure how to describe it. The color was very close, but just ever so slightly different. He kept looking between her and himself, comparing the color.

The next thing Dan noticed was her hair. He had never seen long hair outside of the SR Unit. It was light brown, virtually the same color as his own, but it looked different: smoother somehow. Dan longed to reach out and feel it. Fortunately, for all of his inexperience, he knew that spontaneously running his hands through Heleer’s hair was probably not the best idea.

It wasn’t until Heleer glanced up briefly that Dan had a chance to see her eyes close up. Out of everything, he was intrigued by them the most. Dan had seen plenty of eyes in the SR Unit, but now that he saw Heleer, he realized just how fake they were. Technically they were exactly the same, but Heleer’s eyes had a certain depth to them. Dan felt like there was something behind those eyes, an actual person with actual emotions. By comparison, everyone he had ever met in the SR Unit now seemed flat and lifeless.

Wondering how the eyes could be so different and yet look exactly the same, Dan looked at them, glancing from one to the other. He became so obsessed that he didn’t even notice that Heleer had finished, until she looked up and noticed he was staring at her.

“What are you doing?” she asked after a moment.

“Your eyes,” Dan said, still staring at them. “They’re… I’ve never seen anything like them.”

Dan couldn’t tell what Heleer thought of this statement. At first it seemed like she might ignore it, but then she frowned.

“Could you not stare at me, please?” she asked.

Dan had grown up in complete isolation, aside from RR. Even though she had been the only person Dan had known until now, Dan saw her so rarely that she didn’t really count. That left only the imagined and the fake for company. Dan knew this perfectly well, and knew equally well that he could ignore whatever they said if he wanted to. With virtually no experience with real people, this attitude spread to Heleer. Dan had no concept of caring for others’ feelings, and he saw no reason to stop what he was doing.

“I don’t want to stop,” he said, fully expecting that to be the end of it. He continued to stare at her.

“I want you to stop,” Heleer said.

Dan had encountered resistance before in the SR Unit. But it had all been fake. There had been no need to listen to it. The fact was, he had no idea how to respect another’s wishes, even if he had wanted to. Which he did not.

In reply, he just continued glancing between Heleer’s eyes.

“Please stop staring at me,” Heleer said again. Dan ignored her. After a moment, Heleer did something Dan could never have anticipated: she closed her eyes.

Dan hadn’t expected this. She was far more stubborn than anyone in the SR Unit. “Could you open your eyes?” he asked.

“No.”

“But I want you to.”

Heleer kept her eyes resolutely shut. “I want things too, Dan. The world doesn’t revolve around you.”

Whenever Dan heard something he didn’t agree with, his first instinct was to just ignore it. He couldn’t ignore this, however. He wanted to look at Heleer’s eyes, and she still hadn’t opened them. He wasn’t getting his way, and that forced him to confront what she had said.

Dan had been the only one in his world until a few short minutes ago. As far as he knew, the world did revolve around him. However, confronted with a girl who wouldn’t do what he wanted, he realized that couldn’t be true. She had wishes, and those wishes were clearly just as powerful as his own.

Dan had no intention of giving up, but he realized that he would get nowhere. He realized that Heleer would actually fight him: something no one in the SR Unit had ever done. He lowered his eyes and resumed eating his food.

Eventually Heleer opened her eyes. Dan didn’t look back up, although he couldn’t help but glance at her from time to time. He was now more intrigued by Heleer than ever.

The metal slab of a table slid away shortly after, taking two empty trays with it. Dan and Heleer got up, folded their chairs, and put them back in the wall. Dan then crossed the room, and got in bed, just as he had done for his entire life.

Dan always slept in the middle of the bed. There was no reason for him to sleep on either side. Heleer came to a stop next to it. While the bed was made for two, with Dan in the middle there was no room for her, unless she wanted to sleep right next to him.

“Could you move over?” she asked politely.

Dan looked up at her. Move over? Why? He had slept in the same place as long as he could remember. He glanced down and saw that there was enough room for her to sleep in the bed as well.

“Why?” he said. “There’s plenty of room.”

“There’s hardly ‘plenty’ of room,” Heleer said.

Dan just stared at her, amazed at the emotion in her voice. Somehow the SR Unit had never conveyed that.

Heleer asked again, and Dan refused. Besides seeing no reason to move, he was now curious to see what she would do.

After asking and being denied again, Heleer turned away. “Fine,” she said. And to Dan’s astonishment, she crossed to the far wall of the bedroom, and lay down against it directly on the floor, curling up as best she could.

For any normal person, the sight would have been enough to sway them. Not Dan. He was far from hard-hearted. He simply had no experience with real people, and he didn’t quite see Heleer as a real person yet, complete with her own wants and needs, and the determination to achieve them. To him, she was more of a spectacle than a person. More something to wonder about, than someone to talk to.

The lights clicked off, and still marveling at her, Dan rolled over. The last thing he heard before sleep found him was Heleer’s steady breathing at the other side of the room. In and out. In and out.

A few days after RR had spoken to him, Dan realized two things. Firstly, he knew he wanted to get out, and he believed he could. He knew there had to be something out there, because everything – the walls, the Barrier, RR herself – were trying very hard to keep him from it. This also meant that there had to be a way to get out in the first place; why else would there be walls and barriers?

The second thing Dan realized – after a few days of racking his brains on how to get out – was that he was stuck here. He couldn’t get out, no matter how much he tried. However, because he believed there must be a way, he decided that the opportunity would eventually present itself. He had gotten out once before, hadn’t he? Maybe it would happen again. All he had to do was wait for it.

Knowing this changed Dan’s daily schedule. Everything remained the same, but he threw himself into completing each step, knowing that he had to be ready, always ready. When the opportunity to get out presented itself, he would take it. He wouldn’t pass up a second chance to see the horizon he now knew was out there.

It was a few days after this realization that things changed forever.

There was very little sense of time in the SR Unit. Things tended to switch from day to night, from inside to out, as the scene shifted. But the schedule never changed. That was why one day, when the SR Unit finally faded, and the walls became transparent, Dan knew something was wrong. He knew he hadn’t been in the Unit long enough. It had ended early.

Confused, he pushed on the door. It opened easily. Dan stood there for a moment, wondering. What was going on? The SR Unit had never, never ended early. What could it mean? Something had to be going on.

Cautiously, Dan exited the SR Unit. Nothing seemed out of place, but glancing through the Barrier to the wall beyond, he could see light reflected. A light was on downstairs. The bedroom light, judging by the position.

Curious, and a little wary, Dan descended the stairs and entered the bedroom. Nothing seemed out of place, except for the light. Dan looked at the ceiling, thinking. Had something happened? Was this the chance he had been waiting for? Could he be about to see the horizon again?

Dan was just starting to get truly excited when a sound met his ears. It was a sound he had only heard a few times before, but he knew what it was: it was the sound of the box in the Shaft coming closer.

What did this mean? The only time the Shaft was used was when RR came to him. Why would she be coming now? Maybe she had taken pity on him? Maybe he would see the horizon after all?

There was a soft thump against the wall. The box had arrived. Any second now, the panel would slide away, and Dan would know what was going on. He stood there, next to the hall, excitement coursing through him. After a second the panel slid into the wall, revealing the Shaft. And there was definitely someone inside it. But it wasn’t RR.

At first Dan had no idea what he was looking at. He knew it wasn’t RR. It wasn’t metal for one thing, and it was much too small. A second later he realized it was a Mariedian, like himself.

The only Mariedian Dan had ever seen was Darren and the two people with him. He had never seen skin, eyes, or hair, besides his own, because they had been completely covered. Not so now. He could see bare feet. He could see small hands. He could see long hair, bare arms, and two small light brown eyes, watching him. And then he realized something else. He had seen all manner of people in the SR Unit, and he knew enough to suddenly tell that the thing huddled in a corner of the Shaft, was, in fact, a girl.

The girl’s eyes widened as she saw him, but then they narrowed. She made no move to get out of the Shaft. She watched Dan steadily, as if waiting to see what he would do.

However, Dan hadn’t the faintest clue what to do. Darren and RR were the only real people he had ever met. He had no idea how to react to a girl suddenly appearing in the Shaft, so he did nothing. He just stood there, staring at her, in a general state of surprise.

It was about a minute before the girl moved. Her eyes never left Dan, but she slowly got to her feet, and took one small step forwards, so that she was just inside the bedroom. The panel slid closed behind her instantly, and Dan heard the Shaft begin to slide along invisible rails, the sound slowly fading away, until it was gone.

The girl looked him up and down, her eyes still slightly narrowed. At length, she looked up and said, “Who are you?”

Dan couldn’t answer. There had been so much else going on when he saw Darren. Here there were no distractions. Everything about the girl intrigued Dan, largely because it was all new to him. He had never seen another person’s mouth move when they talked. He had never seen hair move as the head did (Dan’s own hair was quite short, but the girl had very long hair, reaching to her shoulders). He had never seen any eyes but his own, and it was these he was the most fascinated with. He stood there, dumbfounded.

“What’s your name?” the girl repeated. Her voice wasn’t hard or impatient. If anything, it was a bit scared. It was this last realization which finally jolted Dan back into action. He had never really heard a voice with emotion behind it before, besides his own.

“I’m Dan,” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “Who are you?”

“Heleer,” the girl said.

“Why are you here?” Dan asked blankly.

Heleer glanced at him. “I don’t know. I thought you might.”

Dan shook his head. The longer he looked at Heleer, the more he became curious about her. He had never seen anything like her. She was about his height, so he guessed they were around the same age, but there was so much about her which was different and new. “How long do you think you’ll be here?”

“I’m not sure,” Heleer said. Dan rather thought her voice quavered slightly as she spoke, and he saw her eyes darting around the room, examining the walls and ceiling. “Maybe a few minutes. Maybe a few days. Maybe forever,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

Forever? Forever? He might be able to study this strange Heleer forever?

There was a click behind him, and the lights in the bathroom switched on. Normally Dan would have moved towards it without thinking, but he was rooted to the spot. The novelty of Heleer ruled out all else. Heleer apparently did not have the same problem. She took a step towards the bathroom instantly, but then stopped, watching Dan.

“What?” she asked.

It finally dawned on Dan that staring at her might not be the best idea. He couldn’t take his eyes away, but tried to assume a more natural position. “It’s just… I’ve never seen anyone like you before.”

Heleer regarded him with a slight frown. “So?”

“I’m – I’m just curious. That’s all.”

Heleer suddenly seemed to look closer at him. “What’s wrong with your hands?”

Dan looked down. The gloves glinted dully in the light from the ceiling. He had gotten used to them, though they were clumsy and heavy at times, and couldn’t feel things as well as his old hands.

“Nothing’s wrong with them,” he said. “I just injured them, that’s all.” He wanted to talk about Heleer, ask her questions, satisfy some of the curiosity boiling within him. Who cared about his gloves?

Heleer however didn’t say anything else about them. She looked up at the ceiling, and the light coming from it, then back down at Dan.

“Did you… want to go first?”

What? Dan didn’t have the faintest idea of what she was talking about.

Possibly seeing the confusion on his face, Heleer pointed to the bathroom ceiling. “The light,” she said.

Dan’s mind finally clicked into gear. Of course. The schedule waited for no one. He had found that out the hard way. It must be time to shower.

“Did you want to go first?” Heleer repeated, looking at him politely.

First? Dan had never shared his schedule with anyone. He wasn’t sure he knew how. “Uh… no?”

Heleer looked at him. “In that case you’ll need to move,” she said after a minute.

Dan realized he was blocking the way to the bathroom, and quickly stepped forward into the bedroom so that she could pass. She seemed reluctant to leave the Shaft, but after a moment, moved past him quickly. Dan watched her, too stunned to say anything else.

Dan watched Heleer walk into the bathroom. Something about the way she moved around it instantly told him that she was familiar with the layout, and for a moment he wondered how she could be. He was far too distracted though; the thought fled from his mind quickly.

Heleer walked up to the bin where Dan put his dirty clothes, but then turned, looking at Dan expectantly. Not sure what she wanted, Dan just looked back.

“Could you go somewhere else?” Heleer finally asked.

Dan stared at her blankly. “Why?”

“Because I asked you to.”

Dan was used to ignoring what people said, largely because everyone he had met aside from RR was created by the SR Unit, and therefore fake. Something about the way Heleer said it though made him fully realize for the first time that she wasn’t fake. She was a real person.

“Okay,” Dan said, just as blankly. He moved back into the bedroom and sat on the bed. A moment later he heard the water turn on. He stared at the Barrier, his mind a fog of whirling thoughts and questions.

It must be said that while Dan was exposed to all sorts of information and scenarios in the SR Unit, he was fully aware that none of them were real. He didn’t see them as part of the ‘real world’, because to him, he knew of no world outside of his home. At least, until Darren had come.

Dan had seen plenty of girls before in the SR Unit. But they had never been real, and Dan had treated them that way, as if they were temporary, mere shadows of actual people. Until now, he hadn’t even known if a girl was a real thing, or just something created by the SR Unit. This was why he was so stunned to see Heleer, perfectly real and – for the moment – permanent, in his home. He had so many questions. What was true? What was just made up by the SR Unit? There was too much to wonder about, too much to ask.

He only hoped she would stay long enough to have his questions answered.

When Dan woke again, he immediately knew something was wrong. He seemed to be sitting in something hard, but when he opened his eyes, it was too dark to see what it was. Everything was black. In addition, Dan instantly felt a multitude of bruises across his body begin to dully ache. They were everywhere, but seemed to be concentrated on his back and chest.

It took Dan’s eyes a few moments to get adjusted to the darkness. Slowly, the faintest of blue glows came into view, showing Dan only the roughest of outlines. He looked around, trying to figure out where he was.

He was in a square room. It was dark. The only light came from two blue strips running along the side walls. They glowed faintly, but hardly offered much light. Dan could just make out a single door set in the wall through the gloom. It looked very solid. That was it. Nothing else was in the square room, aside from the metal chair Dan was sitting in. Somehow the plainness, the single door and single chair, the darkness… it started to scare him. What was this place?

Dan tried to get up, but fell back instantly, a terrible sensation in his stomach. His arms… something was wrong with his arms. They felt… wrong. He could feel them, and he could feel the chair they rested on through them, but it was as if the senses were dulled somehow. His fingers also seemed very clumsy to him, and both arms felt oddly heavy. Dan looked down.

They seemed to be covered in thick metal gloves. Dan felt a surge of relief. He lifted one and looked at it. It seemed normal enough. There was no more electricity coursing up and down it, and the pain was gone. Curious as to why he was wearing gloves, Dan tried to pull it off. It wouldn’t move. It seemed to be glued as tightly to his skin as if it belonged there. Dan gave up after a few seconds and just looked at it, wondering. It was a curious glove, covering his hand and going all the way up his forearm, stopping about two inches from his elbow. There was an identical glove on the other arm.

The door opened.

Dan scrambled back, but then relaxed as a familiar figure entered the room, closing the door behind her. It was RR.

RR was a soulborg and, until last night, the only other actual person Dan had ever met. She had been with him since the beginning, and even though he had seen her only a handful of times, Dan felt at ease when she was around. He knew she would never hurt him.

RR was comprised of dark gray metal plates, and an occasional dark blue one. Her eyes, glowing softly from behind a protective screen, were a calming shade of yellow. Aside from the fact that she was metal, she was humanoid, complete with a head, legs, and hands. She now approached Dan.

“Explain,” she said shortly, pulling up a chair seemingly from nowhere and sitting down in front of him. Her voice was not metallic or robotic as one might expect. It sounded perfectly natural, like the voice any woman might have.

Dan knew what she meant. “I was bored,” he said. “I just wanted to see the sky again, but I couldn’t get out. I was bored, and I didn’t know what the Barrier would feel like.”

“So you just jumped at it? Just because you were curious?”

Dan nodded. It was more or less the truth. Something told him that RR didn’t need to know the whole story.

RR sighed. “You can’t do that again. Do you understand, Dan? You must never touch that Barrier again.”

“But I— Wait,” Dan said, realizing something, “you said the Barrier would kill me!”

“It nearly did,” RR said. “We got there in time, but a little longer and you would have been beyond our care. As it is, your arms…” She gestured to the gloves.

Dan looked at them. “What? Why do I have gloves?”

“Those… aren’t gloves, Dan. They’re your arms now.”

Dan stared at the gloves. His arms? What did RR mean? His arms were right here, inside these gloves.

“The Barrier you jumped at is a reactive pulse field,” RR said. “It works by utilizing compressed shockwaves to knock back anything it touches. The force is very powerful. If an object stays in contact with the field for very long, like your arms… well, human tissue isn’t designed to withstand that many pulses per second. Seventy percent of your arms were useless by the time we got you down.”

“Useless?” Dan repeated. “I can use them just fine.” He lifted his arms and opened and closed his fingers to show her.

“Your bones were fragmented, Dan.” RR said. “Your muscle fibers were torn apart. Your veins were gone. Your nerves were overloaded. Your tissue was turned to liquid. A little longer and there wouldn’t have been any arms left to salvage.

“We repaired you with soulborg technology.” RR tapped her own metal arm. “We were able to fix the muscles and bones, but the nerve damage was extensive. The pulse field overloaded them so quickly that they couldn’t sense much fine input through all the static feedback. We had to set up a resonator in each arm – a small-scale replica of the pulse field – to imitate the effects. That way the nerves sense what they expect, and can tell the variations which are sensory inputs. You won’t feel things quite the same way ever again, Dan, but at least you’ll feel something.”

Dan looked at his gloves again. “These are my arms?” he wondered aloud.

“They’ll be as good as the ones you were born with,” RR said. “A bit stronger, a bit sturdier, but a bit less sensitive to what they’re feeling. You’ll have to get used to them. You can do that later, however. Right now, we need to talk about you.”

“What about me?” Dan asked, still looking at his glove-arms.

“Do you want to leave your home?”

The question caught Dan off guard. “Do I — Leave — What? No! Of course I don’t want to leave!”

“Then why didn’t you get in the SR Unit this morning?”

“I was excited.”

“About what?”

“I just wanted to see the sky again. To feel the sand. It was totally different than the SR Unit. I could feel the sand pushing against me, it was—”

“Stop.” RR held up a hand. “Dan, listen to me. You must not leave.”

“But… why?”

“You are safe here.”

“I was safe out there, too.”

“You were abducted and nearly blown up. You were very far from being safe.”

“But… But Darren seemed like a friend. I liked him.”

RR was silent for a moment. Then she got up, and leaned forward close to Dan. “Look at my shoulder,” she said.

Dan looked, and as he did so, the metal changed, fading, warping, until a red shape was visible. It was the outline of a red triangle, with a smaller triangle attached to each edge. He looked up at RR expectantly.

“That is the symbol of a friend, Dan,” RR said, sitting back down. “Whenever you see that symbol, you will know that you can trust the one who carries it. Anyone who does not wear that symbol, or carries a different one, is an enemy. Do you understand me, Dan? You cannot trust them.”

“But Darren wasn’t an enemy,” Dan protested. “He kept me safe.”

“No, Dan,” RR said. “He took you away from us. He took you where it is dangerous.”

“But…” Dan remembered what Darren had said. “But there’s nothing out there. I saw it, RR. It’s just a bunch of sand.”

“There is more than a bunch of sand out there, Dan,” RR said, her tone serious. “If you try to leave again, I cannot guarantee your protection.”

“What do you mean?” Dan asked. “What’s out there?”

RR’s eyes flashed briefly brighter. “Redacted.”

Redacted. Dan’s heart quickened at the word. He had only heard it mentioned with one other topic before.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean redacted. I can’t tell you what’s out there, Dan. It’s for your own safety.”

“But—”

“Enough.” RR held up a metal hand. “I’m doing this for your own protection, Dan. Do not try to leave again. Even if you were to get past the Barrier, there is no way out of this place. Do you understand me? No way out.”

Dan had no memory of being returned to his Home. In fact, he couldn’t remember anything after RR had spoken to him. It had happened a few times before, so Dan knew that the soulborgs had wiped a portion of his memory. The next thing he knew after speaking to RR, he was sitting on his bed, watching the Barrier with a frown. RR’s words still echoed in his head. No way out. No way out.

“Why are they keeping you from getting out? Because there’s something to keep you from.”

Dan remembered Darren’s words. RR could say what she liked, but Dan had seen what was out there. For the first time in his life, he began to doubt RR. Maybe Darren was right. Maybe she was trying to keep him from something. Then there was the matter of ‘redacted’.

One of the first things Dan could remember asking RR was where his parents were. The answer had always been the same: ‘redacted’. Who they were, what they were like, why he couldn’t remember them, the answer was always ‘redacted’. Dan knew what the word meant, but he had come to associate it with his family. Now that he knew whatever was outside his home was also ‘redacted’, he couldn’t help but wonder: what if his family was out there too? What if his parents were waiting for him somewhere beyond that dune?

It was probably a foolish hope, but Dan chose to hope for it all the same. It gave him something to do. And he did want to know who his parents were, and why he couldn’t remember them. Until Darren had shown him the outside world, it was in fact the only thing he had wanted.  

Dan clung to that hope throughout the rest of the day. He sat on his bed and imagined what his parents might look like. He pictured cresting the dune of sand and seeing them at the bottom, waiting for him.

When Dan’s dinner finally slid out of the wall, he pictured his parents eating across from him. When he crawled into his warm bed, he pictured lying next to his mother and father, wondering vaguely if that was why the bed was so big. It must be. It certainly wasn’t made for just him.

Dan thought about this. ‘Maybe that means that one day they will be here,’ he thought. ‘Maybe RR somehow knows that, and made this bed large so they would have a place to sleep.’

And so Dan’s imagination went, excited thoughts chasing excited thoughts. It was long after the lights in the ceiling had clicked off that Dan finally fell asleep, his dreams full of cresting horizons and faces he couldn’t quite recognize.