I came to and sat straight up. 

 

“Where am I? What’s going on? What happened?”

 

I looked wildly around my bedroom. Jack was laying in bed next to me. Neither of us were clothed. 

 

“Shh, I told you,” Jack mumbled as he rolled over and reached for me, “somebody’s just stressed out, we don’t have to pay attention to it.”

 

Jack trailed his fingertips across my skin and I inhaled. I was not usually bothered by Outside stress, but when Jack touched me I could hear everything.  Jack didn’t want to think about it but it seemed like he didn’t have much of a choice. 

 

I returned his touch and quietly encouraged him to come closer. Maybe Jack didn’t want to pay attention to what was happening, but I did. I had been trying to get a direct line to the Outside for a while, and right now that’s exactly what Jack was. 

 

It didn’t take very much to get Jack going again.  

 

He lost himself in my flesh, and I lost myself in his connection to the Outside. I was only vaguely aware of my body, but Jack was used to me being basically non-functional in bed. He’d been distracting me from my work ever since I sent Andrew back home, and he barely needed to see my thoughts anymore to know what I did and didn’t enjoy. 

 

The Outside was awash in static. There were voices overlapping and arguing with each other, and beyond that I could hear two other voices- Susan and Katelin. All the other voices were us. Almost everyone had their eye on the Outside, and whatever was happening caused a massive internal upheaval.  If I focused on one voice I could follow the signal to its source. 

 

Marco was there, and Kasey, and Artemis, and David, and... 

 

The list goes on, but there was one voice that seemed to be an authority and I didn’t quite recognize it. I *almost* recognized it. It glimmered with familiarity but I couldn’t match it to anything in my memory. 

 

It was the voice that steadied us when it seemed like the swelling of emotions was about to boil over. I focused on it. 

 

Whoever it belonged to was concentrating on the task at hand. He didn’t notice me. He didn’t feel me picking up stray thoughts and motivations. 

 

He knew everything.  

 

A lot of it was hidden behind walls and diversions, but there was something close to the surface. It had to do with what was happening right now. It was the reason Marcy attacked Jack. It was the reason she disliked intimacy. I could tell this secret was heavy, but I wanted it. 

 

Had somebody hurt her?  

 

I was getting close. I could almost see it, but I knew if I went too quickly he would notice and shut me out.

 

I let Jack distract me for a brief moment. I kept my mind near the familiar yet unknown voice, but I let myself feel my body.  If I was half here and half there I reasoned that I would be more difficult to detect. 

 

“There you are,” Jack murmured in my ear. “What are you doing?”

 

*Shh*, I thought at him, *I’m almost there.*

 

I clung to Jack and focused.  I chipped away at the barrier one little bit at a time until I could slip inside and look around. 

 

I gasped. 

 

I knew. 

 

I squeezed Jack and shuddered. Tears pricked my eyes as a rush of emotion crashed through me. It took me a moment to notice that Jack was in the same state. We breathed in unison and braced against each other.

 

“Oh my god,” Jack breathed, “Marcy.. Marcy’s a boy!”

 

“Shh!” I shushed him and glanced around. I was disoriented and I wasn’t sure how alone we were. “Nobody can know that we know. Somebody has been keeping it a secret, and he wants it to stay that way.”

 

“But it explains so much!”

 

“That doesn’t matter. We can’t do anything with this information, Jack, or it’ll be taken away from us. Marcy doesn’t even know. Nobody knows.”

 

“Oh my god that’s why she’s so angry!” Jack started to get out of bed and I grabbed his hand. 

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“I have to go talk to her— him.”

 

“No. You don’t.”

 

“But-“

 

“I *will* restrain you, Jack. And don’t correct your pronouns. We have to act like we don’t know. We can never bring it up again. Ever. You understand?  The moment things settle down Outside we have to pretend we never learned this.”

 

I opened my ocular display and created a new file. 

 

“What are you doing?” Jack asked. 

 

“I’m making sure I can always remember, even if someone takes it from me.”

 

In the file I wrote

 

“Fools remember all

Tomorrow waits for no one

Make fond memories”

 

I hid it in a folder buried deep inside a series of other folders.  Then I thought that a hidden haiku, if found, would be assumed to be code by anyone who discovered it. So I made a folder simply titled Haiku and put it in an appropriate location.  I wrote a handful more in separate files and saved them to the folder. 

 

“Ok, Jack. I realize this changes everything, but do you think you can pretend you don’t know?”

 

Jack watched his hands as he picked at a loose thread in my blankets. 

 

“Jack?”

 

“Yea I guess,” he huffed without looking at me. The corners of his mouth pulled downward. 

 

“Are you upset?”

 

“You *used* me for information, Seth!  *Yes* I’m upset!”

 

“*You* used me for *sex*!  What’s the problem?  What’s the *difference*?”

 

Jack got out of bed and started pulling his cloths back on. “I specifically told you I didn’t want to focus on what’s going on Out there, and then you used me to focus on what’s going on Out there!!  And now I know something I can’t tell anyone about!  I can’t even act like I know it!  You’re making me lie, Seth!”

 

“No, Jack, it’s not lying it’s *omitting*-“

 

“It’s the same thing!”

 

“Disagree.”

 

“Whatever!  Seth!”

 

He stormed out of my bedroom and I followed him as quickly as I could while pulling on a pair of pants. 

 

“Jack!” I called after him. “Where are you going?”

 

He was in my computer room, trying to figure out how to make The Everywhere door work. 

 

“I’m going home,” He grumped, “Marcy isn’t looking for me. The only reason I’m here is because you thought she would hurt me again.”

 

Jack scribbled the words “Jack Home” on a scrap of paper and attached it to the door. 

 

“Jack that’s not how it-“

 

He pulled the door open to reveal a high class opium den. He flashed me a quick glare before stepping in and slamming the door behind him. 

 

“Alright,” I sighed, “I guess it works however you want it to.”

 

I pulled the scrap of paper off the door and looked at it. Jack Home. The fact that it opened to the opium den and not his literal home seemed like an important insight about him. 

 

Jack had issues. 

 

I opened his feed on my computer and settled in to watch.

 

“Jack, what’s the matter?” A woman I recognized as Lizzy regarded him with sympathy. 

 

“Nothing!  I hate my family, and I don’t want to talk about it!” Jack barked. 

 

Lizzy touched him gently in an attempt to soothe him. When he didn’t soften she brought him something to smoke. When he was good and high Lizzy asked him again what was wrong but he still wouldn’t discuss it. 

 

“It’s nothing,” he sighed heavily, “it’s not important.  I don’t care anymore.”

 

I closed the window and stood up to pace behind my chair. I didn’t like that Jack was upset because of me, but I had other things to think about right now. 

 

I had a window of time and I wasn’t sure how long it would last. The One Who Knew Everything was almost certainly responsible for making sure everyone else *didn’t* know things.  I had a feeling that he could see our thoughts and edit them, (I mean, how else would he do his job, right?) so I could only work with this new information while he was preoccupied. 

 

The rest of the time I would have to be disciplined in not thinking about it. 

 

This had to be the reason Reggie always felt like there was something wrong. It could also be the reason Reggie didn’t seem to have any of her own memories or a life.  She said she used to be Outside all the time, and she didn’t understand why the Core suddenly rejected her.  It could be that the Core was simply no longer tolerating female identities. The girls were vastly outnumbered and none of them had as detailed a world or backstory as the boys.  

 

They were like masks.

 

I allowed myself a brief moment to regret that I couldn’t explain any of this to Reggie. 

 

Then I created a new file and began writing things down.  Everything I thought of that could be related went into the document. When I couldn’t think of anything else I titled the file with an arbitrary number then hid it somewhere deep in the system files on my computer. In the haiku from earlier I created a shortcut that would open the file when a word was selected. I picked ‘for’, a word with absolutely no significance in this particular context. 

 

I saved everything, and closed all the windows, then sat and stared at my desktop.  With Jack gone I couldn’t really tell what was going on Outside. I couldn’t know if whatever-his-name-is was still busy. 

 

I anxiously tapped my fingers on my desk, then I opened several video feeds. Marco, Kasey, Artemis, David, and the Core. 

 

The Core was frightening to look at. It was glowing white and sparks were flying out of it. There were various different sources of light surrounding it, each in a different color. They moved around the Core like rolling fog, sometimes moving into it, sometimes moving away. 

 

Everyone’s feed was chaotic. They were all washed out by a bright light and each of them were shouting into the source of it.  They could all hear each other, but the voices were echoing and distorting so nobody knew who was speaking. Some of them were arguing. Some of them were trying to calm things down. All of them looked agitated and tired. 

 

I closed the windows again and put Reggie’s code on my door. 

 

“Knock knock,” I said as I opened it. 

 

Reggie looked up at me from the couch. Her mouth was pulled into a pout and her hands were fidgeting in her lap. 

 

“Hey,” I said, “you wanna come hang out at my place? Or.. I could hang out here?”

 

Reggie looked down at her hands and didn’t say anything. 

 

I hesitated by the door for a moment before I quietly closed it and went to sit next to her. I wasn’t sure what to say. I should ask if she was alright, but I could tell that she wasn’t. 

 

“So.. I guess you know what’s happening?”

 

“Mmhm.”

 

“It’s gonna be ok,” I offered. 

 

“Yea I guess.”

 

I tried to think of something else to say. 

 

“Um.. do.. you want a cup of tea?”

 

Reggie shook her head. 

 

“Is.. there.. anything I can do?”

 

Reggie took a beat, then she laid down with her head in my lap. 

 

“Ok,” I said. 

 

I brushed the hair out of her face with my fingertips.  

 

“That’s nice,” she murmured.

 

I continued stroking her hair.