---

Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa

By M.K. Hutchins

Self-defense class in the virtual reality sim is supposed to be safe. My green dummy-partner lumbers toward me like a particularly unthreatening zombie and grabs my throat. I clasp my hands together, crash down on those green elbow joints, then strike up at its nose with everything I have, just like Mrs. Rodriguez showed us.

Green blood sprays all over me.

I cough, splutter, stagger back. Who’d program a dummy that way? Several girls gape in horror. Two guys start laughing. No one else made their dummy gush blood.

Mrs. Rodriguez smells wounded social prey like a great white shark—Carcharodon carcharias. She hurries over with a plastic-fake, angelic smile. “As you can all see, Anne has gotten into the spirit of things! Excellent work, Anne!”

She’s trying to make it better, but now everyone stares at me. It’s like their eyes have teeth and their gaze is devouring my soul.

I look down, not sure what to do with my face. Smile? Look cool? I don’t know how to look cool. I mumble, “I was just following instructions.”

“Mrs. Rodriguez?” my best friend Luna calls from across the room. “I had to use the VR blink-controls to turn off my dummy—I can’t figure out how to break its grip.”

Luna isn’t just my best friend, she is the best. Mrs. Rodriguez jogs away to deal with this new crisis, and most of my classmates turn back to their own dummy.

PE is the last class of the day. Afterwards, I go with Luna to get her backpack. She’s opening her locker when Dan strolls up. He was in class too, and is probably here to make fun of me.

“That was pretty aggressive,” he says.

I flinch.

“I meant it as a compliment.” Smiling, he flicks a glance at Luna. “Some girls won’t go for it because they’re afraid of looking unfeminine.”

Smashing in the face of my sparring dummy didn’t magically make me less female.

“Right. Thanks.” I want the conversation to end, but Luna’s still sorting her books and he’s not leaving.

“It’s just a dummy. It’s not like it matters if we hurt them,” Dan says, a splinter of something cruel in his voice. “They should let us do sword practice. I bet you could decapitate one of those green freaks. I’d like to watch that.”

My stomach twists and twists, like my intestines are one long boa constrictor. Usually, thinking about boa constrictors makes me happy (their scientific name is actually Boa constrictor, after all) but not now. I don’t know why, but I never want to talk to Dan again.

“Are you ready to go?” I ask Luna.

She zips up her bag. “Yup!”

Dan follows us down the echoey hallway. “Hey, have you seen the new Pirates vs Robots movie?”

“No.” I wish he’d leave, but he’s looking at Luna.

“I haven’t,” she says, “but I want to.”

That makes him smile even more. The two of them keep talking. It’s not until we leave the school grounds that we part ways.

The squeezing-snake feeling in my stomach won’t go away. It reminds me of the time a senior made a pass at me. I’m extra-abysmal at detecting flirting; I didn’t know what was happening until Luna explained afterward.

“Was Dan hitting on me?” I ask.

Luna frowns. “Did you want him to?”

“No.”

Her shoulders relax and her face softens. “Good.”

For the rest of the walk, we talk about interesting things, like the novel she loaned me or the latest scientific kerfuffle over how to classify the platypus.

Slowly, my stomach settles. I’m grateful Luna thought Dan was awful, too.

---

Luna starts dating Dan a week later.

We sit on the grass with our lunches under a clear March sky. Natalie and Mia, the other best-friend pair in our little group, eat with us. Luna dramatically recalls how Dan flirted with her that day after gym. Hearing his name makes me think of a severed green head thumping to the ground.

“…anyway, after the movie, he bought me these earrings,” Luna says, reaching the climax of her story. She pulls back her hair to show off dangling silver hearts. “Now we’re official.”

“Ooh! That’s so exciting!” Natalie coos.

Mia’s all warmth, too. “Congrats!”

There’s a space for me to speak. I know what I’m supposed to say, but I can’t muster up happy lies for Luna. “I thought you liked gold-colored things better.”

She laughs a bubbly laugh. “Usually! But I love these because Dan got them for me.”

---

Dan makes it his habit to walk home with us, so I make it my habit to stay late at the library to do homework. Or to go to the park and read.

It’s funny how I can’t lie to Luna about most things, but I can lie about this. I tell her I need to keep up on my assignments. That it’s easier to work at the library than at home. That whatever I’m reading is really good.

A month later, Dan starts eating lunch with us. Suddenly, I’m not hungry. Suddenly, I have school work to do during lunch, too.

Dan tries to talk to me during PE when I can’t escape. Thankfully, my school accommodations include earplugs and, in VR, the ability to mute everything and follow the teacher in subtitles.

One night Luna texts me. I miss you.

She doesn’t add heart emojis or smiley faces, but little animals. Penguins and otters and puffins and frogs—things she knows mean more to me than hearts.

Do you want to come over this Saturday? I respond.

Sorry. Promised Dan I’d help him w/ Everyworld. He’s a super talented architect!!!

I look up Everyworld. It’s a popular VR sim. I’ve never been good at keeping up with popular things. I’m still reading about it when my phone buzzes with another text from Luna. Are u mad?

Of course not.

Dan’s hosting my bday party next week in his Everyworld mansion. Hope you’ll come. Luna sends me a link with the date and time.

I’m worried about you, I write. Everything between you and him has happened so fast.

Luna texts back, Worried??? Anne, it’s my job to worry about YOU.

I stare at the words for a long time. If we’re friends, it’s our job to worry about each other. I’m just not as good at it as Luna. She sweeps in and saves me in PE and I…just avoid her boyfriend and don’t even say why.

Maybe it’s time to say why.

He made a weird joke about decapitating dummies. Even as I hit send, heavy failure settles in my gut. I’m the last person who should criticize someone for being weird. I should have called him scary. Unnerving. Something.

At least think about coming ok? Luna texts.

Okay.

---

The next day after lunch, Natalie and I are finishing our science poster on Ignaz Heo, a pioneer in using modern neuro-linked VR sims to train doctors. Out of nowhere, she says, “I don’t know why you have to freak out about Luna’s boyfriend. She adores him.”

“I’m not Luna. He makes me uncomfortable.”

Natalie rolls her eyes. “Everyone makes you uncomfortable.”

It’s not true, but I don’t argue the point. “Can we do our schoolwork and not talk about this?”

Natalie peers at me. “Are you jealous?”

“What! No.”

“Who do you like, then?” Natalie asks triumphantly.

“No one.”

She smirks as she clicks our last photo into place. In a sing-song voice, Natalie chants, “Anne’s just jealous.”

---

Therapist video chat. Thankfully, it’s on my phone, not in a physical office or VR-space; I can squeeze a stress ball off-camera without feeling self-conscious. I curl up in my quiet bedroom, lights dimmed, my weighted blanket over my legs.

Today, I had time to prepare, time to pick words and arrange them so the story of everything happening with Luna and Dan comes out right. I read it to my therapist and try to sound like I’m not reading.

Henry listens with that passive, non-judgey face that is even harder to read than regular people’s. “Maybe Dan is like skinny jeans.”

I doubt it’s what Henry means, but I imagine Dan transforming into a golem made of designer denim, stomping about school and smothering people in his deceptively charming cotton-poly blend.

“You hate tight clothes, right?” Henry continues. “But other people love skinny jeans and feel good in them. Pause and think this through from Luna’s perspective.”

I can hold that reality in my head, the one where Dan is a pair of scratchy, ankle-pinching jeans that Luna inexplicably loves. But the metaphor seems faulty, and not just because being around Dan means that I, too, have to have some kind of relationship with him.

In another setting, I might not say anything, but it’s Henry’s job to help me even if I annoy him. “What’s the difference between skinny jeans and a Gila monster?”

“You’ll have to explain that one.”

Gila monster. Heloderma suspectum. I feel like I’m throwing the poor lizards under the bus, comparing them to Dan.

“You’re telling me Dan’s a pair of skinny jeans—that he’s not venomous. If I generalize this conversation, you’re saying I need to rely on others to tell me how to feel about everything. That’s ridiculous. You gave me a whole book to read on interpersonal safety, and one of the tenets was to trust your gut.”

“Guts can be wrong, Anne.”

“Then teach me the rules, the flow chart, the whatever for distinguishing a right gut from a wrong gut. Skinny jeans from Gila monsters.”

Henry puts on his most-patient face. He can’t tell me. There is no such chart. “Let’s brainstorm some mature ways to handle Luna’s birthday party.”

“Easy. I don’t go.”

“I know change is hard for you, Anne. But there’s enough room in Luna’s life for a boyfriend and a best friend if you let it happen.”

He thinks I’m jealous, just in a different way than Natalie did. I wonder if he’s right.

---

Dan’s had several girlfriends before Luna, but the only one I’ve had classes with is Zoe. In an effort to better distinguish skinny jeans from Gila monsters, I find her during lunch. She spots me standing outside her circle of friends waiting for a moment to interject, and she mercifully steps back and walks to the side of the cafeteria with me. “What’s up?”

She looks exhausted—bags under her eyes. I immediately feel bad for intruding on her. For all I know, her dog died this week or something.

“Umm. You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal. But Dan. Before you broke up. Was he a good boyfriend?”

I’d planned what I’d do if she swore at me or stormed off, but I hadn’t anticipated a wistful sigh. “He was amazing. We spent so much time in Everyworld, building stuff. Talking. To be honest, I’m jealous of your friend.”

“So he broke it off?” Maybe this is why I’m worried. Dan could be the kind of guy who overwhelms someone with affection, gets bored, and moves on.

Zoe shakes her head. “No. I was an idiot. I don’t even remember why I was mad at him. Everything’s seemed dull since I left, like something inside me has died. Tell Luna to hold tight to him, okay? Or, if she doesn’t want him anymore, to send him back to me.”

“Thanks, Zoe.”

“No problem.” She slips back into her group of friends as easily as she left.

I pull up my chat with Luna on my phone. The party’s at a mansion, so I should be able to avoid Dan. And it’s Luna’s birthday.

I’ll be there, I text.

---

My mom goes over VR safety with me again before the birthday party. Stuff like guarding against identity theft. Checking people’s ID numbers on the blink-menu to make sure they’re not a stranger wearing an avatar that looks like someone I trust. How to spot VR-inside-VR traps. Not to panic if my avatar dies; that’d pull me straight into a manual log-off, which takes two hours instead of the regular seven minutes and is incredibly boring, but not dangerous.

Lastly, we review the difference between safe avatar mods, like the bluelight filter I use, and unsafe avatar mods, like linking processing power with another person. Esports leagues temporarily link competitors to ensure there’s not a network speed advantage, but it’s an easily-abused mod.

Dan’s mansion has tall Roman columns, mosaic floors, fountains, marble statues, and plenty of space for cypress trees and square hedges. It’s the kind of place that takes a lot of rendering and processing power. His parents are probably rich.

I’m still getting my bearings in the gardens when Luna sweeps out from the mansion to greet me, an enormous grin on her face. She wears a diamond-encrusted, billowing white dress—like it’s her wedding, not her birthday.

“Anne! You made it! Don’t you love it here? Very Italian Renaissance villa, hmm?”

“Actually, in the Renaissance, the villas had flowers—not solely hedges and greenery. It was people later trying to recreate these gardens who grew them like this. They only found the structural plants in the old gardens and assumed that’s all there’d ever been.”

“I will not call the gardens Renaissance again. But you like them, right?”

They’d be better if there was a chance of stumbling across a garter snake (genus Thamnophis), but it looks like there aren’t even simulated birds here. I didn’t come to nitpick Dan’s aesthetic choices, though. “You look lovely.”

“Thanks!” Luna does a full-circle twirl and laughs. “I feel like a princess. Dan makes me feel like a princess.”

I catch a reddish brown glimmer behind her ear—not part of her outfit. “Luna? There’s something….”

“Oh, I forgot to change it to match.” She blinks rapidly, then closes her eyes. In a moment, it looks like a crystal. It blends.

“That’s an avatar mod, right?” I didn’t get a good look.

She practically swoons. “Dan wanted to get matching FindYou mods. Isn’t it romantic?”

“It’s for tracking you?” I ask. “On your universal avatar?” He’d be able to locate her in any VR program.

Luna waves a hand. “You’re making it sound creepy.”

I’m pretty sure that means it is creepy.

“I shouldn’t stay away from the party for long,” Luna says.

I follow her indoors. At one end of the hallway, a staircase descends to an oddly plain wooden door. “Is that a cellar or something?”

Luna hooks her arm through mine and pulls me sharply away. “No. That’s Dan’s workshop. He’s super-particular about it. He really doesn’t want anyone touching his stuff.”

“What does he need a workshop for?”

“Designing architectural masterpieces, of course! He takes commissions, you know. His work is how he affords all this.” She waves at the mansion. “Impressive, huh?”

“I suppose.” It’s not agreeing with her, but it’s also not disagreeing. I don’t want to fight with her on her birthday.

“He gave my avatar authorization to enter any room in the mansion. He trusts me not to disturb him,” Luna says, either proud or defensive of Dan—I’m not sure which.

Inside the grand ballroom, dozens of people are talking and dancing. I find a potted tree to hide next to and wish this was the real world, so I’d have a plate with snacks or something to occupy my hands. I spot Natalie and Mia, some other kids from school, and some of Luna’s cousins. Maybe half of them are wearing elaborate avatars. Costumes, really. Dragonscale skin, fairy wings, bubble gum-pink hair, that sort of thing.

One of them walks up to me—a pirate with a peg leg, hook hand, floppy hat, and an outrageous, neon-blue beard. Just looking at it makes my eyes ache.

“Ahoy! How you be enjoying the party here?”

The beard is terrifying, but his accent is so bad I laugh despite myself and attempt to make small talk. “I’m fine. How about you?”

“Arrr, I’m doing grand.”

He doesn’t move on, so I suppose we’re having a conversation. The best way to avoid awkward pauses is encouraging the other person to talk about themselves. “Where’d you get the idea for that avatar?”

“I’d wager all me treasure that ye haven’t seen Pirates vs Robots?”

“Ah. No.”

He smiles one of those smiles that seems…too friendly? I’m probably the only person in the world who thinks smiles can be overdone. “Well, the pirates in that fine film have all manner of outrageous costumes. So I constructed me own!”

“That’s very creative of you.”

Luna spots us and her eyes go wide. Horrified. She rushes over and I wonder what I possibly could have done wrong. Is Dan particular about who goes near this tree, too?

“Sweetheart, you promised you’d leave her alone,” Luna says to the pirate.

He drops the accent. “But a VR party is the perfect moment for Anne and me to start over. You know how much I want to make you happy. And it would make you happy if we got along.”

I know what’s happening in a heartbeat, but it takes my brain longer to catch up. To reprocess my entire conversation with the blue-bearded man.

Luna frowns. “That’s very sweet, but…”

Dan swaps out his pirate avatar for his regular appearance. He fervently clasps Luna’s hand and kisses her knuckles. “How can I make this right?”

Luna’s shoulders soften. She apparently finds the whole hand-kissing thing really persuasive. “You’ll have to ask Anne.”

Dan turns toward me. I know Luna has good intentions, but the last thing I want is to talk with Dan so he can make amends for tricking me into talking with him.

He stares at me with overly-apologetic eyes. It feels like a performance, one where he knows that a melodramatic apology will cast him as the hero, and I’ll be the villain if I reject him. My stomach is a boa constrictor.

I’m not going to do this, whatever Henry said about mature responses. I activate the blink commands and log out. I vanish. I disappear. It’s one thing I’m actually good at.

---

Natalie sits right behind me in science. That used to be nice.

“She loves him. What if you’re ripping Luna and her true love apart?” Natalie asks, pricking the back of my neck with her freshly sharpened pencil. Not mechanical. It smells like the pine trees at the park, but that smell is wrong here, in this box of a room.

“Black-and-white thinking,” she whispers, jabbing me again. “Inflexible. Lack of ability to read social cues.”

I don’t have any problem understanding she’s angry. I want to call Natalie absurd, controlling, obsessed with conformity. We’re sixteen. True love? I doubt it.

“Technically, I’m not trying to break them up,” I say. “I’m just staying away.”

Another stab, like a mosquito bite. “Overly logical. Difficulty understanding others. You’re supposed to care about Luna. I wouldn’t do this to her even if I hated her boyfriend.”

Natalie always treats me like I’m a list of traits instead of a real, living person when she’s upset.

“I do care,” I say.

“Then why won’t you let us all hang out together?”

Because it isn’t right. It isn’t honest. “Looking at Dan’s face makes me feel like I’m dying inside.”

“Difficulty with eye contact. Emotional regulation issues,” she chides with another jab of her pencil, which, miraculously, is still sharp.

She accuses me of being overly logical, and now I’m too emotional?

Being in a typical school surrounded by typical peers is supposed to help me understand typical social skills, but I don’t understand Natalie. Whatever I say, she’ll insult me. So I fall silent. Instead of learning how to interact, I am learning how to be invisible.

After school, I head to the park, down to the little creek. I curl up between two trees like a red fox—Vulpes vulpes. The leaves’ shadows on the ground make a chaotic-yet-predictable, ever-shifting matrix as the wind rustles them.

Natalie said she’d act the same way even if she hated Dan. That she’d live an illusion for the sake of keeping the peace. Natalie’s relationship with Luna is more important to her than being honest with Luna.

I can manage little lies that no one believes—like that I need to do homework. But I can’t live a lie. Pretending Dan is a great boyfriend would be an utter betrayal of Luna.

I love Luna more than I love my relationship with her. Natalie is like a vampire who feeds on human interaction instead of blood.

I’m the one who is a bad friend.

At home, my mom smiles and asks about my day. “Did you get to see your friends?”

“Natalie and Luna. We have classes together, remember?”

“I’m glad. Spending time with friends is so good for you.”

Right. I should be happy to see my friends, instead of feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. It’s one more way I’m broken. I didn’t like seeing Natalie at all today. I wish I didn’t have to sit by her.

---

When school gets out for summer, I think I’ll have more time to see Luna, but she’ll only make plans with me when Dan’s busy. She wants to be available in Everyworld in case he needs her.

It’s two weeks into the break, and I’ve seen Luna once. I spend all morning reading books. Escapism, Henry calls it, saying that novels are a controlled environment that help some people like me feel safe. Except that’s not what it feels like. When two armies are about to clash, when the stakes are impossibly high and the future is about to be irrevocably decided—that’s when all of my feelings click into place inside me and some part of me says yes, this is what life is like. Every decision, every misstep could explode into cataclysmic doom and a thousand years of darkness.

Reading makes me miss Luna. How she’d loan me books she knew I’d like. The way she’d introduce me as her bestie without hesitation or apology. Late night talks I could actually follow. Was that because I knew her so well? Because she knew me? Because it was dark and peaceful and I had a fuzzy pillow to hold? Or because Luna usually wanted to talk about interesting things?

If Luna isn’t my friend anymore, I suppose I don’t have any. Does she still want to be my friend? That’s the kind of question only second-graders ask. High schoolers are supposed to just know. But I want to ask her anyway.

I try to call her, but she doesn’t answer. She’s probably in Everyworld. She might be there all day.

I’m afraid of losing my nerve so I put on my VR set and log in. I still have permission to enter Dan’s mansion, with its imperfect copy of an imperfect copy of an Italian Renaissance garden. I use the in-world chat to blink out a message: Luna, do you want to talk?

I wait, counting my breaths in, then out. A glowing red arrow appears over the mansion, labeled Location shared: Luna. Just in case, I check the ID. It’s her. I rush through the sculpted shrubs and too-perfect fountains to the middle of a hedge maze where she’s curled up, sobbing.

I drop to my knees and wrap an arm around her. “Luna?”

“I can’t log off,” she whispers.

“There’s a glitch?” I ask. “Let’s contact tech support.”

She lifts her shirt. There’s a mosaic of mods half-embedded into her avatar’s stomach. I don’t know what most of them are, and I practically have the VR safety guide memorized. There’s definitely a one-way processing power link, letting Dan leech off of her. And several things that look worse.

“Is that one…an educational control mod?” They’re illegal in our state, but some schools use them to keep kids from ditching VR classes.

She nods. “He said it would show him how much I trust him. At the time, it seemed kinda sexy, but now…”

I nod. I wait. I listen.

“There’s this, umm, experimental mod that…that alters the way you process your VR memories when you log out. He wanted me to get that one, too. Said we could use it to intensify the way we feel about each other. I almost said yes. He’s sort of become my life, you know?”

“Yeah.” I’d noticed.

“And I thought maybe this was the best it got for me anyway. He’s attractive and nice and my first boyfriend, and I should just…make sure I didn’t lose him. But then I thought of you, Anne. You didn’t think I should feel lucky just to have his attention.”

“Of course not.”

Luna wipes her eyes. “How’d you know to come? I tried to call you, but…but one of the mods is blocking my messages.”

“I didn’t know. I came to ask if you still wanted to be friends.”

Luna crushes me in a hug. I think she needs it.

“Let’s go someplace and delete those mods,” I say.

Luna shakes her head. “School control mod. I can’t alter any of them myself. There’s a tool in his workshop that could do it—he used it to put the, uh, less-legal ones on—but I don’t want to go down there. And I can’t contact tech support. He’s blocked that, too.”

I could call tech support, but it probably wouldn’t get flagged as an emergency because my avatar isn’t in distress. A response could take days. Manually logging Luna off from inside her house is a shorter process—only two hours—but I don’t want Luna stuck in Everyworld when Dan returns. She can’t hide, not with the tracking mod on her neck.

“Well, I’m happy to fetch the tool you need,” I say, “even if I have to burn his workshop to the ground to get it.”

“You don’t have permission to unlock the workshop. I…I guess we can go together.”

As we hurry through that stupid, pretentious mansion, I use blink controls to send a short message to my mom: Luna’s in VR trouble. She can’t send messages. I’m helping her here, but please tell her parents to start a manual log-off, just in case.

Mom shoots back a message right away. Are you all right? What happened?

By then we’re going down the stairs to that plain wooden door. I’m not great at texting while doing anything else, and this requires my full attention. Later.

Luna puts her hands on the door. There’s an exaggerated unlocking sound. Then she pushes it open.

There’s a table with blueprints stacked on it. The rest of his workshop holds bodies. Eight teenage girls. Lifeless. Hanging in weird tubes along the wall. There’s a few empty tubes at the end of the row.

Luna wraps her arms around herself. “I don’t…what…what is this?”

“A VR-in-VR trap. Well, one kind of VR-in-VR.”

There’s a picture of this one in my safety book. Keep the actual universal avatar somewhere, locked up, with a constant processing-power link to siphon from. Create a sub-avatar that shows no signs of the offending mod, so the victim doesn’t realize they’ve been hacked. The girls’ brains would try to compensate for the lack of proper VR support—the mental equivalent of squinting at a book that’s blurry. Symptoms included clumsiness, migraines, and exhaustion.

Dan might be selling some architectural plans, but he got the processing power to render his mansion in a far worse fashion. I spot Zoe near the end of the line. Her universal avatar looks as worn out as the real-life teenager.

I think of what Dan said months ago. It’s not like it matters if we hurt them.

He feels that way about more than sparring dummies.

Behind me, Luna yelps. I spin away from the bodies. In the desk drawer, there’s a screwdriver-looking tool with buttons on the handle.

“That’s it. That’ll take the mods off. But it burns if I try to pick it up.”

I hurry over. I can grab it; I can even touch it to Luna without hurting her. The pain must have come from the control mods Dan stuck on her.

“Do I just…slice under the mods?” Suddenly I’m not sure this is a great idea.

“Yes. I’ve watched him take mods off himself that way.”

I inhale. I exhale. I can do this.

But then footsteps thunder toward us from the hallway up above. We both startle. I drop the mod tool. In one terrible heartbeat, I remember Dan has a FindYou mod on Luna. He knows she intruded into his workshop. He’ll be here in seconds.

“Authorize me to look like you,” I say.

“What?”

“Do it!” I blink a permission command into existence in front of us. Luna taps it. My skin, hair and height all shift into a precise mirror of hers. I shove her behind the desk just before the door bursts open.

Dan swears at me. “We have one fight, and you break the only rule I’ve ever asked you to keep!”

I didn’t get permission to use Luna’s voice. I nod helplessly. Dan picks up the mod tool from the floor and stalks toward me.

“I’m going to freeze you, Luna. Then I’ll get to work.”

He presses a button on the tool. I freeze. I try to hold perfectly still.

“Your universal avatar will work for me forever. It’s going to leave you feeling drained and tired and like the only part of your life that was worth living was when we were together.” He grins and touches the tool to my stomach. “I can’t believe I’ve gotten away with doing this to nine girls now. Let’s start by maxing out the school controls.”

But his tool makes an error noise when he tries. Dan scowls and turns it around, looking closely to see what’s wrong.

I’m supposed to be a statue, trapped in a net of mods. So really, he’s not prepared for me to reach out and yank the tool away from him.

I remember Mrs. Rodriguez’s lesson. I remember the way my arms felt that day, hitting the training dummy with my all, just like she’d said to. With every ounce of my strength, I slam the mod tool into his face.

Dan’s avatar doesn’t spray blood. He fritzes, frizzles, and falls to the floor. Limp. Unmoving. Just like that.

I use my blink commands to make sure his avatar is truly out of commission, then exhale. It will take two hours for him to disappear, for the manual log-off to complete.

“Luna, he’s out,” I say, changing back to my own avatar. “He can’t return for hours.”

Luna hesitantly looks around the desk. “He’s really gone?”

“Yes.”

---

I’m still trying to figure out the modding tool when Luna’s worried parents show up. She’s embarrassed about everything, but there’s a lot of hugging anyway. Her parents get a tech moderator involved in an emergency call—it’s not too hard now that there’s a decommissioned avatar on-scene. The moderator takes one look at Dan’s workshop and lets loose a stream of profanity. He calls someone else to get all of Luna’s mods off.

There’s a lot more to do than that, given the eight bodies on the wall. But that’s where my part ends. I log off and go to Luna’s house. We sit together and my mom brings over hamburgers and hot fries and milkshakes for everyone. The food doesn’t fix what’s happened, but it’s salty and sweet and comforting.

Later, I tell my therapist Henry about everything. I can see the wheels turning behind his eyes, trying to catalog all the things we ought to talk about. He says I’m a stalwart friend. That I was brave.

Black-and-white thinker. Cognitively inflexible. Stalwart. Brave.

It’s interesting what words people use when they’re annoyed that you’re not bending, that you don’t fit, that you can’t conform—and what words they use when they’re grateful that someone was unwilling, or simply unable, to act like everyone else.

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Host Commentary

It’s always nice to see a new take on a traditional fairytale – in this case, bluebeard – though perhaps the longevity of these themes are also a little depressing. Predatory, controlling partners aren’t a new invention, but nor are they in any danger of disappearing. It seems that with every technological advance, there are people out there ready to abuse it, to make it a tool of the abuser.  What made this story special for me is the other angles the author brought in: it’s a story of friendship, for someone for whom friendship and social understanding doesn’t come easily. The neurodiverse experience is very well drawn: we’re often labelled as uninterested or incapable of friendship, but the emotional needs are still there. It’s just the baseline rules that get in the way, rules that are anything but self evident, that we need to figure out and derive from first principles. The exhaustion of masking and fitting in, the incomprehensible logic of it, really comes across well, and I hope this story doesn’t just resonate with people like me, but also gives a kind and compassionate window of understanding for others.  There is value in difference, and we should learn to celebrate it.