Ghost Code by Negovetich Sarah

Author:Negovetich, Sarah [Negovetich, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2017-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

C:\>NINETEEN.exe

Marching back into the building, I pull the door shut behind me so there’s no way Adam can follow me inside. His words are too much to process right now, and another headache is building between my eyes. Life was so much less complicated when I was just some girl dying from cancer.

Back on my floor, I wave at Samuel but keep my head down and walk straight to my desk. I don’t have the energy for another fill-in-the-blank conversation with whatever programmer is controlling him today.

The new OS is still pulled up on my monitor, but my fingers freeze on the keys. What the hell am I supposed to do now? There were always instructions for my life. Eat this, take this medicine, go through this trial, make an appointment with that doctor. Even when the cancer had taken over and my life was out of control, there was always some protocol to follow. Some next attempt to get me from sick to healthy.

But that’s all gone. There isn’t a standard treatment protocol for figuring out how to live or not live inside a virtual reality.

I mash my hands down on the keyboard, and the screen flickers repeatedly as it tries to follow whatever commands I inadvertently gave it. After thirty seconds, it stops flickering, and the VALR participants page flashes up. The computer must have been running through my access history.

I slide the mouse over the ‘x’ to close out of the page but stop before clicking the button. Just because Adam acted like an emotionless asshole didn’t mean he was completely full of shit. It wouldn’t hurt anything to check out Grant’s story.

Scrolling down the page, I find his picture, though I almost missed it. I was looking for the Grant I know, goofy Chinese kid with a perpetual grin plastered all over his face. Instead I find him, Grant Wong, dressed in a black graduation robe, his mouth pulled into a tight line and his eyes staring blankly out of the photograph.

I click on the picture and read through the brief bio. It’s the same story he told me. A car accident left him in a coma. His parents, Brenda and Stan, placed him into the VALR program so that “our son’s life could have meaning, even in his death.” Short, sweet, and nothing that would suggest Grant was lying about anything.

Still, something niggles at the back of my head. Adam had been so serious. So insistent that I was missing some important detail.

Closing out of the VALR OS, I open up a web browser and type “Grant Wong VALR” into the search engine.

The first several results are public pages on the VALR website and his obituary from the local paper. Exactly what I would expect. Under that are several news stories about the accident. I click to the next page without even stopping to look. No way I want to see a picture of Grant’s mangled car.

The next page pulls up more news stories on

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