Rhodes opened his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. He blinked. Everything about this sensation felt pleasant, easy, and second nature.

  Rough wooden beams crossed the ceiling above his head. He could even see the scrape marks of a draw knife on the planks nailed to each beam.

  The grain lines in the wood, the position and shape of each knot—it all looked familiar. He’d been seeing the same ceiling above his head for years—every morning when he woke up and every night before he went to sleep.

  The all-too-familiar clunk of an axe splitting firewood drifted through the walls next to his ear. He picked up his head and looked around.

  He was in a house—a one-room house with a fire burning in the big stone fireplace and a table with benches on either side.

  His bed sat against one wall. A carved wooden rocking chair sat in front of the fire with a small three-legged stool next to the chair. That was the only other furniture besides the table.

  He sat up and ran his fingers through his hair like he usually did in the morning—but it felt different this time. He looked down at his hand. It was flesh and bone. He didn’t have implants anymore.

  He wore the same cotton pants, scuffed leather boots, and loose, homemade shirt he had been wearing in the fields.

  The whole conversation with B came back to Rhodes in a flash. He was back in The Grid—in Stonebridge, the town he’d seen in the distance.

  He got to his feet, threw open the door, and stepped outside. A man stood there chopping wood on a piece of sawn-off tree trunk. The man was Fisher—the human version of Fisher Rhodes had seen last time.

  Fisher grinned at him, bent over, and balanced another piece of wood on the chopping block. “Good morning. I wondered if you might sleep all day.”

  “What are you doing here?” Rhodes asked.

  “I live here—just like you do. The Masks are keeping me here. They’re keeping all the SAMs here. It seems like the Masks finally got the message about the battalion needing us around….so here we are.”

  He swung his axe, brought the pointed tip down on the piece of wood, and split it neatly.

  “Where did you learn to do this?” Rhodes asked. “You’re a computer program.”

  Fisher laughed. He laughed much more easily here. He had an infectious kind of energy that didn’t fit at all with the personality Rhodes knew.

  “I guess the Masks can program us to do whatever we need to do. As soon as I wound up here, I realized I knew how to do everything I need to do to live here. I know a lot more about humanity than I did before.” Fisher made a face. “I know more than I want to.”

  He split another piece of wood. Then Rhodes watched Fisher stack all the split wood in the fold of his elbow, carry it to the stack against the house, and pile it on top of a growing wall of firewood.

  He came back, picked up the axe, and started chopping again. He gave Rhodes a look on the side. Fisher’s hair fell in his eyes when he worked.

  “What do you want to do today?” Fisher asked. “I’m supposed to help you out—show you around—introduce you to everyone—generally get you oriented to life here.”

  Rhodes scowled at the town. The other residents went about their primitive business. Rhodes didn’t understand half of what they were doing or how they did anything without technology.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “I guess I’ll just see what’s what here. I guess I’ll find the rest of the battalion and see how they’re doing. Then…I guess…..”

  He trailed off when a woman walked up to him, passed him, and went into the house where Rhodes had just been sleeping.

  She smiled at him as she passed. Her green eyes sparkled and her cheeks colored.

  She was pretty with wavy sun-streaked brown hair tied up on her head. She wore a plain, handmade dress of the same drab cotton as all the other clothes Rhodes saw around here.

  She also wore a grey, hand-sewn apron with a short kitchen knife hanging out of one pocket.

  She went into the house, and a second later, a boy about six years old ran past Rhodes and burst into the house, too.

  The boy slammed the door behind him and silence descended over the town—all except for the low hum of voices, banging noises, and the steady pulse of daily activity.

  Fisher shot Rhodes another smirk. Fisher looked way too happy about all of this. “If you want to see the rest of the battalion, I can take you now. Do you want to go now….or later?”

  Rhodes furrowed his brow at the closed house door and then at Fisher. Rhodes didn’t want to know, but curiosity ate him up inside. “Is there something here you aren’t telling me?”

  “Only where the battalion is. Come on. I’ll take you. They’ve all been dying to see you since you’ve been in the hospital.”

  “They are?”

  “Sure. None of them can stop talking about the way you saved Lauer and Thackery. Everyone misses you. Come on. We aren’t getting anything done around here.”

  Fisher stacked up the rest of his firewood, hung his axe from a hook on the outer house wall, and headed off through Stonebridge heading east.

  A beaten dirt road passed through the town from east to west, crossed a stream over a rough, ancient stone bridge, and wound away through the countryside. The road disappeared behind rolling hills and wooded riverbanks.

  “How long have I been in the hospital?” Rhodes asked.

  “It’s hard to tell,” Fisher replied. “It’s hard to tell anything around here, especially about the passage of time. Everything just kind of blends together—but it’s always nice.” He squinted into the sunshine and cast a critical glance around the town. “Everyone here is really nice and welcoming. It really is a utopia.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” Rhodes murmured.

  Fisher looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “What you said in the hospital. You said it was too perfect.”

  Fisher frowned. “I said that?”

  “Don’t you remember? You said you wouldn’t want to live like this because there were no challenges and problems. You said the interaction between people wasn’t real.”

  “You’re real…and I’m real,” Fisher pointed out. “We’re both real and we’re having a conversation. That must make it real. This conversation is as real as any we’ve had outside The Grid, don’t you think?”

  Rhodes shrugged that away. “I guess so.”

  He couldn’t tell if this conversation was real or not. He couldn’t tell if this Fisher was real or not.

  This definitely wasn’t the Fisher he knew, but then again, Rhodes wasn’t the himself he knew, either.

  He was the same man he’d been before he woke up in Battalion 1, but he wasn’t the same. The man he’d been before would never come to a place like this.

  The place itself confirmed that nothing was the same, not even him.

  Himself with all his implants and all the pain, anguish, and frustration that came with them—even that seemed like more himself than this.

  He really was too comfortable here. That was the problem.

  He also didn’t have Fisher in the corner of his vision anymore. That was wrong. Fisher shouldn’t be a man walking around, talking to Rhodes, raking his sweaty hair out of his eyes, and pulling his sweat-damp shirt away from his back to make it dry faster.

  None of those fit with the Fisher Rhodes knew. Rhodes wanted the old Fisher back—the Fisher who was just a face lingering there in front of Rhodes’s eyes.

  Rhodes could have talked to that Fisher. Rhodes could have talked to that Fisher about how much Rhodes didn’t trust this other Fisher—the human Fisher.

  This town sure was beautiful, though. The blue sky rang high and pure all the way to the tiny wisps of cloud up there. The sun blazed on the fields, warmed the grass, and sent that intoxicating smell wafting on the breeze.

  Animals grazed out there and in fenced pastures closer to town. People walked back and forth tending their animals, cleaning their houses, delivering goods to each other—everyone here seemed happy and contented.

  The place breathed with a kind of energy Rhodes had never seen anywhere, not even in his childhood hometown. Everyone here acted like they had somewhere to be, something to do, and plenty to occupy them.

  No one seemed discontented or acted like they were lacking a challenge in their lives. Everyone Rhodes saw talking to each other engaged in conversation as animatedly as if this town and everyone in it really were real.

  Was that all part of the illusion? Fisher said the Masks could program the town to be anything they wanted it to be—anything its residents needed it to be.

  If it was supposed to be a place of respite and renewal for human beings, wouldn’t it need challenge, engagement, and interrelationships?

  Rhodes couldn’t figure any of that out right now. It was all too complicated.

  End of Chapter 8.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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