Outside:

The oversized chair released the raven-haired girl, who sat up looking miserable. Her eyes were red and her lips quivered as she held back tears. She moved to stand, but the pain won and instead, Saki cried. Hard.

After a while she regained her composure, sniffled and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her grey tunic. What have I done? She didn't know if she loved Mont but feared that calling off their relationship like she had was a mistake. Maybe she should have tried to bring him around, give him a chance. She looked over to the recessed shelf where she kept her non-standard possessions. The items numbered three: an antique book, an old toothbrush and a small knife.

Out of habit she moved to the shelf to retrieve her knife. She studied its razor-sharp blade, mirror-like, its metallic surface reflected back the windowless walls of her small round apartment.

She sat back onto the chair, she pulled up her sleeve to reveal dozens of small angry red scars on her forearm. She picked a clear spot of soft, pale skin and with the tip of the blade cut into it, slowly drawing down to make a small gash. The pain was sharp and intense. She sat on the edge of the chair and, in the gloom of the small room, watched a slight stream of dark red run down the side of her arm and drip to the floor. Mesmerised by the infinite resolution of the blood as it left her body, Saki knew it to be a gift from the real world. Beautiful and free.

Calm now and satisfied that she was free of the Environment, she pinched the wound and waited for the bleeding to stop.

A short time later, she rubbed the dried blood from her arm and returned the blade to its place on the shelf, then moved to the clothes spencer and removed a new tunic and pair of leggings. For an extra layer of protection from the elements, she pulled the clothes over those that she already had on.

On the way out of her small box-like apartment, Saki grabbed the small faded-green book from the shelf and placed it in a black bag that was hanging by the door. She took the bag from its hook and flung it over her shoulder, slipped on her soft boots and stepped through the iris.

The dimly lit bare grey hall stretched to the left and right, the shadowed recesses for irises to the other apartments making a kind of uniform pattern on the walls. There was little variation or design outside of the Environment, so little things like that stood out to Saki.

Normally she would call up a cap by throwing a few internal op-codes then follow the hall to the left and around the corner to the terminal. From there, she could take the egg-shaped vehicles to visit a user utility or another apartment tower. But today, Saki's destination was not on any official route so she would have to brave the streets and walk. Next to the wide terminal door was a small maintenance chute that would take her to the ground floor.

Down the chute, and around a corner brought her to the building's main entry. For such a large building, the foyer was tiny, grey and dimly lit. She walked to the tower's primary exit. The solid grey door slid open to howling wind. Saki gathered her shoulder bag in close to her chest in readiness for a blast of cold and stepped out, determined, onto the grey empty street.

The midday sun was high in the sky but it was still freezing down on the ground. Like frozen monster tidal waves, a system of massive grey walls enclosed the city. These walls funnelled the wind into selfish shadows that refused to release the chill. Saki wondered if, out of the millions and millions of users that lived in the city, she was the only one who had to get out—outside into the real world? Not to go outside like everyone else just once a year to visit utilities, initiate pairing or update their children, but get outside just for the sake of being outside.

Walking against the wind, she shivered and kept her hands and arms tucked in tight to her body to try and maintain warmth. Even with the extra layer, her clothes were inadequate for outside.

A cap whizzed past, just missing her; she jumped back—an instinctive reaction as she knew that the calculated trajectory of the automa transports, named for their capsule-like appearance, were so precise that they were never at risk of hitting anyone. Still, she couldn't help wishing that the bots would factor in a level of pedestrian comfort. She wondered if 'pedestrian' was even a word these days, It was as if the streets were made to be inhospitable to users. It makes sense, she thought. In a way Mont was right. Why venture out into the cold when you could be tucked away in the Environment, content with a perfect life where everything is a game and the greatest danger is the risk of losing high-res designs to gankers?

In the streets, devoid of landmarks and hedged by the uniform facades of the towering apartment blocks, everything looked the same. Saki called up a guide map on her overlay and set her destination to the river. Now all she had to do was follow the green line.

It seemed that she had been walking forever, and the physical discomfort of being outside was giving Saki second thoughts, but she ventured forward, shivering in the wind, knowing that her destination was close. She turned a corner and could see the grey city wall in the distance. As she approached the wall she could see that it leaned inwards and was massive, taller even than the city towers. The map's guideline in her overlay marked the path dead ahead and terminating into the wall; she prayed that the river she had read about would be on the other side.

The wall, like the street and the towers, was built from a rocklike ceramic surface known as grog that was used in every surface in the city, including interiors. Grog was remarkably hard and also virtually indestructible, so Saki was surprised when the map overlay terminated at a hole that had been, seemingly, melted into the base of the grog wall.

At first she thought that it might be a drain of some type, but the hole was asymmetrical and therefore, she figured, handmade rather than an official easement. This was the opening that she was looking for, made by an outsider many years ago. It was cut into the wall and ground at an angle; she could see light at the end as she peered down.

Saki lowered a foot and felt around for a foothold, which she she soon found. The glass-like surface of the cut grog was slippery, but regularly spaced grooves allowed her to control her descent and, she thought ahead, would allow her to climb back out. The wind whistled above as she entered a new world.

The short tunnel through the wall opened to a ledge bathed in bright, warm sunlight. The wind had stopped almost completely, replaced with a fresh breeze, a coolness pleasantly offset by a warm sun. Saki stood carefully, as the ledge seemed constructed from a strange reddish-brown material. She thought that it could be rusted metal, having seen virtual textures similar to it ingee. Two handrails led down to a scene beside a deep brown river that was, to her, beautiful beyond belief.

A wide bank of emerald-green grass ran the length of the river in both directions. To her left, a giant and lonely tree stood over the space like an ancient watchman. Its great arms, outspread, welcomed her.

She took a couple of tentative steps to the edge of the ledge and placed her hands on the rail. She looked beyond the green and over the river to another high wall hiding what she thought must be the continuation of the city. The river ran up and down as far as she could see. A couple of white birds were gliding in the air over the river. I wish I knew what kind of birds those are, she thought, rarely having seen a real animal. At that moment, she would have been content to spend the rest of the day just watching them fly.

She placed her weight on the first narrow step. It was a little wonky but seemed stable enough to support her. She cautiously made her way down step by step, and at the last, jumped down the to the soft cushion of short grass. The colour of the grass was bright and fresh, and the fidelity so crisp and naturally clear: nothing like the simulated textures ingee, even those at the most expensive resolution. Saki realised that she was seeing the world for the first time.

And the smell, too, was like nothing else she had sensed before. It wasn't what she would call pleasant, but held a musty, natural, earthy quality. It was a sensation she thought she could learn to like.

Scattered all around were little balls of rich black dirt. She picked some up and rubbed it between her fingers. It was smelly, and she figured must be a natural feature until she saw the first mottled brown bird with an oversized flat beak sitting at the edge of the high grass, and then another, and another. She dry retched and quickly threw the dirt back down to the ground, then wiped her fingers on the grass. "Urgh, it's bird shit! Now that's just nasty."

It seemed to her that the ducks had been eating the grass and in so doing maintaining the green embankment. She half expected them to rush up to her like they did to the man she had read about, the one who had discovered this place. But that was long ago; today they ignored her.

The sun had driven the cold from her body, but was now beating down on her cheeks that had been chafed by the wind on the street. She looked over to the ancient tree and spied the shade that its wide canopy provided. That looked like a good spot to set up.

As she approached the bank of the river, she could hear the lapping of the water against the lower foreshore. Another real outside sensation that gave her goose bumps.

The age of the tree became apparent as she neared. Thick branches that snaked out in all directions were so massive that their weight had become too great for the tree to bear, and so many had snapped down to the ground. The gaps between the gnarled old trunk and the branches created a mysterious system of dark, mossy caves. I could just hide under there and disappear forever, she thought, and contemplated the romantic notion of becoming disconnected and living on the outside with only the birds to keep her company.

Under the edge of the canopy, she found a seat on the ruins of an ancient stone wall where she sat and took in her surroundings. But the relaxation that she craved would not come.

She had sought out this place to be away from everything she had known before, to share with her book with a discovery of nature. That was the original plan, but her fight with Mont had been troubling her and began to dominate her thoughts. "This might help," she said to herself as she removed the book from its bag and opened it to a random page—page forty-one. There was a title at the top, 'The Same'. Saki read the first two lines out loud:

   'Tis strange we are thus parted, not by death

    Or man's device, but our own mad will.

Shit! no freak'n way, she thought, excited about the verse that related directly to her problems with Mont, and on a page that she had opened randomly. She continued to read to the bottom of the bound sheet of paper, whispering the words as her eyes led her through line by poignant line until she reached the last.

    --Ay, take thy bitter freedom.

    'Tis the fee of love betrayed and faith's apostasy.

She sat in a daze, stunned by the meaning of the words as if the book had somehow tuned in on the argument and decided which words it would serve. This is the spirit of nature, beautiful, random and unaware. Not like life ingee where everything is served up inert, calculated and coercing.

"Why do you need to read words, when a simple picture can speak thousands?"

Saki almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the voice. An old, balding man in a shiny black full-length coat had been watching her from behind. He moved to her side and gestured to the ample space next to her on the old wall she was using for a seat. . .