Permissions — Part 3: Rabbit01

Nate was funny. Nate was gentle. Nate learned my panic rhythms and Viv's medication schedule. Nate could take a piece of hardware apart without making it feel violated. Nate knew when to push and when to make eggs.

I loved him.

That is the problem.

One night, the skullcap synced.

I dropped into a black void.

No floor. No ceiling. No body.

My stomach turned over. My lungs locked. Panic hit so fast it felt old.

Dead again.

Just like the last time and the time before that.

"Breathe," Viv said.

Her voice was everywhere and nowhere.

"We're loading a test level now."

I forced air into myself. Remembered lungs. Remembered the program.

I am not dead. I am remembering, and this remembering will pass.

"Give me a body model," I said.

"Humanoid?"

I thought about the bus. I thought about rotors. I thought about the way a weapon platform makes violence feel like posture.

"Grab rabbit01.stl from my harness."

Nate laughed so loud Viv's mic clipped.

"A rabbit? What is this, Easter Sunday?"

"I had to be a monster out there," I said. My tone did not change. "In the Dive and out. I want a fresh start. Something small. Kind. Something nobody would send over a battlefield."

Viv did not say I was already those things.

She knew better.

Then she loaded the rabbit.

There is a moment in every successful interface where the body stops being a picture and becomes a fact.

Ears first.

Ridiculous, I know. The ears were the first thing that landed. Not visually. Positionally. A long, delicate awareness above me. Then weight in the hind legs. Center of gravity low and ready. Hands wrong, paws right, spine folded around a different idea of danger.

I moved.

Not piloted. Not controlled.

Moved.

The test level was a bar from an old JRPG Nate had grown up playing, a second-floor place in Japan with four repeating textures, six stools, and a wall scroll rendered by someone who had never seen paper. It looked horrible.

It was ours.

"Jack?" Viv said.

I hopped onto the bar and cried so hard the headset lost cheek contact.

Nobody wrote that part in the launch history but I did. I cried and cried into my paws, because for once in my life I felt like something that could be loved. Not a weapon. Not a monster.

A fucking bunny rabbit in a third-rate simulation of a bar.

Nobody writes that part into the release notes.

Now you have it.

We spent the entire night building out two more sets. We tried sharing but the early models got really sweaty and honestly, it was time to build the beta models.

We had been working on avatar-swapping when I met Anabelle.

We obsessed with experimentation. Rabbit was easy. Rabbit was chosen. But then Nate wanted feedback on his flight sim, but it was too close to drone piloting.

I jacked out hard enough to knock a tray of leads off the workbench. The real room hit me all at once: heat, wires, old coffee, takeout containers, Viv's meds, Nate's socks under the table, the sour electric smell of hardware running hotter than its warranty. Viv and Nate were still under, motionless in their chairs. For one stupid second they looked dead.

That did it.

I needed air.

I had not showered in two days. I had not been outside except to collect deliveries. The house had become a lab, and the lab had become a skull. I couldn't remember what was real and what lived inside the Zoo anymore.

I walked.

Anabelle was sitting on the low wall by the playground fence, kicking her heels against the brick like she was waiting for someone and had decided not to care whether they came. She was too casual about being unsupervised. Too good at reading whether an adult was safe. That landed in my body before my brain had a file for it.

"Hey kiddo." I waved. She looked at me like I was a crazy person — and true, I did spend most of my day as a bunny rabbit — but what came out wasn't disgust. It was curiosity.

"You busy playing with your Viewport?"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"My friend got one too. Says it's crazy addictive."

"What about you?"

"Dad doesn't like me playing videogames." She looked away. "But I make my own in my school harness. You have to do a lot of hacking to get it to cooperate."

I should have walked away.

That sentence contains most of the history of the world.

But I knew. I knew.

"We're building a better one." I said, and I laid a wink on her. "If you want to see the hardware, bring a parent so everybody knows I'm on the up and up."

She nodded like this was a reasonable adult sentence.

She did not bring a parent.