Harley straightened and strolled over to the dining room doorway to inspect the golden plate. “It looks to me like we need to find... two, three... five items and set them in place. Presumably they’re in this room somewhere.”

“A hidden object puzzle in three-dee? That’s interesting.” She got up, nervously trying to tug the bottom of her too-short skirt down enough that she felt less exposed. It was a faint hope and it utterly failed to accomplish anything. “Okay, so let’s look around. What shapes do we need?”

“These are flower shapes. Trillium with three pointy petals, four-petalled... I don’t know what has four petals. Five, six, and more than I can count quickly.”

They started at opposite ends.

“I’ve got something,” Marisa said. “I don’t think I can reach it, though. See? The painting over the couch that changed to a different scene? The top corner has a sort of shape that blends in with the sky and clouds.”

“Good eye. I can get it.” Harley laid a hand on Marisa’s shoulder to steady herself, as she leaned forward and stretched to pluck a four-petalled figure from the corner. In her hand, it looked like gold enameled with swirled blue and white on one side. “And it actually feels like a solid object, despite not existing. Let’s see what happens, shall we?” She strolled over to the dining room door and placed the flower figure into its spot on the golden plate.

Light flashed, and the flower melted into the gold plate, the blue and white enamel shimmering against it.

“Nice effect,” Marisa said. “Four to go, Mistress. It’s hard not to get distracted just by the sheer amazing realism and detail.”

Harley nodded, and reached thoughtfully for an object from a wall-mounted shelf that was now gold filigree instead of oak. “Definitely. I know I’m picking up a dark blue vase painted with wolves and moons, but my eyes and hands are both telling me that it’s a faceted crystal bottle of something red. I’m not going to break it to check, but I need to remember to ask Claudia what would happen. It’s a little unsettling, wondering whether we’d be able to see actual safety hazards like broken glass.”

“Oh, man. She did say they did safety testing, but did they think of that kind of thing? Would we be able to hear the smoke detector going off? Or see someone breaking into the house, or one of the cats in distress? We should definitely ask Claudia about that, Mistress.” That word was getting easier to say. It was going to come out on its own, why fight it?

“Do you see my pad and pen, so I can jot that down, along with a few other things?”

They found it—now a small book with a black leather cover, and a feather with quite a pretty red gradient.

“Inkwell not required,” Harley joked. “Plus-one Quill of Notetaking. Which, I might add, takes a little more care with these claws.” She perched on the chair, back straight and ankles crossed. “Safety about seeing real threats that are out of context, or for that matter a sudden health issue. How invasive is the mind-witchery required to make this so believable... what determines outfits within the game, and is there an option if someone is genuinely uncomfortable with the result. Anything else?”

“Nothing comes to mind, Mistress... oh, maybe, how and why is it actually forcing me to say that? I almost forgot for a minute, there. Mostly just that this is beautiful and so realistic that it could really mess with someone’s mind if they aren’t good at telling the difference between reality and fantasy.”

“Hmm, good point. I am really on the fence about this. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever heard of, but good god, the number of ways that there could be bad consequences even with flawless and comprehensive safeguards in place... On the other hand, I would have to say that this is a massive step in the direction of genuine VR, and an absolutely inspired genius-level integration of tech and witchery.”

“Lots of things look dangerous while they’re new, Mistress,” Marisa pointed out, resuming her search for the flower figures. “Once people get used to them, the risk, or perception of risk, drops because we understand and accept them and integrate them into everyday life. Well, usually. I mean, people still die, or survive but get messed up bad, in car accidents a lot, partly because we take them for granted too much and do stupid things like thinking we can drive just fine after a few drinks. But I know there are other things. Medical stuff, like vaccines, that save lives now but were shocking at the time. Okay, they were maybe a bit more dangerous originally, until we got better at refining them, but still. Possibly half the stuff that kept Claudia alive and lets her be so active now. I think even electricity was seen as impossible to safely control, wasn’t it? Coffee and tomatoes and such from the New World? And most kinds of witchery, for that matter.”

“True, but that list also includes amazing well-meaning inventions like, oh, heroin. I think WyrdTech needs to make sure they have the world’s most complete warnings to minimize the risks of doing harm to someone, both ethically and for their own self-interest. I’m not sure the world is ready for this yet. On the other hand, once something is discovered once, it almost always starts turning up elsewhere in the very near future. I’d rather have the patent for this in the hands of a group of people who actually have a conscience. Are you okay looking while I do this?”

“No problem, Mistress. Notes are important.”

The many-petalled one was against the fancy brassy supports of the ornate mirror that had replaced their television.

She picked it up and turned it in her hand, marvelling at the apparent reality of it. Her hand told her there was substance and mass and texture, her eyes saw the gleam of it... there was nothing to differentiate it from something that had not been created by Reverie.

Marisa took it to the door, and tentatively set it in place. There was nothing at all there, she knew that, but her eyes and her hands both told her that she was touching metal and glass, and she felt the flower piece connect with the plate just before it merged into the whole.

The trillium was in the folds of the heavy drapes over the front window. The five-petalled one was among the exotic multi-coloured blooms that had appeared on the thriving catnip plant that lived on a sturdy table in the front window.

Harley set down the book and quill, next to the two phones and Reverie box on the end table, and stood up. Lazily, she stretched, and scanned the room. “There can’t be many places that you haven’t already looked. This is like hunting for keys before going out.”

“No deadline, Mistress, but it would be nice to find the last one and get on with whatever comes next. I’m curious how the story at the core of this progresses.”

“Likewise. Oh. I think I might see it, but I very much doubt that I can get to it dressed like this. It’s down near the floor.”

Marisa looked at herself, and sighed. “Well, what I’m wearing isn’t going to interfere with my freedom to move, that’s for sure—there isn’t enough of it. It just might mean flashing you. Where, Mistress?”

“There.” Harley pointed with one golden-clawed forefinger, red scales flashing. “It’s blending with the couch upholstery on the end, but too far back for it to be easy to just lie on the couch and reach over or something.”

“Um... I might be able to do it from on the couch, but it would probably be easier from the floor. Maybe you could just not look for a minute, Mistress?”

Harley pointedly turned around, then moved a few steps so that she wasn’t looking at Marisa in the TV-now-mirror.

Marisa knelt carefully, and leaned down and forward, steadying herself on the arm of the couch with one hand. She felt her tail move the opposite way, like a counter-balance, but it really didn’t seem to be very effective. That made sense, since her real mass was off-centre and an illusory tail wasn’t going to be able to functionally compete with real physics, but it was an interesting sensation anyway. Her fingertips felt cool smooth enamel, and she seized it and straightened.

“Got it, Mistress.”

“Safe to turn around?”

“Yes.” Marisa tugged her excuse for a skirt down again, but it wasn’t like it was going anywhere, between the chain garters holding it down and the chains holding it to what passed for a top—and there was nothing under it, she was quite sure of that now. She drew her knees tightly together, rocked forward and up, then back, to get her feet under her. It never would have worked with higher heels. She could feel her tail move in response. With the final flower figure in hand, she crossed the room to the doorway.

“In the interests of proper game experience,” Harley said, “and proper immersion and so on, it might be worth trying to actually roleplay and approach the situation from the mindset of who we’re supposed to be, to whatever extent we can.”

“Easy for you to say,” Marisa muttered. “Yes, Mistress, I suppose you’re right. Avatars and all are a bit pointless if we just act like ourselves. Aside from evaluation and notes on things to bring up to Claudia.”

“Of course.”

Marisa laid the fifth flower figure in its spot on the door.

Like the others, it melted into the background.

Then all five swirled together, and the golden plate split raggedly down the centre.

The woven lattice of blue metal bars unravelled itself, horizontal bars pulling back to alternate sides and sinking into the walls, vertical bars doing the same into ceiling and floor.

“Pretty,” Harley murmured. She picked up the notebook and quill, and strode over to the doorway.

The dining room, despite the walls being lined with shelving units holding the overflow of tested and reviewed items both had kept, did have a round table in the centre with four chairs around it. Any space in the kitchen that might have allowed even a small table had been sacrificed to a small chest freezer and extra shelves to extend the limited cupboard space.

The shelves were now hidden behind a mystical-looking violet shimmer; the bare hardwood floor resembled slick deep-purple glass.

The table had become a white marble pedestal with four decorative carvings arching above the centre—probably marking the locations of the four chairs, or at least their backs.

Harley set the book and quill on the edge of the pedestal, and planted a hand on the surface to steady herself while she took a look at the centre. A spherical black object hovered there, quite a substantially large one at that; it looked complicated, with a lot of different glowing symbols and a lot of coloured threads or wires.

“I’m not touching that without some kind of clue as to what to do with it,” Harley said. “There has to be something. What’s that in the corner?” She indicated the corner she meant with a toss of her head.

Marisa headed for the corner to investigate. “There’s a sort of... well, it looks like a screen that’s turned off, really, on the wall, and two handprints, one on either side. I guess it’s worth a try, Mistress.” She laid her hands cautiously on the handprints.

Both flashed once, and anodized red metal surged out of the wall beneath them. It snaked itself through the rings on her wrist cuffs and then stopped moving, her wrists linked to the wall by short bright red chains.

“What the fuck?” She jerked against them.

“What’s on the screen?”

“What?”

“The screen just turned on. What does it show?”

“It won’t let me go, Mistress!”

“You don’t need to go anywhere right now. You need to tell me what the screen says. Because it might tell us what to do with this thing.”

Marisa gave up. For chains that existed only in illusion and her own perception, they felt very real and solid, and they weren’t budging at all.

Well... it simplified roles, anyway, since there was no question of her helping directly with the thing on the central pedestal.

“It’s, um... it’s a sort of index, Mistress, broken down into sub-sections several layers deep.”

“There’s a real-world game like that, about defusing a bomb, and it’s completely based on communication. I doubt this is a bomb, but it might be the same kind of premise, because neither of us can both see the screen and work on this thing at the same time. So. What’s the first category in the list?”

“Ah... it’s a symbol that I don’t recognize, Mistress. Well, one of four symbols that I don’t recognize. There’s a sort of X with a circle in the top fork, like a very stylized human, or a kind of broken capital T with a star on each side, or two squared spirals extending out from the same central point, or, um, a points-down trident or maybe a bell? But they all have different colours too.”

“Okay. Hold on.” Harley circled the table, slowly. “I see the two spirals. They turn counter-clockwise, right?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“It’s on a tile or maybe a button. It’s glowing red.”

“Red spirally thingies. Gotcha, Mistress.” How many times a minute was the game going to nudge her into the title? “How do I scroll through this thing?” She jerked at the chain on her right wrist, hoping she could get a hand up against the screen to see if it responded to touch.

With an animation of a turning page, it went to the next page.

“Seriously? This is going to take forever! And I don’t remember what page it said.” Experimentally, she tugged on her left, and it flipped back a page. “All right, weirdest way to turn pages ever. And one of the least efficient.” She made note of the page number and started scrolling forwards. She discovered quickly that if she simply maintained the pressure, it moved rapidly through pages until she let go, and then she could adjust back and forth one at a time. “I hope there’s no timer on this thing.”

“Do you enjoy puzzles with timers?”

“No, Mistress. I’d much rather take my time and think about them without artificial pressure.”

“Likewise. So probably there’s no timer. But we won’t know unless we actually run out of time. What does it say next?”