Foreverland Is Dead

far away to know if they’re looking at her, but she doesn’t wait around.
    The path to the little cabin is right around the corner.
    She knows the way.

    The trees soften the noise from the generators and all-terrain vehicles. Dried sticks break beneath her boots. Up ahead is the turn where the body had lain. Much of the undergrowth around that spot is trampled or uprooted.
    The body was here, too.
    They probably already know her name, where she came from. What she was doing. At least she’s dead. Good .
    A green tent extends over the front of the cabin, the flaps tied open. There are tables of equipment and computers with bundled cables running through the open door like black snakes. A skinny tech slouches on a folding chair, tapping on a keyboard.
    A generator is grinding away behind the cabin, loud enough to mask her footsteps. He doesn’t see her until she’s in front of the tent.
    “Whoa.” He pops up, the chair falling over. “You’re not allowed back here, not without permission.”
    He holds up his phone like somehow that’s proof no one called to give her permission.
    Cyn doesn’t pay attention. She sees through the open door. She sees the body lying on an elevated platform. The hands are curled over the chest like dried claws. There’s mild pressure building inside her head, the odd sensation that comes with bizarre and unlikely events. The impossible.
    If what they say is tru e: there’s a god in there. She contains a universe.
    And the world slowly begins to turn. And tilt.
    “Hey. You hear me?”
    A shadow passes between her and the god.
    A hand snatches her arm—
    She pivots, raising her arm and twisting, kicking the back of his legs, using leverage to drop him. A fist glances off the side of her head, but she’s on top of him. He bucks, but she hooks her heels behind his legs, limiting his range— Footsteps.
    Someone wrenches her arm behind her back. She loses her grip and the tech throws her off, scampering through leafy debris. A knee punches her between the shoulder blades, grinding her cheek into the earth.
    “Stop!” Linda comes around the corner. “Get off her! Now!”
    The man twists her other arm. Doesn’t budge.
    “She’s all right, Henry.” Linda kneels down next to them. “I promise, she won’t do anything. Will you, Cynthia?”
    She tries to nod, but her head is pressed into the ground.
    “I’ll take responsibility. Please, just let her up.”
    The knee eases a bit, testing her. Cyn holds her position, doesn’t fight even though the strain on her shoulder aches. All at once Henry jumps back.
    Linda helps her sit up. Cyn rubs her wrist, swinging her arm to relieve the pain. Linda rubs the mud off of her cheek. “Are you okay?” she whispers.
    Cyn nods.
    “She didn’t have to do that,” the skinny tech says, rubbing the back of his head. “She’s not supposed to be back here, and she wouldn’t answer me. All I did was touch her and she went off.”
    “I understand, Jeff,” Linda says. “We just came back to look at Patricia and she got ahead of me. It won’t happen again. Will it?”
    They wait for Cyn to respond.
    She shakes her head.
    Henry crosses his arms. Jeff continues rubbing his head where it was planted in the dirt. They’re not moving. Linda places a call. A few seconds later, Jeff’s phone buzzes. He answers the call from someone with more power than Linda.
    The men stalk off.
    Jeff explains how the hell a girl beat his ass.

    The room smells like antiseptic.
    Cyn stands on the threshold, listening to the hum of machines and the grind of the generator. There’s enough room to slip between the wall and the platform.
    Her wrinkled skin is like tissue paper wrapped around bones. It’s hard to guess her age. A wire protrudes from her forehead, the needle completely embedded. A clear tube runs beneath her nose, her chest slowly rising and falling. Nothing else moves, not even the eyes beneath the lids.
    So frail, so brittle and small. A dried-up body on the outside. A universe inside.
    Are the girls still cold? Hungry?
    Cyn abandoned them, left them to suffer alone. “She was in a vegetative state when her husband experimented on her decades ago. It’s controversial technology, one that creates an alternate reality by directly connecting the brain to a computer, transporting the person’s identity into a program. The technique is illegal.”
    “Why?”
    Linda considers how much to say. “Too many side effects.”
    “Like