When V opened her eyes again, the Braindance still hadn't ended.
The sound of the waves was still the same as ever, but unlike during the day, the seabirds had vanished.
She opened her eyes. Stars filled the sky, and the Milky Way stretched across it. Far from the city, the night was deeper. She looked out at the sea, where starlight shimmered.
It was so quiet.
There were no pop-up windows in her field of vision, no occasional crackle of static, no vibration from her Cyberware running.
"Guess this is something only a virtual world can manage."
A sense of loneliness welled up in her. V stared blankly at the starry sky, suddenly realizing that she seemed to have lost the ability to think.
"This is a real place."
Huh?
V turned around in surprise, only to find that Lier was in the Braindance too!
No-seeing Lier was what suddenly made her feel as if she could no longer tell reality from illusion!
This Braindance was too pristine, too real!
"Where'd you find this? If it's real, then where is it?"
"Somalia, off the coast of Africa."
"Sounds kind of familiar. Orbital Air territory?"
Lier gave V a helpless look. In this day and age, the only use geography had in her little head was to identify which company owned a place.
But Lier could only go along with her question. "Right, Orbital Air."
As it happened, the place Lier had chosen to build a base was also in the Kilimanjaro Mountains, where Orbital Air had built its largest launch facility.
After he finished speaking, V stared at the sky in silence, then suddenly swore.
"Fuck, Orbital Air owns a place this nice and just lets it go to waste?"
"More accurately, Orbital Air is in the mountains, which