Chapter 20

After our little discussion, she made me go back over the guys.  Trust me, I protested, but only in my mind.  Since she did so much for me already, and will be doling out more for me too (I just love being so dependent!), I just can't be rude.  And these are her friends we're talking about!  Granted she has bad taste, but what am I supposed to do about it?

But I gritted my teeth and tried my very best to be polite.

"Hey guys!  Sorry about that."  I looked at Chamille.  "She just had to set me straight with something..."

Then Chamille looked at me seriously, "look, Jezabelle.  They know.  Everything."

I gave her a weird look.  "Like, every everything?"

She shrugged.  "Yes, everything.  They're my best friends and I don't hide anything from them.  Besides, um Brandy didn't specifically tell me to tell no one about...well, you know.  So, I told them."

They both nodded.  "Yeah-it's true.  Chamille has told us everything..."  They looked at each other uncomfortably.  "We don't blame you for hating us."

Chamille looked at them thoughtfully.  "Look, Jezabelle.  You have to break it.  You can't let Brandy control your views anymore.  These guys are great.  Trust me."

I just nodded weakly as I gave my best this-is-a-real-smile smile.  It's pretty hard to change a person's viewpoint on something like this when it's so ingrained in me.  That's like telling someone of the communist party to go democratic.  That's not gonna just happen.

They all looked at each other (yes, I was the only one out of it.  But is that new?  Of course not, but how would I get to be suddenly with it all with three good friends?), and Clyde spoke.

"We should go to the library."

Reese raised an eyebrow and nodded.  "Oh yeah, let's go."

They all touched me, and suddenly I went all ghost-like again, traveling so fast that I couldn't make out the background at all.

When we arrived in the library, I instantly broke away and looked at them.  They didn't even have time to move.

"Okay, really.  What's the deal with you guys?"

They all looked at each other as they had before, and Chamille started to talk.

"Well, I suppose this is the day that you will know who we really are. We didn't actually expect to hide it to you-but until you would believe us...we would keep our mouths shut.  But now-now we can tell you will."

"What are you talking about?"

"We're from the future too....just like Brandy."

"You are..."

"Yes.  We had to come here to keep our eyes on her, but she isn't a priority so we can't do anything about her."

"What about her?"

"Let's get to that later, alright?  One thing at a time!"

"Okay, so teleportation is possible..."

"Yes, from where we're from it is.  But not in this time, it's not."

"Alright..."  I thought I was taking this news pretty well.  Considering my whole life, this was like believing in there being a sky.

"Then why was the teleportation in my life-erm...the virtual reality, why did it involve light and not the...ghost like affect thing?"

"I'm not exactly sure.  Brandy wanted to make it seem believable-and that seems more believable than this form of teleportation.  As crazy as it sounds, she didn't want you to be let on that you were in virtual reality.  Did that thought ever cross your mind?"

Instantly, I shook my head.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I thought!"

"What more can you tell me about Brandy?"

"Well-I'll have to be seeing her soon.  I go in about once a week to check things out, see what needs helping with the virtual reality program.  I'm surprised she hasn't called me yet to say anything about you.  She shouldn't suspect though, because she doesn't know who I really am."

"So she thinks that you live in this time?"

"Yup.  How about we talk later and browse through some books?"

I looked through some books, and Reese was looking at some near me.  Clyde said he was going upstairs to go on the computer.

"Hey Jezabelle-I think I found a really good book.  It's about the history of mathematics."

"Hmm..interesting for you.  I think I found a good science fiction book..."

I had just decided I should try one out, to see what people think the future could be like, since I always thought I was in the future (since I lived in the past before), but...that was wrong.  It was a virtual reality version of a future?  Hmm, weird.

I sighed looking at Reese.  It seemed like he was trying his best to give me a good impression of him so that I may end up liking guys.  But it was no use-if anything, it was making it worse.  He was giving me the (probably false) impression that guys try really hard to impress girls, and of course that goes with the whole wanting-the-girl-to-fall-in-love-with-him theory which goes along with the heartbreak.  Try again later, Reese.

I went to read through my book.  It was called June the Android.  I didn't read that much yet, but I was already laughing at all of the robot "rules" and the way she was acting in general.  If no one was in the room, I probably would've been laughing extra hard.

Reese was sitting beside me reading his 'book', while Chamille was looking at it with him (I don't know...).

"Hey Jezabelle-you know, I am really understanding every word of this.  You should try reading it-I know you're smart enough."

He smiled at me, but I just continued looking at my book, pretending to ignore him.  Who is he kidding?  He hates that book, he probably doesn't understand it at all.  If he did, he would start telling me about something in it.

Chamille tried to step in, "you know, Reese is really smart, Jezabelle."

I looked at her.  "Chamille, this is getting pathetic.  You too Reese.  I'm sorry-but why don't you guys act natural?  This is getting weird.  Reese, read whatever murder book you actually want."

Reese looked at me offended.  Oh please.  You know I can read you like a book.

"Jezabelle, I resent that!  I like to read real books.  You know, the classics.  Like Jane Eyre.  Good stuff."

I raised an eyebrow.  Sure I grew up in virtual reality, but I still knew of that book.

"Jane Eyre, you mean the one about the plain Jane with horrible relatives that went to a house to be the teacher of that little girl, who ended up getting together with the owner of the house.  You like that book?"

"I'm a complicated man."

"Sure you are."

Then we heard Clyde yell up from upstairs between laughs, "Oh my llama, you guys have to see this!"

We got upstairs, and he aparently meant a music video.  I brought up a chair to watch it, not convinced that I was going to like it.  Clyde found it funny, after all.  This is the video we watched [note to readers: I'm talking about the beginning part of this music video.  Watch that in context for the story :)].

I watched the music video, and I was repulsed.  Chamille, Clyde, and Reese were cracking up but I was just confused.

"How was that funny?"

Clyde answered, "oh right, you don't know Rebecca Black do you?"

I shook my head.  "Um...and I'm thinking I don't want to."

"Yeah-I guess it's just a cultural thing."

Yes, thanks so much for letting me see that pointless video.

Clyde looked at me, "sorry, Jezabelle.  Really, I am.  I didn't even think about it-"

And of course, he meant about me not knowing who the heck she is.  Considering how they laughed when she was "run over", I think I should be glad that I never heard of her.

After that, we all went on the computers.  Clyde and Reese were silent and didn't ask for us to 'come and see this super hilarious video'.  In a sense, I'm glad for them for not doing that.  Because then, I would think even worse of them than I already do, and they're already pretty low on my 'like' scale.

I was looking up random things.  Like, journals or something: anything recent.  I know it sounds really weird in every single way, but I was just trying to understand what is different here than of my other 'reality'.  Sure I could ask Chamille, but it's not like she can just make a list of all the differences.  I wanted to at least try myself...

And trust me, some of those journals were very weird.  Some people-like this Evangelline Polark character- tells pretty much everything about her whole life every day on her blog.  It's pretty creepy...she even mentions if she has diarrhea.  She says everything.  I think it's pretty nasty, but she actually has fifty followers.  What's wrong with people?  But besides finding out how..open she was along with other people, I noted how life is different here than my virtual reality world in certain ways.  I was pretty happy, I don't want to go on believing lies.

After a while, we all teleported in front of the library.

"We have to go now."
"Alright, well, I guess we'll see you guys later."  They both looked at me.  Oh my llama, don't even think about it.  I'm untouchable.

So we parted ways, and they teleported somewhere.  Where did they go?  I could care a less.

We started walking down the steps.

"Jezabelle.  You're hopeless.  Snap out of it!"

"I'm insulted!  I'm sorry that your friends are...um...you know!"  I couldn't possibly tell her how dumb they were!

"Jezabelle!  Your head is messed up.  You would actually be liking my friends right now if Brandy never got ahold of you!  They're awesome guys.  Can't you see that?"

"No, not at all.  Enlighten me."

"Oh, it's hopeless.  It was worth a try.  I'm sorry for making you go through that...Brandy is just so powerful...Messing with a nice girl's mind like that!"

"How do you know I'm nice?"

"Oh, come on Jezabelle.  I observed your life, you talked to me, and you knew me as 'giggler'.  You're nice.  Before two guys broke your heart, you were fine.  You just didn't like any before that because all of the ones you knew were stupid, ugly idiots.  Well, news flash-my friends are neither."

"Yeah-I'll give you the handsome part...but they just want me to like them so they'll break my heart."

"No Jezabelle!  They actually like you, and they really want you to like them.  It doesn't mean that they want you to love them so they can break your heart-no!  That's not what all guys are about.  That's what you have to get!  There are some good ones, but then there are the bad apples.  And they aren't bad apples!"

"Okay Chamille."  There's was no use fighting:  I had made up my mind.

"And off we go."  We drifted off.

"Yeah...you gotta stop doing that, Chamille!  Isn't someone going to see and question it?"

She laughed.  "Sure they could instantly see us-but they would never believe it.  But usually they wouldn't see it simply because it isn't ingrained in their nature to believe it.  You could tell that that happened the first time I really saw you because of your strange experiences.  Trust me, we don't have to worry about that with anyone else."

"Okay...um, where are we?"

"We're at the mall.  You don't actually want to walk around in that outfit, right?"

I looked at the old sweatshirt, and my ugly tennis shoes.  Yeah, I didn't like them.  But strangely I liked the jeans.  They weren't super tight like I remembered jeans being in my fake life.

"Yeah-um...good idea!"

It took us no time to walk to the clothing store that Chamille had in mind.  "Here we are!  Trinity's my favorite store.  We're bound to find something.  This is a good time to start asking questions."
"Um...what kind of questions?"

"Well, not that kind."  We both started laughing.  "You know, of your life...virtual reality."

"Oh-right...why did people always go into that one building and could never tell me why they were going in there?"

"That's where parts of the virtual reality program is fixed.  It's quite a confusing process-fixing and changing a virtual reality program.  That is, when you're in virtual reality.  It involves weird processes through the view of a person inside of it...and, it really is experimental...so, long story short, they were 'fixed' I guess you could stay."

My mouth fell open.  "No wonder I couldn't go in there..."

"Yup."

"Um...why couldn't I ever get a job?  Like, the interviewer for this lab company seemed to know me or something..."

"Brandy wanted you to see failure.  She also wanted you to feel dependent on her when you got back...if you saw getting a job as an option, you would be more willing to leave.  But since you already saw that to be impossible...you knew you had to be dependent of her."

I nodded to myself.  I certainly did feel dependent of her when I woke up.

"Alright, let's go in and we'll find you something.."

Chamille started to look through some clothes.  She went through each piece rather quickly, and she was starting to have a lot of clothing on her arm while she looked.  I technically never shopped (I guess that wasn't apart of my 'virtual reality'), so I was finding zippo.  All of the clothes looked weird to me-and I had no idea what size I was.  I just decided to hang back and watch Chamille go.

"So-why did everyone always treat me like a celebrity.  Everyone always seemed to know me..."

"Well, the virtual reality knows that you're 'foreign' and not apart of the program, so it knows that you are the person that's in the virtual reality, so it had to adjust itself for you.  It really is a living world most of the time, this computer program.  Little computer people could be talking anywhere on the world there.  It's pretty complex..."

My mouth dropped.  I've seen some pretty advanced things in my day, but technically this is where it's all from-a virtual reality world.  Can't possibly beat that!

Not too much later, I went into a dressing room to try on all of the garments that Chamille found.

The first couple of outfits were bland, and when I came out in the tank top she gave me, I frowned.

"Ew-you can so see my bra with this.  Talk about no modesty-and it's such a blah color...  But the shoes are kinda cute."
"Yeah, I agree.  It isn't the right look for you.  Try on something else."

"Yeah, that's for sure."

I went back in the dressing room to try on something else.

A few outfits later, I found the one!

"Oh my gosh, it's really cute!"

"Yeah, that looks nice on you.  I love the bright color!"

"Yeah, how come all the women in the virtual reality program always wore bright, solid colors?"

"Well...I guess it goes with why she set the program to the future."

"Why?"

"Because then it would be more believable for you.  You were a very young girl when you were put in the program-but old enough to be suspicious.  Since you thought you were in the future from where you were from-you'd be more likely to believe what was layed before you."

Yet again, I nodded.  Wow, this Brandy lady is really smart and sly.