Sweating, Hui-chun stumbled into the cyber-cafe. The usual crowd… He sat down at a booth and tried to look around.

She was there.

The crowd was very young. A man took a seat near the window, near a window displaying the Chinese characters for the city of Taipei. A Taiwanese girl with shoulder-length black hair sat opposite Hui-chun, her slender build a product of the heat from the frying pan, and a thin plastic tube extended from her left shoulder to cover her breasts.

She moved to take a seat next to him on the cold foam, her eyes hiding.

“What’s happening?” Hui-chun asked.

The girl shrugged. “I dunno. It’s all just a big game now, you know? Games you play once. You play once and you win.” She smacked her lips. “I played once, and I won’t take any chances.”

“Tell me what you know about Chang-She.”

“She’s dead. Murdered. My bad.” She shook her head. “I guess I killed her, you know? She’s very easy to kill, if you know what I mean.” She sagged into her chair. “I never kill anybody, you know?” She sighed. “I mean, I kill people all the time, but I don’t want to kill anybody.”

Hui-chun stared into her eyes for a long time. They were the only ones he’d seen that day, and he was still trying to process what she was saying. “I guess I guess, yeah. I guess I guess I guess I killed her.” He stared into her eyes, trying to process what she’s saying.

“I guess I guess I guess I dunno, mon, but I guess I did kill her.” She sighed. She smiled. “I guess I was messing up, man, you know. I was, like, going through some routine I had, and I guess I killed her.” She kissed his forehead.

Hui-chun sat back against the foam, letting the wind in. The cyberspace of Taipei had no gravity. She wore a sleeveless mesh jacket with the sleeves ripped out, exposing the black nylon of the insectsilk. She carried a rucksack on her hip, over her shoulders, and a pair of dirty pairs of sunglasses.

“Don’t overthink it,” he said. She was still staring at him. “Don’t think that just because something is real it has to matter in the real world.”

Then, a voice. The man near the window was speaking.

The owner of the voice was a tall, squat figure with a large, expressive mouth. It spoke in an accent that suggested the owner of the cafe, namely, a Russian named Irin. He spoke in a language that had been invented, in the Soviet Union, to convey the impression that a language existed, and that there was a speaker there.

It was the language of machines and the computer.

The man spoke to the girl in the dark, in the language of the computer. She spoke to the man in the language of the machine.

And then the café was empty.