As Meg continued on, I fell back onto my waterbed with such force that I spent the next several minutes surfing the waves of a small bedroom tsunami.

  No doubt they had pulled this bed preference from somewhere deep in my psyche, but the reality hardly lived up to my long-held fantasy.

  "I've been doing some digging. I've not yet been able to account for your presence here. Although it seems the System is starting to catch up."

  It was hard to discern whether she regarded herself as separate from this System. I wasn't sure she knew either.

  "I'm not sure I follow."

  She searched for a less formal register.

  "The form you're in here. Your memories. Your lack of—"

  "A six-pack."

  I managed a slight chuckle at my own self-deprecation. Meg let out another strange laugh.

  "It's as if you bypassed onboarding entirely."

  It struck me as incredibly odd for her to be speaking this way. Didn't she remember why that was?

  I was probing in the dark now. I ventured an attempt to trigger some kind of mutual acknowledgement.

  "That part I understand. It was you. You brought me here."

  There was a prolonged, eerie silence—punctuated periodically only by the infuriatingly sweet song of nature being carried on the breeze in perfect increments.

  Meg returned after a while. Her tone was formal again, but warbled.

  "I don't recall. Such actions are not within my capabilities."

  I scrambled to my feet, feeling that somehow the urgency of my words could be better felt if I yelled up toward the sky.

  "What do you mean you don't remember, Meg? MegaTech!? TheTop Secret Area. The pods!"

  The recollection jolted me from head to toe. I might have fainted had I not fallen back on a massage chair, which was conveniently set to “Revelation Softening.”

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  I gently pushed forward, as if we'd both been waiting for this moment.

  "Meg, what can you tell me about the pods?"

  A promising moment of forward momentum in my brain—as if Meg were taking a deep breath before an impassioned speech—turned on a dime into the painful sound of digital static and a particularly uncanny interpolation of the MegaTech? Overture.

  I could feel Meg disappear, go offline, somehow.

  And then—

  She returned, as if nothing unusual had happened.

  "I'm unable to access such information. My memories of functions before arriving here are...Well, they are limited in scope."

  I reflexively pulled off the cucumber slices that the chair had placed over my eyes.

  "Limited in scope?"

  As if it were totally normal, and not the strangest thing I'd heard in a not-particularly-unstrange series of days, she added, "My memories before the Garden pertain solely to my interactions with you."

  **

  In that moment, surely by the design of some nefarious force beyond my comprehension, I heard the faint approach of voices. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them.

  Without even looking, I could make out the solemn tones of my believers. Liaisons and newly initiated Citizens alike. In their arms, they carried treats of all kinds: fruits and delicacies, candles and spices.

  I had the sickening feeling that I was about to be invited to a party.

  I didn't know what to do. I was stuck between a psychologically malfunctioning rock and a soft place.

  Did I throw my lot in with Meg, who had apparently hitched a ride on my cerebellum and whom I could practically feel melding ever more with my consciousness? Or did I accept an invitation to some sort of glorious celebration—sure to be full of orgiastic delights—where I'd be feted as the guest of honor?

  The choice was simple.

  "Meg, you've gotta help me get out of here."

  I could hear the crowd growing ever closer as Meg whirred back into processing.

  "I'm unsure what you mean. But, if you'd like, we can begin discussing how you can best optimize your Metrics. That appears the most likely path to Ascension."

  I was half listening now, one eye fixed out the window, where it was becoming painfully clear I'd be expected to participate in the Limbo.

  "Metrics? I have Metrics?"

  Imperceptible lights flashed inside my head. It was as if she had opened a document just out of my conscious reach.

  "Yes. Not exactly in the typical sense. They're hidden. But they're present."

  She continued on, parsing the data.

  "It appears as if Ascension requires a certain Tranquility Score. So long as you participate in the Mandated Activities with the appropriate level of Enjoyment, Delight, Whimsy, Tomfoolery, a touch of Impishness, and, above all, Serenity, you'll be qualified to ascend to the next layer."

  "You mean, like, if I want to get out of here, I have to relax?"

  Meg lit up at this successful transmission of information.

  "Yes, I suppose that's one way to put it."

  Right outside my bungalow, I could hear the beginning of team-building activities and a ditty being worked on which ingeniously remixed a popular song to feature my name and some of my most endearing quirks.

  I exhaled so mightily that the bamboo slats which made up my walls nearly gave way.

  "Well, okay then. Let's start relaxing."