Joe maneuvered his bike carefully across the bus lane, sliding smoothly over to the turn lane. He didn’t like commuting down 122nd Avenue. It contained too much rubbish, and too many buses, so he made a habit of turning off onto the first bicycle-only street he encountered. That would be SE Clinton. When he passed the obstacle course and was safely on Clinton, he began to think about what he had just done. He might get fired for that. At the moment of his frustration, he hadn’t given a damn, but now fear began to nibble at him. Five years ago, he would have been confronted before he left the building. Told not to come back. But that was then. Now fewer case workers had to deal with an exponential increase in the misery index. Joe was good at what he did, and conscientious. And one of his clients just died. He hoped they would understand.
 
     At 119th he turned right, toward Division. Division was a rail line, but it had a bicycle lane, which took him all the way down to 52nd. At the Fifty-second and Division checkpoint, the blackwater looked at his ID badge disinterestedly, waving him though. From the checkpoint, he followed the Hawthorne trolley down to 21st, and then right to Belmont. The five-mile journey took him about half an hour on most days.
 
     As Joe wheeled his bicycle up to his apartment building, he knew that something was not right. Through Jessie’s window came the faint but unmistakable blue glow of her veejay screen. He clearly remembered going into her room after she left for school this morning, to make sure everything was shut off. It was a routine, because Jessie inevitably left something on, and although he lectured her over and over about the cost of electricity and climate change and the threat of further rationing, nothing seemed to get through to her. It wasn’t defiance, just forgetfulness. She had been like that since she was a little girl. He used to tease her, “You’d forget your head if it weren’t screwed on,” a homily his mother had often used on him.
 
     So what was Jessie doing home at 2 pm on a school day? He locked up his bike at the bottom of the stairs, in its usual place next to hers, and approached his door, turned the key in the lock. Inside, all was quiet, except for the faint sound of a voice coming from Jessie’s room. He put his bag down and walked over to her bedroom door, gently pushing it open. Jessie leaned back in her chair, involved in some fantasy world, talking on her gamer headset. He hadn’t remembered seeing her with these before. They were those wrap-around sunglasses, similar to the one’s he had seen on Connie Velasques and the girl on the bus. As he thought about it, he recalled kids wearing them down at the coffee shop, and in the park this summer. The latest cool thing, he guessed. How do the kids say it? They were glitch.
 
     “Jessie,” he said. No answer.
 
     “Jessie!” Once more, a little louder. She still didn’t turn around, or acknowledge him.
 
     Joe walked up behind her and removed the glasses. Jessie jumped, and wheeled around in her chair, startled.
 
     “God, Dad,” she said, “you scared the pee wadding out of me. What are you doing home so early?”
 
     “The question is, Jessie,” Joe shot back, “what are you doing home so early?”
 
     Joe could see the look, the evasive movement of her eyes to the right, a signal that Jessie was about to lie. Instead of stopping her, he would let her spin her story. He would gently challenge her, until she became caught up in her own web. It never failed. The fourteen-year-old was a terrible liar.
 
     “I wasn’t feeling good.”
 
     “So why aren’t you resting?”
 
     “Well, I wasn’t feeling that bad.”
 
     “Who are you talking to?”
 
     “Just some friends.” The look again.
 
     “And what friends would this be?”
 
     “Pox and Cedar,” she said. Names he’d not heard before.
 
     “So, why aren’t Pox and Cedar in school? Are they sick, too?”
 
     “I think maybe they’re in a different time-zone or something.”
 
     “Jessie,” Joe lit into her, “how many times have I told you that people you meet online are not your friends. You don’t know them. You don’t know anything about them. They might not be kids at all. They might be rapists or terrorists or human traffickers. You don’t know what they are. Don’t you get that?”
 
     She looked as if she were about to cry, or scream at him, Joe couldn’t tell which. It could go either way these days, but to his surprise, she did neither. “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, “the kids told me about this sim on New Life. It’s really glitch. Everyone’s doing it.”
 
     “So, where did you get the new hardware?” he demanded, holding up the headset.
 
     “They’re citspecs, Dad,” she said. “You are so living in the past. They were selling them in the mall at SimWorld. They only cost $20.”
 
     “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. He looked at them, and set them down.
 
     “I think the idea,” Jessie said, “is to get people into the sims so they shop and buy stuff on New Life.”
 
     Joe had heard about New Life. The newest generation of life sims on the grid. Not so much a game as a simulated world. For a couple of years now, it was the buzz among the clients, and some of his coworkers. Escapism is how he would describe it, but probably no worse than some of the grid games kids played, or those stupid reality shows. Maybe he was being too harsh with Jessie.
 
     “Jessie,” he said, “I just want you to be safe. You know that, right? These people…just don’t let anyone know your real name, or where you live, okay? Be careful. And promise me you won’t skip any more school for this nonsense.”
 
     “I won’t, Dad,” she said, “I promise.”
 
     Joe closed the door and made his way to the kitchen, where he pulled a beer out of the fridge. Then he went to the living room to zone out on the couch for the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t want to think about work or Connie Velasques, or Jessie, or the state of the world. He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep.