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face, and Renie felt her stomach go sour. He was definitely spending too much recreation time plugged in if he was so desperate to get back. She would make sure he spent some time out of the house. If she took him to the park this Saturday, she could make sure he didn't just go over to a friend's, plug in, and spend the whole day lying on the floor like an invertebrate.
    "So tell me more about the bomb," Stephen said suddenly. "Tell me all about it."
    She did, and he listened carefully and asked questions. He seemed so interested that she also told him about her first meeting with her student !Xabbu, how small and polite he was, his odd, old-fashioned style of dress.
    "There was a boy like him in my school last year," Stephen said. "But he got sick and had to leave."
    Renie thought of !Xabbu as he had waved good-bye, his slender arm and sweet, almost sad face. Would he, too, get sick somehow, physically or spiritually? He had said that few of his people did well living in the city. She hoped he would prove an exception-she had liked his quiet sense of humor.
    Stephen got up and cleared away the dishes without being asked, then plugged in again, but surprisingly accessed Marching Toward Freedom, disengaging from time to time to ask her questions about it. After he finally went to his room, Renie read term papers for another hour and a half, then accessed the newsbank. She watched reports about a variety of faraway problems-a new strain of the Bukavu virus forcing quarantines in Central Africa, a tsunami in the Philippines, UN sanctions on the Red Sea Free State, and a class-action suit against a childcare service in Jo'burg-and the local news as well, including lots of footage about the bomb at the college. It was strange to be on the net, watching in 360-degree stereoscope the same thing she had seen with her own eyes that morning. It was hard to tell which experience was more convincingly real. And these days, what did "real" mean anyway?
    The headset began to feel claustrophobic, so she pulled it off and watched the rest of the news she wanted to see on the wallscreen. Full surround was a bit of a busman's holiday for her anyway.
    It was only after she had made everyone's lunch for the next day, then set her alarm and climbed into her own bed, that the feeling which had nagged her all evening finally surfaced: Stephen had manipulated her somehow. They had been talking about something and he had changed the subject, then they had never got back to it. His subsequent behavior alone had been suspicious enough to suggest that he was avoiding something.
    She couldn't for the life of her remember what they had been discussing-some netboy larking, probably. She made a mental note to speak to him about it.
    But there was so much to do, so very much to do. And never enough hours in the day.
    That's what I need. She was bleary with approaching sleep: even her thoughts felt heavy, like a burden she ached to put down. I don't need more net, more full-surround realism, more pictures and sounds. I just need more time.

    "Now I have seen it." !Xabbu contemplated the apparently distant white walls of the simulation. "But I still do not understand precisely. You say this is not a real place?"
    She turned to face him. Even though she herself was only vaguely human in appearance, beginners were comforted by retaining as many of the forms of normal interaction as possible. !Xabbu, in this beginner's simulation, was a gray human-shaped figure with a red "X" across his chest. Even though the "X" was a normal part of the simuloid, Renie had inscribed a complementary scarlet "R" across her own figure-again, anything to make the transition easier.
    "I don't mean to be rude," she said carefully, "but I'm really not used to having this kind of session with an adult. Please don't be offended if I tell you something that seems very obvious."
    !Xabbu's simuloid had no face, hence no facial expression, but his voice was light. "I am not easy to offend.