The Illusionists Read Online Free PDF

hour. She’d heard the unmistakable sound of retching. When she banged on the door, he didn’t answer, so she talked to him incessantly through it, threatening to break it down if he didn’t tell her whether he was all right. All she’d got for her trouble was an irritable plea for her to stop banging and that he’d be out in a minute. And when he finally emerged he just shrugged it off, saying he’d eaten something bad at work.
    She wanted to help him, to comfort him. But he wouldn’t allow it, fobbing off her attempts with a small smile and insisting nothing was wrong. He was just busy. And what could she do? She had no way of finding out what was wrong without him telling her.
    Her day currently consisted of this: when Wren left in the mornings, she could use his box and go into Life. When she was hungry, she could go into the social room and order food. He seemed to think that those two things should be enough for her.
    They weren’t.
    He’d told her not to go wandering outside the apartments. Her appearance might get her into trouble. People would automatically think she was a Technophobe. He’d said there wasn’t much to see, anyway, without an implant. She had pressed him as hard as she could, stoically enduring his shutdowns until he’d finally given in and programmed what he called her ‘retinal scan’ into the outside door key, just to ‘stop her incessant questioning’.
    So she went out, exploring the city.
    On leaving for the first time alone, she’d stood outside the building, wrapped up in World clothes that sat funny on her, bunching in places they shouldn’t bunch and stretching in places they really shouldn’t stretch. She had breathed in, nervous and excited. The air was flat.
    She promised herself she wouldn’t go far, in case she got lost. Just wander for a few minutes at a time, checking that she knew how to get back. And then she set out, her eyes widened to catch all the incredible sights that she would undoubtedly see.
    But the thing that really irked Rue was that Wren had been right.
    Without Life, the city was dull. All the buildings were made of the same shade of grey-coloured materials. She didn’t see why exactly that had to be, but Wren just shrugged and said it was necessary as the platform for Life. The streets were uniform and wide, much wider than Capital City streets, but there was nothing much else to say about them. It was hard to remember any detail at all. Everything was so  …  neat.
    She had money, or credits, as they called money here. Wren’s mysterious employers, whom she was increasingly anxious to meet, had given her enough in her account to last months. She could spend them on whatever she wanted – once she got the hang of spending something that didn’t physically exist in her hand.
    But in Wren’s city, there were no shops to visit, because everything you could ever wish to buy you bought through virtual Life shops. As fun as that was, it didn’t have that tangible thing of going into a store, running your fingers lightly over cotton dresses and silk shirts. Desiring, because you could see and touch and smell those exquisite things.
    Shopping alone was no fun, either. Clothes shopping made her mind inevitably slide towards the trips that Lea used to drag her on, to expensive boutiques and evenings filled with trying things on and giggling while Lea spent more money on a brooch than Rue would see in a month. It was  …  flamboyant and wasteful, she supposed, to do that. Worlders certainly seemed to think so. Clothes were unbelievably cheap here, and for a while she had been enamoured at the thought of all the new things she could own with just a handful of credits. All the brand-new versions of her she could make.
    There were little eat places dotted about the city streets, where people could meet and order food and drink from the food units there. But all