While the call connected, Abuelo’s chatspace loaded around me, a full 3-D scan of the jungle around Laguna de los Cerros—an ancient Olmec city Abuelo had worked on when he was younger. He’d taken the scan himself, years ago, so the textures weren’t quite as high-res as some of the newer chatspaces, but that added a rustic, old-school feel to it. Between the impossibly tall trees, Olmec colossal heads were strewn, some on their sides, all overgrown with thick tropical vegetation. Over my head, a bird squawked noisily, and I looked up, almost expecting to see it there in the trees. But, of course, it was just ambient sound.

“Isaak.”

At the sound of my grandfather’s voice, I turned. Abuelo stood behind me, in the same flannel shirt and worn blue jeans his figuscan avatar always wore. “It’s good to see you, mijo,” he said. His voice was rich and deep, with the faintest hint of an accent he’d never quite lost, even though he’d come to America as a small child. Hearing his voice was like coming home.

When he moved to embrace me, I felt the familiar pang in my heart that I did every time I saw him on Speculus. As great as VR is, it still wasn’t the same as having him right here with me. I could almost feel the hug, but it wasn’t really there. It was only in my mind. It lacked the weight of reality—the smell of spices that lingered around his clothes, the rumble of his voice in his chest, the heavy solidness that I always felt when I’d visit Earth with its stronger gravity.

“You’re getting tall,” remarked Abuelo. “It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you. And what are you doing calling me at this time of night? It must be past midnight where you are. Don’t you have school in the morning?”

I laughed. “Yeah, I know, I know. I just… you know, wanted to talk to you. You’re right, it has been awhile. School has been hard this year.”

“And you’ve got a lot going on now,” Abuelo said, nodding. He moved over to one of the colossal heads and hefted himself up onto it, gesturing for me to sit beside him. “Your mom tells me that you’ve been following in my footsteps, working as an excavator on the weekends.”

I grinned and scrambled to the top of the stone head. “Sort of. It’s a geology dig, not archaeology.”

“Still, it’s excavation. Are you having as much fun as you used to when you’d come down here with me?”

“Not quite,” I laughed. “But it is pretty fresh. Or it was, anyway. There’s been some weird stuff going on recently.”

Abuelo frowned. “‘Weird’? How so?”