“This is just the basic interface,” Helga replied, not hiding her annoyance at Bryson’s smart comment. “Pretty much anything can happen from here. It’s my equivalent of the old entertainment centers people used to pay for in the public VirtNet houses.”

Michael felt a little sway of vertigo whenever he looked up or down, so he concentrated on Helga’s face while she spoke. Still, those swirling shapes beneath his feet created a sense of movement that made his stomach turn.

“So how does it work?” Sarah asked. “And why are we here?” Her Aura heavily resembled her real self, and her face showed that the question of what to do about her parents still weighed heavily on her mind.

Helga gathered them around her and pointed at the glass on which they stood. “Everything in this place is directly connected to my thought process, which took a long time to fine-tune. Under better circumstances, we could have a lot of fun in here, and I’d love to show it off, but for now, I just want to show you some of the things you’ve missed.”

She looked down and focused on a large rectangle of bright light, pulling it closer to the surface. It stretched until it surrounded the group of four, and when Helga tapped her foot, a moving picture appeared within the rectangle, like a WallScreen. It was an aerial view of Atlanta, and suddenly the picture was moving—zooming in closer to the city. Michael’s stomach lurched and Bryson yelped, throwing his arms out and staggering to get his balance.

Michael looked up at Helga and caught a sly smile on her face just as she spread her fingers, then threw her arms into the air. The motion brought the images up and out of the surface beneath their feet, and sent those images flying into a perfect three-dimensional rendition of the city of Atlanta around them. It was all Michael could do to keep his eyes open; the transition was so dramatic it was almost too hard to watch.

Helga, using her whole body like a remote, moved like a dancer to manipulate the imagery around them. A twirl of her fingers to spin the orientation of the city, the sweep of an arm to shift them down streets in an instant, leaning left or right to steer them. They traveled without any sensation of motion—a trick that took Michael a bit of time to get used to. Finally, though, his queasiness dissipated, and he could appreciate the incredible detail of what he was seeing. Beyond impressed, he couldn’t help but wonder, had his nanny been a closet programmer the whole time he’d known her?