“Sort of. More like a translation, though. What the VR programs build out is like a translation of the data into a navigable space. It depends on what version you are using, but the concept for all of them is basically the same: They create a navigable representation of the network. A simulation you can enter into, in a sense, and ‘walk’ through. Explore. That helps the hacker find their way through the maze. But it’s approximate, like translation. The fidelity is never one hundred percent. You’re relying on one neural network to interpret another, and then you are working from that interpretation. Distortion is inevitable. And the simulation is always a reduction of the original. It’s easy for the AI simulator to misinterpret the data in the original and miss something important.”

“So the hacker might be doomed from the start.”

“That’s right. No matter how good you are, you can only be as good as the data you are given. The input. If something essential is missing, if the input is off from the start, there’s no solving the problem.”

“And you’re different, because you don’t need that.”

“No. I can visualize the network without it.”

“Can you explain what that looks like to you? I can’t imagine it.”

What is it like to be a bat? What is it like to be a Rustem?

Nobody had asked him before.

He didn’t mistake this interest Aynur had in him, or in his talent, for affection. He knew it for what it was: She was a collector. Like him. She just wanted to know something new. Put it in her pocket. Well, that was fine. This similarity between them was probably what had drawn him to her.

“You walked here, right?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Half an hour.”

“How did you do it?”

“What?”

“I mean, how did you walk here?” Rustem said. “It was dark, because the city power had failed. You wouldn’t have been able to see the street signs—and many of them are missing, anyway.”

“Okay, if you’re serious, I’ll play. I guess I have kind of a map in my head. Of Astrakhan. I’ve lived here a long time. So I imagine where I am on that map, and then where I need to go.”

“How do you know where you are?”

“I look around me, and I see things I saw before, or recognize. And I remember where they are. A building or a storefront that is familiar.”

“What about the first time you had to go somewhere? In a city you didn’t know? How would you navigate?”

“Well, I would pay more attention, I guess. Try to remember things.”

“To build the map.”

“Okay, no. I would probably just use my terminal, and follow the blue line.”