She ignored the voice. At the window she looked out across the city. She thought of all the things that had been different since she stepped through the doorway: the office décor, Martin’s appearance, the ESC traffic flow. It was as if someone had built a detailed model of the world for a vast museum exhibit but failed to get everything right. In this museum version, Anna 53—me, thought Mistletoe—was a willing participant in the Unison upgrade. Which meant that here, Anna had grown up side by side with Ambrose and become a happy UniCorp overachiever. There had been no brazen rescue. She hadn’t been stashed away beneath the canopy. She hadn’t been kept hidden and lied to. She hadn’t messed up so many lives. So what about Jiri and Dita? Were they alive in this place?

“Hey!” she yelled at the room.

“Please select a composer from the following choices: Mozart. Debussy. Bach. Beetho—”

“Show me how to get to Little Saigon.”

*   *   *

Her neighborhood was all false perceptions and fleeting glimpses. She wandered in a daze, afraid to touch anything for fear that her hand would pass right through and prove this world’s—or her own—lack of substance. Every few minutes, her heart raced and she had to stop walking, close her eyes, and take a deep breath. Her fingertips tingled and lost feeling.

Streets that were supposed to bear left turned sharply to the right, and yet still brought her to the same place. An old-fashioned barbershop was familiar down to the squiggly graffiti on the door, but the person lounging out front was a fat woman rather than the man with the bulbous nose who had owned it since she was a little girl. An apple she stole from a street vendor tasted exactly like an overripe peach. She took one bite and tossed it away.

She stopped when she saw the pudgy little boy dart around the side of a parked flatbed transport stacked with old rubber wheels. A dangling sign advertised CHUCK’S TIRES. She followed the boy into an alley, where he joined three kids throwing eleven-sided holo-dice against the brick wall. She stood out of sight and listened until the little boy sneezed.

“Sh-sh-sham-poooooo!”

She stepped into the middle of their game. Shampoo paused, the holo-dice glowing in his curled hand.

“Hey, what’s the notion?”

“I just wanted to apologize for scaring you the last time we ran into each other.”

Shampoo squinted up at her. He wasn’t quite as dirty as usual, and his eyes were two different colors—one green, one blue. He wiped his nose with the back of the hand that held the dice.

“C’mon!” said one of the other kids. Mistletoe watched Shampoo search her face.

“Um,” he said at last, “I think you got the wrong person.”