Grid Seekers (Grid Seekers Book One) Read Free Page B

I will have fun once I get home,” I said, smiling.
    “Will you braid my hair?” she asked, wide-eyed.
    “If that’ll get you to stay after school without a problem, then yes,” I said.
    “Yay!” she said excitedly, before hugging me tightly and letting go, joining the other kids in running inside.
    I smiled, watching her run out of sight inside the hallway, before I turned and started my somewhat leisurely stroll to work. My walk was going to be pretty stress-free since most of the people in the city were already at work. My boss let me come in a little bit later on days when I had to take Saraia to school, which was about the only kind thing he did for me. I sometimes thought about trying to find a new job, but it would most certainly be suicide for us financially. Not only because it was hard to find a job in the first place, but also because I knew they would want some kind of reference, and this job was the only one I’d ever had. The last thing I needed was some guy calling Mr. Kriegle up and inquiring about a girl named Alexia who just applied at his place. I knew I’d get fired on the spot, and without another job in place it wouldn’t be a smart move on my part.
    When I was about ten minutes from work I passed by a shop. A sign in the window immediately caught my eye and caused me to stop in place. The shop was a café, though they didn’t serve any food. They served access to WorldNet, which for some people was far better than even the tastiest cuisine money could buy. Cafes like this were starting to sprout up more frequently, and they offered anyone with a little cash the luxury of logging onto WorldNet comfortably, getting to see the world and an environment that was artificially better than the one I was standing in now.
    “ First-time customers get twenty minutes free inside WorldNet. Claim your twenty minutes of fun now before space fills up! Spots are limited! ” the sign read.
    WorldNet was unique in that it worked on a four-to-one ratio between minutes in the real world and minutes inside the grid. For every four minutes that went by in the physical world, one minute went by in there, which meant my time in the grid would only feel like five minutes in the physical world. That wasn’t that long. I had thirty-five minutes left before work. Twenty minutes in there and a ten minute-walk to work left me five minutes to spare in case anything went wrong, which I knew it wouldn’t. I looked around, saw nobody coming from either direction and, biting my lower lip, decided to take the plunge. I walked up to the door and opened it up, as a little bell rang above me.
    There was a screen above the front counter showing all of the pods available. Only one had a green light, which meant it was available. All the others were occupied, which was surprising because they had ten pods and it was a weekday morning. A woman walked out of a door behind the front counter and came towards me with a smile on her face.
    “Hello, can I help you?” she asked.
    “I’m here for the promotion. I saw the sign,” I said, pointing behind me at the banner strung on the window.
    “Oh, yes, please come forward. I can definitely help you with that,” she said.
    I walked up to the counter as she pulled up a small screen from below, a scanner from what I remembered the last time I logged on, and looked back up at me.
    “I will just need your thumb print, if you’d be so kind. It’s for government purposes, not for us,” she said.
    I pressed my right thumb against the scanner, the light behind it going from left to right before the blue screen turned green, which I took as a good sign.
    “Good, good. You’re approved for access to WorldNet. Is this your first time?” she asked, putting away the scanner.
    “No, but I haven’t been on in a while,” I said.
    “Well, you’re about to have a great time. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to your pod,” she said.
    She walked out from behind the counter and I