Free Dragon Day by Lisa Brackmann

China, they still think of dogs as taco stuffing.”
    My mom shudders. “I don’t know,” she mutters. “I really do like it here, but . . . there’re some things I just can’t get used to.”
    I shrug. I could say the same thing about anywhere.
    I take the subway to the Yonghegong stop and find a coffeehouse south of the Lama Temple, past the gilt-embellished peaked roofs that rise above the red-washed walls. Typical coffee place—menu drawn with multicolored chalk on a blackboard, scarred wood tables, mismatched chairs, curling black-and-white photos of old Beijing and Red Guards stuck up on burlap walls with thumbtacks. The brewed coffee here sucks, so I order an Americano. Get out my new MacBook Air, launch my virtual private network, and open a browser.
    The spam stock email was a signal from Lao Zhang, telling me to log on to the Great Community.
    No network is safe. Anything on your computer or on the Internet can be accessed. Hacked. I know that. But I at least don’t want to make it easy.
    I copy the string of numbers from the bottom of the email that look like random computer gibberish, place it into my browser’s address bar, put periods in the right places, and hit enter .
    And find myself on the “Welcome” page of the Great Community.
    On a beach, where choppy grey waves crash against the sand, an animation that looks like it was done in brushstrokes. A three-legged dog that barks at an incoming wave. The giant Mao statue, which before was faded and half buried in sand, looks even more battered now, encrusted in barnacles that have climbed up to the top button of its tunic. It’s about to fall over, propped up by the outstretched arm holding a Little Red Book. Farther up the beach, one of the Twin Towers has toppled. The other one sways in the pixel breeze.
    It’s a virtual community, a secure environment that Lao Zhang created after he disappeared from Beijing last year, where he could make art, where it was safe to hang out and chat. I don’t know who hosts it, where the servers are, who’s paying for it. Better not to know, right?
    At first it was just for the two of us—at least that’s what he told me—but I don’t know if that’s really true. Other people showed up pretty quickly. Other artists and musicians and writers. He kept adding to the place, and so did the newbies, until there was a whole virtual village, with galleries, houses, nightclubs, stores, bizarre sculptures, performance pieces. A safe place to say what you wanted, be who you wanted.
    Funny thing is, I never spent all that much time here, especially after it got busy. I never even gave my avatar a cool outfit. Just the same jeans and white T-shirt she was created with. There wasn’t all that much for me to do here, other than chat with Lao Zhang. Some of the concerts were okay, and some of the art, but I wasn’t making any art. Wasn’t playing any music. The Great Community was just another place where I stood around and watched other people do stuff.
    I figure I’ll take the path along the cliffs that leads directly to my house. Usually the three-legged dog runs ahead, stopping now and again to wag its tail and bark, until I catch up.
    This time the dog does something different. It turns inland, on a different path, the one that leads to the town square.
    The last time I was here, there was lots of stuff going on. All kinds of avatars, text boxes popping up faster than I could read them. A poetry reading by a fountain that spouted multicolored sprays of gems, butterflies, stars. A couple of dinosaurs lumbering through the plaza. Who knows why?
    Today it’s empty. Hardly anyone here. The fountain is motionless, a pool of standing water. A lone avatar dressed in a samurai outfit stands by a building that looks like a cross between a cathedral and a rocket ship. As I pass, the building suddenly pixelates. Then vanishes. Just like that.