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“Have you ever thought about if the universe could be a simulation?” you sign.

She considers the question a moment and slides down your arm to sign back, “For me it’s like, what I can touch is real.” She reaches up to caress the side of your face. “But everything more distant than that is described to me, either by a braille display or an interpreter. So it kind of is simulated, by a machine or a mind, either way filtered through language.” She points up at the sky. “And everything beyond that, the whole universe out there, I know it’s there because I can calculate the position of any object if I know its orbital parameters. Math is also a language the whole universe can be filtered and processed through. So in a way, don’t we all experience a simulated version of the universe?”

With your listening hand you pull her close to you and kiss her, switching signing roles in the process.

“You’re amazing Akiko, I just want to listen to you talk about stuff for hours,” you sign.

She happy stims with her fingers on your hands, voicing a cute noise.

“Are your parents expecting you home soon?” she signs.

“Like I care,” you sign.

“Then let’s go be alone somewhere...” she signs.

“Okay! Where should we go? The park?”

“I was thinking we could check out that abandoned factory,” she signs.

You look over the wall, behind your school, next to Akiko’s. You can only see the top of the building--broken windows on rusty metal frames over a wall of cracked concrete covered in green ivy. It’s been a ruin since before you were born.

“Yeah, I’m curious about it too,” you sign. “Could be fun to explore.”

“There are all kinds of rumors about it,” she signs. “But nobody will go there with me, because they see me as a walking insurance liability. And I could use someone who can detect broken glass from a distance.”

“I have this power,” you sign. “Let’s go!”

Rolling her hand over from the back of yours to the palm, she slips her fingers between yours, and walks toward the industrial ruin, pulling you along. You stop her near the corner of the lot, where another huge old tree towers above you, on your side of the fence. You reach to touch the bark of the tree with your entwined hands.

“We can probably get over from here,” you sign.

“Okay, you first,” she signs.

You let go of her and climb up the low branches of the evergreen tree, finding a sturdy branch reaching over the wall. She climbs up after you, and you take her hand as she reaches up. Now both balanced on the branch, you look down into the factory lot. “Going down right here,” you sign.

“About how high are we?” she signs.

“No more than three meters.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

You drop down, hanging from the branch, then let go and land. She follows. After clearing the pine needles from her hair, she finds your arm and signs to you, “Tell me what you see.”

You switch and sign back, “It’s a warehouse about a hundred meters long, twenty meters high, all lined with windows, most of them broken, some boarded up, and what isn’t broken is covered in old graffiti, I can make one out--‘Beware,’ ‘Danger,’ ‘This is not a place of honor.’ The walls are overtaken by vines, with thick vegetation all around it. Everything’s rust, it was probably built in the fifties. I see what looks like a doorway, with a metal door hanging off of it, half-rusted through.”

“Good simulator,” she signs and pats your head. “Let’s go inside!”

Holding her hand tight, you walk up to the old building and peer inside. “Looks like there’s not much left of the old machines,” you sign. “Just scrap metal, and an old freight elevator. More warning notes written around the door frame...”

You step inside onto the cracked concrete floor. “It doesn’t seem like the building is about to collapse anytime soon though.”

“It’s probably just other kids trying to keep us out of their cool hiding place,” she signs.

“We seem to be all alone, though,” you sign.

“Great.” She gently slides her fingers through your hair to your neck. “Just what I wanted.”