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- Chapter 1
- He had never allowed himself to displace his consciousness into the rift. Perhaps he feared it would see the eclipse and deconstruction of his soul, something that; as a man a little too tied to the past, he could not abide the idea of. This did not prevent him from carrying out his work with due prejudice and diligence, in fact, he proposed to himself that the very reason he was able to perform the research he so enjoyed was due to the fact he had been uncontaminated by the vast, soul-destroying expanse that would have been lain before him should he have chosen to don the technological vestments his subjects so often did in his presence.
- One such subject, Fletch, was laid out on the table in front of him, a wafer visor encompassing his eyes, electrodes flat against his temples and within him the needed nervous taps connected to the device without any use of wires. The visor was a one-way mirror, through it he could see Fletch’s eyes, through Fletch’s eyes however, Fletch could see nothing but the rift. One was not unconscious upon entering the rift, the body operated in a business as usual fashion, to the point where the user can sense fatigue, hunger, need to relieve oneself and in such situations remove themselves from the real world and into the world of base needs.
- It was not uncommon for users to ignore these minor signals, as you did become much less aware of your physical being when wired in, to the point where it was easy for some to forget they had a body at all; until after thirty or so hours they awaken, emaciated, soiled and exhausted beyond all belief. This is what Gira was afraid of – being consumed, taken under and taken for a ride, discovering infinity and knowing once he had tasted the boundless opportunity of the wired he would not want to be unwired, he would not want to limit his findings to the plane of existence so few people now chose to be a part of; if it could be called existing at all.
- Fletch had only been under for six hours. He had made no effort to communicate any discomfort in this time. His longest run had been just shy of twenty, though during that run he had agreed upon the prerequisites to his being put in by the doc. He was slowly being fed a nutrient paste through a tube rather inconveniently hanging down the back of his throat, he was catheterised and he had rested for forty-eight hours beforehand, disallowed from jacking in. When he returned he was a disoriented phantom, blinking erratically and wandering, lost, through a valley of confusion.
- He had spent so long under the watch that he was unsure whether he was truly outside of the grand simulation, refusing to trust the objects he could feel before him, they could be mapped into his neural sensory network. He had no real way of differentiating. Most of the paranoia stemmed from multiple dreams within cyberspace itself, in which he had relived this exact moment of escape, or ejection. In each of these dreams-that-weren’t-dreams, the good doctor had done exactly as he was doing now, sitting the man down, bringing a much needed glass of water (in which the doctor had also added vitamin C and glucose) and carefully de-catheterising him in an attempt to cause as little discomfort as possible, however Fletch never quite got used to the sensation of the slick rubber tube retracting from his urethra. It was always fire.
- Chapter 2
- Eight hours, forty-three minutes and seventeen seconds, or as near to it as Gira could bring his thumb down on the watch. Fletch always wondered why he didn’t have a program simply monitor the length of the dive from the moment he was under until the moment he was up again. He brought his legs over one side of the table as if he were atop a camel and awaited the glass from the doctor.
- “Cheers doc” The liquid was gone a moment later.
- Fletch hopped down from the table. Gira looked as if her were about to ask a question, but Fletch turned his back to the man and walked across the room. The linoleum was cool beneath his bare feet, whereas the rest of the room was terribly humid. He pulled the curtain around him which hung from a rail on the ceiling, the rail was succumbing to rust at a steady pace, and in this humidity would likely need replacing within the year.
- “How did you spend the past, say, nine hours? – Mr Fletcher” The doc enquired.
- A constant noise of piss against pottery pervaded the room. It seemed to last for minutes. Fletch drew back the curtain, his eyes closed, concentrated, as if trying to fight some enemy within his own head. It was common for him to suffer headache after prolonged use of the visor.
- “I don’t know Doc, I mean, I know what I did, but you know time in that place, you could spend five hours swimming in a virtual pool and it’s actually been ten minutes of real time, or you can have a ten minute conversation and it’s actually lasted two hours.”
- “You know Mr Fletcher, thankfully, I have no idea what time is like in ‘that place’. I trust you to fill out the journal as best you can.”
- “I’ve never asked you Doc, what exactly are you trying to find out from this little gig you got going here anyway?” He reached to his shoes and removed the bunched up socks from inside them.
- “As long as I’m the one out here and you’re the one on the table exploring that damnable rift, I have no obligation to tell you why I’m doing this.” Doc straightened his glasses. He looked down at the pad in his hands and began writing. “The young woman I was observing before you became irritatingly quizzical, if you wish to continue receiving fifty dollars an hours for the time you spend here, I’d recommend you cease with the questions - Mr Fletcher.” He nodded to Fletch.
- “You know, Doc, you might have your little screen there, but watchin’ isn’t nothin’ compared to actually experiencing all of it. Maybe you might find ya like it if you’d just put on the visor and give it a whirl, it’s a hell of a place, infinite possibilities, and it feels real as if we were sittin’ here right now.” It was a sincere statement, most people took it for granted that nobody would want to be without it and what Fletch said was true, it just didn’t matter at all to Gira.
- “Thank you for your time Joseph, it has been a pleasure as always.” Doc tapped a few times on the translucent screen covering six inches of his forearm, “Four hundred and thirty five dollars and ninety-eight cents has been credited to your account and I look forward to seeing you again in ten days’ time.” He held out Mr Fletcher’s jacket and allowing him to slip, arm after arm, into the thing before releasing it.
- “The pleasure’s all mine Doc, I ain’t gonna quiz you no more either. I’d be a sucker to pass up the easiest job I ever did have. There isn’t no fucker’d get me working in QC on dehydes production line again, not even if they offered me fifty an hour.” Fletch smiled at Doc and subsequently left the room, back out into the sprawling city which ten minutes prior, simply didn’t exist.
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