God this heat!
It was just as hot inside as it was out. His face and arms were overdressed but his mind was no longer drained - no longer dismayed - by his own lethargy from a whole day in midsummer heat. He was alert and upright in his chair at the glowing terminal.
Even better; here, in the Testing Wing of the Development Division complex, they had apparently fixed the Air Con, so his body would soon cool down once he was immersed and online.
He thought of the masses of people that would be outside, across the world, baking at barbecues, raking at the soil, clinking glasses at restricted social occasions, or crowding resort hotels. Or maybe playing a sport for some crazy reason in this heat while their time seemed true, while they felt their own struggle for power over their being; their ways of being.
And this was all good. More healthy for me. For it meant that the new virtual web would be faster than usual. He would have less restriction in accessing what he needed, finishing what he once started...
He thought of the old William Blake quote:
I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's'.
For what though, exactly? For personal fame and freedom? For glory and success upon one's name and one's family? Or for the power for oneself - or a potent combination of all of these - or just for the testing of it; to see what wonders it can... bring forth...
So... it's a power game.
But not here; not right now...
As he stood up to take a last look at the evening sun he thought that it was more a necessity to create. The blinds changed, smothering all the light in the room. Simply as a bid for freedom and understanding, simply as powers to be gained over any possible alternative.
He moved into the VR Trainer.
Imaginative freedom for oneself in one's present lifetime; a place or some new medium where everything runs wild against physical restrictions...a place to belong... enhanced...
He thought for a while longer.
Would we go mad if, over the reality where we dwelled, we possessed a total control? Perhaps... but it would be a victory over our fears, over any form of dependence on another; over Nature and over Death ... over God?... So we would become, in a sense, Gods ourselves?
He clicked open the portal...
...The power in the phantom webworlds awaited their creators; their innervators; their cyber-artists and demiurges... even its new Kings...
And from out of that deep void within his headset some cool, incalculably advanced phrase greeted him in the depleting darkness:
"You are now entering: THE NEUROCEANS ... Forsake not the Lore of Being!"
[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +3 XP : LESSER BACKGROUND ITEM - see more under XP + Ranking.]
CZYTASZ
In THE SPIRAL: Connected Stories & Fragments from the Virtual Future
Science FictionVIRTUAL INSPIRATION: TEST OUT the SPIRAL INTERFACE and ENTER the brave new SUPER-WORLDS... For there are no limitations, only imagination and ideas manifested in these initial projections and snapshots - voices from the ashes of the Neuroceans as t...
