In THE SPIRAL: Connected Stories & Fragments from the Virtual Future

VOICE/FRAGMENT: 'Diode' [5XP]

He walked quickly along the cobbled streets. They were the recently-installed cobbles that were catching on across the cities, with centres fashioned to look old in tribute to the generations who had walked within this area in times past. Their grooves, however, were fitted with UV lighting so that in the dark the streets looked unearthly; a gridwork in a spooky glow that reminded him of a spider's web, or the pulsing patterns to be found online, in the superscapes.

He had come from the library, focusing up on the latest trial of a new design system, adjusting his mind to the new 'carving' mechanisms for spatial fashioning. He felt he was progressing; the interface more in tune with his faculties.

As he hurried along he took a deep breath and clenched his teeth. The smooth feel of the 'cadding' - the fashioning - still resonated within him. It made him feel for shapes in a new way, like the bridge he was now approaching over the River Dee. It was an arc summoned forth like music, frozen music, and he wondered how this shape would feel being fastened down with the tools of the new system. I will melt it into place and festoon it with crystal garlands that shimmer when the fingers make a circle. People will float and bind around it.

He already had some elaborate plans for a new landscape using the new sys. So many plans, he thought. His stomach was clenched again with his fire for art and absorption online; for the new medias flowing forth and for his own spirit spread within it for others to feel and to know. It was a fire that was always there, simmering away beneath his real-time moments; his facetime and even in the restless down-time of the Re-orientator, a system that re-synchronised the mind with reality.

Someone was approaching ahead. It might be a 'disconnect'. He had only passed one of them on his trip back from the library and he was only about a hundred yards from his small flat. They were the ones also called 'bound' but realists would call them 'freed from super-addiction', some of them by choice, but most of them likely damaged from the older systems. Trying to re-orientate their damaged senses and re-fix their minds to the steady currents of real-time might have failed. You could see some of them twitching occasionally down along the waterfront, trying to lock on to the motion of the old, slow river rippling past and across the diagonal line of the weir. He would do it himself, for minutes just staring out when the wind spread the water out, flattening a miniature desert of water.

But the figure approaching was... clearly a girl, and now he looked forward to admiring her. He may be in training for a career in media, in altering and enhancing reality; in making it complex or hyper-cool, but there was nothing essentially cooler than the mother-world; the Source, whereby evolution had fashioned the female form to be attractive; to be alluring; to draw the eye. He thought of the Theory of Forms, an essential class in the long road of 'focusing' that it took to be a complete artist or designer of the virtual. Yet although we have made our lives and our natures more free; richer and more placated in super-time, it is still the Cave, and the hard edges of reality is the source and spring from which all forms evolve and our fashioned.

The girl drew closer. She wore jeans covered in intricate designs. Her hair was a unique blend of red and gold. As they drew even closer the fabric of her jeans, he noticed, were of the latest nano-thread, so that the patterns could be said to be moving, and the tints cycled shades of blue to match the supreme clarity of the clear evening sky. Her face was full and fresh; affable; radiant, and his eyes soaked up an overall air of wildness.

It was only in the last five years that 'Open Source Style' had exploded into individual freedom, ungoverned by the inhibitions of a previous, single reality, released by the influence of the super or virtual. Anything went, because it corresponded with the extent to which virtual life had brought down the barriers between people. People were now unbound from caring how they appeared in the one reality that was once so exclusively shared. Loneliness was not common now, although, as he knew well, loneliness was not just about people... but about the right people.

The girl's arm came out to him in a gesture that he was expecting; this was also customary. She held a small white card with electronic script and her wrist bands jangled at the same time as he saw the script illuminated. Those little effects he thought, with a mild wonder. So natural in the Source; still so hard to render in the Super. He took the card, which would remain illuminated as long as it was touched, and glanced swiftly at the text. It was something like 'fountain' and it would be a key to her v-space, or to a sect, or to a dance space. In reality people still looked like who they were and she was in her twenties, 'studenty'; musical perhaps. She smiled swiftly and hurried on. Once more he'd been targeted.

He might access it later in a moment of supreme boredom and these were becoming increasingly rare. For one thing he already had a real-time partner, and today, while 'cadding' away in the training 'scape he he'd been 'pinged' by her already so that in ten minutes time they would due to be binding in Dreameld.

But suddenly he realised a possibility about that other girl. On the street.

She was familiar. Someone he had once known.

Diode.


He had known her only in the most basic way; in platonic real-time and later, via social networks. She was known by another name then but now he knew it was Diode, and likely to be one of many of her online PIPs would now try to make contact. She may not have recognised him. Besides, he'd left her behind, with many other friends when - like many of them too - his time had begun to shrink.

Much later, as he was immersed in his console, summoning a shape with the new interface and 'bevelling' it into being, his PIP icon pinged again.

Welcoming the distraction, he 'swiped' the icon and entered the sim where his PIP resided, dressed in cowboy-style attire in a futuristic saloon bar environment. He picked up the glass of virtual whiskey before him and this act triggered the replay routine for messages. The whiskey itself was energy for his PIP, a valuable commodity for being able to remain in the saloon space. The barman – usually a real-world moderator – then stopped polishing a glass and came over across the creaky floorboards to warn him:

'A girl... stylish... possibly arty... your type.'

Being inside a PIP was literally an out-of-body experience. It recorded space-time and, when inhabited, could replay encounters with other PIPs, either inhabited ones or the ones 'gone zombie'.

There was only the one re-play segment in his inbox that had occurred so he uttered the word 'embody'. Now he could actually 'witness' the encounter with this 'stylish' girl avatar. Once again the it had been brief; she had entered the bar, scanned the room quickly before spotting his online presence in the corner table. Her avatar was similar to the real-world impression. Once again she wasted little time; leaving a half-smile and a white card on the table. He watched the saloon doors swing shut.

He was sure it was her now, making a point of hand-delivering the card in both the real and the virtual.

Diode was becoming well-known for her skill with avatar creation, identity and disguise. What could she be want to show him?

He looked down at the glowing card, with its tiny green script.

'Everything is flowing back to Fountellion. Find me there.'

[FRAGMENT COMPLETED! +5 XP : BACKGROUND ITEM - see more under XP + Ranking.]