Little could be said about the London Metroplex’s Transit System, except that it was always on time. The transparent, bubble-like tube cars were designed to be unobtrusive, silent, and mostly uninteresting to look at, which meant that they didn’t distract from the natural dull gray metalwork of the Metroplex itself. With much of the physical world depopulating and falling into disuse, replaced by the efficiencies of virtual existence, there seemed to be little point in ornamental detail — or mass-transit systems, for that matter.
Fewer than a third – the so-called “fluid” – of the Metroplex population ever bothered to leave their homes and interact in the physical world. The rest led strictly virtual, idyllic lives in the Phrame. She’d seen it everywhere. Cities once overpopulated with tens of millions of residents were now hollow shells slowly succumbing to the relentless forces of entropy. Political initiatives had begun converting the outer districts back to nature preserves or tomb-like historical centers. In contrast, many inner districts were routinely gutted and rebuilt from the ground up to reflect the population’s changing needs. At least, after centuries of destroying the planet, mankind was finally starting to repair the damage it had done.
The nine-minute express ride from Bethnal Green to the Soho Tower Centre was pleasant and usually the social high point of Serah’s day—a chance to interact with various flesh-and-blood acquaintances she had made over the past few years. She and the rest of the “Car Seven Commuter Club” were beginning to feel like something of an elite group, having had relatively few additions or losses to their membership in recent memory.
Today, however, she was in no mood to exchange pleasantries. The disruption of her normally unshakable nightly routine had left her in an effete haze. A “bad dream” seemed a trivial excuse for ending a three-year perfect attendance record, but she had briefly entertained the idea of calling in sick.
As the train sped along, She avoided eye contact with the half-dozen other passengers and settled into a comfortable rear-facing seat at the back of the car. Her personal datapad, the most essential item in her life, scrolled her itinerary over a pale blue background and indicated a light workday.
“Amazing,” a man’s voice came across the aisle beside her. “I didn’t realize anybody still used antiques like that.”
Serah stifled the urge to reply with a snide comment, choosing instead to fake a smile and pat the flat screen as if it were a favorite pet. “My oldest, dearest friend,” she cooed. She glanced over at the man and stifled an embarrassed gasp. He was tall and handsome, with perfect blonde hair and piercing green eyes. His suit, contemporary in fashion, was unmistakably hand-made, bearing the label of what Serah knew to be one of the more expensive boutiques in the Chelsea district.
“I’m Michael,” the man said, cautiously extending his hand with a warm smile.
“Serah Wyles,” she replied, shaking his hand. His skin was smooth, and his grip firm. When she pulled back her hand, she caught the scent of expensive cologne, one of her favorites. “I’ve not seen you on this train before,” she said.
“Yes,” the man looked embarrassed. “I normally take the second train, but most people have stopped riding lately. You know how it is: new jobs, promotions to virtual offices, early retirements, etc. I was feeling energetic, so I thought I might change my routine and earn some overtime credits.”
“Wish I could say the same for my energy level today,” Serah smirked.
“Do you work in Soho Tower?”
“Yes, I’m a journalist with Neward and Provident.”
Michael paused, thinking for a moment. “That’s right,” he said at last. “Didn’t you do that wonderful interview with the Emir of Persia from the Diego Garcia penal colony a couple of years ago?”
A chill went down Serah’s spine, as it always did whenever somebody mentioned the Emir.
“Yes, that was mine,” she said. Frankly, I’m surprised anybody watched that. Usually, the darker, tragic stories about human cruelty and suffering aren’t very popular with viewers.”
“Well, foreign politics is a particular interest of mine,” he said, then quickly added, “not necessarily incarcerated former dictators and insane mass murderers, mind you.” He chuckled slightly, then leaned a little closer to Serah.
“Seriously, that was a great piece. Taking him on the way you did took a lot of guts. Though I must admit, I had nightmares for weeks after seeing some of the documentary footage.”
The word “nightmare” echoed in her head and triggered another chill. Serah shook reflexively. She remembered having nightmares of her own as she sifted through hours and hours of footage documenting the worst human suffering–and inhuman atrocities–in recent history. She remembered Henry, her boss, forcing her to visit a therapist. She also remembered heavily relying on the dreamspinner just to get through the nights, and it never failed her once.
Her surroundings faded away briefly, and she suddenly pictured the old man in her dream again, remembering every detail of his features as his chest exploded in front of her, snapping her back to reality. She jumped with a start, realized she had probably been staring blankly at Michael, and wondered what he must think of her to appear so obsessed at the reference of her espouse on the Emir. However, he seemed genuinely interested, so she shrugged the thought off.
“And what do you do for a living?” she asked, changing the subject.
Michael uncrossed his legs, meticulously brushing something from his trousers. “Oh, a little bit of everything, I guess. Whatever puts food on the table without requiring a lot of effort.”
“I see,” Serah said, not having a follow-up for such a vague response. A few seconds of awkward silence passed.
“You seem a bit out of sorts,” he said, furrowing his eyebrows. “If I may ask, is everything all right?”
Serah shrugged, wondering briefly if her disorientation was really that obvious.
“Oh, just a little problem with my dreamspinner last night,” she said.
Michael’s eyes seemed to sparkle; he leaned in further and lowered his voice as if about to share a rare and precious secret. “I know exactly what you mean. My old one started acting up, and after a while, I just didn’t trust it not to fry my synapses while I slept. Ended up replacing it with that new Stewart Mosaic 2700 and their premium subscription service. They have a complete staff of qualified analysts who–”
“You use a dreamspinner?” Serah asked suspiciously, nodding toward the neural interface jack visible behind Michael’s left ear. “Why don’t you just sleep in-Phrame and use a hosted neuro-simulation service?”
Michael’s smile quickly faded. His eyes darted around the car as if looking for the answer. Serah frowned in disappointment. “You’re a billy, aren’t you?” The man sat back and said nothing. She grunted in frustration, then said, “I can’t believe I fell for that. You people are shameless. Does my consumer file really make me out to be this desperate and gullible?”
Michael smiled acerbically and shrugged like an errant child who had just been caught telling a lie.
The “human billboards,” guerilla salesmen who seemed to prey on unsuspecting fluids for their virtual bosses in the corporatocracy, had gotten out of control in recent years. A statistic said that less than a third of the population was fluid – still occasionally detaching from virtual life in the Phrame and interacting in the physical world, or Root Realm, via their old flesh-and-blood bodies. Of that number, as many as 25% were actually employed as billys, influencers, surveillance specialists, or other flesh tools to keep a vigilant watch on unsuspecting potential consumers, as well as the competition. There were days when Serah had no trouble believing these statistics.
To make matters worse, Serah’s service call to Noctivo Systems had been a bold announcement to agents and tracking databases all over the planet that she was alive and well — and having problems with her dreamspinner. Hundreds of corporations would have spent the last three hours retrieving copies of her consumer file. By now, they would have analyzed her work history, travel schedules, hobbies, and interests to help them calculate the perfect (or at least most efficient) personal sales pitch. The next forty-eight hours would be filled with offers for every conceivable product and service: sleep-inducing medications, dream analysis specialists, and dieticians who claim to have developed an all-natural alternative to computer-controlled sleep regimens. She was now the hapless target of the ultra-competitive global marketplace at its most ferocious.
The sad part was that the tactics worked enough to justify them as standard practice. People purchase goods based on the recommendations of billys and influencers all the time, perhaps without even knowing it. The corporatocracy recorded and tracked these so-called light touches, analyzed them for trends, and then sold or traded them throughout the settled systems as part of a comprehensive data set containing intimate details of each citizen of the Sol Directorate.
Michael blushed slightly, trying to salvage his work on the pitch thus far, “Honestly, Ms. Wyles, we only want to help you. If you would just–”
“Help me?”
Serah laughed incredulously, raising her voice for the benefit of the rest of the commuters in the car. “The very first words out of your mouth were a deliberate deception. Why would I want to do business with the likes of you?”
“Look, Ms. Wyles, it’s just a job,” he said defensively. “I have a right to –”
“Yes, let’s talk about rights,” she interrupted, completely fed up with the conversation. “How about I just claim my ‘Article 43’ rights, and you go back to your little hole in the wall and wipe my record from your system!” She tapped a quick, well-rehearsed series of commands on her datapad and beamed her consumer ID number to the government-mandated personal recorder Michael would be wearing on his belt. There was a beep of acknowledgment from the device, and Serah grinned triumphantly. Nothing could be done about such types of harassment, but the consumer privacy acts were irrefutable laws.
She was okay with corporations tracking and storing minute details about where she ate, what she wore, or, as Michael’s appearance would indicate, her tastes in men, fashion, and cologne. She would not abide a company that abused the privilege, however. Her verbal instructions and transmission of her consumer ID legally bound his employers to erase all information they had acquired about her over the years. With luck, they would consider her a “lost customer” and not even go to the trouble of starting or purchasing a new dataset. Growling in frustration, she turned and stared out the window. Michael got up and quietly drifted to the other side of the car a few moments later.
The Neward and Provident Newsnet Agency’s main offices, at least as far as the Root Realm was concerned, were sparsely decorated and encompassed a mere 750 square meters tucked in the back of the 263rd floor of the Soho Tower Centre’s northeastern wing. In the virtual world of the Phrame, however, they were the ninth largest newsnet corporation on the planet, employing thousands of agents, analysts, and other content producers. The meager entry room was empty, as usual, except for the solitary avatar of a young, bright-eyed man who sat behind an empty, featureless desk, greeting Serah as she exited the lift.
“Good morning, Ms. Wyles.”
“Good morning, Erik,” she nodded to the avatar. “Slow day so far?”
While Vir. Erik Walker maintained a competent air of professionalism and efficiency to most, over the years, the two of them had established a rapport, and he had allowed Serah to see his personality’s more flamboyant and mischievous side. As a result, he was one of her favorite people.
“Oh, we’ve got 37 people in the Phrame offices right now,” he said disinterestedly. “Most of them are here to complain about our ‘biased coverage’ of the Comanche Embassy bombing yesterday. For the most part, they’re not even taking 20 percent of my bandwidth.”
Serah rolled her eyes, knowing Erik’s penchant for controlling simultaneous avatars. With a base configuration and no special training, most people had the mental acuity to convincingly run two at a time, three for short durations in a pinch. She had known Erik to convincingly run as many as half a dozen avatars simultaneously. This had the advantage of allowing him to be in six places at once. Such a feat was rarely matched, except by expertly trained military and government specialists for intelligence and infiltration.
“Erik,” she grinned, rehashing the running joke the two had shared for the past five years, “You do understand when most people moonlight at two or three companies, they usually don’t go to all three jobs simultaneously?”
“Hey, it’s not enough that I am able to afford my opulent lifestyle. I must also have enough time left over in my day to enjoy it.” He bowed flamboyantly. “So, what the hell happened to you last night?”
Serah arched one eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Erik took a deep breath and began, “You’ve received 270 new messages in the past six hours, and all but thirteen of them were solicitations of some form. I routed the legitimate ones to your terminal and kill-filed the rest. You’ve also had six calls from gentlemen claiming to have lunch dates with you and wanting to know your favorite restaurant. I know you never mix business with your social life, and since Henry had already ordered lunch for two to be delivered to the conference room, I assume they were all billys. Two of them were rather cute though, so I ran a quick background check and made sure they weren’t married or anything, then left things a bit vague in case you wanted a free lunch and a chance at some social interaction–”
“Ugh!” Serah cut him off abruptly. “K-F them as well. I loathe salespeople.”
“Sensible policy,” Erik continued without missing a beat. “I’ll call them back and tell them all of your personal finances are held in trust by a cult of devout mango worshippers in New Tibet, and they should really go through those channels if they’re trying to get their hands on anything but your–”
“–Thank you, Erik.” Serah hissed before he could complete the thought.
“You should hire one of those blockers to accompany you when you go out. Some of those billys can be dangerous, you know. I’ve heard stories about people signing over their entire life’s savings without even knowing it.”
“Tell Henry I need a raise then,” Serah said as she walked down the hallway toward her office.
To Serah, her work area was simply an extension of her living quarters, which were an extension of her personality. The automated routine ran like clockwork, as it had every morning for four years. As she entered the small room, ambient lights flickered on, a desk lamp swung into position over her work area, and the holoprojection screen on the wall came to life, displaying a picturesque country field bordered by lush meadow. The food dispenser in the corner, after a well-memorized musical series of gurgles and beeps, presented her with one perfect cup of coffee and one glass of water. She placed the coffee on the sandstone coaster on her desk and carefully poured the water into the potted plant in the corner. Next, she called for her terminal and personal portal and slid into the perfectly formed chair behind her desk as a jumble of reports and tickers materialized and danced through the air before her.
She casually pulled up a couple of headlines concerning the American block commodity markets and the latest on the Comanche Embassy incident—which, it turned out, was the one in the Antarctic preserve. Everything else was a jumble of meaningless numbers to her this morning. She yawned. This was a bad sign for 9:05 when she hadn’t finished her first cup of coffee.
Unable to concentrate, she stared blankly at the meadow image on the projection screen. Though she didn’t know the artist’s name, the picture was a favorite of hers and had been since she first saw the original in the Buckingham Dome Museum at the impressionable age of ten. The painting’s subtle details sparked an interest in pursuing a career as an artist … then a poet … then a sculptor … and then a novelist. It didn’t matter which dream was prevalent in her mind; the painting simply represented sheer creative force. Ironically, the copy projected on the wall in her office was now the only expression of pure creativity she saw most days.
She sipped at her coffee and studied the picture, a regular exercise she felt necessary to focus her mind for the day ahead. The piece’s beauty to her was that no matter how often she examined it, she could always find some new detail or inspiration that she had never noticed. It was simply a matter of changing her perspective and looking at the picture as if it were the first time again. After about five minutes, she found what she was looking for: nothing more than a swath of black paint behind a brown tree trunk. To Serah, however, it was now a shadow, possibly cast by some woodland creature the artist had painted, then covered up with the tree trunk. She imagined momentarily that she could peer behind the tree and see a figure standing there, dressed in a black uniform with a visored helmet.
He stood there, not moving, regarding her for a moment. He somehow transfixed Serah; she could not avert her gaze or look away. Reaching slowly with his right arm, he removed a sidearm from its hip holster. Casually and methodically, so as not to startle his prey, his arm raised and aligned the sights on Serah. There was a loud bang as he pulled the trigger.
Serah jumped and yelped reflexively, then stared at the painting again.
The figure was gone, as was the streak of black paint she had spotted earlier.
“Rough night?” a friendly voice in the doorway boomed. Serah shrieked and jumped again, this time splashing coffee onto her desk. “Sorry, kiddo,” the man apologized.
“Morning, Henry,” she said with a nervous giggle as she exchanged the coffee for her datapad, stood up, and headed for the door. “Staff meeting this morning, right?”
“That’s where I was heading.” His face grew concerned. “You look beat today.”
“Yeah, having issues with my dreamspinner.”
“Ugh, I hate those things; the idea of some quack analyst and his computer monitoring, programming, and controlling my dreams just to improve the efficiency of my sleep cycle and gain me a few more hours of boredom during the day…” He stuck out his tongue in mock distaste.
“I can’t get along without it … obviously.”
Henry frowned. “How long is your programmed sleep cycle?”
“Just under four hours.”
“Good grief!” he exclaimed, amazed. “How can anyone function like that? I take at least nine hours, all-natural and unassisted, as nature intended.”
Serah laughed, “You realize you’re missing over a third of your life that way.”
“Nah, I’ve already done everything I wanted to. Now I’m just trying to recuperate.” He smiled warmly. “You ought to just try it once in a while. You’ll feel a lot better in the long run.”
“Well, when you retire, and I have your job, I can afford that time. Until then–”
“Hey, I’ll give you the time if you want it. All you need to do is ask, you know. You work too hard as it is, and I can’t afford to lose my best reporter.”
Serah raised her hand and smiled, hoping to end the argument for the moment.
Henry patted her gently on the shoulder, then slid back the door to the conference area and motioned Serah inside. “Well, think about it anyway. I’m genuinely concerned about you, you know.”
Serah regarded the man for a moment. Henry Whittaker had been her mentor during her university years and had immediately recommended her when a position at Neward and Provident opened up. She knew she owed no small debt to him for her subsequent successes, which had culminated in her becoming the youngest full correspondent the agency had ever had. Like herself, he too lacked the neural jack needed for complete sensory immersion in the Phrame. While she merely tolerated the labels of “slow-bander” or “primitive” that came with the decision, Henry seemed to revel in it. The benefits of rank, she decided. On one occasion, after an intense debate about his inefficient insistence on using his physical body, Henry used the ancient typewriter in his office to type all the senior staff’s annual bonuses on paper cheques. He then sealed the cheques in envelopes and left them on the conference room table, inviting the assembled avatars to “drop by and pick theirs up” at their convenience. However, the lesson seemed lost to his employees.
Though Serah figured the man to be some eighty years her senior, physically, he still appeared to be in his early sixties, and she knew him to have a wife at home who looked even younger. The idea of commodified beauty was one of those nagging questions that always ate at Serah. Would she end up spending her later years and a small fortune on rejuvenation treatments to extend her life for additional decades? For that matter, would she one day break down, have the neural jack installed, and pay for a metabolic stasis tank for her body while her consciousness lived permanently online in the Phrame, waiting for her brain to wear itself out physically?
“Something else bothering you, kiddo?” Henry asked.
Serah realized she was staring at the man and smiled defeatedly. “Oh, Henry, why is it that my most meaningful relationships are with men who are either married, incarcerated madmen, or worse still, salespeople?”
A female voice giggled from the other side of the room. “Because you persist in that degenerate off-line lifestyle of yours instead of meet-netting a nice man and settling down in the real world.”
“I was misinformed,” Serah sighed, “I thought this was the real world, Maggie.” She nodded to the avatar seated at the table.
“Not anymore, my dear.” Vir. Maggie Steward had been with the company for twice as long as Serah had been alive and, for most of that time, served as the be-all-end-all decider of what went into the style-related content the agency published. Maggie was a significant expert and influencer on cutting-edge fashion and outrageous pop culture professionally, at least in the Phrame – she regarded the Root Realm to be stylistically dead, or at least sterile. This contrasted with her self-righteous devotion to traditional, conservative values like marriage, the duality of which confounded Serah. Maggie was happily married for over sixty years, and she took pains to remind Serah of this at every opportunity. Still, she had only been in the same room as her husband three times — at least as far as the physical world was concerned.
“Honestly, dear,” Maggie continued, “you’re never going to meet anyone unless you spend a little more of your time in-Phrame. I don’t see what you have against joining the civilized world and settling down with your soul mate,” she smiled condescendingly, then added, “online that is.” Serah busied herself, flipping aimlessly through various files on her notepad, hoping to end the discussion. Maggie persisted, however. “Unless, of course, you have aspirations of being a breeder or something as–”
“Now, Maggie, don’t be such a cynic,” Henry scolded. “I’ve got to believe that the important things in life, the ones that really make you happy, can’t be cataloged, preprogrammed, or distributed by the Phrame with a stamped-out compatibility rating. If two people were meant to be together, love will find a way.”
Maggie was polite but not amused by the argument. “That’s a sweet, primitive sentiment, Henry, and I’m sure it has worked out just fine for you, but surely you understand you’re the famous anomaly.”
Another avatar, a younger man with short-cropped red hair, rezzed into the chair beside Serah.
“I don’t know. I find something curiously arousing about the idea of a physical relationship. It seems so … primitive and feral,” the new man laughed, “not to mention dangerous.”
Serah blushed in embarrassment, fearing her sex life, or at least what her co-workers imagined it to be, was a frequent topic of discussion when she was not around. She could only hope that the perverted fantasies of her co-workers proved more interesting than the reality of her situation. “Careful, Jafet, or I’ll find where you keep your pale, atrophied body and breathe on it,” she said dryly without looking up from her notepad. She genuinely liked Vir. Jafet Meléndez, and she knew he would appreciate the slight taboo of the joke while at the same time completely offending Maggie.
Jafet laughed, then leaned in close to Serah and whispered, “Well, I’m not one for bleeding through the eyeballs or whatever you get with the latest venereal disease out there, but if I thought you were the least bit serious, I’d happily take the risk.” The offer was no doubt serious. Sex was quite a casual act in the Phrame, especially random, anonymous sex. In fact, despite the average Phramer’s fantasies, they would probably find conventional sex in the Root Realm about as bland and boring as Maggie found its culture and fashion.
Serah laughed off the proposition, knowing Jafet would leave it at that.
“You really should listen to Maggie once in a while,” he said, smiling dejectedly. “You might just meet the man of your dreams.”
Dreams …
The word hung in Serah’s mind. She pictured the old man, remembered the pleading look in his eyes, and heard the needler exploding in his chest. The last thing she remembered was Henry, in the corner of her vision, darting across the room to catch her as she fell out of her chair.
© 2022 Darrin Snider. All Rights Reserved.
