Thrown down, blood on the street
Rage and blade, servant of the game
On high they laugh as we burn
Our lives just fuel for their flame
****
The first milisecs were always the worst. A jackhammer pulse in his neck and an electronic scrape across the cortex mixed with a hurricane of vertigo. Out of the I-Space where rules were made by code and he was a logarithmic weaver of fate. Back into the dark, musty crawlspace below the frigid heart of Central Data Processing. Frazzed nerves reorienting from data stream digital purity, to the mess that was a biologic system reset. Kaj forced himself to keep what little he’d eaten at dinner down. The sea that was the modern global connection of full sensory Interface Space made the days of old fashioned audio-visual net look like stone tablets.
Legit users had all kinds of safety interfaces and limiters. Kaj couldn’t spare the memory or time for that.
Deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth, the mind rules the meat, that’s what Sutherland always said. And he’d been sucking in white phosphorus smoke, burned buddies, and vaporized cera-steel, not chilled air from a corp school’s most powerful processor. The gut-twist moment passed, and Kaj ran an internal status check.
“Kaj, sweetie, you’re showing a cortisol imbalance and elevated heart rate.” The soft, soothing female voice drifted into the speakers of his som-inducer. The feather-light piece of tech was mandatory for every student in the corporate school. Meant to induce the maximum amount of melatonin, dopamine, and induce Theta wave activity in an organic brainpan, they helped prep the next generation of LUMINA elite. Kaj’s was next to his prone body, hardwire interfaced with his rig. Slowing his breathing, Kaj blinked sweat away from his eyes and found the issue with the deception sprite that should have been spoofing his biomonitor output.
“Bad dream about my parents. Angel, can you say some prayers for me?” He scrubbed the memory buffer clean and slid the deception program back into the system. Location, sleep programming, and network security were all still good to go; otherwise he would have been pulled out by corporate security at magrifle point, not ejecting himself.
“Of course Kaj, just relax. The Lord is my shepard, I shall not want, for he has led me to the grace of family. He maketh me lie in green pastures of abundance. He leads me to purified waters. He giveth my soul purpose.” Psalm 23 from the LUMINA International approved New Testament, Kaj noted idly, wondering if anyone else here even knew there was an older version. Hard printed on paper when they had enough trees for that.
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Speculative science fiction that is hopefully not used as a playbook by the people it criticizes.
Writing in the Gray Area 