Transcendence Read Free

industrial accompaniment.
    At the same time, he’s double-subscribed—naturally, he’s not paying the kind folks who, unwittingly, let him electronically feed from their home systems—into an adventure flick he never misses, entitled, Lone Ship Bounty . The center 30-degree wedge of his vision is spliced with the show, pushing reality 15 degrees to each side so this virtual world can take center stage.
    Lone Ship Bounty isn’t scheduled to begin for an hour, but the previews are sometimes as interesting as the show itself. Except when his captain is in real-time combat: That’s the best. Jonathan especially enjoys watching the Captain, his quick decision-making, his sure confidence in crisis. Secretly, he wishes he were the Captain. The Captain was from Minneapolis, too. Jonathan bets that no one ever got the best of him , when he lived here. Jonathan knows about being used.
    Echoes of shrieks and laughter dash off the steel and concrete facings of the real buildings near him, so Jonathan kicks open his cloud of data-icons and begins to walk faster. A ground-car screeches around a corner. Jonathan rushes to the ragged sidewalk just before the wheeled vehicle roars past, spewing a cloud of exhaust from poorly burned methane. If it weren’t for the shrieks and this car, Jonathan might think Minneapolis abandoned.
    “ Meat!” he cusses the driver using both his physical voice and the public:local comm channel. At the same time, he reaches down for a chunk of concrete. He throws it after the beetle-sleek car. But by the time his projectile falls, the target is far away, dodging charred hulks of other cars as well as shattered aluminum and glass panels fallen long ago from the old towers. He cusses again, mentally dashing through network channels to find this guy and tell him a thing or two. What kind of retro drives a ground car intheflesh anymore, anyway? The guy isn’t even transmitting a signal.
    Then, embarrassed, Jonathan realizes he too is traveling intheflesh. He is on his way home from Minneapple Corrections, which just released him from feedrapture-addiction treatment, where he spent a damned long time, including his sixteenth birthday, ostensibly learning that a healthy boy needs to lead more than a purely electronic life. The car vanishes from his mind.
    “‘ Feedrapture-addiction,’ phah!” He spits. He never felt enraptured while spliced into layer upon layer of the virtual world. Only relieved. Who wouldn’t? Who doesn’t? Anyhow, Jonathan spends more time in his physical world than many he knows.
    He pulls his concentration from the spliced-in subscription—not needing to shut it off, so adept is he at this—and studies his physical surroundings as if they had just now sprouted from the street.
    Unedited, clear of overlays, the city seems to crash down all around, ominous, heavy, impenetrable. Few objects display any info-icons, and those that do offer little in the way of comfort. His nostrils fill with the stench of decaying garbage and damp cement. The shrieks end with a final rising note, and the laughter ends with them.
    Now silence, except for gravel and broken glass scuffling beneath his boots as he walks.
    He is alone. No, alone isn’t a strong enough word for how he feels. Once upon a time he had been in love . . . what? only a year ago. Not with an individ—a subscription fantasy mate almost everyone enjoys at one time or another—no, that isn’t for Jonathan. His love was a real girl, someone he’d been with intheflesh. érase was her handle. As he begins to think of her, powerful need automatically brings an individ program to life, a program that his former— goddammit, former! Jonathan thinks—gang leader had him download. Jonathan has to force himself to stop dreaming of érase to shut down the damned thing, beautiful girl or no.
    “ Fucking government card,” he mutters, cursing his cybernetic implant for its utter lack of security against such downloads, and what a bitch