GuNNhead

The two enter the pod, agony in hand. The extraneous gear gets off right away. The brick hooks, up, and charges in their stead, siphoned to hers. Easy.
“Where’s your storage?”
“In the basement, same as anything else?”
“Right, wasn’t even a question.” They leave, and the door solidifies behind them. They walk down the smooth colored walls. It’s a brightness not available in true reality, perfect for their geostation, the Galactic Halo. Entering the lift, a note of fear enters his brain.
“This isn’t… would… Newgov will have our asses for sure for this one if it goes wrong, won’t they?”
“It’s the same for nearly everything done here. But, yes, this more than any other.”
“Ha!” the doors slide open, and they walk to storage locker C-18 “Well, you know what they say:”
“If you can play, we can pay!” Saying it together, they exchange a hearty laugh, echoing the darkened steel and concrete of the sub level. Before long, they arrive at his storage. The door dissolves as all the others. He enters the room, and emerges with a cold metallic briefcase.
“Here they are, let’s get this done.”

They arrive at her pod, and begin inside.
“Wow, I didn’t even think this was possible! How many bricks are in here? This can’t be safe!”
“You worry too much, it needs this, come on, check your value here, I’ll set up the discs, run them on a double, then loop the block to pass. After hinging, of course.”
“At least it’ll be safe.”
“I hope so.”

The two work diligently, she performs her tasks with a nimbleness not seen outside the inner world. When he is able to catch it out of the corner of his eye, it disturbs him. There’s no way interlocked in his mind for it all. It simply doesn’t.

“I know you know what you’re doing, but I hope the results work out for us.”
“I hope so too, but if this isn’t based on Type-6, and a whole new type like I think it is, we can’t be beat, we’ll earn big by playing. Unless, of course, we encounter the protus.”
“But wouldn’t doing this basically ensure we encounter it?”
“Well, yes, but that’s why I have you installing alongside me.”
“You really think I’m that good?”
“Inside? Yes, the electricity is chemical. What’s the readout?”
“It’s all good here.”
“Great, time to test this out: “the paradisio drive.”
“So, what, exactly, does this do?”
“It’ll give us an unknown advantage. I can’t even explain it out here, and it’s far too dangerous to even talk about it in there. For all intents and purposes, we’re just playing.”

On the inside:
“You have picked for the first round of today’s games!”

“Ugh, damn ads.”
“No amount of tech will remove those, I guess.”
“C’mon, the rounds are launching. We have to play.”

They flow downwards through the pathstream. Data of rush transverses the constructed ether, towards a piloted goal of time and skill. There is only a realness felt here. It’s not a certainty of feeling, but is a reality of the brain. In such a way, that is, to cloud the fog of the outside. The death, the sand, the desolation.

Every game gives you more.

“These guys are giving away 20,000UEC bonus to all entrants, get yours here!”
“Yeah, we know, adbot!”
“Psst, no, guys, it’s me, Ceta.”
“Ceta? How are you doing here?”
“Yeah, last I heard they found you, dead.”
“It’s not a way to slide, I’m here for life. It’s hard to explain. In short, they did.”
“But that doesn’t make sense.”
“It does, but I can’t say this close, we’d need a closed channel. Next cycle, worldtime, y’know, the innercyde.”
“Perfect, we’ll install on a secure-pain.”
“Until, then, don’t spill a byte to a soul.”
“There’s no such thing, see you then.”
“Try all our games and collect more extra cash!” He disappears back into the adbot, slipping through the cracks in the lifecode.

They continue through past the netic-ghost, into the arena. In the center of the large room, vidlinks on all the walls, they focus on the one dead ahead. The big seller, damn near a job, or, the best anyone can get nowadays.

“There it is, the brand new and now best way to earn UEC: Sybaritic: The Havoc Onslaught” Their minds double-click in unison, and they leave the bounding overworld into a narrower channel.

“Your new favorite game.”
“Shut up, you always say that.”
“And each time they get better, do they not?”
“In some ways, but, as you may already know, I don’t like dying.”
“More slots are open to you now more than ever, we have no worries about in our setup.”
“In our setup? Did you not hear about the guys who got all those newgov chips?”
“Oh please, that’s just a stupid rumor.”
“Well, I heard one of them was a girl too!”
“Don’t start up with that synapse phase bullshit again. It doesn’t even compute.”
“It totally does, it’s all about the connection, see, and-” he sees her glare, and stops. “Either way, they were able to get the companymen to get them in!”
“The companymen don’t exist, and if they did, nobody without some seriously gravity connections could find them. Unless it’s… well, it’s unimportant.”
“Right, we need to move ahead in the game.”
“Oh no, not yet. This one reads from an altered source. It can’t just be accessed, and the installation process is a total fragmentation.”
“So how’s everyone else playing it?”
“They’re not, they only think they are. I’m talking about the real game, here.”
“So, meta?”
“Beyond the common meta we do here. I’ve been following this release, it’s unlike anything I’d ever seen in the public domain. Newgov doesn’t even know what they’ve released.”
“Are you talking about this game? It’s just the most killer install ever made, a big budget cash grab for the junkies in this fucking desert.”
“I wish it was. But it’s infected, could be bad, could be good. It’s just… unknown, plus these schemas I was able to get, it’s pure redshift.”
“Don’t you mean blueshift? Like, that’s what they do! You’re probably just over-installed; you gotta purge sometimes, man.”
“I know what I read, I know what I saw, I can handle my install-base, and, most importantly: I know what I’ve been building.”
“Building?”
“When have you ever known me to find ecliptic schemas and not try to reproduce them?”
“Still, what would a redshift possibly accomplish?”
“Depends who’s doing it. This exo is so advanced I could barely understand it at first. It could do anything, internal, external. The way it affixes a mindwave, it’s like it was created by someone who totally derailed and lived: a genius who doesn’t know it, but with incredible drive towards an unknown purpose.”
“So, what do we do?”
“We try it out. I need your help for the final bit.”
“Well, if this does what you say it does, I have to, if only for curiosity, what do you need from me?”
“I need your pod, well, and your schizo discs.”
“They’re so obsolete, I put them down in storage.”
“Exactly, they just need a rehinge, and they’re perfect. We should go now, first to the pod, then storage. I have to transvert some dynamism.”

“Your chips are worth more.”
“No, they’re not, it’s just how you view them.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, here look at them this way.” I showed the angle I had.
“Well, I still feel the same.”
“That’s your choice. Feeling and thought.” The trains rushed by us. Wind, tugging at our clothes.
“Can we agree to share?”
“You know the answer to that.” Bar codes and serial numbers flashed in my mind’s eye. It was no day to die, not like this.
“They’ll get us.”
“They don’t even know who we are.”
“But we do, man, it’s us.”
“In what ways?”
“Like you said, before, don’t question it, it’s a feeling.”
“I don’t think that’s quite what I said. Either way, we have too much for ourselves, this is a good thing.”
“Not if it can’t be used, they’ll find us.”
“You worry too much, they, if they exist, want us to have these, they practically gave them to us.”
“And that doesn’t worry you either?”
“I don’t see why it would. We’re the rightful owners.”

We keep walking. I can feel a creeping in my gut. It works with my body, fueling me. The sand gives way under our feet as we veer away from the mag-lev tracks. It’s a cushy, uncomfortable feeling. Harder to walk on real ground, I think to myself. I don’t… being inside of the world… the rush it gives me. It’s this place, it feels less real because I feel it less.

“Could they have changed?”
“How would I know?”
“Well, how do you feel about it?”
“Great.” A shuttle passes overhead, the sonic boom is negligible at this distance.
“You always say that.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter, we’re here.”
“I don’t even know where here is.”
“It’s nowhere, that’s the point.”

My friend walks ahead of me, in the same direction, but doesn’t know where we’re going. I let him, he needs to let go of his nerves, he almost lost his cool back at the facility. The sun scorches down upon us. It feels like we’re walking aimlessly, lost in the desert, but I can feel. I can feel. After hours off-radar, he smacks into the air.

“Ow! My fuggin nose!”
“I told you, man, nanites. I got this. My information has been approved. High-end ch’krhine”
“I can’t believe they picked you.”
“We have to play.”
“I know, but you reached first place.”
“Yeah, and you reached second, with bonus opportunity! Come on, let’s go!” I touch the invisible wall, and it slides open. Cool air flows into us from the darkened innards, flashing with lights.

We walk inside, glimmering wires of electric agony line the hallway. We pass through a large steel door, towards the paradisio drive. My heart begins to beat faster with anticipation, we’re almost there, in, inside of ourselves, and the world. Well, what’s actually going on in the world; the only thing people care about anymore. Where the action is. We’ll all die, can just do it more now.

“Well, lets test this shit out.”
“Respect, man, the chips.”
“I get it.”

We relax, and take a seat. The companymen come from a door in the back. Their suits glisten with sincerity.

“Ready to be installed, boys?”
“Always, always.”
“Always.”