The Neoprene Dreamscape
Peg arose just after dark. She seldom got up in the day. She hated the sun, and the poisonous burning light that emitted from it.
Still encased in the shiny black neoprene outware that she had worn from the previous outing, she moved slowly, cautiously across the smallish vestibule. Soon she would need to shower; one of several that she was allotted each week. Although it rained nearly every day, the burning, black sheets of chemical residue falling outside could only be purified at a limited rate in order to meet the needs of the filthy populace.
Electro-chemical deodorants and ultrasonic detergents became the alternative but less preferable method of cleansing.
On this day Peg would be allowed two minutes of pure pleasure. She removed the elaborate outware that enclosed her naked human form. She stepped carefully into the foldout modular shower, and pressed the start button. Nothing happened. She pressed again. Again no response. She hated manual controls. Then a mindless, sexless voice blared on her monitor:
"Error #28. Please report to regional maintenance."
She knew what that meant, there would be no shower today. Probably not all week. As she reached for the self-scrubbing console, Peg felt a burning sensation underneath her tongue. It was common for small infections to occur around Dsu3 receptor sites as the body mysteriously rejected even the most innocuous implants. But with bio-engineered anti-rejection drugs Peg, unlike many illicit implant recipients, got by without the serious side-effects that still plagued most God hosts.
After a rather unsatisfying and smelly electro-chem bath, she fought her way into her newest, formfitting wetware, custom designed by Samsung. It felt snug and provided a unique sense of security in the uncertain world in which Peg resided.
"I wanted that shower so bad," she cursed as she fastened her electrodes, each to its corresponding nerve plexus.
The excitement rising into the evening, fully jacked in, with a fresh stock of pure God nearby, was becoming anticlimactic in light of the fact that Peg had not had a real shower in weeks.
She reached into the small space behind her bedboard and quickly produced an ampulet of her most precious and beloved God. Casually placing the smooth vial beneath her tongue she closed her mouth, gave her tongue a twist and then released.
The familiar and reassuring sound of God fizzing in her mouth caused an immediate response.
"Aaahhhh," she moaned in ecstasy as beautiful pastel colors began to softly explode behind her partially-closed eyelids.
The real advantage to having had one of her "natural" eyes replaced with a conduit to the Optical Browser terminal was in the graphic interface between God and her own Sat-link receptors, custom designed by Peg herself to interface with her own hemi-synchros.
The colors became more intense as the physical rush began a spiraling ascent that felt like climbing the walls of heaven.
She blinked her left eye two times and closed her right eye, requesting full channel correlation. Then her arcane wetware began to first record and then simulate the exact brainwaves whose structure is enhanced by God, creating a powerful holographic interface with the info-verse. Through the amplification of these resonant frequencies the possibility of opening the gateways to infinite parallel dimensions would manifest in few individuals. This elaborate technique was perfected by a mere handful of talented infonautical explorers.
Riding on the crest of the brightest data-waves, Peg morphed into the deepest edifices of that seemingly infinite architecture of the Infi-Net. She tried in vain to remember the days before she became an addict. Peg had studied both Virtual Dimensional Theory and Digital Observer Effect, making her extremely qualified to navigate the colorful Cybernetic Chateaus and Lounges that were pulsing through the global brain like infinite galaxies in a never ending cosmos.
"If only the Denizens of Infi-Net could find freedom from the Multinational," she thought to herself, suddenly damning herself for thinking self incriminating thoughts. "Thoughts can be monitored as easy as any other form of communication," she reluctantly told herself.
For twelve years Peg had worked for Telenet, the main division of Net-Gates, the largest security division within the Multinational conglomerate. Only in the last year had she gone into semi-retirement, working on loan as a free-lance security tracker.
Her current assignment involved trying to keep track of every Transvandal on file within her primary domain.
This, of course, was easier said than done. The rotting core of the Megapolis were comparable to rotten logs crawling with termites. Clustered cells of multi-cultural and multi-ethnic enclaves, each one intersecting and overlapping with multiple digital domains.
Within this veritable jungle of external architecture and internal hardwiring existed both magnificent structure and awesome chaos.
It has been said that Infi-Net has no beginning, no middle and no end. If the Net had a center, then that center was known as the Abyss.
The Abyss was fabled to be a chaotic whirlpool of data and consciousness containing the sum total of all known facts in the Info-Verse, located within a single architecture. This inaccessible area of Infi-Net was long forbidden to anyone without the compatible wetware to interface the incredible density of dimension within the Abyss.
This gargantuan data-zone, compressed like an imploded star, supported the nexus of all electronic networks. A veritable citadel of data; if the Net could be thought of as the CNS of the global brain, then the Abyss was surely the neo-cortex.
Peg navigated the first security check. As an agent of the Multinational, she maintained Priority 6 security access to the Global Nexus. She entered her brain scan as her skeleton key.
Peg boosted through several priority access checks until a protocol override locked on to her retscan.
"Access Denied." "Give reason for this intrusion," spoke the security monitor in a dull monotone.
Peg replied, "Routine maintenance," and quickly reversed her path progressively downward through security levels. That was the furthest she had ever roamed into this highest of security zones. She didn't know how many security veils were remaining to go all the way in but she guessed that was one of the final checkpoints. She felt exhilarated at the thought of such a dangerously illicit intrusion into what had become known as a "forbidden zone".
"Routine maintenance," she thought to herself with a devilish smile on her face. It was an idea that she had been thinking about for years: surfing the Abyss.
This time she had been allowed to return.
Peg felt as if her eyes were on fire. Even approaching the outer perimeters of the Abyss had meant hacking through a density of information with no comparison elsewhere on Infi-Net. She shut down her retscan and took a deep breath.
Slowly she opened her burning eyelids to look at her cramped living chamber.
"It feels like I'm living at the bottom of a grave," she mumbled. "A place to die in, certainly not to live in," she thought to herself as her body began to lurch forward involuntarily.
Peg flashed, "Must be an error in my motion-simulator". She reached for the mo-sim manual override.
Peg stood up, detached the electrodes, and signaled her smartware to realign them to her body's erogenous zones. "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," Peg mused.
With her retscan temporarily shut down to sooth her tortured optic nerves, Peg decided to don an ancient pair of stereoscopic goggles. As she reached over towards the stogs, she again experienced an unsettling shift in balance.
While everything from extreme vertigo to schizophrenia had been attributed to VR/Dsu3 interface, she still found the misinterpretation of motion sensing data to be unsettling, to say the least.
"The Abyss must serve as a Gravitron for the Nexus," she theorized. Just the thought of data configured in such an epic proportion made her wet. Tonight she would need sympathy and the basic mammalian creature comfort only Infi-Net could provide.
Settling back into the latest Daewoo Vibra-Lounge Cushion, Peg launched a quikscan for the raunchiest domain she could locate. Within seconds she floated into the House of the Rising Sun. One of millions of virtual bordellos along the erotic byways of Infi-Net. This particular cat-house contained 37,000 private "rooms," each one replete with exquisite decor reminiscent of a Shivaite Temple, where tantric love rituals were practiced for millennium.
As Peg begun a quick-search for available room titles, she reached behind herself with her left hand. Her hand expertly snaked around behind the diskshelf into her secret God stash. Bright Orange and Yellow wrapping crinkled as her fingers tore through the ceramic gauze surrounding the precious Dsu3. Within seconds she had consumed and spit out the empty hit. The used ampulet tumbled to the floor, like a spent shell-casing; a discarded byproduct of Peg's relentless war on reality.
Tonight Peg would seek total immersion in debauchery. With her sensory matrix pushed full tilt, she represented the human animal in the apex of sexual heat, going where no one had gone before.
She began to be swept away in the spectacular Niagara of erotic, sensual images, intersecting with all sexes, all races, all species throughout the galaxies of data which was Infi-Net.
This was not sensory overload but sensory fulfillment and gratification on levels both sublime and unfathomable.
After experiencing orgasmic fulfillment for what seemed like aeons, she glided electra-blue into the lounge area.
A quickscan revealed a sordid group of denizens, for most of whom prurient interest was a point of pride.
Peg had no concept of four-dimensional time or space in the traditional sense.
She began to wander aimlessly, effortlessly, immersing herself through the phantasmagoria of transitory images. Suddenly she saw something that startled her in a way that shook her to the foundations of her being, and sent her mind reeling like a spool of magna-thread falling off of a 200 level cond-op. It was "that face." The same face she had come so close to the night before.
"A coincidence?" she wondered.
"Not a chance," she assured herself. "There are no coincidences," she told herself, remembering what she had learned about the Observer Effect.
The suspect Transvandal glared ominously at Peg, flickered for a second and then disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived
