Hypercage: Instant Reality Prequel One (3 page)

He was about to connect when a jack-head loomed over him.

“Sorry to bother you.”

“What?” he spat, annoyed at the intrusion.

But when he looked up, he was surprised to see it wasn’t a jack-head at all. In fact, she was extremely pretty. Pink hair all messed up. Deliberately torn clothes. And lots of bare skin. Her skin is what drew his eye immediately. Glowing lines and shapes flowed over her body, tracking her curves and contours. She was covered head to foot in ARt. At least he assumed it was all over. The constantly flowing tattoos appeared and disappeared beneath the edges of her clothing. He queried her appearance with merely a thought.

His personal AI assistant captured her image and cross-referenced it, delivering the information straight to his HUD. He scanned through it quickly. Dave cancelled the wiki feed with a thought.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to shout at you,” he said.

“No worries, man. Look, any chance I can sit here? Those jack-heads are giving me the creeps,” she admitted, jerking her thumb over her shoulder.

Dave looked behind her and two dishevelled husks were leering at her, practically salivating as they watched the glowing lines of her ARt flow all over her body.

“Yeah, sure. Of course,” he said.

She stepped past him and sat down, distancing herself from the lecherous creeps.

“Thanks. They kept pinging my personal profile, over and over again, with disgusting pictures of themselves. Dirty bastards,” she said with disgust.

“No problem,” he said.

“So what you here for then? You don’t look like a jack-head,” she said.

“Well, that’s not what my wife thinks. She says I’ve got a problem. Get detoxed or don’t bother coming home.” Maybe it was from talking to someone about it, even a stranger. Or else it was the fact the drugs had worn off. But either way, he noticed his hands were shaking again.

“Hey man, we all need our jack time, right?” She encouraged as she took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

Yes, exactly. Why couldn’t Becks see that?

“Fancy telling my wife that?”

She laughed at his joke and he watched as her ARt flowed around her mouth, tracing her smile lines.

“Sure,” she offered, giving him a big smile.

“So, you into your gaming then?” he asked, a little nervously.

She crooked her arm and clenched her fist. Her whole arm turned black. Pinpricks of white light faded in from the blackness. A familiar blue spaceship appeared around the curve of her wrist and shot up her arm, rocketing towards her shoulder. As it reached her elbow, a purple ship appeared from underneath her tank top and streaked towards the other craft. They started to dance and twist around each other, firing off salvos of laser fire. Eventually the blue ship pulled a manoeuvre that placed it right behind the purple one and it unleashed a torrent of destruction against its engines. The purple ship exploded. Fragments of smashed spaceship flew in all directions. Some of them exploded out of the confines of the scene on her arm and came flying towards Dave’s face. He ducked out of the way and watched them fade into nothing over his shoulder. When he looked back, the blue ship stopped on her upper arm and then unfolded. The metal flattened to reveal the Galaxy War logo.

“Woah, that was awesome. Did you program that yourself?”

“Yeah, most of it. I got a bit of a hand off my boyfriend, though,” she admitted.

“So you play Galaxy War then?”

“Have you heard of it?”

Dave excitedly conceded the truth. “That’s pretty much why I’m here. That’s all I play. So which Outfit are you in?” He inquired.

“DevilFish. You?” She returned the question.

“The Gloaming,” he admitted to her with pride.

“Alien loving freak,” she said.

He laughed. “Better than being rebel scum.”

“Fair point,” she acknowledged.

“So how come you’re here then? You don’t seem like a jack-head either,” he said.

“Me and my fella are doing closed beta testing for a new plug-in. We need to come in for a weekly check-up to make sure it’s not frying our brains. It’s a bit of a drag, but the app is amazing, so we don’t mind too much,” she explained.

“That sounds pretty involved. What’s the plugin do?” Dave asked, his curiosity starting to take hold.

“It’s pretty cool. It’s called Mul-T. It’s basically like a multi-tasking app. It allows your brain to focus fully on multiple tasks at the same time. It takes a bit of setup and you need to train yourself to use it, but it’s fucking awesome.”

“Ah, OK. What sort of stuff can you do with it?”

“I’ve been using it nearly all day today to tidy up the house and play Galaxy War at the same time,” she said with a grin.

“Right. You been running it long?” He balled his fists to stop his fingers from twitching.

“About two months or so. It’s taken that long to train it properly. Although, now it’s getting better and better every day.”

“I see. And how did you get into the beta?” He asked, his heart racing.

“Well, it’s closed beta, so it’s invite only,” she informed him.

The cut on his head stung as a bead of sweat rolled over the broken skin, but he had to ask, “Any chance you could sort me out with an invite?”

“I dunno. I don’t want to risk getting kicked out. It’s under NDA, you know.”

“Not even for an alien loving freak like me?” He asked as his finger nails dug into his palms.

“I might be able to convince my boyfriend. He’s pals with one of the testers, that’s how we got in.”

To hide his increasing desperation, he clasped his hands together as if in prayer and pleaded, “Please. Honestly. Anything. I’ve got money — me and my wife, we do OK. She trains medical mechs. I can pay you… “

She laughed, and for a second he thought she was just going to brush him off.

“OK, OK, I’ll see what I can do,” she said, taking his clasped hands and lowering them.

“Thanks,” he said, noticing his hands were relaxing a bit.

“Mind you, it’s got some pretty steep requirements,” she explained. “It copies a large portion of your brain function to your home hub. It uses that to stream motor control and responses whilst you do something else. Which means you have to use it at home, at least for now.” She said.

“So you can talk to people, too?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I can still have a relatively decent conversation when playing. It’s odd. It’s like you know what’s happening, but you don’t control it. The plug-in controls it all. All your responses… everything. It isn’t good with tasks you’ve never done before, or any conversation that evokes a lot of emotion. But that’s why you need to train it. Once you do that, the multi-tasking just gets better and better. The dev’s reckon soon you’ll be jacked in permanently, but live a normal life at the same time. Like splitting your entire brain in half. Crazy, eh?” She said.

“That sounds really far out. I didn’t think they could do anything like that yet,” he said.

“Me neither. Some sort of new advancement in transcoding or something. I don’t know. I don’t care, really. As long as I can play Galaxy War uninterrupted, I honestly don’t care how they do it,” she said.

Uninterrupted. That’s what he needed. He’d be able to do all the jobs Becks set him every day, all the ones he carried out metronomically, without thinking. And looking after Jakey too. Then he wouldn’t have any more accidents either. It was perfect.

“Do you want me to talk to my boyfriend then?” She asked.

“Yeah, definitely. That’d be amazing. Any idea when? Could I get an invite tonight? I’m going to have to get this drug delivery authorised, otherwise she will know something is up. But as soon as I get home, I can jack-in. My Outfit has a big combined operations night tonight,” he said.

“Yeah, mine too. I don’t suppose you’re going after the Ashur Cluster, are you?” She asked cleverly.

He chuckled. “I couldn’t possibly comment,” he said, a big grin spreading over his face. He never had an opportunity to share any gaming comradery with anyone in real-life, and the connection felt amazing.

“Well, it was worth a try. Share GUIDs then, and I’ll see what I can do. No promises though,” She said.

They pressed their palms together and a translucent cube appeared in the air. Dave traced a finger inside the cube, drawing a glowing blue circle. He pressed his palm against it and an imprint of his hand glowed red in the centre. She clasped her fingers and the cube collapsed in on itself.

“So if I do get you access, will you get to play tonight?” she asked.

“Yeah, my wife and kid will be asleep, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

He watched her eyes dart around her invisible HUD as she looked over his personal profile. He did the same, absorbing her data in a glance.

“Woah, ninety-nine point six percent progress towards BR 40. Impressive! Hey, you really are a jack-head,” she said.

“Very funny,” he said, suddenly serious.

“Oh, come on, Dave. I was only teasing.” She tilted her head and her eyes were suddenly awash with artefacts. When they cleared, the Galaxy War logo burned brightly from their centre.

“Forever war. Forever fun,” she said in a gruff military voice, mimicking the games strapline. The logo flipped and her eyes returned to normal.

He burst out laughing. This girl was something else. Becks never just joked around with him like this.

“Honestly, though, with this Mul-T plug-in, you’ll be BR 40 in no time.” Her eyes danced around her HUD again. “Right, my test results are in and they’re all clear, so it’s jack-time, baby,” she said, throwing him a repeating smile as she stood up. “I’ll try and let you know tonight, OK?”

“Thanks, Starr.”

Dave watched her walk out of the clinic, eager to make the most of every last second, drinking in every curve as the ARt flowed over her body. If only he wasn’t married.

“Hey,” she called. “Good luck with the raid,” she said with a wink before walking away.

Dave beamed ear to ear, ignoring the glares as he tracked her every movement out of the clinic.

± ± ± ± ±

T
he heavy wooden door swung open just as he stepped up onto the porch.

“Welcome home, Mr Charlton, you have one message waiting from Mrs Charlton,” the house AI said.

He ignored it as he strode into the kitchen, straight to the nano-factory. He could guess what the message was, and frankly, after everything that had happened this evening, he needed a drink before he could deal with any more of Becks’ shit.

“Lagavulin. Triple measure,” Dave said to the house AI. It accessed the template for a 16-year-old peaty whisky, and instructed the nano-factory in the kitchen to dispense his drink.

Dave stood in front of the satin white box at the kitchen bench. He rubbed his temples and then gripped the bench on either side of the whirring nano-factory. A picture of Lagavulin Bay popped into ARSpace above the nano-factory as the template was loaded. The soft sound of lapping waves emitting from the picture in time to the animated water. The company logo shined brightly underneath the peaceful image.

He sighed. “What a night.”

A cut-crystal tumbler started constructing itself from the bottom up. The thick heavy base of the glass gave way to amber liquid as the glass and the whisky were created in one fluid motion. In just a second, a triple measure of the finest Islay single malt was waiting for him.

Dave didn’t even wait for the machine to ping. As soon as the glass was finished, he snatched it up and chucked the whisky down his throat. Finishing the drink in one go, he then dropped the glass into a hole beside the nano-factory. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and sighed with contentment as the whisky warmed him from the inside.

“Let’s get this over with then. Play message.”

Dave turned as a section of reality fizzed with a wash of static. Triangles floated in from all around his peripheral vision, combining and building up to create a solid object in ARSpace. Becks was standing in front of him with her arms crossed.

“Glad to see you’ve seen sense and come home,” she gloated.

Dave rolled his eyes and requested another whisky from the nano-factory. He grabbed the glass and turned back to the image of Becks standing in the middle of the kitchen.

“You’d better have been to the clinic otherwise you might as well just leave now...,” The house AI, monitoring that he hadn’t left, continued to play the same message. “Good. By now, you should have received you first dose, which means we can start over in the morning. At least you shouldn’t be an erratic mess anymore.”

Dave thought back to the hours spent in the clinic, going through all the tests, and then the agony as they strapped him to the bench, and IX flooded his system with the detox drug. His body had convulsed and spasmed for what seemed like hours.

Becks was right. He wasn’t an erratic mess. But he still had that overriding feeling that he should be logged in right now. Like an itch at the back of his mind that had to be scratched.

“Which means you should be in good shape to look after Jake tonight. The nanny mech is on the blink and the engineer can’t come until tomorrow. So you’re on duty. I gave him 5 ounces at about midnight when I got in. I’ve got a diagnostics session tomorrow, so I’ll be up early. See you in the morning. And Dave, if I catch you playing that game, you won’t get another chance. Night, night.” Becks’ image blew him a kiss.