Wire Jacks

As he boarded the Tramcar, Cozy couldn’t tell if his ocular hack had already begun to trip him out, or if he was just way too charged up from his re-entry into real time from the docs’ office virtual Net. Either way, things were definitely looking odd.

On his way out, the CyberDoc had said it would be at least a few hours before the full effects of the hack would wear off — “and no extra charge by the way”.
Because of the intense level of detail in the new imaging protocols he’d used this time, a residual echo wouldn’t be unheard of, and his ocular nerves wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between real life and the Net.

Taking a standing position near the styroglassed section with a view of the city, he could swear on a godprint that he was seeing Luke Skywalker III, in the seat across from him. Not the actor who played him in that video from years ago! The actual character of Skywalker the noble Jedi Knight! The way he had looked on the covers of all those fictprints people used to read.

Up front, the operator looked like C3PO with a hat on. He’d even tapped the brim of his hat when Cozy boarded and mumbled “I’ve forgotten how much I hate space travel”. All Cozy could think about was Princess Leia in that gold bikini and how he hoped he’d see her before his body compensated for the after effects of his Net hack.

He decided to move back farther down the car to enjoy the full experience of the after effects in peace.

Remming

The advancements made in Self Perpetuating Recreational Imaging (SPRI) in recent years were staggering. Cozy was quite certain that what he was seeing was real. What really blew his mind was that the system was now creating nuances that he, himself *would* have thought to create if the system hadn’t beat him to it.

Cozy plopped down into a vacant seat on the tram. He looked out the window and saw as the bottom leg of an AT-AT was waiting at the same red light as the city bus. He smirked to himself and leaned toward the cold window, his breath forming a small, cloudy patch on the glass. There was rust on the feet of the AT-AT. The system had even thought to render that.

Several moments later, after the initial excitement and novelty wore off, he put the system into Suspend Mode and jacked right into the city mainframe for a long overdue nuro-defrag. The AT-AT dissolved into the brick wall behind it, as did several other items around him. Most of what was changing was happening so fast and so subtly that he couldn’t focus on all of it. After the motion blurs died down, he closed his eyes and was jacked directly into REM sleep.

Immediately, Cozy was mentally reminded of his digital commitments to his continued access, as well as retaining the ability to continue to earn credits, to the city matrix: One fifteen minute nuro-defrag every three hundred hours, four solid hours of dedicated render mode per twenty four hour period, and finally one live psychiatric visit ever two thousand hours. He was sixteen hours late for his defrag and it would cost him eight credits.

City Matrix

Cozy had been part of the City Matrix’s private alpha while he was in junior high, since then, he’d never looked back to the “real” un-wired world.

Entry was like being cast (or possibly thrust) into every single matrix users personal life-vlogging webisode all at once, with top of the line chatting, file sharing, life streams, feeds and so much more. It was like living on line as an employee of the largest corporate conglomerate in the world even though no one corp could contain it. It was so intense, that wire jacks like Cozy stayed wired, one full entry into the city matrix was enough in life.

The tram control system chimed into his feed informing Cozy that a city matrix port hub was the next stop. There he’d be able to go full wired, and jack into his avatar to access the world wide wire.

When the tram stopped the left doors opened and only the wire jacks got off to occupy a hub jack. Something norms couldn’t access since they didn’t have enough hardware spliced into their system.

Story by caine1 (Caine Dorr), sammysunset (James Jackson) · December 2007–February 2008 · Originally published on novlet.com