The Dilapidated Structure

As I approached the dilapidated structure, my heart sank. I was expecting to be able to handle things myself. But by the looks of it, I knew then and there that I was going to be hiring at least a handyman if not a small construction company. My buddy was right, I shouldn't have invested in this. he's going to be laughing at me for a long time to come.

As I pondered the humiliation my buddy was going to send my way, I entered the house through a gaping entrance sans door. Faint sounds of water dripping mixed with a damn mosquito buzzing around my head distracted me enough to somewhat ignore the pungent and mildew smells. Somewhat.

The room I entered had the requisite cobwebs in the upper corners, sheet-covered furniture, and weeds poking through the floor. It was your typical scary-movie scene.

But something caught my attention. The corner of my eye picked up a weird glow in the far corner of the room. I cautiously approached it until I was standing over the oddity. I squatted down to get a closer look and some kind of nebulous mist sprayed out of it and into my face! I couldn't believe it. I wasn't expecting it and it freaked me out.

I stood up and ran back across the room, tripping over a large crack in the floor. I sailed down towards the floor, but before I made contact, all hell broke loose.

Or at least that it was it seemed like to me. The room changed to an endless cavern of colors. I was floating among the colors, which had both mist-like and moisture-like qualities. My mind whirled. I had no idea what was happening. Maybe I was having a reaction to the stuff sprayed in my face. Maybe this cursed structure was a portal into another dimension. I was perplexed and scared.

As I contemplated my new reality, I floated higher and higher through the clouds of color. It seemed I was picking up speed, sensing the mist passing me by more and more quickly. I began to panic. Oddly, I also thought about how I should have just hired a handyman for this broken-down old abode.

The Move to the Past in Philadelphia

The Move to Philadelphia

It wasn't as if we could have anticipated any of it. I certainly didn't think that a simple move across the country would have caused any kind of cataclysm in my life. So when the inchoate idea took hold in Holsten's mind to move to City of Brotherly Love, he began to talk me into too.

"It'll be great!" he said. We'll pack only what we need and purge the rest. We'll head to Philadelphia and start a new life, one away from all the turmoil that seemed to dog both of us these last few years.

In just a few months, Holsten had me as excited as hound in a hen house. The planning began then.

So we hired a Philadelphia moving company on moving day and then followed behind them till we arrived at our glorious new Philly apartment in the heart of the French Quarter. Holsten unloaded our car upon arrival and I took a walk around the block to get a lay of the land.

The Move to the Past

I had never seen such magnificent trees lining the sidewalks before. The air had a suspiciously fragrant scent to it, a smell I would never have associated with a city. Could Philadelphia be so different than the West Coast?

As I rounded the corner a few side streets away from our new place, I also noticed how oddly everyone was dressed. Was that a bowler hat? Knickers? Bustiers and corsets? Was I going crazy or were these people dressed like they were just stepping off the set of a period piece movie?

I meekly went up to one the women walking with her two little children and asked her why everyone was dressed up like so. Her looked helped answer my earlier question about my crazy potential. And then she sauntered off without a word.

I began to realize that maybe I had stepped onto some kind of 1800's set! The roads were dirt all of a sudden. Horses were everywhere! Th air smelled of flowers and smoke and lifestock. What happened? Where was I?

I desperately needed to go find Holsten but abruptly discovered I was totally and utterly lost. I wasn't even sure if I was in Philadelphia still. How could I have know such a move would have resulted in this?

An Alien Planet

IF you've ever been to an alien planet, you'd know that there are many things that are eerily similar to life at home on Earth. For instance, there is land, sea, atmosphere and sometimes even fauna and flora to boot!

So when I landed on this godforsaken place, I was immediately taken aback by the strange sameness, while I got a nasty case of the deja vu's too. The wind whipped my coat tails and hair, the sky looked ominous, but not all that alien. My boots stood on firm ground in what seemed dirt-like.

I left my lander a mile behind me and never looked back. That was what was needed, since it was useless to me now. Maybe I'll return to it later for parts, but for now I am headed away from it and towards happiness station, my destination.

As I trudged through the alien landscape, I hummed tunes by my favorite musical divas while I scanned the horizon for danger. I saw nothing mostly, certainly nothing living, or at least not to the naked eye. My heart pounded in my chest and I prayed.

I had a limited supply of food and water, and knew I'd be in danger of dying of hunger or thirst if I didn't locate something or someone to help.

Between the Antique Swedish Chairs I Went in Chase

I raced down the side of the street chasing after my prey with a synthetic focus that man was probably not supposed to possess. Too bad for my quarry. He ducked into a door as I whipped between a set of hanging sheets just barely in time to glimpse the sole of his right foot disappear through the alcove.

 

I leapt over a synthetic wicker basket, probably painted on the Cape, and slammed on my heels to gain purchase on the asphalt to right-angle it into the same door without wasting any time. I had to get him.

The first thing I noticed was the darkness. The second thing I noticed were the stairs; the only way was up. I blinked the short sequence to activate the night vision in my contacts at the same time as I breathed the sequence to squirt the necessary extra adrenal fluid and stims into my blood. 

While I bounded up the steps taking three at a time I blinked another sequence and time slowed down to a crawl, or at least my mind was now experiencing time go by ten times more slowly than usual. This allowed me to effectively think ten times as fast a normal person.

Now I could see in the dark, I was jacked up on adrenaline and stimulants and everything slowed down from my perspective so I could take my time thinking through my next moves and plan while I ran. I had no time to lose because the man I was chasing was a pro and he was getting away. I watched him get to the last stair, like a fat fish floating through the sea on the way to the surface. 

In what seemed like minutes, he slowly rotated a bit as he began to run down a hallway. My advantages allowed me to make it to the top a lot faster than him. I barely felt any exertion at all. Climbing stairs was no effort and I was soon in the hallway too and right behind him.

Once again he ducked into a door and disappeared. I followed. The room I entered was bright and airy and he was gone! My contacts automatically adjusted so I wasn't blinded by the light. Tiny half-inch drones buzzed my head, my prey's defensive measures. 

To my right was an antique Gustavian desk and in front of me was a large open window with its curtains flowing in the breeze. To my left was a pair of antique Swedish chairs on either side of an odd-looking door. I took this all in within a half a second and swatted at my enemy's drones with an armored and weaponized forearm.

Shit! Did he go through the window or the door?! It seemed as if it was a fifty-fifty chance and I had to flip a mental coin. But if I chose wrong, he would get away, I didn't have time to choose incorrectly. He was too good and too fast for mistakes. There was something about the chairs. One seemed askance. Maybe he bumped it as he passed? 

I made my choice, he went through the door between the chairs, I was sure of it.  As I accelerated towards the door, I noticed why it all seemed so odd. There was no door. He had set a trap hoping I would choose the door. An almost invisible force field was extended between the antique chairs and when I tried to run through, the force field not only stopped me, but electrocuted me in the process, rendering me useless and writhing on the floor in painful convulsions. I had lost him and it was over.

Going to the All-Immersion Amphitheatre Concert Experience

We were deposited on the grounds leading up to the concert venue with little fanfare. We immediately activated our shield rings and eyez. Now we were safe and secure and were able to see 360 degrees around us for up to a mile.

My friend and I trudged over the pavement that led to the entrance, all the while people-watching. The fellow concert-goers were as decked out as were. Lighted pants, colorful, shimmering tops that oscillated between opaque and transparent, hats with videos playing above the brim; the fans of Snuffleupagus were indeed colorful.

Our eyez floated above our heads, scanning the place with precision. There were about twenty-five of the one-inch drones, all synched to my contacts which in turn displayed a kind of HUD directly in my vision (I set mine to display across the top third of my vision). They fly around according to pre-set patterns, and have a bit autonomy too when things get dicey. Some buzz around my head while others shoot off in all directions and around corners to offer me a complete picture of my surroundings.

As we approached the huge double doors that marked the entrance to the amphitheatre, a small queue had formed. We dutifully went to the back and waited for our turn on the people-thrower. A minute later we were at the doors and I put my finger in the scanner as I stepped onto the people-thrower platform. 

An instant later I was being whisked up, over and through various points in the amphitheatre, flying actually, until I slowed and was gently placed onto my seat. My buddy plopped down next to me in his seat, smiled at me and thanked me for the tickets. I like doing good things for people. We had a good pair of chairs in which to enjoy the spectacle.

Looking out over the crowd, I gathered my composure and sighed with contentment as I viewed the stage. This theatre-in-the-round amphitheatre didn't have a bad view, and our seats were perfect to watch the live concert. We were far enough back so that the anachronistic tradition of Snuffleupagus spraying the front row wouldn't be an issue for us. And this was nothing like being in the stands of some football or soccer stadium.

We spent a short while of watching other Snuff fans finding their seats as the venue's lights dimmed in preparation for the concert's start. I signaled and my eyez made their way back to my hat's docking port and I reached behind my ear to turn off my comm-net. These interfered with live shows. Finally, I stuck my finger into the seat's armrest jack. I was ready.

A half a second later I was being transported again, but this time through nothing but colors and mist and alien sounds. This lasted only a minute until everything was personally calibrated for me and I settled down to a much more comfortable floating sensation. I didn't feel the seat beneath me although I knew it was there. Instead I was alone in a vast space, looking down at the obscured stage, weightless, as the sounds of Snuffleupagus began to creep out of the corners of nowhere.

The all-immersive concert-going experience is never dull, never the same and absolutely mind-blowing. The sights one sees are synched to the music, which you feel in your bones and out your nose. You are moved to the rhythms, flying with the beats, dripping with the melodies, all the while seeing a thousand movie screens play coordinated, synched stories that tell the story of the music you're experiencing. There is nothing like it in the universe.

I signaled again to change my concert experience and allowed my friend in to float next to me. We experienced the show together for a while, drifting in and out of the music's realities, losing all sense of ourselves while Snuffleupagus played on and on.

After a time a red dot appeared blinking in my vision to signal that the end of the concert was near. Within minutes I found myself back in the seemingly one-dimensional, dull amphitheatre seat next to my friend as the music ended and the lights began to get brighter. The end of a concert always sucks. I didn't even need to do anything and the people-thrower had me and was racing me to the nearest exit.

When I landed, my friend was already there waiting for me. We both activated our comm-nets and eyez and I signaled our transport. Thousands of other fans were doing the same thing across the venue's exit area while others began their post concert festivities. But we needed to leave.

Our transport arrived a few minutes later from the eastern sky. It must have been three in the morning at that point and I swear I thought I could see the dim light of a sunrise as our transport settled on the grass next to us. When we boarded, strapped ourselves in and ascended, I could see the concert grounds recede in the window like a giant map shrinking in seconds as our transport carried us up and away and back to my friend's awaiting parents a continent away.

I stuck my finger in the jack next to my seat and opened my eyes. I looked around. I was back in my office, old furniture around me, sitting at my desk alone. As I looked down and saw that my finger was stuck in some kind of jack that was connected to a computer, it started to come back to me. It always takes a second to come back, that's part of the program, a deliberate feature to make it seem all the more real.

I was never at a concert, I was never with a buddy, and I was never on a transport. I was plugged into a simulation in my office, a simulation that is so real it makes you forget you're in a simulation, I think.