“How long are you planning on staying? You know, Parker, you can’t dry-dock all night?” Nina said, as she tapped the counter with her ring making a loud click.
“Oh, no. What I meant was for the evening – maybe 2, 3 hours not sure. I’m planning on watching the Beast Fights though.”
“Well if you’re going to be there for longer than 4 hours we suggest you get in a pod.”
“Okay, yeah I guess it’s best to take a pod then.” Parker realized he could get a meal in as well if he took a pod.
“Well typically the Beast Fights don’t end until midnight or so, does that sound right?” Nina asked with a blank expression on her face.
Parker quickly realized he really didn’t need to tell her the details of what he was going into the Cloud for. He took a deep breath and said, “Yes that would be great, I’ll take a pod…”
“…You like the top level right? I can get you up there if you want?” Nina said while smiling.
“Oh, that would be great,” Parker said in earnest. He loved getting the top floor. When climbing into the pod there was a sliver of space above the mycelium liquid that was big enough to get a good look around Sandpoint from the tallest building there. Parker felt Nina must have some discretion about who goes where and he liked that she knew he preferred the top floor. It reminded him why he felt Nina was good at her job.
Nina handed Parker the key, which was a small piece of plastic with an embedded chip. These tracked peoples’ movements around the hive and were used for security reasons. Parker started walking towards the elevator, just off from the center of the lobby. He pressed the ‘up’ button and looked down at the key he was holding. The key read 40P14, which meant 40th floor and 14th pod.
Hive hallways circled around the outer edge, with pods on the outside and the inside rooms were designated for dry-docking. The dry-dock rooms had 1 to 4 chairs, each of them like dental chairs with high railings. The chairs had wired mesh beanies with sensors that came out of the headrest. Each room had a private bathroom. Even the outer rooms with pods had bathrooms. Some felt weird about going in the mycelium liquid so they went beforehand, even though it was well researched that there was a disconnect from going to the bathroom inside the Cloud versus outside (meaning the body would go when it had too, and if inside the Cloud you felt the urge, it didn’t mean anything was actually happening to the body). Either way, it was looked at favorably to use a hive for dropping a deuce because they converted the excrement to energy.
Parker got to the door that read, 40P14. He waved the key across the door which shot open from the center. He walked through into the changing room, and the doors closed behind him. The changing room was the size of a small bathroom with a toilet, sink, mirror combo on one side, a bench for changing on the other and the pod entrance on the opposite side of the door. The pod entrance looked like a submarine hatch that sat on top of a counter, opening the hatch would reveal two steps, one of which was covered in the mycelium liquid. The fungi liquid was known as one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs that made living in the pod a success. It was capable of rejuvenating the skin and managing waste. The liquid was self-cleansing and essentially alive.
Parker undressed and climbed up the counter. He stepped down into the warm thin jelly liquid. Under the hatch door was all the equipment Parker needed. He reached for the headset and slipped it on, then pulled down the oxygen relay over his nose. Once the headset was on, it took two minutes to be at HomeBase in the Virtual Reality Cloud. Parker knew he had plenty of time. He took a deep breath from his mouth and inserted the feeding tube. He was ready to climb in. Parker grabbed the hatch handle and started scooting forward, each scoot submerged more of his skin. Once he got his body in, with his head poking out, he looked out at Sandpoint. He thought the town looked incredible. The red sunset from behind was filling the city with warmth and casting shadows down the streets pointing towards the snow capped mountains. Parker took another breath then reached up to close the hatch.
Parker closed his eyes and submerged himself. He started breathing from his nostrils and quickly dozed off.
C H A P T E R 6
Parker’s body started tingling. Whiteness surrounded everything and then started to fade. Consciousness was taking shape. Parker was in the Cloud.
He came to, like always, seated at his control station, the control panel that made it easy for people to navigate through the Virtual Reality Cloud. Most people had similar buttons to push and panels to swipe, taking a person from their control station chair to different realities at their discretion (unless they hit the random button of course). Everything on a person’s control station could be customized, from the color and look of the chair to the types of buttons and placements of screens. But in general, the control station was a chair surrounded by a desk full of controls.
Parker chose his control station to look clean; he had efficiency in mind with the placement of each control. Choosing a name for a control station and the surrounding virtual plat was like picking out a username for an internet identity, it was done at the initial UAN registration which only had to be completed once. Thereafter, a person had their control station name. It became their address, a way for people to keep track of one another while in the Cloud. People wanted theirs to be unique, but there are only so many names out there. So, many people ended up with digits and symbols in their control station name. When Parker initially registered with the UAN, he came prepared with a name he researched, Apollo, a Greek God ladies’ man that was a musician and a poet. He felt, ever so slightly, that the name would bequeath him with an alter ego while in the Cloud. Instead, when he registered he found out that Apollo had already been taken, so he added his favorite number and went with ApolloFour (Apollo4 was taken). He liked the way it sounded though, ApolloFour. He found out later that Apollo 4 was a NASA space program launched some hundred-plus years before.
Being in the Cloud was an entire body experience. Once Parker came to in his control station, he was free to get up and walk around. Unlike the internet of the past or older virtual reality worlds, once in the Cloud it was like walking around in real life. Each time Parker came to, it was in his powerful looking white chair. It was like the beginning of a dream he’d experienced several times. Seated at ApolloFour Parker was the commander. He stood up and gazed down at his control panel. The controls sat on two levels, both sloping in towards him. Parker configured his control station in the center of a room with dark, hard wood floors surrounded with large glass walls that looked out in every direction.
The control panel room and all it looked out upon was his territory, the plot of memory the UAN designated for ApolloFour in the Virtual Reality Cloud. This was his space to develop, architect and manifest his imagination to create his ideal living environment. Parker didn’t care too much about spending time in the Cloud to build his own castle on a blank canvas. When Parker was in the Cloud he rarely spent any time working at his control station to build his own paradise. For the time being Parker was happy with his halfheartedly selected generic Cities of the World map, which by default placed his control station in the
center of a city designed to take the best attributes from global cities and disperse them into one giant metropolis. By selecting a generic map Parker didn’t help his class rank on the VF scale, but he didn’t really care. It was easy and he felt if he wanted to, he could leave the shores of Lake Pend Oreille and walk around in an ultra-urban world where the trends in fashion, food and art were all simulated to mimic current real world and Cloud trends.
The generic maps were worth paying for, Parker felt, and to use one that somebody else developed didn’t bother him. He liked looking out at the Cities of the World map from the Control Station. He could see the Eiffel Tower and the Pyramids of Giza from his chair. When he got out of his chair and walked up to the window he could look up to see the top of the 2,722 foot Burj Khalifa Tower of Dubai or the Petronas Towers of Malaysia. He could look down in the streets and see p
eople walking the sidewalks. From up high where his control station sat in the center of the urban metropolis the people were small, looking like little worker ants. He could see cars driving on the layers of road that intertwined the bases of the skyscrapers. It was a concrete jungle below with beautiful relics of the past spotted among mirrored glass skyscrapers. The people in the streets and cars driving around on multi layered roads were just simulations, but it made the city feel alive.
It was an amazing sight.
As real as everything looked and felt, Parker knew it wasn’t actually real. He knew that if he decided to step off the sidewalk down below and get hit by a double-decker people mover he wouldn’t die, he would simply reappear at the helm of ApolloFour, if he didn’t just bounce off the front and get right back up. Sure there were stories of people dying in the Cloud, but these stories were few and far between. It was known by everybody that encountering a situation that would be sure death in the real-world would not kill a person in the Cloud. The worst case scenario was waking up in the real world confused as all hell inside of the pod. But even that was hardly reported. When in the Virtual Reality Cloud things looked and felt real. An architect that took care in the details could perfectly reproduce the sensations of touching soft skin, but no one found it particularly beneficial to mimic real-world pain, like breaking a bone, or any severe pain for that matter. The fact that they knew they were in the Cloud gave way to a permeable feeling of confidence that pushed basic instinct aside. It allowed people to take all the death defying risks they were too afraid to take in the real world. People developed all different types of challenges. Cloud sports were on a different level than real-world sports. Some people would enjoy combat simulations from different eras of warfare. Other people just took liberties that they wouldn’t normally try. Some people visited simulations that let them drive a race car as fast as they could.
Heliskiing, big wave surfing, and various other dangerous sports were common for people to try at different simulations in the Cloud.
Parker sometimes would just try to pull off crazy stunts because he could. It led to the development of a challenge Parker and Cadmus had. It was an ongoing bet that seemed like it would never end.
Parker signaled to Cad from his control station that he was in the Cloud. He sent him a message that read, Are you ready to see this. They were betting to see who could pull the craziest stunt that was feasible in the real world. The second condition of their bet required that it take place at ApolloFour or at Cadmus’s control station, OrangeEleven. It was more of a running tally than an actual bet. They continually tried to one-up each other. Cad was currently on top because he successfully jumped from a city bridge onto a moving 1990s bus in AppolloFour. So it was Parker’s turn to try and out do him. He thought he was pretty fast and agile so he wanted to try and run across a busy five lane freeway. Parker had ApolloFour set to have automobiles of the ages drive in his city and the freeway was crawling with sports cars of the past, tractor trucks and everything in between.
Parker got a message back from Cad that read, Be right over.
Parker turned in his chair and looked over just as Cadmus was taking form. “You weren’t joking, that was fast,” Parker said.
“Yep, what do you got for me, because I want to get back to OrangeEleven? I’m close man. Just about to make the next class,” Cad said.
“Cool. I’ll make this fast. We just need to go to the freeway. I’m going to try and run across the five-laner out there,” Parker said.
“You think that’s harder than jumping onto a moving bus?” Cad said. “Well, yeah. You just made one move. This will require dodging five lanes of high speed traffic,” Parker said.
“Okay, deal. You probably won’t make it anyway.”
Parker leaned over the control station. He was looking at the map of ApolloFour. In the left hand corner it showed that Cad and Parker were the only humans on the map. The highway that Parker wanted to run across snaked through the middle of the city, bending around the Pyramids of Giza with a giant banking slalom turn. Parker selected Cadmus and himself with the touch of his finger and then double tapped the map near the bending S-turn.
Both Cadmus and Parker vanished from the ApolloFour control station and reappeared, standing at the edge of the freeway where Parker double tapped. The Pyramids of Giza were at their backs and chunks of limestone were scattered about in the sand at their feet. On the other side of the busy freeway was a meridian, then another five lane freeway; across from the sea of traffic stood the base of the towering Taipei 101.
“That tower is massive,” Cad said.
The guys were standing close to the edge of the freeway and the traffic was loud.
Parker yelled back, “I know, it’s almost 1,700 feet tall. It’s a replica of the tower they built in Taiwan in the early 2000s.”
Cad stared out at the traffic ripping by them. “I would never have traffic like this at OrangeEleven.”
“I could turn it off if I wanted to,” Parker spoke loud. “I like the traffic and people simulated, it makes the city feel alive.”
“Alright Parker, you crazy fool. I want to see if you can make it across.”
Even though he knew it wasn’t real, Parker was scared. He had to focus on slowing his breathing when he stood at the edge of the road in anticipation. Looking across at the traffic trying to judge how much time he had for each lane seemed impossible. Each time a car came by the edge lane a gush of wind ripped by him, reminding him the city’s architect didn’t leave out any details. He stood there for several moments waiting and taking deep breaths. Cad was watching.
Parker saw his chance; the first two lanes were open then the third would be cleared. He bolted across the first two lanes, pumping his arms and staying low to accelerate. He slowed down with a chop-step for a red convertible and then entered the third lane with time to spare. Everything was moving incredibly fast, Parker was crouched over on his toes, a large van was slamming on its horn in his lane, and the sound of screeching brakes came from every direction. The fourth lane looked clear. He decided to make a run for the other side; he was pumping his arms, staying low like an accelerating sprinter, doing his best to run fast. He was only looking straight forward. Parker made it to the middle of the fifth lane and got hammered.
Parker was tossed into the air, flipping head over heels back into the fourth lane. A black semi-truck in the fifth lane jerked, right as the van swerved in front of it. The semi-truck jackknifed. The trailer slid sideways right over Parker. He laid there for a split second and then rolled over, jumping to his feet. He made it off the road just as another car screeched past, slamming its hood into the semi truck trailer. The cars kept piling up. Smoke billowed out from the front tires of the semi. Parker gazed at the accident he caused with awe and disbelief. Holy shit that was crazy, he thought.
Parker lost this challenge, since in real life Cadmus would have lived with his bus jumping stunt and Parker’s chances were slim to none. Parker had a hard time thinking of something else to top Cad, but soon something would come to mind, he thought. Parker looked over and saw Cad on the other side of the road. They gave each a nod. Cad then shook his head. He waved to Parker and started vanishing, leaving back to OrangeEleven.
Parker had a smile on his face and waved as Cad vanished. He then took out his mobile device known as a Compass in the Cloud and set the coordinates of the control station.
He appeared back in his chair. It had been a long day and he was running on an empty stomach. He was hungry. He hadn’t been in the Cloud for a while so he briefly scanned the control panel, looking for trends in the Cloud, but he knew his body needed some nourishment, so food was on the agenda.
Eating meals in the Cloud triggered the feeding tube mechanism, which force fed a nutritionally enhanced soybean paste into the stomach. The sustenance was farmed at distribution hubs. Sandpoint’s local hive sustenance came from a giant stadium sized warehouse just outside Seattle. The soy paste formula also i
ncluded several potent vegetables, fruit, fish and algae. The food mixture was considered the optimal intake diet for humans. The best part about eating in the Cloud was that it didn’t matter what type of junk food a person wanted to eat. People ate for taste above all and were free to gorge. The body in the real-world was eating a highly nutritious supplement that was only given in measured proportions.
Parker knew what he wanted, the famous Coconut Crab from Fiji with a rum mojito. Through clever social advertising, Parker knew of a restaurant that mastered the scenery of Fiji and the delicious
sweet taste of the crab. He regularly visited the Coconut Crab House. It was by far his favorite meal. And he spent enough time there that he actually befriended the architect of the Coconut Crab House. His name was Tom Rumford, a European chef whose work blossomed in the Cloud. He mastered the art of taste manipulation, something Parker knew nothing about, but certainly appreciated when it was done well.
It was time to jump to another person’s Virtual plat of land. Moving your way through the Cloud was easy and very intuitive, learning to master the shortcuts and scale up in pay grade required skill and knowhow. Parker had some of both.
Once in the Cloud, people had a choice to be in their own space, ones they architected themselves, or visit a friend’s space via accepting an invite or visit a social enterprise space. One of the ways to make extra money in the Cloud was to architect a space that had mass appeal. Build a space that people wanted to come to, and open it up for business. Each time somebody visited, a percentage of what they earned from their electric output was given to the architect or business running the space. A person’s VF scale class would determine how much space or memory a person had to use. Even the lowest class had seemingly infinite space, because they could go and visit any number of social lounges, as they were known.
Social lounges could be any number of spaces. Some were architected for a specific recreational thrill, like scuba diving the Barrier Reef (no oxygen tank necessary). Others were designed more like traditional restaurants and bars where people could come and meet. In essence, people could spend their day floating in the Cloud, spending their time either working on their own virtual plat or paying a fraction of their energy to visit social lounges. The people that architected popular social lounges became famous in the Cloud.
Dawn of Modern Man Page 4
