We're back to Science Fiction this week with this prompt:
Tap In
I tapped in, like I did every night. Work had been the worst that day. That creepy IT guy, Joey, stopped by my desk to update my computer, which cost me a lost hour. I needed a break from reality, a mental vacation of a sort. So, I tapped into my relax-app. Soft music, puppy videos, anything to bring my cortisol levels down. That night it was different, though. Instead of the slow fade out from my apartment into my favorite virt-world, there was a hard blink that took me into...nothing. The virt-osmos had never glitched like that before, so I tried to blink out. Three blinks in a second should have brought me right back to my apartment. It didn't work. Instead, I just floated in white, featureless space. No sound, no heat or cold, no sensation at all. I'm not even sure it's white. Sometimes I think it's grey, or even pink. I've been here for what feels like weeks. I don't know for sure, though, since there's no way to tell time. I “wake up” sometimes with no idea how long my mind was away. I think I'm going insane. I wonder how my body is doing. If I've been here anything close to how long it feels, I can't be in very good shape back there. Maybe somebody smelled the remains of my last lunch, which must have leaked out of me by now, and sent me to a hospital. Or maybe not. I live in a building full of New-Genners like me. We all tap in most evenings. If the relax-app, or even the entire virt-osmos, glitched, then all of us, including tens of millions others, may be slowly going mad in no-space while we starve to death. Hmm. Now the color's blue.
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