San Diego - Barely

It was on his 21st birthday that Harold had been going for a walk in a park near his virtual house. "How unsatisfying," he thought to himself. "That although this place is a technically perfect sensory match to what was reality hundreds of years ago, it should still feel so contrived."

Even more unsatisfying to Harold, was the knowledge that he was the only individual on Earth who lamented the fact that it was contrived. From birth, every human had understood only one concept of what "life" meant, and that concept was firmly entrenched in the faith that virtuality was no different than any other reality. It was just not something that anybody questioned, or even wanted to question - it was just an accepted fact of life that didn't make sense to Harold - if he was part of the phenomenon that was spontaneously occurring all around him, how could he be so consistently terrible at fitting in? After all, he had stopped the electricity from sparkling through his spine, which had stopped him from seeing things beyond what everybody else saw, which had stopped him from saying things beyond what everybody else said, which had stopped people from looking at him strangely; yet he still felt utterly alone.

As he walked along a bridge, he noticed from out of the corner of his eye an elderly couple passing nearby. As the sun set in the distance, he noticed how they walked, arms interlocked. He looked at their graying hair and saw peace and he looked at their stride and saw consistency. As his pupils dilated, he saw how they fit into the picture and imagined how the rhythm of the universe moved through them. As he looked on, he imagined them becoming objects floating in water and then with a shudder, realized that they actually had become objects floating in water. His pupils dilated further as he expanded the scope of his vision, a metaphysical painter finally discovering his palette, and as he raised his arm slowly - BAM - a hard impact knocked him to the ground.

Shaking his head frantically, he looked in the direction of the couple, but only saw the elderly couple that appeared moments before, walking slowly across the bridge. He turned his head in the direction from where the impact had originated, prepared to release a tirade, and found himself gazing into blue orbs that simultaneously stunned and enthralled him.

She was lying next to him on the ground, and she was laughing! She had just knocked him flat on his ass, not to mention ruined what would have been a successful attempt on his part to mold reality, and she thought it was all hysterically amusing.

Just as Harold was about to bark at her, she shook her head and began to speak: "I'm terribly sorry, that was awfully clumsy of me. Are you all right?"

Strangely enough, her voice caused Harold's anger to dissipate instantaneously, leaving him wonder-struck.

"Are you all right?" she repeated as her eyes turned from a look of amused concern to one of unease as she wondered if her action had caused an error in Harold's voice modulation interpreters. "Hello?"
"Yee. . .fine is. I mean, Yes, I'm fine," said Harold as he shook his head, hoping to jolt himself into virtuality.

"Well, okay then, I'm sorry about that," she said as she picked herself up and offered him her hand. He accepted, and she pulled him to his feet.

"Well," she said with a smile. "Goodbye."

He nodded mutely and with one last smile, she turned and began to jog off. Harold, turning his attention back to the elderly couple began to breath in deeply - he was going to attempt to alter his vision again in the hopes that he would enter a place where it would be possible for him to alter - "WAIT!" Harold did an internal double take as he realized that the words that had just come out of his mouth.

The girl who had just moments ago crashed into him, stopped abruptly and whirled around, her eyes wide with surprise.

"Yes?" She asked, irritated that she had just turned around out of what seemed like duty, and not volition.
Harold felt his sense of internal awareness subside as shadows of thoughts began to fizzle and rise to the surface of his consciousness. "It's just that, it's just that," he began feebily. A moment of pure fear carried forth an underlying comprehension of the inevitability of his failure as his eyes slowly shifted downwards.
"Let it go," he said to himself. "Don't try to force it."

She looked at him for a moment and then shrugged her shoulders and turned back around, wondering why she had ever stopped in the first place.

"It's just that I've seen you before," said Harold.

"What?" She asked as she turned around again, this time more than a little irritated by this man who was so bizarre that she wasn't even sure whether he was sexually harassing her or just acting strange.
"Not you exactly, but it has been you," he continued as his eyes steadied on hers. It was almost in his mind now and he could feel the surge of excitement as words began to appear in his mind.
"What the hell are you talking about?" she asked.

"Look at that couple," he beckoned, while pointing to the elderly couple who were now nearing the end of the bridge.

Although it seemed against her better sense - she knew that she should have probably kept running - she turned and watched the couple.

"Do you realize," Harold began as she turned back towards him. "That there is nothing in their world right now except one another. He is not thinking about what he has to do later on that day, she is not thinking about what happened last night, they are thinking only of each other."

She turned back to the couple, expecting to see the same mundane image that she had just seen, but was shocked to see that there was something about the couple that had changed in the short span of time that it took for her to turn towards Harold, and then back again towards the couple. There was something strange about the way that they fit into the background, almost as if the expanse of her vision was a portrait, albeit one that was fluctuating.

"Their eyes," Harold said. "There are only two of them. Their dialogue is thoughts. Can you see?"

And even though Autumn had no cognitive notion what this strange man was rambling on about, she saw that their pace was one and she felt the truth in his emotions as she nodded silently.

He smiled, and spurred on by her acknowledgment, felt the words begin to surge.

"I've seen you before," he said. "And it hasn't been you, but it has been you. You understand the true nature of this world we live in. It's not real."

As Harold spoke, he began to move closer to her. "Every time I've looked out over a valley, I've felt two things: a thrill at the beauty of the image, and a feeling that the feeling was incomplete."

He took a deep breath and looked at her for a moment, half-expecting a look of unadulterated fear to occupy her gaze as she realized she might be actually talking to a lunatic who had managed to evade the CEN's investigative algorithms.

To his surprise, she seemed anything but fearful of him. She had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but the manner in which he spoke the words were enough for her to believe and her faith was enough to sustain him in this shit-infested world.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4