George’s Last Trip

A companion piece to Chen Wang’s Cyberspace Paradox.

It’s been a hard day at the office for George, hell it’s been a hard two decades. Stuck in a 7×7 cubicle for 27 minutes and 33 seconds, twice a week ain’t no way to live in this day and age. When he finally worked up the nerve to submit his resignation to the bosses upstairs he felt an incredible wave of relief. Sure, no doubt it was augmented by his daily fix—jacking into the “Up With People” program via his Pocket Personality Pod that morning—but hey: whatever works citizen, whatever works. 

As he walked out of the Institute of Algorithmically Controlled Sentiments for the last time, heading towards Bay723dz where his late model CortinaZV9 was being topped off with the highest premium GravBeGone, his thoughts began to wander. Fuck it, he thought—Jane plasma’d his favorite meal to celebrate the occasion and little Elroy and Judy would be waiting expectantly for Daddy. But today George felt like taking the long way home. 20 minutes late won’t hurt anyone. Besides, this was HIS day dammit!

Sliding into the Cortina, he slipped the hot new tunes file into the slit above the bridge of his nose and pressed the green button to activate the GravBeGone servo distributor in the Cortina. Slowly, the jet black rectangle elevated to its cruising height and began to navigate itself out of the company Bay Space. He still had 30 minutes before “Up With People” lost its lustre and he intended to take advantage of every second. Even now, the mottled gray ennui of the Reality Array was starting to seep into his sense ports. He muttered to himself, “gimme a beat”.

He hit the open Skyway as the Deluxe Woofer Matrix triggered in his temples.

“Ah, there is it” he thought as the synthetic bass drops pounded within his cranial zone.

“GADZOOKS this is some groove thing she’s got going on” as he blinked seven times to adjust the volume and EQ with his optic filter.

“ZOWIE ZAPS” he hissed, “did you hear that neural fuzz slide down?” asking no one in particular as he entered the DEEP SOUND OBJECT redspace. 

He decided to go for broke—about 10 clicks from his Homestead Unit George blinked 15 more times, because on this day—his day—no one, but NO ONE was going to deprive George of his “Up With People”/DSO redspace vibe.

At the wreckage site, not even the Skyway Sentinel guys were able to figure out what happened. Nor could anyone decipher the weird, cryptic message spat out in the damaged metallic voice from the orange box trauma meter generated from what was left of George’s Pocket Personality Pod. 

RTFM

RTFM

RTFM

… on endless repeat.

Moral of the story: Don’t be George

Unless of course you got the latest Deluxe Woofer Matrix firmware installed!  In that case; go for it!!!