Surprisingly, it wasn’t a completely new, different world, but an almost near replica of what we had now, simply with a few tweaks here and there. People still dressed the way they did, and lived their lives as per normal, but it was all easier, simplified.
With the click of a remote, which came with the Goggles, we could teleport from say, the garage – not that we even needed garages, cars became an accessory, not an essential – or the kitchen, to the office building.
They called it the Bite, a ‘bite-sized’ ‘remote’ that stuck as a ring on the second finger, and only existed in the virtual world. The tiny thing made the MicroComputer a dying trend of ‘yesterday’, the WWW a forgotten remnant of last decade, and papers an ancient fragment of last century.
It was all done on a holographic screen that would appear above my hands if placed in a cupped position, no walking necessary, no need to wait for it to turn on and off; it was left on at all times.
The Bite allowed all buildings to be on one level, elevators and escalators were no longer essential. It also provided us the convenience of shopping and spending without having to queue or having to search for a particular item, but simply buying it ‘online’.
Writing had become a thing of the past; this superb remote could convert voice and speech into words and send and receive messages in less time than that of the speed of light.
Amazingly, the Bite could even set a daily house routine, ensuring that by the time you wake up every day, the coffee machine and water heater would have been turned on, breakfast cooked, and whatever mess made the day before was cleared.
Wonderful thing, the Bite was. People loved it, for it was the best thing next to perfection.
“He’s of no use to us now. Stagnant! Like all the rest of those unproductive rejects.”
“#114650 on that list does him no good at all.”
“Time to do him in, as we did all the rest who were boring.”
He chuckles. “How so? Swiftly, painfully, immediately or…” Another laugh, “slowly?”
“Marvelous suggestion! That’ll surely make things amusing around here.”
“Brilliant choice. Come, let’s watch.”
There is malevolent laughter.
I recall the last time that I’d activated mine; I used it to check my bank account. By some fluke, my messages had unknowingly disappeared, my money too. Who knew, my very Identification had vanished straight into to thin air when I awoke the very next day, and the Bite started to ‘speak’ in some strange bizarre, new language. So much for efficiency. I had to walk to work and was at a loss as I didn’t know the way, the Bite did. My breakfast was a horrid shocking green, and the coffee was a bewildering chunk of powder, disgustingly purple. The sight of it made me feel nauseous and I decided to go without it. I couldn’t go anywhere, I couldn’t buy anything, was incredibly lost and exceedingly starving, and even more so, deprived of even an iota of an identity.
That was when my increasingly deep-rooted doubts were finally confirmed. This thing, it was flawed. I was convinced. I had been hacked. Either that or someone was trying to sabotage me. For all I had known, what was missing here in this realm would most probably have disappeared in reality as well. I could be worthless, destitute and without an identity in reality! As rapidly as the thought came to mind I struggled desperately to get the dumb waste of goggles off. But to no avail, it came to me like an infinitely unbearable blow, I realized I couldn’t, I didn’t know how. Great.
“Stage 1 complete.”
Without a speck of suspicion, simulation technology had gradually become our primary method of running the world. From education to military planning, to this. I think about how gigantic crowds had thronged every Technology Store, dying to get their hands on this extremely ‘magnificent’ piece of equipment, the World In a piece of Goggles – WIG, this … hideous thing. And regretted the very fact that I myself had also put in so much effort to acquire one as well.
We were lured by the wonder of living another life; an alternative to our already dreary lives – somewhere flawlessly perfect. Countless numbers of people had worked stupendously long, tedious hours, saving up any and every penny, and perhaps stealing and taking from others just for this pair of unusually heavy, fully wired goggles.
All we had to do was stay at home and the goggles would do the work for us. There was no walking or waiting involved, it was an awesome deal. Or so it seemed.
Perhaps it really may have saved me bucket loads of time just to get to from one place to another by simply opening the Bite; even the buildings did not need stairs or lifts as everything could be ‘crammed’ into one storey. It was all rooted in the brain.
“Stage 2, commence.”
“What in the world should I do now?” I contemplated upon my present situation, wondering what to do next. There was nothing other than become a worthless rotting lump of a vegetable, more stagnant than ever before in my presently shortening life. Everything I had in the WIG had practically vanished.
“Come on, this is 2032, not the 2000s, there has to be some way to get out of this.”
That was when I saw all my surroundings turn blur, tiny black spots gradually appearing on everything. Was I seeing stars?
Darkness engulfed all things, my table and my bed, then my chair. I seemed to be levitating in the emptiness. What on earth? Was I hallucinating?
I rubbed my eyes in a distraughtly frantic attempt to convince myself that this was not happening, that I was not vanishing, and my world was not literally falling apart.
It didn’t matter how many times I tried and tried again, no method or approach would allow me escape from this bane – isolation. Even jumping hysterically and trying to find hard ground caused me to rotate and go in circles.
Alone. In a void.
Those four bloody words rang relentlessly, repeatedly and agonizingly in my mind, as persistent as a bloody broken record that just could not seem to be bloody fixed, no matter how bloody hard or how bloody much you struggled and tried to mend it.
Just like that, my very damn world had briskly disappeared right before my eyes.
How ******* screwed up could this bloody system be?
It WAS 2032 for crying out loud.
What the hell was wrong with this damn machine?
The damn thing was obviously going to kill me.
Why had I been such an idiot?
What the bloody hell was wrong with me?
Falling for a ******* scam like this.
WHY THE ******* hell was I such a ******* asshole?
And why was this ******* shit-ass machine was so bloody irritating and such a ******* bogus sham?!
WHAT THE ******* hell?! …
I felt like banging my head on some wall – which was obviously impossible because I was somewhere, NOWHERE, in this place of NOTHING. In this NON-existent void. Being NON-existent and just being some fading soon-to-be or perhaps already NON-existent silhouette.
Or so I thought.
I had to get out of this… this… thing.
Yet helplessly after an infinite number of extremely annoying, failed attempts, I succumbed to the intense and excruciating fatigue flowing furiously through my every tissue and muscle, and permitted my exasperation to ultimately overwhelm me. I was left sitting in the empty world, wondering how many hours it would take for my virtual self to finally fade away and speculating whether I’d really die or I’d just be trapped for a bland eternity of oblivion, my body still rotating, slowly.
With a final, single, violent gasp of delicious breath, he jerked fiercely before lying on that chair, still, and dead. Burning acid oozing from the goggles, morbidly, sadistically consuming his currently putrefying corpse.
