Disconnected

Section 7

        Walking down the street, it was hard to contain my excitement. It wasn’t a real street, only a virtual one. I was browsing the internet. I am about to go meet a girl, in a chat room. I looked around at the buildings as I walked. Each building is a website, and their size represents the traffic they receive. The giant ones were the big online corporations. These towered over the rest.

        Most of the other buildings are small in comparison. As I walk I look down the alleyways between the buildings, only to see dark corridors which ominously beg entry. More buildings are located in the dark rather than here in the light. The internet can be used for a million good things, and as many bad.

        I moved on. The beautiful people passed by. The internet is rendered realistically, because we can’t kill. It’s physically impossible to kill anyone here.

        The chat room is quickly approaching. I walked across the entire city in twenty minutes. I walk faster here than I intend. A simple step takes me two times as far.

        As I walked up to the chat room I couldn’t contain my smile. I stepped into the chat room’s server, and the world around me disappeared. A menu popped up, instead of the city around me. I checked to see if she was already here, she wasn’t. I created a chat room of my own, and sent her an invitation.

A room suddenly materialized around me. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all made of wood. Almost as if I am in a log cabin. Two chairs are in the center of the room, for us to sit and talk. The room is well lit, even with no windows, or any other light source.

 I sat in one of the chairs and waited. She appeared across the room after a few minutes of waiting. She is beautiful, her avatar is beautiful. She has blonde hair which flows slightly past her shoulders. Her face is slightly pale, and perfectly symmetrical, in the way only a computer simulation can be. She walked up to the chair and sat down. She began, and led, the conversation.

The conversation went wonderfully, and she agreed to meet me in person.

After leaving the chat room, I walked through the city aimlessly. Before I noticed, an advertisement bot had walked up next to me. After a few seconds, he repeated an advertisement. He played back an advertisement for some shampoo brand. I didn’t pay any attention to him. Everyone gets used to advertisments. All bots look the same. They have televisions as heads, with video ads playing. The rest of its body is a metallic silver and bone thin. A metal skeleton is walking next to me.

        This bot is being persistent, so I decided to log out.