Bright Lights & Dark Secrets: A Sci-Fi Anthology

Seeking Sensation [Part 1/6]

It felt so real. She felt so real. The bedsheets clumped up in her hands. The warmth of the man on top of her, his breath against her face, the whispers in her ear. His name left her tongue, and her name returned by the voice of the one person in the world who'd completed her. When the fun was over, she fell asleep in his arms as he kissed her head and joined her in her dreams.

"I'll see you soon," he said. "Don't forget to come back to me."

Then everything went dark, and the Looksy logo overtook her line of sight, followed by the Brightsight logo, reminding her who she'd have to thank for that simulated heaven.

Another Povie over. Another nobody dipping into the waters of someone else's life, now forced to climb out and dry off in the cold. Trinette Mackenzie awoke in her true body. Seconds ago, she'd watched through the eyes and felt through the arms and legs of a perfect specimen named Lynn Valentine. Lynn had sex with her boyfriend Liam Chapman, a marble sculpture come to life with a chiseled body, soft radiant eyes, and a husky voice that could freeze the world in place. Trinette was one of a hundred thousand other blurred faces borrowing someone else's life, even if only a fleeting moment with all the hardships of reality conveniently trimmed out.

Like all the others who floated downstream to get their Povie fix, Trinette could not trim out real life. It was there the moment the credits appeared, the moment the Looksy and Brightsight logos vanished into holographic dust particles and left her in her starless void of a bedroom. Real life was her waking up in an unmade bed with unwashed sheets, her panties wet from an erotic memory she had no role in creating, tears streaming down her cheeks as she forced the headset off her face, mourning the intimacy she'd never know without Brightsight's innovations. At the end of the day, Trinette only had herself and her preferred form of self-destruction.

"I wish it was real," she whispered, smoothing her hands down her thighs then back up to her crotch. "Why can't it be fucking real?"

She turned on her side, her burning eyes squinting to see the time displayed three inches above her nightstand in red holographic letters. 5:23 AM. Only two hours before work. Self-destruction in motion.

Those two hours fled so quickly, Trinette almost assumed she'd emerged from another Povie. As the alarm screeched in her ear, she forced herself out of bed, her eyes still dry from her time with Liam Chapman. Every move she made felt as if she were encased in cement. Putting on her glasses. Changing into clean clothes, or as clean as a work shirt worn five days in a row could be. Eating a third of an orange for breakfast, apparently all that she deserved. Then out the door she went.

Too many people her age lived in squatterboxes, studio apartments with a bed, kitchen, and private bathroom. Dirt cheap rent with free wi-fi and easy access to public transportation. She knew that being in one would guarantee she'd never reconnect with her parents again. Why the negative reputation? The usual: wasted potential. Homeless shelters, student housing, a roof overhead with meals for an overworked labor force, all the possibilities rendered moot when Povie addicts took over the place, living other people's lives while occasionally pausing to check their own pulses.

Trinette took the elevator down to the lobby. Out the windows amidst her descent, skyscrapers took bites out of the atmosphere, polluting it with holographic screens the size of airships, reminding the people who had the hold on them. Looksy: Life from a new perspective, read one. Brightsight: See the future, Be the future, read another.

Trinette emerged from the elevator, eyes darting from one corner of the lobby to the next. Mountains of paper bags and boxes from nearby fast-food joints erupted from the tops of trashcans, the sanitation bots squeaking and sliding around the floor to clean it all up. Lights flickered, and the front desk remained uncared for. Thankfully.