The NeurOcean Line

1. Ladder

'Desire as the Life-force flows where it runs free, through where it is diminished, or where it is magnified too greatly. Desire rises through its nurtured realms. As it is the path to freedom and the love-bond binding us to the world, so too does it hold the power to harm others, lose our true selves and deprive the life from flowing.'

- Insight of the Village of Fountellion

1. Ladder

Aged thirty-nine he was, but it had happened again.

It was lucky he hadn't been higher up the ladder. As soon as he was properly aware again, grounded, he felt the deeper bite of fear in his stomach, the one for the ultimate disconnection; death.

Losing Source control... Steady Ben... What did they say? That he could deteriorate. At any time. Until I'm really out of it.

He was stooped over with his hands on his knees.

Thank god for the birds, he thought. Rooks, not seagulls. Their rough squawks gave him some bearings again as he beheld the green grass of France.

He did begin to feel more stable. Another gust of April wind blew clumps of his brown hair across his head, and he straightened up, slowly. Wooden wind chimes in the garden knocked softly together and were soothing.

This IS the world...

The memory then, it had been a sensation of the interface. He knew because he'd instinctively started to raise his arms, spread out wide behind him. It was the virtual gesture of surfacing that had come back to him. It had occurred before. Each time it had been triggered by the girl's face, surfacing too into memory.

My God it's hot. And a warm breeze too. When it hit midday it would be too hot to be outdoors. He walked carefully to the small entrance of the rustic cottage. One arm came out again as he felt another wave of sickness and his hand gripped the wooden frame.

Who was she? ...A joyful face, some blue flower in her hair... Surely it was real, he probed. Unembellished; a real memory, with a large greenwood tree behind her and long green grass. And her expression - of honest, trusting love - made his whole being ache for his youth; a simple man, with strength and passion. Before it was lost in dreams. Before he began to chase the glory from his own skill or mastery inside the Hyperzones and the Superworlds. And of course, the Neuroceans. How they had drained him of time and his life force. They were all transcendent realms of control, away from the honest influence of reality; away - you would think - from the restlessness of thought, from lonely desire and this presence of nature.

And now this haunting. He was paying the price he supposed, for ignoring a slowly evolving world; for turning his back on its levelling and certain timeframe.

Today, he had been going up to trim the creeper growing off the side of the old house, when the girl's face and the confusion it brought set off the other, more life-threatening memory. It had re-awakened with one absolute wave of disorientation. But it wasn't anything visual; it was the sheer, vivid sensation of the interface, coming back. The cutters had fallen from one of his hands and he had swung round on the ladder and fallen quickly and awkwardly to a heap on the grass. There had been a horrible moment when he was sure the grass was an illusion and that he would fall right through the earth. Just like he had once in some game.

Too many worlds, and too much time in them...

A simple answer, but he knew it was more than this. It must still be the side-effect of the Neuroceans and the Line he had faced and crossed, so many years ago. As one of the few who had become too immersed; too detached - had been chosen to get too immersed - and had agreed, so eagerly. The experience of it had never left him.