'In a time when everyone sees a flat world with the sun moving around us, one man watches the sun's arc through the sky; he looks at the shadows cast about him and he sees the world is round; he sees us moving round the sun. Søren is that man in our...
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Søren flung out his arms, his clawing hands trying to reach out for anything in the darkness surrounding him that could stop his fall. He gave a short cry before heavily breathing inwards as if having just surfaced from beneath water. He wasn't falling; that had been confined to his dream alone which was now merging with reality in his half sleeping state.
Taking back his flailing arms he quickly pulled himself upright. Thick streaks of burgundy trickled their way down his vision. Blood. His heart was thumping in rapid succession against its ribbed prison as if trying to escape the horror from within him. A cool glistening of sweat enveloped his skin and he gave an involuntary shiver. The bloody vision before his eyes melted away as he fully awoke from his disturbed slumber. Still he slowly rubbed his hands down his face and checked his palms just to make sure it had indeed been a dream. Only then did he try and breathe more steadily to help calm his heightened anxiety. He swallowed with laboured effort, his heavy tongue rasping against the dryness of his palate.
Sensing that Søren was awake, the dorm-capsule he lay cocooned within gradually increased the light intensity, along with an adjustment to the ambient temperature and humidity in an effort to bring his physical state back to a homeostatic norm. It proved a wasted effort though. Søren couldn't detach his thoughts from what had transpired yesterday. Additionally he had recorded the entire thing. So now with a whole day's vacation to fill because of the events at work he was left to stew over the same repeating thoughts that had haunted his dreams, but each time with subtle changes so that he now wasn't sure exactly what had transpired. Some perverse impulse overcame him and accessing yesterday's file through his ocular implant he began replaying the day over again.
#
Søren left his apartment. A mixed sense of excitement alongside anticipation coursed through him at the prospect of the first day in his first job. Stepping into the clinically white corridor a call came through to his OculoWave Comms implant. Søren scanned the prelim-message; the beaming smile of a company representative was offering to act as his personal guide. He declined the offer with a pre-programmed 'thanks, but no thanks'. The guy at the other end looked genuinely hurt, near suicidal, as if having failed at the one and only responsibility entrusted to him. It was enough to make Søren reconsider. He was too soft, and reasoned to himself that his would-be guide probably wasn't even real anyway, just an algorithm of over-friendly helpfulness, designed to respond to any topic of conversation Søren could spout. He hesitated, this new thought almost making him change his mind yet again, just to see how difficult it would actually be to get round the programming. But after second thoughts he decided to leave the caller to snooze in digital limbo. He wanted to make his own way to work and could hardly get lost with his implant guiding his every step anyway. In the past his life had been contained within the School. Now with an apartment and a new job every recent experience seemed like a bit of an adventure.
