The Electric Archipelago (WIP)

Chapter 8: Legion

I reach my destination, it is an apartment complex for VR addicts. There aren't any signs that proclaim this, it isn't advertised as such, but it is the truth. The focus on tiny, bare bones rooms, as well as the boasts about connection speeds gives it away.

The smell is something straight out of hell.

One of them steps out of their room as I walk past it. He is thin and pale, a pair of drone monitor's coveralls hangs off of his ghoulish body. His kind only leaves VR when he absolutely needs to. He is a high functioning addict; he knows that he has to go to work so that he can pay the bills. He knows that is what he needs to do to get time in the virtual world, so the retch powers through the workday. I shake my head as he walks toward the elevator. My mind struggles with visions of a possible version of myself.

I reach room 205. I knock on the door. After a brief delay it opens. What at first appears to be a humanoid drone is standing in the doorway. But the fact that it wears fancy robes and has decorated its frame with engravings gives away the fact that it is a person. The torso is somewhat wide, not in a way that suggests fat, but more that it is stoutly built. It breathes heavily, as it needs much more oxygen than normal.

The face is minimalist, little more than a few optic systems and a small light positioned where the month would be. This light would turn on to indicate when it was was speaking. My eyes are always drawn to the two cylindrical mechanisms that act as sense organs; something about the way that they randomly move around is hypnotic.

"John, I haven't seen you in a while," it said I and not we, which always confused me.

The Being known as Aganok lives in the cheap little Délta Corp apartment that I rent to keep up appearances. Aganok can't live anywhere, because it is an Untouchable, so it covers the rent for me in exchange for allowing it to stay there.

The place is claustrophobic, features nothing beyond the basic necessities. Aganok has done its best to make the place feel like a proper home. A shelf is completely filled with books, with a few extras stacked on a rather beat up looking end table.

I take a seat at the kitchen table, which has stuff piled on it so that it can no longer serve its original function. I default to the trusty tactic of telling a lie that is based on the truth, "I would come by more, but I have been deep into the grind."

"I get you there. I have lifetimes of that shit running around in my mind," it said my mind instead of minds, and again, I am confused.

"I finally got my debts paid off. Now I am aiming at getting to the point where I am financially stable."

"That is a good goal to have. You took my advice and decided to wait on that other place?"

"Ya, as nice as that Charles Fauré place is, I can't afford it right now."

"I am glad to see that you are staying rational, a lot of people don't."

"People are crazy these days."

"These days?"

"I guess you are right, people have always been fucked up."

"To say the least. Take my advice, decadence is fun, but in the long run it isn't very fulfilling."

I laugh, "You are probably right, but that won't stop me from trying!"

It returns my laugh by projecting one into my IC and asks what has brought me there.

"I'm looking for a girl," with a willed thought the image of the young woman is sent from my IC to the main processor that links its brains, "I checked in her employer's system and it said that she ran off with an Untouchable.