Cooper sat very still. He knew if he twitched even a millimeter during onboarding, the RealScan system would pick it up as either a facial tick or dither entirely, turning his face into a weird mesh of cheek and too-wide nose. He knew this because he’d been in the arcade the day Axon Ruggs onboarded and a house fly got locked into the suite with him. The system scanned the fly onto his simulant like a facial tatoo. People called him brundlefly for the next two months, though Cooper had to admit he didn’t get the reference. Like Axon, Cooper didn’t have the funds to write another simulant if things went squirrelly. Unlike Axon, he wasn’t cool enough to turn the look into a some kind of battle scar, wearing it proudly in his matches.
Cooper really wanted to sneeze though. He imagined what it must’ve been like for all of those people who had to sit for paintings like a thousand years ago or whatever. Then he thought about how cool he was going to feel taking his simulant out for the first time in the matrix. He couldn’t go far or do too much until next month’s paycheck, but he’d at least get to interact with the starters mall and maybe skill upload a few of the classes he’d been taking to level his simulant.
Some Thoughts:
- This is less a story than the beginning of what could be an interesting story. I don’t know where it came from or why. I know I was in the shower thinking, “I gotta blog still” and the line, “Cooper sat very still” popped into my head. I held on to it until I got out of the shower and the rest started forming slowly. I stopped where I did because, with the time as it were, I wasn’t ready for more. Perhaps Saturday brings the promise of a second… verse?