[spoiler]/load_ep_1.genv . . . Loading. . . . . . Complete.[/spoiler] In the depths of Thaniel’s dreaming mind, consciousness glowed. Kinesthesis bloomed throughout his body and gave him control of it after what felt like an absence of either a few hours or maybe around a year, and his first input after his hiatus was to open his eyes. Their lids slightly breached to let his readjusting pupils peer forward. His vision was confronted by a milky gloom which surrounded him entirely, and somewhere in the murk was a pale green light, blinking slowly. And as he considered what he saw, he realized his other four senses were present yet unresponsive, as if in a stasįs, though he could feel his spine start to tense. This wasn’t the place Thaniel fell asleep in. At least not the place in which he was worth any of his own attention. Something in the back of his mind began murmuring to him— telling him that he had returned to the place from which he wanted to escape. [i]But why? What was there to escape from here?[/i] He began digging through the mulch in his head for the answers, and his chest began to gain speed in its respiratory lulling. There were echoes of grey skies and rain that burned his skin and dark monoliths which surrounded him everywhere he dared to travel. . . and decay. A rotting, stinking, suffocating, inescapable decay which this world he was waking up into was made of entirely. His eyes widened, and his heart thudded at the doors of his mind. Where were all the green things? The plants of the forests and the animals of the food chains, all of which were so very much alive instead of simply being. . . switched-on? Where were the mountains and the valleys and the deserts and the oceans where he trekked in search of discovery and triumph and grandeur with boundless magical abilities at his disposal and a vibrant roster of companions at his side? Why was there now only— A muffled ringing blipped through the white void around him, and the green light held bright rather than falter again. Thaniel’s eyes darted from side to side, searching for the next occurrence, and then something ever-so-softly dragged at his arms, which were resting at his sides. He shifted his head to peer sideways at the sensation, and saw dark, blurred lines on either side of himself. The lines seemed to be responsible for the faint pulling, though before he could investigate further, he felt his sense of touch wash over his body before his vision suddenly became slurred by a white liquid which clung to his eyes. He blinked against it in growing agitation and raised his arm to clear the obstruction, but his hand struck something moist and metallic suspended above him. His body jolted in shock at this, and then again as he felt lukewarm liquid drip against the skin across his body, and a grunt of fear escaped his mouth. He then adjusted his arm to slide it along his bare chest and onto his face so as to not touch another foreign surface. His curled fingers reached his eyes, and just as he dug the wet stuff out of them, a mechanical sound filled his ears and impaled such a visceral lance of dread through his soul which he didn’t immediately recognize the meaning of, but as piercingly cold air suddenly washed over him, his memory glistened like the wet teeth of an unfathomable predator hovering in the shadows of his mind, ready to emerge into the light and seize him. “Rise and shine,” a familiar voice called down to him, teasing Thaniel in such an unintentionally horrible way. He peered forward to recognize the scruffy face of Jan hovering over him, a friend he’d met in some early academy year. A dark ceiling dimly lit in blacklight was his overhead backdrop; he was fully clothed in some dark, heavy outfit which included a bulky synth-leather jacket. His brow was raised, and his teeth were gritted through slightly jarred lips. He seemed to be so thrilled by the fact that Thaniel had awakened from a dream and into a nightmare. “No,” Thaniel cried hoarsely, folding his arms over himself to cover his face and twisting himself sideways, “put me back. Sync me back in, I don’t want to be here!” There was what seemed to be a short, startled pause from Jan, and then: “Hey,” —there was rough concern in Jan’s tone— “what are you on about? You’ve been in this pod for almost a week. Your credits must be sucked dry by now, and I don’t want you going broke again.” Thaniel shifted and made a gap between his arms so that an eye could peer out at Jan. “You ended it,” he whimpered as tears formed within his vision, “you pulled me back out here. Please, Jan, sync me back in. I’ll pay you back, I—” “Niel, Niel, calm down, please,” Jan pleaded lowly as he extended a hand to rest it on his friend’s shoulder and glanced around warily, “I don’t wanna make a scene. Just know that everything’s fine. It’s okay. I know Stranger’s a fun game and all, but it’s a trancer, and you shouldn’t be in it for so—” “The Stranger is everything! It’s the only escape I have— the only escape we have! Just join me in it, Jan, please! Everything will be better if we just play together! Why won’t you do it?” “Because we’ll be dead men sleeping, and we can’t make money from a simulator to keep us inside. Now come on, let’s dip out of here— I don’t wanna get droned.” Thaniel made no response as Jan began to lift his friend’s shivering, fluorocarbon-soaked body from the soft glow of the metal cocoon’s cushioned womb that he’d been lying inside of. He reached behind Thaniel’s dripping head to unplug the pod’s syncing cord from his rig port, an electronic crevice fused into the nape of his neck which led into biocybernetic circuitry rooted inside of his brain. The cord detached with a soft click which always satisfied Jan’s ears, and he let the black serpent of fiber-coated wires fall limply into the wet bedding of the pod. Thaniel sat timidly against the pod’s side, and Jan offered him a white towel which glowed starkly against the blacklight filling the chamber around them. “Here, dry up and we’ll get your clothes and whatever else you brought over. We gotta get back to campus and have you cleaned up by five at the latest, or we’ll miss a rental party Reggie’s throwing at a Dollhouse over in Centra at seven. He rented a Jupiter for us to ride in too.” Thaniel didn’t respond— he only gazed aimlessly at the wall in front of him and clutched the towel given to him, holding it tightly against his chest. At this, Jan sighed, disheartened, and carefully brought his friend to his feet, supporting the weak, long-unused legs he stood upon. “Come on, Niel,” Jan reached, “it’s gonna be fine. I’ll slip you something to calm you down once we get outside. I bet Reggie’ll have some stronger stuff, too.” Thaniel was mute again as he wrapped his towel around the white briefs he’d been wearing inside of the pod, though the silence only remained for a moment before he finally gave a response— meak, but unagitated. “Okay.” Jan pursed his lips at this, blinked as he gazed into the blank, hollow shell that was Thaniel’s face, and then stepped aside before gesturing toward his friend to follow. “Come on, the lockers are this way.” Warily, Thaniel stepped forward, his tender legs trembling under his own weight, and Jan stepped back over to him to wrap an arm of support around him before he could collapse in fatigue. “See? Look what staying in there does to you,” Jan quietly scolded him in concern, “it wastes your body away, makes it useless.” He didn’t expect Thaniel to finally shift his empty gaze towards him, sullenly turning his head as he replied. “It’s no different out here,” he murmured, “this city eats you away, body and mind. At least in a pod, your mind can escape it— for a little while, until someone pulls you back into this hell for whatever fuçking reason.” Jan held Thaniel’s gaze with dumbfounded eyes. There was no tensity in his friend’s expression— much less an expression at all. He was nothing more than a shadow of a person, and that deeply unsettled Jan from the visceral depths of his mind. His brow twitched as he mulled over in his head what had just been said to him, and then, as if breaking a lag spike, he broke eye contact with Thaniel. He inhaled deeply with closed eyes before letting it out and looking ahead of them, through the exit of the chamber they were in. “Looks like you need some NRG in your system,” Jan suggested with a lighthearted edge to his voice, “that always wakes you up.” Thaniel’s gaze clung to Jan for a short, longing moment before falling away, reverting forwards. Holding onto one another, the duo eased their way through the open exit-way of the play-chamber. Among the lurid shadows and vibrant whites of the place, rows and rows of dozens upon dozens of other dark, mechanical almost-coffins lay idly across the chamber floor behind the two young men as they went. Across the exteriors of the machines, white stylized scripture read “[i]NEUROCAST PLAYPOD[/i],” and a small yellow light shone from most of them, signifying their status as “occupied.” — PAGE 2: https://www.bungie.net/en/Groups/Post?groupId=3981268&postId=254090618&sort=0&page=0