I wake to madness slightly muffled by thin apartment walls. Fuck.
Now there’s two psychos roaming the halls, wailing for my death. Well, one’s screaming Die and stabbing doors, the other’s just roaring and slamming into things. Semantics. They both want me dead.
As I lie next to my sweaty bedmate, a thought slowly congeals.
“Fuck this. Let’s leave town.”
Really? asks Volt.
“Why not? I’m not attached to any of this. I don’t even know where we are. We’ve got a truck. Let’s see what’s over the horizon.”
It takes 48 minutes to get out of the building. 46 minutes of listening for an opening, and two minutes of sneaking - but eventually we’re back at our truck. Once again, I’m struck by how stupid it is to get back in this truck. The cops are after me, what if they are watching it? People want me dead, what if there’s a bomb in it? But I’m still bankrupt for options, and forced to rely on the incompetence of strangers.
The truck starts and doesn’t explode. We pull away and no one follows. Yee-fucking-haw.
I toss Volt on the dash and let her drive. Conserve my strength. Take in the sights. We’ve got snacks and a full battery. It’s 20 minutes to the edge of town. The outskirts have a rundown, stripmall vibe. The graffiti gets bigger as the buildings get smaller.
- DONT RUN! THE DOGS WILL SHOOT!!
- RANDO FOR MAYOR!!
- GO BACK!! YOU WILL DIE!!
- PLEASE STOP!! THE DOGS WILL KILL YOU!!
Fun stuff. Quite the art installation. Volt doesn’t notice and I can’t be arsed. Fuck this town. It’s either leave or burn it down. They’ll let me go or wish they had.
The truck slows. The road isn’t blocked, but congested with rusted out vehicles. Volt weaves through them slowly, while my newly excellent vision picks out their broken windows and headless corpses.
“Huh. Maybe we should speed up.”
Tricky. Bit of a traffic jam.
“Do you see any dogs?”
Nope. Just broken cars with headless drivers.
Stolen story; please report.
“Does that seem weird to you?”
Should it? Is this not how cars are normally abandoned?
“Not really. Looks like these guys were shot.”
Noted. Must be easy to shoot a guy with no head.
“They probably had heads before they were shot.”
The truck lurches to a stop. Reverses full throttle.
“I was hoping you’d accelerate in the other direction.”
Nope.
We try a couple other ways out of the city, but they’re equally bleak. Headless skeletons everywhere.
What the fuck? Is this normal?
“No. Something has gone very wrong.”
Is this our problem? Do we have to deal with this?
“I don’t know. But this feels bigger than us. We should focus on dying from much smaller problems.”
Volt stops the truck. What are we going to do, Xan?
“About the psychos? Diplomacy’s out. Running and hiding ain’t working. That leaves us with ambush or allies. What’s your poison?”
We sit in silence for several minutes. Finally, Volt quietly says: Allies.
“Cops again?”
Do we have other options?
Now it’s my turn to think. The city is full of people. In theory we have many options. In practice, they all have the same problem.
“Do you know how to wake people up? Without freaking them out?”
I thought I did. I woke you up.
“That’s right. What did we do differently when we woke me up?”
A couple things. I woke you from inside the dream. You knew you were going to another reality. We didn’t peel off your brain sticker. There was a lot less slapping.
“Ah yes, the slapping. We may have been a tad abrupt. Let’s wake the Deputy from inside the dream. Is there any easy way to find him?”
I have a 60 year old name and an address, but that won’t help us find him in the dream. It was designed for anonymity.
“Of course it was. Well, Liam has a profile on everyone in Bright City. We just need to make a profile for the Deputy and match them up. Shall we browse his socials?”
We could, or we could buy a packet of profiles for everyone in Dark City. Bit of a time saver.
“We don’t have any money.”
We can pay in crypto.
“wat? You said they don’t take crypto here.”
Not for legal shit. When breaking the law, untraceable videogame money is accepted. Sometimes. It still has value. Kinda. To some people.
That’s a lot of qualifiers. Fuck it. I’m on borrowed time. Anything that saves a minute is worth my videogame points. I tell Volt to make the buy, then get a weird feeling. That’s most of my net worth.
“I swear to god, if reality is a long con to get my crypto, I’m gonna fucking kill everybody.”
Nah, we’re good. Shit’s totally meaningless. You won’t regret this.
Sniper Dogs
Profile Matching
Blackmarket Profiles
Hi! If you are enjoying the book, now would be a great time for a nice rating. Also, your rating may enable a disaster. Consider:
Why is my Dream Machine so different from Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse? One’s a fucking adventure, the other a nauseating Zoom meeting. The obvious answer is the Dream is fiction while the Metaverse is real. Of course reality is lamer than fiction. That’s how reality works.
But this isn’t quite right. The Metaverse is fiction as well. That’s why they’re spending $36 billion to get it running. Sure, the Dream also requires R&D - specifically on the olivocochlear implant and handshake protocol - but that shit could be developed for a few million, tops.
The real reason these two virtual realities are so different is necessity. Each will only do as much as needed. The Metaverse is geared to business meetings because the best moments of Zuckerberg’s life have been at business meetings. To repeat these moments on demand, his perfect world needs only talking heads and volatile assets. So that’s all the Metaverse has.
Due to my non-achievements, I haven’t enjoyed many product rollouts. Instead, I habituate the simple pleasures of delirium, loss of self, fucking, and unnecessary panic. Virtualizing these moments requires a slightly different interface. And so, you get the Dream Machine.
Which one of these virtual worlds would you prefer? I don’t care, we’re doing my version. I refuse to do virtual business deals - that sounds awful. Granted, my plan also has few downsides - the dissolution of society and our inner selves - but that’s probably okay. We’ll get new ones. It’ll be fine.
So! I propose the following plan:
- Everyone reading gives this stupid book a 5 star rating.
- It gets popular enough to normalize the concept of the Dream Machine.
- A hearing aid manufacturer teams up with Budwiser to create the Dream.
- We abandon society. It knows why.
- Sweet madness.
So yeah… Thanks for reading!
Doctor Zero