Farah was a not a misfit of society, at least not to the part she considered worthy of the name.
The two most promising subjects thus far had all turned her down, sad, but not devastating to this trip of guilty pleasures; she had rented a capsule over the day to visit the yearly online exhibition of older media.
The exhibition was huge, as was its bandwidth consumption. About 54 Million people were currently connected to it. As Farah looked around, huge egg-like shapes of light were seen, spread out in all six directions. She directed her floating downwards, where the older media was, not caring much for the non-vertical directions; she couldn’t care less about game genres.
Soon, she hovered above one of the shining eggs. Inside of it was a huge cluster of old capsule precursors. Surrounding each group of 'capsules' was a colorful signboard, advertising whatever game the group of capsules was assigned to.
There wasn’t as many lining up for game matchmaking here in the lower eggs as in the upper ones. Farah had noticed higher ratios of families each time she went for a lower located cluster. ‘Most of these games probably only have people playing them out of tradition,’ she concluded indifferently.
The egg shaped coat, enveloping this cluster, was, as most other old media stations, made out of old TV screens. When passing near one of the floating, illusionary, displays, Farah felt its sounds of music and speech surround her, from all directions.
To most, the flat screens were a great way to immerse visitors in the feeling of antiquity. Long time ago, flat screen technology had probably been impressive, little doubt about it; today though, they served little purpose other than invoking a feeling: void lack of stimulation. Perfect for setting the right atmosphere for old games from old eras.
The shell of ancient entertainment understandably wasn’t given much thought by any passerby, short of one; Farah was cemented next to one of the floating flat screens. Crude audiovisuals didn’t deter her much; what captivated her was their traces of true, unadultered life.
In this instance she was watching the third remake of ‘Inception’, a movie few knew to have inspired some pretty fundamental legislation, long, long, time ago. ‘Pity those laws were ever needed,’ Farah thought bitterly, gradually recovering from her own line of though.
She loved watching these old movies. What she gazed onto was a world where everything was real; the people, the feelings, the clothes, the food, and foremost the culture,shared bt everyone; everything was real. Well, in this particular movie, perhaps not so, but at least the actors were all from a world where everything they ever knew and acted upon was real. Farah loved it, thus the guilty pleasure; she was in a fake world watching real people. She was escaping reality within a world not even real, yet she felt as if she was closer to how the world was supposed to be; much closer than before entering the rented capsule.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The movie ended, and she immediately headed towards the center of the capsule cluster to get a good look at candidates for the next watching. After a while of focused staring, accompanied by her signature frown and tensioned lips, she was almost done pondering what to binge next. Before coming to a decision, her forehead went from unusually low to unusually high; a bit above a prospect movie, was a person standing; He was quite hidden by the flat screen actors around him, but bloody hell, he sure was watching a movie!
Seeing another person, such as herself, had her both hopeful and nervous. She tried to quench her hesitation and fly straight over to him; ‘one wouldn’t just stay in the middle of nothing rather than watching one of the masterpieces just next to you. Would you?’
Deciding not to give her anxiety another chance taking root, she started hover towards him, not awkwardly fast, in case he’d see her, but fast. Small butterflies hit her stomach and fluttered upwards her throat as she wondered what’d happen when she reached her destination.
Arriving to his left side, she stopped for a moment, taking a glimpse at him, and the flat screen in front of him. He was at least 190 centimeters tell, blue, half long hair… and, wow that as an impressively muscular back. ‘Not the time to dream away.’ She stopped about a meter away from him, careful not to disturb his view of what seemed to be an investigative drama.
“ Hi,” she said, looking at him, looking down, looking at him, looking down, looking at him… “Hello?” she continued in a careful tone, biting the tooth gum bellow her lips. No reaction. Well, fuck it. She patted him on the shoulder.
“Hi”.
”Eeh, Hi?” the man replied. “How’s the show? “she followed up. “Good,” the man replied vacantly. “Mind if I’d join watching,” she asked, pointing at the flat screen in front of him. “Fun joke,” he replied coldly, turning back his head.
Farah was confused and didn’t know how to respond. As if noticing her awkwardness, he continued: “Only my family should be the ones disrupting me today, I’m watching the quarter finals of BenDover versus Enigma god dammit.”
His voice was less vacant now, but, his face frowned faintly instead. “Asphyxia, block her”, he indifferently instructed his AI; his twitching eyes soon no longer to be seen.
“Fuck it, for reals, fuck it!” Farah burst out. He had been the third person she had tried to talk with today. She knew that realists were considered weirdoes, but the indifference she had met today was just burning her insides. If it was disgust, anger, anything, she wouldn’t have had as much problem with the way she was treated, but this indifference; It was as if she didn’t have the ability to exist in anyone’s ‘personal sphere of self-delusion’. She hated it.
Deciding to leave the socially empty exhibition, she started multitasking. One half of her mind repeated a impressive chain of curse words whilst the other focused on getting out of the capsule. She hovered towards the place she entered the exhibition from, neglecting that a voice command would suffice to exit the dimension. “I’m done with this fake world’s, fake people. Probably fake backs too.” she muttered.
As she kept up phase, an unfittingly happy and forward going voice hit her. “You’ve been registered watching a lot of old media, are you perhaps a fan of old style reality?”
“Fuck you too computer, what if I am,” she spat to her bodiless greeter. “Then we’re happy to inform you on UN's recently released full immersion game...”, the AI replied with the same tone, clearly not programmed for social cues.
“Not interested”, Farah muttered. UN’s recent shift in policy was a lego in her shoe. To have gone from saving the lives of billions, just to 'game zombify' their offspring, the thought was one she'd rather not think. The era of immediate challanges, such as getting relocating countries, destroyed by global warming, might be over, but Farah hardly saw that as a reason to abandon reality and aid the world's flight to empty fantasies.
“The immersion game is a sanctioned initiative, keenly modeled after reality. The log in rate has averaged three and a half million a day on different servers for the past month.”
‘Just when things couldn’t get more stupid; it’s now officially more popular to play reality than actually experience it.’ "Wait, what? There's a reality inspired game all of a sudden?"
“Found 3 friends playing it together: Oscar Anderson, Khalid Babak and Hua Yawen, do you wish to join them?,” the AI once again ate away at social capital not existing.
“You know what? Screw you! Go uninstall system32 or something,” Farah replied, quickly continuing: “Take me to my friends already. I’ve got about 6 hours left of no-refund on this stupid machine anyways.”