Eli looked at the previously empty black box suspended in the top right of his visual field. He watched as the digital yellow numbers counted down. AV added the timer, at his request, after the first few failed transfers.

"I need a break. Log me out." His eyes closed, he reached up and waited. A wave of aches, pressures, and fatigue washed over him as his actual sensations reasserted themselves. He pulled the skullcap from his head, detaching the leads from the canister that was strapped to the orange safety harness.

"Why would anyone agree to such terms and conditions?" AV asked.

Eli shook his head, setting the headset down. A series of small cylinders filled with various liquids sat on one end of the worktable. Leads from the cylinders led to a mess of tangled wires. Eli looked up at the screen and reviewed the performance of the unique solutions each cylinder held.

"Because they have no choice? If everyone has the same terms, then what options are there... huh, candidate three is outperforming the others." His fingers ran over the illuminated keys. A new window appeared on the screen, a chart showing power over time.

The terms and conditions offered by the many immersions he tried all had one thing in common. They required him to forgo logging out and traveling to another immersion. It baffled him. Wasn't that the entire point of Project Deep? It was the grand pathway between interconnected worlds. You could find brilliant success in one universe and some of that success transferred with you when you traveled to the next. Or if you didn't find success, if you were a total failure, you could travel to another world and start all over.

But every immersive he tried to join wanted to lock him in, prevent him from leaving, and that was just the start. The clauses that discussed children conceived while in the immersive were creepy, and the creative ownership clauses for content created like streams or anything else were simply abusive.

He refocused his thoughts and looked back at the graph on the screen. It compared the power output over time; it showed candidate three rose sharply over the last day.

"There are thousands of immersives, Eli. I am sure some will still honor your original terms of service. We just need to keep looking." AV remained remarkably upbeat about the adventure.

Eli was less enthusiastic. He'd spent his life learning the skills and gaining the experience to log in to Project Deep. He'd overcome many obstacles along each step, only to collide with an impenetrable legal barrier.

"Use the SNC and keep searching. Create a list of immersives that don't require us to update our terms."

"Acknowledged."

Eli sat down at the worktable. With AV puppeting his avatar around the routing system, he could concentrate on other problems. He brought up the schematic of the biofuel engine, expanding it into a three-dimensional model on the screen. The little engine was remarkably efficient at converting metabolites into electricity. He rotated the model, this way and that, but still could not see the complete mechanism.

The screen flickered then went dark. The hum of the fabricator went silent as it powered down. The only indication of power was the running lights installed along the floor. The keyboard faded under Eli's hands.

"We have depleted our discretionary power for the month." AV said. "We no longer have access to the dematerializer, the fabricator, or any display screens." The network still worked as did the environmental controls and minimal floor lighting. That was all.

"We used the dematerializer too much," he looked over to his tool wall, "And the sledgehammer was pointless." The two hot meals he'd eaten didn't contribute much, maybe two hours of screen time. They'd almost made it, just two days to go. He hated his stipend, that he didn't earn it, and how low it was. Pity funds for the disadvantaged. I'm trying to fix all that. One of his goals was to earn some money. With his technology he should be able to make a decent living, but not being connected was a real roadblock along that road.

He stood in the dark, then slammed his chair under the worktable, "We're so close. I can taste it."

AV parsed Eli's last phrase. It was ironic how Eli had literally tasted his freedom in the recent tests. I should recommend wearing the headset to Eli when he takes his meals, it would significantly improve the taste and I could make it so they feel hot. A few thousand calculations later and AV confirmed the results of its thought process.

"Eli. I believe I have a solution to our power problem." AV ran the numbers again. The math worked. They could restore everything, except the fabricator.

"Oh? Not going to siphon power again, that didn't go so well." Eli recalled the event from his teenage years. The fine from that misdemeanor took him four months to pay. Four months of no screens. He'd almost gone crazy.

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"No. The bio-fuel engine. We only need to power the SNC and your headset for a few days."

"Allright, tell me what you're thinking."

***

The idea was simple; create a local immersion node using Oceanic's software. Realism, the premier immersion technology, was freely available to developers. If a company wanted to release an immersive using Oceanic's Realism they would sign a licensing agreement and pay royalties, which most were happy to do because of the high-quality, proven, experiences it was famed for.

Since Eli was just doing it for himself, since it was private, he could use the software for free. With his own immersion node he could simulate the power. The best part is, it doesn't matter how much light or heat I simulate, the power use is constant. In theory. With his personal canister of homebrewed bio-fuel, and the three test canisters, they had enough for maybe a week of powering the headset and SNC. Energy wasn't the problem.

Learning how to use Realism was proving more difficult.

Eli stood in the middle of his dark laboratory. He wore the harness, a bio-fuel canister clipped to it. The leads from the skullcap were plugged into the canister.

"Close your eyes and imagine nothing, an empty expanse of nothing." AV instructed.

With his eyes closed Eli tried to concentrate - to clear his mind of everything. It was hard. Images kept appearing, random thoughts about Gia, or his parents, or the way the water circled the drain in the shower. He couldn't stop his imagination, not even for even a second.

"It's not working. I can't just not think of something."

"You are not supposed to not think of something. You are supposed to think of nothing. Concentrate on whatever nothing means to you." AV digested the documentation and tutorials and had configured their local environment, created the code repository, moved over the Realism boilerplate and started up the modeling environment for Eli. Without a brain of its own though, it couldn't actually use Realism.

"Right, concentrate on nothing. That's supremely helpful." He rolled his eyes then closed them. Okay. Nothing, so a vast cosmos, without even stars, an empty void. He imagined being surrounded by nothing, just an empty black expanse so empty he couldn't tell if it was space at all. He felt small and at the same time closed in, suffocated.

"Got it." AV confirmed the modeling environment's blank state. "Now, imagine in that same space the screen in the lab. Not the wall or anything else, just the screen, imagine it and that it has something displayed on it."

Eli imagined the screen. The thin chrome edge, the glossy surface, the scrolling text. Having something inside his void added some depth to it and relieved the claustrophobia he was feeling.

AV monitored the feed from the headset, isolating energy patterns. With the snapshot of Eli's mental modeling space he could use that to triangulate the models Eli was thinking about.

"Now move around the screen, viewing it from all angles if possible."

Eli floated in the void, he hadn't imagined himself a body, so he had nothing to move around with. Instead he imagined the screen rotating and observed it as he did.

"Open your eyes."

When Eli complied he saw a screen hovering in front of him. On the screen scrolled a message from AV.

Congratulations. You have modeled your first object in Realism.

"This model referenced your memory of the actual screen. The process for sharing this with others would be more complex, but since we only need it for you that is all that is required. The human brain really is amazing."

"Fascinating." Eli walked around the hovering screen. "Can I change the properties? Make it larger? Change the material?" Hang it on the wall?

"Yes. The process is similar. I will walk you through it."

***

"Eli. I have completed the survey of all immersives available through the routing system."

Eli looked up. Around him rotated a model of the biofuel engine, some parts translucent, others cut away entirely. With the help of Realism they had transformed his former lab space. On the lab walls, screens hovered in place, some filled with metrics for his biofuel project, others with some of his favorite streamers. But the biggest change, by far, was the ceiling transformation. Gone was the bunker-like concrete and metal. In its place, an open and airy hexagonal frame, above which clouds rolled by in a blue sky. Sunshine illuminated the lab, rays falling through the hexagonal frames warming the work surfaces and floor. Even the air was fresher, warmer, more vibrant.

When Eli looked at the new lab for the first time he baulked; his philosophical attachment to reality was strong. Then AV showed him the cost savings projections for a month, using the SNC and headset to replace screens, light, and heat. Philosophy lost to pragmatism.

"That was fast. So give it to me straight, how many can I use?"

"Three." AV replied without dissembling.

"That is three under your original terms, a further twenty-two with terms that do not prohibit relocation at all, but have other changes, and another two hundred and seventy-three that permit relocation under specific conditions."

"Interesting. More than I expected." Eli walked through the three-dimensional model back to his workstation. The model disappeared once he left the illuminated modeling circle.

Wait. If there are so many, why did they have to reconstruct the routing systems?

Something didn't seem right.

"What are the populations of those immersives?" Eli asked.

"Insufficient data to determine."

"Doesn't matter. Excellent work AV." That meant he could connect. He wouldn't have to file a petition to travel. He wouldn't have to get an escort. He would log in and become a fully connected citizen by every measure. Two days. In two days they would get discretionary power back and he could complete all the fabrication, then he and AV would set out. That might be too soon? I should run some tests, some simulations, maybe fabricate some more equipment?

Eli breathed out. He felt his heart pounding faster just thinking about leaving. If he delayed for tests or simulations, he may never leave. He couldn't do that to Legend or himself.

Eli walked back into the modeling circle, the model of the biofuel engine appearing around him. He reached out and began separating the parts.

"We're leaving in two days. So let's get to work."