Lost in Space

I shifted uneasily, waiting for my turn to board the bus. Today it was a school bus, the irony of which was not lost on me. The words “To SafeWay” circled above it, and inspecting them would show you where in Space the grocery store was. As I stepped in, the scanner checked my tag. “Opaque!” it buzzed, letting me through the invisible barrier stopping me from entering the bus. I breathed a sigh of disappointment. The bus driver didn’t even turn his head to look at me. Bot. I walked past the Clear zones and stepped into one of the Free Opaque zones, and relaxed as an ad played in front of my eyes. Past the ad, I could see glimpses of the Paid Opaque zone, where Whales were strapped with cool outfits and bling, stuff I couldn’t hope to afford in a hundred years. I tried to turn my head right, to see into the Paid Clear zones, but the s****y bus wouldn’t let me. I stayed locked in. The ad continued to run, and another after it ended, and another, and after the third 120 second ad ended, the bus came to a stop. Six whole minutes of flashing colors and paid promotions, stuff I wouldn’t buy simply out of spite. But I guess we were just vessels for Whales to get a glimpse of the ads we were watching and they could determine which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t. Win for everyone involved, except my neurons, I supposed. I glanced around as I left the bus, one of the last avatars to disembark. Waste of my time. I hopped out of the bus and entered the SafeWay.

The store contained everything I could possibly want within a day’s distance from my actual place. I always felt a little overwhelmed at the stores in Space, even with all the categorization and attempts to make it customer friendly. I just needed a few things, but they always took SO long to find. Thank god for search features, even if they just took you to the aisle. First was Kewpie mayo, which we had recently run out of, as well as some rotis and cinnamon sticks. Fungus grew so easily, especially if you weren’t using your fridge. If you left a piece of bread out for a few hours, you’d see green splotches begin to form. Mutated GMO fungus probably, among all of the other crazy viruses we now lived with. No wonder nobody leaves their homes anymore. I also wanted to get some muffins or some other snack but my dad always had something to say when I asked for junk food. It wasn’t worth it. I put everything in my cart and checked out, hearing the classic “cha-ching” sound that confirmed payment. I didn’t have anything to do there anymore, but I didn’t want to be at SafeWay when I came back, so I took a bus back to a transit hub before hitting the sign out button and-

I took the visor off and breathed deeply, coughing slightly. Coming back irl was always such a jarring experience. It felt like getting ripped from reality, only to end up in reality. I slowly peeled off the skin-tight Lastic haptic suit, feeling like a snake emerging from its molt. With my second skin off and my visor safely hung up, I began my stretching routine. Staying in Space for long periods of time takes a toll on your muscles, seeing as they don’t get to move too much. I hate stretching, but I’m glad my parents drilled it into me. I’ve seen firsthand in my dad’s clinic what happens when you don’t stretch. Limbs that have gone without blood for so long they need to be amputated, blood pooling around the lower half of a person’s body, muscles that have sheared themselves from bones in an effort to save themselves. I walk into the kitchen and grab a GatoradeV+. The electrolytes are bitter over my tongue and down my throat. After chugging the bottle, I do a lap around the house. My sister is in her room, still attending lessons at school. My dad is in my parents’ room, halfway through a shift. Fortunately he only has to go into the operating room once every week or so, and I’m more and more thankful every time that I chose not to be a doctor. My mom is cooking some curry and it smells delicious, but I’m not hungry right now. I have places to be. I send my family group chat a text that says I’m meeting my friends and walk outside.

The world’s gotten darker in the last couple years. Each time I step outside it smells a little worse too. I don’t really know what time it is anymore, not that it matters. Everyone runs on their own schedules. Even the sky reflects that. Perpetual night. Even in the suburbs. I’m sure there are places in the US where you can still see the stars, but those places are nowhere near where I live. I get in my parents’ car, a space blue Lucid Zolt, and type the address onto the screen. It starts driving, and I sit back. On my phone, I pull up my account, tapping through messages from friends, and texting my boys, the ones I’m on my way to meet right now. The car rumbles through the unpaved roads, gravel shredding the tires. It pulls up in front of my friend’s apartment, and I punch in the code to take the elevator up to his floor. It’s a 4 minute ride. The minutes stretch out as the elevator quickly ascends, past floor ten, past floor twenty, to the sixty fourth floor, a lucky find for an apartment nowadays. The building scrapes the pollution in the clouds, and it’s hard to say how many people are still alive in the building at any point in time. Eventually their bank accounts will stop paying rent, but until then, the leeches that own the apartment will suck them dry. Then more will come to take their places.

As I step out of the elevator, I take note of what’s left of the cockroach that I was accidentally standing on in the elevator. In Space, that elevator ride would have taken an eternity, and I would have had to watch ads the whole way up while locked in. It’s hard to tell whether it’s worth living in the real world or in Space more. As I step into the apartment, the stench hits me and I can’t help but gag. It’s the smell of trash mixed with alcohol and weed, and maybe some other things too. I don’t know if they can even tell this place hasn’t been cleaned in years. My friends are already high. I can’t wait to join them.

“Yo”, I call out into the apartment. “Yo, what’s up”, they respond. I walk in and take hold of whatever’s in the joint my buddy hands me. It tastes like magic.

Within seconds, I’m in the sky. In the pollution, I can make out fragrances of thoughts. In the distance, I hear my family’s voices, calling for me to come back, to work, get a job. The usual, generational expectations. Later, later. I’ll do it later. To be honest, I hate the idea of working. I’ve been living with my parents for three years, after I completed my degree at OCC. I don’t know what I would want to do for work, or where I would get hired. Either way, I can’t muster the energy right now, sinking into the abyss of the sofa. Small brightly colored dots begin filling my vision. I see colors flashing before me. Am I dying? Honestly that might be better than living as an Opaque citizen for the rest of my life. 

As the ketamine opens a hole below my amygdala and I find myself falling into an abyss, I see fragments of my time. Memories of growing up in Space, being surrounded by my friends in virtual game sessions at all hours of the day. Nobody has time to play games anymore. Nobody is allowed to have fun. I’m devoid of any salient expression of emotion in my day to day. The only time when I can feel anything at all anymore is on these drugs. The only other respite I have is when I put the visor on and let the chip in my brain live its own life in a game using me as its host. But those are moments when I’m just watching life, not experiencing it. They get rid of the free trial when you’re 16. They put you into a category of either Clear or Opaque. Both of them have to watch ads, but the Clears’ way fewer. And both categories have a paid subscription plan as well. The Opaque subscription fee is a little bit higher per month, but with the power of money comes the opportunity to be free. Freedom from all the subliminal influences running through your brain. On a train ride from one fictional planet to another, one should only experience a loading screen, not a train ride’s worth of marketing-�"

As the highly potent drugs manufactured for people with immensely high tolerances negatively interact with the cybernetic chip implanted in the stem of my brain, my neurons, that had been working overtime to try to keep up with the drug, have ceased firing. My brain has short circuited. There are no more signals being sent through my body. And as I lay on the couch, my heartbeat slowing to a crawl, I wonder how long it will take to be found in this space.