The past is an open book, and somebody's been stealing the pages.
I fought in the Great War of 1914-18, the Franco-Prussian War, the Second World War, and the London shares riots of 2000 on that first day. During the Second World War, I lead a team into Berlin where we captured Hitler and ended the conflict a year early. I remember there was a systems glitch and Hitler had no hair. At the end there was a message from PastVEL, and a fine for corrupting the historical database. It didn't really matter; I could pay it easily enough. I mean, it's not as if they'd do anything like cut me out, is it?
They sent me into ChatsymbVEL while the shell was cleaned. The problem is that, while cleaning the shell doesn't really stop the VEL working, the extraneous sensation can spoil things. If you've in a sword fight in FantasyVEL and suddenly your real arm starts feeling odd things because some scrubber's lifted up the arm of the shell… well, I've got killed by that before now.
There's something very strange about Chatsymb. I've met a few shell-holders in it who say they like it, that they actually access it voluntarily outside of the cleaning time. OK, so there are a few VELpeople in their too, in case you can't access anyone else, but most of the time if you're talking to somebody in Chatsymb, the chances are that they have a shell. That sort of eats into your confidence. You're so used to feeling like you're the only one, that if you die you're the only one who has a shell to back-up from, that meeting others is really strange. I was in the 1990s a few days before that and I'd come across this term: reality. Meeting other 'real' people is a bit sick, if you get my meaning. I mean, things you say there might have an effect. You could actually change something about somebody else's thoughts. I mentioned to the sheller I to whom I was chatting that I'd found out about this reality thing, and I got the impression that she was pretty disgusted by the whole idea. Reality means… well, I suppose it's a kind of bodilessness. You're stranded in your shell and the only way to move is to push it about. That would take the biorhythmers out of alignment of course, so before you knew it there would be sweat being created, and saliva, and lots of other things. I know about this, you see. I did a study on shellbiology a lot of days ago. Anyway, I was having this conversation.
We were sitting on a beach on the surface of the sun, running lava through our fingers and sipping iced orange juice and talking about… well, about all the things you usually talk about when you meet shells.
"You mean you went to the 1990s?"
"Yeah. What's wrong with that? Do I detect fear? Is that some kind of adrenaline response?"
"Shut up. You know the PastVEL doesn't like that. Too much technology. You end up with it jumping through all sorts of horrible recursive hoops."
"PastVEL needs an upgrade. I'll message CVEL1 about it." Her features twitched into something that I supposed was meant to represent horror, although the blue rabbit she was wearing made it a bit difficult to tell.
"You shouldn't…" To intimate that a VEL needed an upgrade was bad, I know, but I wasn't feeling very happy with PastVEL after that stupid message, so I felt like prodding it a bit. She continued, "You're disrupting me." With a rather contemptuous flicker, she left the body behind. It began chattering away under some subsidVELmind, but I didn't listen. I was too annoyed to be polite to the VEL network. After all, they save to default settings at the end of each night. It wouldn't stay annoyed with me long.
I chatted with a few more shells before the sleep began to kick in. Shell sleep isn't like VEL sleep, of course, because VEL sleep's supposed to mimic what shell sleep used to be like. The shell metabolism's been slowed down so much now that it's difficult to tell when the conscious mind disconnects and the shell dreams begin. Maybe this is just a shell dream. I could hope.
I didn't know which VEL I was in when I woke up. Sometimes you find the selector's responded to your first conscious thoughts before you're awake enough to direct them, and you're somewhere you don't know, and would never choose to be. This was like that. It was a small room with six walls and a domed ceiling with a very plain pattern on it. I was rather annoyed by the lack of colour graphics. Anyway, I sat up, feeling a bit dizzy- evidently I wasn't fully awake, and took stock of my surroundings. I could always message the VEL in charge to find out where I was, but after yesterday's experiences I didn't want to be such a nursling, so I tried to work it out by myself- in the mean time on the look-out for any ravening monsters, alien robots, or similar unpleasantnesses. I wasn't really expecting historical figures- the graphics looked too poor for it to be a PastVEL. I stood up then, running my fingers over various surfaces. The texture programme was actually quite good, although the colours all seemed rather washed out and pale. I had been lying on a sort of leather couch, with steel bars to the side which felt properly smooth and reflected extremely well. I didn't like the physical appearance, but couldn't think the change character icon properly- I could visualise it in my head but the link seemed to be down. In the middle of the room was what looked like a twentieth-century dentist's chair. Maybe a MedHistsubsid of PastVEL? Didn't seem like the sort of thing my semi-conscious mind would normally ask for, but maybe my shell had had a restless night. Anyway, the room didn't really look right. I would have thought there should have been more doors. I pushed open the one that was, looking round for any objects I should collect to use later, and stepped out of the room.
I was in a long corridor now, with one side open to a garden-type area outside. There was a fountain with excellently rendered falling water, which probably explained the poor quality of some of the other visual imaging. The brightness was a bit too high. I started down the corridor. There was something moving up ahead- some sort of robot by the look of it. Now, I don't spend all that much time in sci-fiVEL, not as much as some shells I've encountered spend in shakespeareVEL, which is really pointless- he wrote it so long ago that there aren't any alternate plat options. Probably written it HTML or something like that, but anyway, I digress. Whatever time I might spend immersed in sci-fi, I knew how to recognise a servitor-type robot. Evil killer robots are usually humanoid, getting their effectiveness by being disconcertingly like shells, to which I suppose we all have some sort of unconscious affinity. Friendly servitor robots don't need to be humanoid because there's no need for irony- they really are friendly. There was no way I could see the mobile scrubbing brush up ahead as a deranged megalomaniac.
I approached, wondering why I was in sci-fiVEL and if it was actually possible to complete a phase here without knowing the programme I was in.
"Take me to your leader?" All right, it was a bad line. Still, the VEL ought never to have heard it before. The machine ignored me. I looked around it for a keyboard or some other sort of input. Nothing. It was a poorly drawn box with no apparent aesthetic considerations whatsoever. I remember once slipping through an error into an un re-mastered version of the Great War, and seeing what tanks really used to look like. This thing looked like that, only much less formidable. I supposed I was supposed to either follow or ignore it. Maybe if it were meant to be followed they'd have spent a bit more time on it, but I could always re-take if it went wrong, and I couldn't really think of anything else to do.
Looking back, I suppose it was about then that I began to feel at some level that something wasn't right. The fact that I could feel it at such a level was, of course, a major indication of that, but it wasn't the only one by any yardstick. I visualised the commands, but, although those I had in memory were there, the others didn't download properly. The message VEL command was there, so I tripped it, but there wasn't any response. I tried again. Then I tried to close VEL. Nothing. This was, I admit, freaking me out just a tiny amount. Being linked to a VEL without any exit probe would be scary enough, but if you couldn't communicate either it would be really hellish. Help. No response. I looked around, trying to find something in the sensory map. No. Then I realised that, when I switched my attention to the sensory map, my command images all disappeared back into memory. The VEL wasn't even taking over visualisation. None of this made any sense. The VEL was obviously still connected, as I was receiving the environment, and the robot, and all my sensory inputs were running perfectly well, but it wasn't communicating at all. There was no link.
"Where's it coming from? Where's the environment coming from?" I retraced my steps, hoping it was just a temporary bug. The room was still there when I got back to it, so the connection was still being updated. I looked around, trying to find something… the dentist's chair. I said I'd done a course on shell biology, remember. There was a scanned in image from reality showing a shell, my own, in the Virtual Ether Link harness. I remembered being rather sad about the unprepossessing state of my shell, remembered the good quality reflection of my image in the bar of the couch, remembered the dentist's chair like apparatus the shell lay in, remembered myself thinking:
"It didn't really matter; I could pay it easily enough. I mean, it's not as if they'd do anything like cut me out, is it?"
I tried to look down, to see the shell that I was using…. using as a body, but I could feel my eyeballs slithering around in their bone sockets. Inside the shell, an odd sensation was moving, gliding up towards my neck, bulging, bursting… Acrid fluid exploded from my mouth, disgust heightened. I'd seen this is PastVEL. I was sending neural signals to the shell's muscles. I swung forward, an unecessarily sharp pain fracturing my concentration as the edge of the harness struck the forehead of the shell. A blank screen flashed past the eyes as it fell.
"Owing to your continued abuse of the system, your VEL access has been denied."
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