Peace Out (116 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by charminglybeef (View user info) at 2006-09-25 18:35:39 EDT
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Peace Out.
Peace out is what you say to bid a sarcastic, white-washed goodbye.
Peace Out is the organization that brought us The VR.
Peace out is what you say before entering The VR.
Peace out.
My stubble can no longer be considered stubble really -- it is now a beard. The fuzz on my teeth, now plaque. The pain, now anguish. But all of that -- that's outside of the VR; where people live people's lives, and not the superhuman existence that I, and so many of my junkie-brethren enjoy.
My apartment is a fucking shithole. What used to be the dapper digs of a twenty-something computer scientist is now a festering hate-farm of bacteria and human waste. A similar comparison can be drawn between my body, recent-past, and present. And if it were possible to place blame on anything so completing the picture of perfection, it would be the fault of The VR. But I would never fault it so. Well, not for what it has done to me, but maybe for taking so damn long to do it.
I can remember it all.
"Holy shit!"
"Yes -- it is very real, isn't it?"
"Is there any way to tell that it's not?"
"Occasionally, an incorrect memory is triggered -- normally in the form of a smell. Yesterday, someone on the battlefield thought they smelled jasmine -- it was napalm. Napalm death."
"Crazy!"
"Yup -- but otherwise, it's entirely indiscernible from reality."
He could not contain his enormous grin. "Is everybody ready?" The group represented the entire spectrum of the affirmative -- from the apprehensive but enthusiastic, to the enthusiastic but apprehensive. "Well, lock and load!"
And we all went rolling down the narrow, dusty street in our armoured personnel carrier -- another tour set out to learn firsthand, the horrors of war, in the simulated environment of The VR.
Peace Out -- they had some kind of genius, coming up with the beast. It was the perfect mix of entertainment and purpose -- submerging everyday people in the harshest realities of conflict. The first dose -- but a nose of the sleeping polar bear -- was you, as a soldier, marching the mean streets of Fallujah. Your face, being the coward that it is, decides to flee the shrapnel without you. It hurts. You are actually bleeding. You are actually screaming. Eyeballs hang limp from their sockets, and you smell the earthen burst and charred flesh.
That got people talking.
Adolescent males, mostly -- who got to satisfy their sick, hormonal lust for death, without ever leaving the living room.
As if the aspirations of Peace Out were as righteous as handing out goblets of blood though. Hah. I laugh, even in my train of thought. My internal monologue cackles. Fool. Oh, they had bigger, and better things to come. They had real purpose. Purpose unparalleled -- and depending on where you got your news, that purpose might have been sinister; it might have been un-American; it might have even been noble. But it was what it was, and it was against the war.
They marched forward, hoisting the flag of Peace, gunning down civilians all the while.
So, the next dose: you are Jonas Fucking Belfry, or whoever the fuck you are, walking down the street when a child dies in front of you -- exploding, melon-like, at the introduction of screaming hot fifty-cal. Then it's your turn, and projections of your family, your lovers, your pets, all meet the haughty hand of death.
It's generated from your memories -- the old technology that seeks out the banks of familial-information -- and so, the images and mannerisms approach perfection. In fact, it's almost better than reality, because most of us remember these people in flattering, photographic light. In The VR, your children are sweeter and more intelligent than anything they approached in the real world; your wife radiates an ethereal beauty.
And there she is beside you -- you see her? -- kneeling before the very same open pit, your sobbing daughter enveloped in her arms, as dark men, with intentions malicious but non-specific, chatter unintelligibly as they pace behind you.
She looks over -- tears bubbling on the lower lids of her eyes -- and is about to speak when the solitary bullet destroys your cinematic moment, and pierces her skull, and that of your only child. They both fall limp, and tumble without pain, into the waiting ditch below.
That's what I got, anyway. There were variations on the theme. It was tailored, to exact the greatest effect. It changed people's lives.
There were, of course, the people that thought it was great -- the testosteronely-gifted, mostly. Odd incarnations of them, too -- single mothers, judges, nannies, schoolteachers -- and for them, it was more of an advertisement for war than for peace; but for most, it was a horror beyond imagination, surfing the crest of a wave of social opinion -- enough of the death and dying.
By virtue of its likeness to reality, and the startling, perpetuating emotions inflated, people shared it. Told their grandparents. Told everyone. Told everyone to go do something they would never have dared suggest: go watch your family die. And it was because it really was waving -- above all the guns and polished boots and goose-stepping; the flag of Peace. The message was love. The message was strength. And lovers, they are the strongest of all.
Peace Out -- buncha fucking geniuses. They had people marching in the streets; burning effigies; voting. It was as if the whole of America had ingested magic paper squares and elected to fuck openly in the streets again.
But who fucking cares now.
Who fucking cares, because something had to be done. I was a doer. I did it. I got paid to do it. Not because I was against their message, but because I loved The VR. Because I hated real life.
I played in it all day -- part of the department charged with sabotage on the front lines -- and was one of the first to discover the exploit in the self-projection. In The VR, you are represented as who you think you are, and if you think you are Jesus Christ, well, Jesus Christ you are.
Me -- I wouldn't even consider disgracing myself as such. Not anymore.
But for a long time, that's what I was, and what I did -- tagged along on tours, impersonating the instructor; distracting the guests; causing general confusion -- anything to dilute the experience; and my success was limited to that narrow, intangible goal.
Until one day, someone saw me change form.
"Hey, how did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Change like that?"
He was young -- pimply, with a bulbous nose. His eyes were wild and filled with fire; the projection of himself.
I was confident.
"You mean this?" And I changed, into a duck-billed grizzly bear.
He began to drip. "Dude, I come here every day -- this is the coolest shit in the world. Please, tell me how to work it."
This proved a decisive moment. It was a tight secret -- how to change. We protected it -- feeling it was a power best-kept for ourselves -- but here I saw possibility -- a way to not undermine Peace Out, but render it entirely irrelevant. A way to bring about a big change. A gift to humanity, even.
"In The VR, you are what you believe you are. There is a distinction between thinking and believing though, and that's the hard part."
For a brief moment, he was of school-going age. He noticed.
"You'll get it," I said. "Tell your friends."
And he did. And he did. And they told their friends. And before long, The VR was full of handsome guys and girls, animal-hybrids, and inanimate objects that spoke.
It was all teetering on the brink; all it needed was a tiny shove. And hey, I had gone that far already, hadn't I?
"You guys wanna see something cool?" I approached a group that had strayed from the tour -- there were many in those days. They were a herd of elephants, trouncing through the jungle with human heads.
"You know we do," said one.
I lead them to a tiny, thatched palapa. Automatic weapons chattered in the distance, ignored. "In we go."
And then: "This is something I discovered not long ago," belt unbuckling on its own. "You will not be able to see or feel what I am experiencing," I said, pants falling to the ground, "but there is a beautiful, underage vixen kneeling before me," and my underwear slid down my legs, "who is about to perform the most amazing fellatio on me," and my dick at once bobbed and glistened.
They stood, in awe, reverting to their original, corporeal projections.
"In The VR, I can do whatever I want, and you can too. The only limit, is your imagination," and I tapped significantly at my temple. "The key, boys and girls, to ecstasy unattainable through drugs or anything else; do with it what you will."
I spent the next few weeks combing The VR -- smiling at all the moaning, writhing, morphing shapes splayed out in the crater holes. It was truly a thing of beauty. It changed the world. No one who experienced it ever did, or wanted to do, anything else. And so, they didn't -- the vacant cubicles and sewing machines and automobiles a testament to that.
And the guarantor on my paycheque -- old Uncle Sam -- was oddly pleased about it. Men with expensive suits and thinning hair dominated the public debate, denouncing those who likened it to a technological narcotic, and praising its virtues as a leisure activity, similar to boating, or soccer.
This was of course entirely at odds with the religious right. Originally, it proved divisive -- pitting greasy-haired addicts in colossal street fights against the great washed and cleanly -- but even the most pious of Americans began to find the church at odds with the new God -- The VR.
It was that good.
The day that Peace Out pulled the plug, as it were, was akin to stopping completely, the flow of methamphetamine to East Hastings. If East Hastings was the entire state of Texas, and methamphetamine, guns.
Scores roamed the streets, most angry and wild-eyed; some depressed and dejected; a small few, celebrating quietly.
It was forty-eight hellish, riotous hours before the government announced their plan: a new system would soon be online -- available to everyone, on a work-to-use basis. For every hour spent working a state-recognized job, equal time would be granted in The VR.
Morally abhorrent; a completely pacified public.
I don't give a shit.
For my part, I am granted unlimited access. Call it my pension, if you like.
So hey -- guess where I'm going?
That's right.
Peace. The Fuck. Out.
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