Anonymous

Chapter 1

Sometimes I go full-immersion and forget to eat dinner, but everyone agrees that's total lamer behavior.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it's also total suck to not go full-immersion at least once a day, but everyone agrees that only the techheads let it get in the way of their lives. And nobody wants to be a techhead, what with their fiber-optic hair and LED tattoos. A little goes a long way, guys, and that applies to fashtech, too.

Still, I try to go full-immersion for a few hours a day. All the cool stuff is happening on the avnet, anyway, so there's really no point in going online manually.

Besides, I'm way more at home in my av than I am in my "real" body. I mean, the avnet's where everything in my life really happens. Sure, I've still got school and family and all that, but everyone I know agrees with me: the avnet is where a sixteen-year-old's life is these days.

So here I am, eyelids closed, my eyescreens fully on and functioning in immersion mode. The LEDs embedded in my eyelids should be blinking a full-immersion pattern, warning other people not to freak out when I'm unresponsive or whatever, unless they're glitching out—but they shouldn't be, since they're my own mods. Of course, I'm not aware of any of this, since I'm in the avnet.

My av is pretty sweet. All my own mods, of course; there's just no point in trading for other people's mods once you've got a good grasp of how to make your own. I'm especially proud of my coat, which is knee-length and black and fades into pixilation towards the hemlines. I'm a subtle animation kind of guy, myself. I don't begrudge anyone their animated pixie wings or violet hair; I just prefer the lighter touches for my own appearance.

Like the spinning tattoo on my left cheek. Three little prongs radiating out from a central point, swirling lazily along my cheekbone. That's nearly the only concession to differing from my physical appearance I've made—mostly, I modeled my av off a photograph of me. Sharp cheekbones, wiry-muscled frame, slightly raggedy black hair that's starting to creep down my neck by now (no haircut for the past three months, which is starting to get really suck), one tiny jewel in each of my fingernails.

And so this is how I appear on the avnet, except with my tattoo and pixelated coat and violet eyes. I reel with the split-second disorientation that comes with full-immersion; suddenly appearing in a busy marketplace with hundreds of new sounds, smells, sights—almost like teleportation, if that was a real thing. I wish.

I start down the nearest path, sliding between two female avs, one with an intricate lacework of spinning tattoos that covers her entire arm, making it almost appear to pulse, and the other with brilliant cotton-candy-colored hair that trails sparks behind her. I make a note to figure out the modding that went into that later.

It used to be way harder to move in avspace. Back when the tech was new, people had to move in realspace as well, 'cause it tracked your movements and translated them into what was playing behind your eyelids. Of course, they quickly found out that that wouldn't work out too well—people in realspace were running into walls, getting hit by cars, running into other people that weren't hooked up at the moment. So they worked on changing the tech, and now it works by reading your brainwaves or some weird thing like that. Whatever it is, it's much better. Plus, you can talk without talking out loud now, which was total embarrassment back when you had to.

It's not all that intuitive, though—there's this weird mental twist you have to do in order to move or talk or control your av at all. It's kind of like, you move your arm in realspace, you're not actively looking at your arm and telling it move, you know? You just move your arm. Well, in avspace, you just move your arm, except you just move it without moving it in realspace.

Like I said, not intuitive. Most girlies and boyies don't really get it straight off. It takes them a couple years, but by the time they're ten or eleven, they've usually got it.