Dreams of Jupiter

Virtual Insanity

My name is Ezekiel Atlas and I am not insane.

At least, that's what I told myself as I stared down at my hands. They looked like my hands, the hands I had before I was jacked in. Damn it, they even felt like my hands. But after my sojourn in the virtual world known as the Rift, I couldn't be absolutely certain. I couldn't be certain about anything. And that ... Well, that made me feel like I was going crazy.

Then a quietly superior voice was intruding on my musings.

"Mr. Bennett, you're drifting again," the voice chided, each word smugly polished with education and arrogance.

"The name is Atlas," I said in a tired voice, feeling like I was re-engaging with an old argument. I lifted my gaze to look across the battered metal table at the pale face hovering above a lab coat, with its washed out eyes and jutting nose.

"How many times do I have to tell you?"

The face pasted on a thin smile as equally pale hands shuffled through the stack of medical documentation in front of it.

"Likely as many times as I've reminded you that your name is actually Camble Bennett, not Ezekial Atlas as you claim." The pale eyes glanced down at the top page in the stack. "You are a college student and amateur hacker that got himself caught in a feedback surge over his custom-built neural interface during a marathon VR gaming session and accidentally fried his own brain." The face sighed before lifting delicate, almost feminine fingers to run through slicked back dark hair.

"We've tried a number of restorative treatments that were successful with other patients suffering from acute trans-positional personality disorder, as you are, and all our tests confirm your memory and core personality are both intact." Those watery eyes locked in on me and a look of frustration flitted across the pale features. "Yet, Mr. Bennett, you persist in clinging to the character personality you were engaged in at the time of your accident." The face sat back with another sigh.

"At this point, we must conclude it's a conscious choice that keeps you in character, not an injury."

"I'm not in character," I doggedly insisted with a weary shake of my head, but the face kept talking as if I hadn't said anything.

"The funds your parents gave us for your treatment are almost exhausted, Mr. Bennett, ..."

"My parents have been dead for over twelve years ..."

"... And if we don't see any improvement by the time they run out in a couple days, then we'll be forced to do a final evaluation on your psycho-status then officially turn you over to governmental health services, who will most likely remand you to VR rehab due to the violent nature of your adopted personality."

VR rehab; just hearing that sent an involuntary shudder through me before I could stop it. In an eye blink, I was back in the horrors of the Rift, with fire falling from the sky and murderous beasts hunting me through the shadows.

It wasn't supposed to be anything. A random encounter with another unknown species in the depths of space. The government told us it was nothing. Then our defenses were being overwhelmed by the aliens and their war fleet that appeared in Earth orbit without warning.

It was a story we had heard many times, watched it on a dozen holos but never believed it would actually happen. Yet, there they were, raining fire and death on us from the sky. It wasn't long after that their soldiers, mind-slaved humans and mercenaries, began their landing.

I was rounded up in the first few hours, a field journalist that had been covering the invasion for the news nets. While I was an adventurer and a bit of an adrenaline junkie, I wasn't a violent man and certainly no soldier. Not that it mattered to them; being the same species as the soldiers defending Earth was good enough for the mind-slaves. I was pushed into a holding pen with hundreds of other terrified civilians and forced to wait to see what Fate had in store for us.