Epigraph

content/read/032.md

@@ -1,110 +1,77 @@
-# Dr. Carter Ramirez --- 2112
+# RJ Brewster -- 2112
 
-> Dr Carter Ramirez,
->
-> We would like to thank you, first of all, for all of your continued efforts in working on these cases of the lost. Your services are invaluable and are providing the families and friends of the lost with hope, not to mention the world at large. We have come to rely on this technology in our daily lives in all spheres of work and pleasure.
->
-> As you know, research here at UCL is funded through a series of organizations and foundations working together. These relationships are both an expression of trust and a political statement, and both of those expressions work in both directions. We welcome conversations, questions, and comments about research from the sponsors, mediated through the appropriate channels.
->
-> A recent suggestion regarding your project was that more effort be placed on researching the neurological aspects of these cases, focusing primarily on the treatment and prevention of such events in the future.
->
-> As such, we are requesting that you add one more neuroscientist intern to the team. Unfortunately, due to budgetary constraints, your team must remain the same size as it is currently. At your earliest convenience, could you please respond with the name of a member of your group not on the neuroscience side who will, if possible, be offered a transfer to another project? Admin will take care of the rest.
->
-> Please continue the excellent work. If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to send a note.
->
-> *Ari Liebler*  
-> *Research Coordinator*
+No menu.
 
-Carter slid her chair slowly back from her rig and walked numbly to the coffee station. She wasn't tired. She *wasn't* tired. She was a bit too awake, if anything. She just needed something to do while mulling over the email from admin. Such a politely-worded request to change the course of her project and fire one of her team.
+No menu and no HUD.
 
-Pouring herself half a cup of chicory coffee, she looked out over the room, at the heads bowed over tablets or nestled into the headrests of rigs. How could she possibly be expected to choose who would get the axe?
+Without eir HUD, there was no way that AwDae would be able to teleport. Ey would need to swipe up a destination entry and tap or speak the command for sending emself off. Hell, even if ey *was* able to get at the menu, ey wouldn't have the coordinates for any of the particular places ey had come up with to visit. 
 
-Carter slipped back to her desk and delved in, stepping out of the workspace and into a side room, one of the small areas off to the side of the main space where virtual meetings could be held, where others' avs would show up in full focus rather than just shadowy shapes.
+If locations within a dream even had coordinates, that was. Of all eir explorations, ey had begun to doubt that this was a sim. No sim, no coordinates. No coordinates, no teleport.
 
-Shadowy shapes. The dream still dogged her.
+Ey would have to walk and just hope that it would not be tiring. No calories burned when taking simulated steps in a simulated environment. All the same, the prospect felt exhausting.
 
-"Meeting, when you get a chance," she murmured into a message pane, then sent it off to Sanders.
+Eir first location on the list had been the university, that sprawling campus where ey had studied (and, later, pioneered) the integration tech ey used daily at work. It seemed meaningful enough: that place most closely associated with the beginnings of eir susceptibility.
 
-She received a ping of acknowledgement and settled back to wait.
+Without teleport, however, that was out of the question. It was halfway across the continent.
 
-It was only a few minutes --- hardly enough time for her to organize her thoughts --- before the head of neurochem stepped into the room and settled into the chair across from her. "What's up, Ramirez?"
+Something more manageable, then.
 
-"Here," Carter said, swiping the email she had received onto a vcard and handed it over to Sanders. "Give that a read."
+The clinic where ey has had eir implants installed was halfway across town. It would take an hour or two to traverse, ey supposed. A guess. Ey had never walked it before.
 
-"Rough stuff," he said. "Who do you think will be the unlucky one?"
+Ey had time, though, it seemed. All the time in the world.
 
-Carter sighed. "I'm not sure. I can't think of anyone I would want to lose. Anyone we could afford to lose, even."
+With little else to do, ey once again slept early and woke early in turn. If it was to take a good chunk of the day, at least ey could do so while it was light out.
 
-Sanders nodded and tossed the card back to Carter, who recycled it.
+Shouldering the appropriated pack, ey set out from home as soon as it was bright enough to do so. A short walk down to the school, then further down the hill toward Broadway, which would get em most of the way there. After that, two blocks east, and ey would find emself at the squat, white building of the clinic. 
 
-"Look," Carter continued after an awkward pause. "I know you weren't a fan of the social link I mentioned before..."
+From there, it would be easy. There had been about a dozen appointments in the building, so ey knew it well enough that it would likely be in reasonable shape. Assuming the doors were unlocked, at least.
 
-"Did I suggest this?" Sanders laughed, holding up his hands. "No, of course not. I'd not presume to go behind your back like that. You knew my reservations, but I'd rather talk about it with you and the team than pull something like that."
+The first skip happened halfway down the hill from the school.
 
-Carter nodded. The sincerity was clear. She relaxed back against the seat. "I got it, yeah. I'm sorry. It just came so suddenly and seemed connected, is all. Maybe I'm getting too good at seeing connections that aren't there."
+AwDae reached the corner of the fence surrounding the track and football practice field, remembered eir brief jogging phase, and how ey always turned north through the neighborhoods before reaching Broadway, which was always so noisy. And then, without warning, ey was gliding down the street in a sitting position.
 
-Sanders politely said nothing, looking down at his hands.
+Ey yelped, startled, and flailed eir arms out for support, left elbow catching painfully on something solid a foot to the side of em.
 
-"Well, hey. Thanks for that. It's reassuring. I'll let you get back to your stuff, and will call the team in for a huddle about this after lunch."
+The skip took perhaps a second all told. A second of blurred darkness, of shadow and motion. A second of panic and confusion before the rest of the car formed around em. Ey was sitting in the passenger seat of the family sedan, coasting down the road toward Broadway at what ey supposed must be the speed limit.
 
-"Sounds good," Sanders said, pushing himself up out of his seat and walking back into the sim.
+The car, like the books in eir room, took a while to swim into focus. Even then, parts of it shifted indecisively, unable to come to rest in some solid, known state. Ey had only tried to drive it once before giving up on the prospect, so the dashboard in front of the steering wheel was particularly vague. Hints of dials. Gestures at needles. Smudges of marks on the levers on the steering column. The back of the car lurched in and out of focus sickeningly.
 
-Carter watched as he turned from a solid avatar back into a shadow, thinking. If she was going to pursue this line any further, she'd likely have to do much of the work herself.
+Ey realized ey was holding eir breath and let it out in a shaky whine.
 
-Something, she realized, she was already prepared to do.
+The car continued down the street toward Broadway. Turned smoothly without stopping at the light. Accelerated seamlessly, without haste, without care for its occupant's stress. The soft hum of the motor and the road noise beneath the wheels was as indistinct as all of the visuals. Indistinct and disconcerting.
 
-The team was visibly unhappy the news. They had been working together over the months that they had on the project and by now felt themselves a well-oiled machine. Rightfully so.
+After a few short blocks, AwDae had a hypothesis. Of course the sim --- correction: eir memories --- did not include walking along Broadway. Ey had never done so, had only driven. Or been driven, as ey had never gotten a license emself. All eir memories could dredge up were those of the car, of moving smoothly along the road.
 
-"This is going to throw a huge fucking wrench into things," Avery grumbled. "We lose one of our own, then have to get someone new up to speed. It's going to take ages."
+No teleportation, then. Just fast-travel.
 
-"I know." Carter sighed. "I'd push back if I thought it'd get me anywhere, but they say it's a matter of those who sign the checks, so I think I'm S-O-L on that front."
+Eir one experience with hallucinogens had prepared them for the blurring, smearing effect of the world around em. The fog did not diminish, but it played tricks with the buildings lining the road to either side. There was the house with the psychic's sign out front, relatively clear. But the rest of the buildings were shifting, unsettled. When focusing on them, AwDae saw them as flat facades. No depth. Textures on a low-poly wireframe. It was a nightmare of that hidden time of intrasaccadic perception, that moment of suppressed visual input when one shifts one's gaze. That moment laid bare, elongated.
 
-An tense silence greeted her. No one was looking at each other, just staring at shoes, ceiling, walls.
+Ey moaned and closed eir eyes. The sights were wrong. The sound was wrong. Even the feeling of acceleration and deceleration, the swing around turns, was off, as though the entire universe was poorly rendered and em right along with it.
 
-"Listen, I think we have some time. Absolutely no pressure, but if anyone wants to volunteer, cool. Otherwise, I'll put some thought into this and make a decision. I'll have to, I mean. I don't want to. Either way, I'll go to bat for you in trying to get a transfer rather than just the sack."
+It *was* poorly rendered. Eir stomach turned at the wrongness of it all.
 
-Another sullen silence. Carter shrugged helplessly, and with an apologetic look, walked back to her rig. She had little more consolation to offer.
+The next skip hit as a memory of walking through the parking lot of the supermarket at Broadway and Timberline asserted dominance over the memory of driving along the thoroughfare. So suddenly was ey on eir feet and walking parallel to Broadway, so surprising the shift, that ey stumbled and fell to eir hands and knees.
 
-Once delved in, Carter frowned. A small, pulsing envelope icon in her peripheral vision let her know she had another email. *If it's more bad news, I'm going to scream.*
+AwDae retched. Nothing came up. Not even the sting of bile.
 
-The address wasn't from someone at UCL. Or the UMC, for that matter. It was a free address, something personal rather than professional. It had made it past the filters, though, so perhaps it was legitimate, despite its shady provenance. Perhaps not bad news, but Carter remained wary.
+Ey lost track of time, sitting in the empty parking lot. Half an hour? An hour? Trying to master the urge to return home and disappear beneath the covers. Anything to avoid that horrible, half-remembered drive.
 
-> Dr. Ramirez,
->
-> I'm writing to ask for your help in the search for two of my friends who are lost.
->
-> I know there's probably not much you can do to help, and you might not even be able to talk to me, but my friends and I are scared, and want to know what's going on. And if we can help, we'll do all we can.
->
-> Their names are RJ Brewster and Collin Jackson.
->
-> If you can, email me back. I understand if you can't.
->
-> Sasha.
+And yet, ey had to do *something*. If there was even a chance of em being able to get out of this dream, this non-place, ey would have to keep moving. Keep moving and hunting and looking and thinking.
 
-Carter frowned harder. Not bad news, then, but neither was it good.
+With a groan, ey stood and walked toward the road once more.
 
-This Sasha, RJ's friend, was right. She technically wasn't supposed to respond, at least not with anything more than a form letter stating such. Carter wasn't even supposed to know that RJ existed, who ey was, much less that she knew who *Sasha* was from Johansson.
+The skip came as expected, and ey gritted eir teeth as the world whirled past. Perhaps ey would be able to make it to the east coast, but if that meant eight hours of this --- home to the airport, the plane, a different airport, transit to the dorms --- well...hopefully there was a work-around.
 
-She began digging through administrivia to look through the form letter. At the same time, a part of her sequestered itself and began to plan.
+The rest of the journey to the clinic passed without further skipping. There were a few shaky moments passing through the pedestrian mall, where ey'd spent countless hours walking, but apparently ey had spent enough time traveling along the road along whatever metric required. Eir 'car' continued down the empty street, blithely changing lanes to pass vehicles that weren't there, turn signal and steering wheel moving on their own.
 
-She would have to do most of the work on this herself, yes --- perhaps all of it --- but maybe she could do a little more outside research. She had done so with Johansson, why not with Sasha? She wouldn't be able to rely on it, couldn't publish it, but there was no harm in more information, was there? Even if she had to strike out on her own?
+And then it parked.
 
-Before she lost her resolve, she filled out the form letter and scheduled it to reply at five, near the end of her day. Then she paced around the workspace, organizing and cleaning decks, too distracted to dig into numbers as she sorted through the plan in her mind.
+The low-slung building of the clinic was just as AwDae remembered it.
 
-She left that evening at five after five, earlier than usual. She had been prepared to beg off with feeling ill, but found she didn't need to: most of the team were also packing up and leaving. No one looked happy. One of their jobs was on the line, of course they would be unhappy. Everyone avoided eye contact on the way out.
+The idiom got a laugh out of the fox. Perhaps that was literally true. It could be no other way than how ey remembered it. The building was as it must be.
 
-Determined now, Carter left quickly and, standing in the station for her train, fumbled out her phone and started typing.
+Preempting another skip, ey scrambled to open the door of the car and hop out on eir own before it was done for em. With a satisfying thunk, the passenger door of the dusty blue sedan swung shut behind em.
 
-> Sasha,
->
-> I know you just got a reply from my work address, but I'm replying here as well. While UCL and the team I work with aren't able to provide any assistance or information with regards to the cases, I might be able to help a little on my own, and I'm sure you'll be able to help me. We don't have much information on RJ or Collin, and I'm desperate for more.
->
->  Maybe we can figure out a way for that information to get to the team later, but for now, we can talk here.
->
-> -Carter
+*Promising,* ey thought. *Perhaps I just have to be more deliberate about it. I'll get in the car later, follow the drive back home, and maybe it'll park in the driveway as easy as that.*
 
-She hesitated, thumb hovering over the 'send' button. This was reckless, she knew, but the more she thought about the interactions of the lost, the more she was convinced that there was something to the connection. Especially here. Here, where she knew now that patient 0224e8 was RJ, and that aca973d7 was likely this Collin Sasha had mentioned.
-
-And the more sure she was, the worse the letter from admin stung.
-
-She gritted her teeth and hit 'send'.
+Eir claws clacked against the pavement leading to the smoky glass doors. It wasn't overly warm out, but the cool air that breathed out of the clinic was refreshing nevertheless. Something static. Something still. Something known.