I am linked to Travel 101 right now, submerged in it. Travel 101 is the reality, my cube is the dream. The instructor's vox is way tobaccoed out, windpipe the size of a needle from all those Pall Malls she smokes during the lesson, constantly sipping off a steaming mug of colon-blow. If fractal images could die, she'd die really pain-twisted and slow. She's prattling on about an island in the Grecian province, a place I'll never vacation at called Corfu. This goddamned tutorial is a pain in my ass. They've programmed it to look like a nineteenth century lecture hall with hardwood benches, ink-stained writing desks, and a podium down front where the hag smokes and sips and spits and prattles on and on. The woman irks me. And I say to hell with this because I am way snake and I can do any damn thing I want in my cube. I disconnect. I pull the tempopts from my skull-jacks, and cube 23!6oB melts into view. I punch the piss-break key, strangely relieved to be back in the land of the real. It's amazing to me how all those binary smells, all those textures for the fingertips to touch seem so real when there's actually nothing there but me and cube 23!6oB and the tempopts sunk into my brain.
My cube is dimly lit by a couple of candles sunk in tall glasses with pictures of Jesus pasted on them. Five months ago I'd wiped my cube's nanny-gram so now I can set up my cube any damn way I want, provided I can order the décor off am-bay on my Eves' account and the décor that's sent passes the dullards' hazard inspection. My mickied holoreel, bought a month ago with an opening bid believe-it-or-not, is beaming Bombay Malloy's Milk Chunked Pink, a pumping vid, ask me. I like Malloy. The Dead Presidents are better, but that reel crashed, so.
The waste receptacle slides out and I pour candle wax into it, facting damn well they'll freak when they test it later, facting it was a stupid thing to do and I'll pay in some way or other. Bombay is screaming on the vid screen, a scratch of fizz running diagonal down his fish scale suit, so I knee the holoreel in just the right spot and the fizz melts. The wax-filled waste receptacle slides back into its slot in the wall. The little red light over the monitor comes on and I mutter to no one in particular, "Suck eggs." The light turns green as the tutorial instructor's vox leaks out of my cube's audio cones, instructing me to relink. The T.I. is invading my personal space uninvited. Always the same voice; an older female voice, raspy and, well, old. Why do I always dice this damn vox? Why couldn't my T.I. be some slit-skirted MILF with sweet, warm breath and an imbalance that would keep her leaning over me with the top three buttons of her blouse undone, explaining the lesson in a lazy, southern drawl?
I shove the tempopts, the tips of them dull and plastic-coated, under my tongue. They taste funn y, but this tactic buys me ten minutes or so. Enough time to enjoy the vid. Bombay is still screaming. What a snake he is. I lean back, the instaform pillow comforting me just as I've mindset it to, the keys floating within reach.
For fun, banging my head along with Bombay, I key in an innocent enough eyewash request, followed immediately by a fumbling tattoo, or at least it should appear to them to be a mistake, that results in a station scramble, and then, quick as spit in a skillet, I tap in an exec code all the Higher Ups seem to use these days: mothers of invention. And then, with one click, I execute a cut so they can't monitor my keystrokes. The penologists at this rehab fact enough about this system's infrastructure to blow the mind of like maybe a two year old, okay? What do you expect when the state privatizes the prison system? What's the point of being good at your job when you're only pulling down minimal wage? When I first got here I snaked a peek at the surveillance station, set up in a cube not mucho unlike my very own 23!6oB, except maybe a little roomier. At the helm I saw two desexed dullards who apparently found no thrill in curtailing the shenanigans of all the cutthroats and villains under their care. If I remember right one was peeling scabs while the other was tapping at a smoking vid screen. They may have been replaced by a pair of fresh dullards over these last seven months, but my fingers are fast and my reflexes faster, and no dullard is ever going to catch me goofing with the system. I am full-on snake, slippery as egg whites.
Exec functions aren't overly exciting, but what the hell, it's all in fun, and once you tap in a code, why not meander through the function menu, I say. I patch into Monitor and I key down to the Subliminals to see what it is they're trying to shove into my brain via this Travel 101 tutorial. I like the visuals when the needles are stuck under my tongue. With the tempopts stuck in my head, the whole image wraps around me, and I can turn around and it's there, it's under my feet, overhead, and I'm inside their world, seeing and hearing and smelling and feeling whatever they've programmed into the tutorial. It's way too spooky for me. And it makes me mad to be in their world. Not sure exactly why, but it does. When the tempopts are under my tongue, the screen holds the image, a bit blurry like a 3D movie without the eyewear, but it's on the screen, and it's flat. So that hag in the tutorial can talk on all she wants, her lips flapping away, and I am ear-blind to her rants what with Bombay's screaming.
The subliminal flash messages are now on the monitor, hanging there a second longer than they're supposed to, and I can read them plain as headlines. First one is what I expected with the dead neural feedback from my mouth. It reads PAY ATTN TO YR LESSON, and then it's gone. After a few seconds another one pops up. It reads YR PART OF A WHOLE. Next one reads TRUST YR GOVRMNT. Okay, yeah. Next one reads DN'T LOOK TOO CLOSE @ THE OATMEAL. Good to fact. There's only a few new subliminals this viewing, most of them predictable. They're enough of a bore that I cozy in and mindset the instaform pillow a quarter turn so I can watch Bombay. What a snake he is.