“It’s probably going to be you,” said Tuner, her flat voice betrayed by the way that her eyes flickered up at him twice and then away.
“Yes, that seems about right,” said Holder.
“We’re the cleanest system right now. Fewest defects. And you’re you. And I’m me. I can manage this system better than you.”
“Yes, that seems about right,” repeated Holder.
“But you probably won’t come back,” continued Tuner. Thin fingers writhed through her short hair, pulling it to tension. “Almost no one ever does.”
“Yes, that seems about right,” sighed Holder, slumping down into a chair at the opposing side of the small, tin can room. It wasn’t dirty. How could it be dirty? There was nothing to dirty it and nothing to do but clean it. But it was degraded in a way that was maddening; there was nowhere for the eye to settle that did not have some form of defect or damage.
He briefly considered strapping himself to one of the outtake valves like Baker occasionally did, when the stress became too much.
But there was something moving beneath that, too — a feeling of curiosity. He had no choice but to admit it, he was interested. It was something different. Something that he would never thought to have experienced and, if he turned it around in his mind, something that might actually have meaning.
It would be nice to see something real. Something real that wasn’t contained within an eight by eight cell, or some dark winding passage. Even in the terror it would be beautiful. What was it like? It was already hard enough to get used to being uptop. Everything was so immediate.
In the system, there was a constant, imperceptible delay. It couldn’t be detected; you were born into it, it was natural to you. But the world could never quite work in sync with the mind; they were two disparate beings, one always playing catch up to the other. Part of the training involved an isolated environment, where the speeds could run much faster and each person could acclimate. His first experience had been…
There wasn’t a word. There had never been a word.
And beneath all of these jagged thoughts, rippling below the surface, were all the glorious stresses of potential failure. What if he never got there? What if he got there and they couldn’t resolve the situation? What if he got there and then couldn’t get back, dying alone with nothing more than his own thoughts, the salvation of everyone else encapsulated forever within a lost mind?
He closed his eyes.
He could still see the body. A pale outline of a thin form.
In the close-lidded darkness, he saw a bright, blue flash.
“They voted,” said Tuner.
“I expected longer,” said Holder.
“They chose me.”
Holder’s eyes snapped open.
Unplugged: a Cyberpunk Serial 