The Split

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. This vacuum had all the makings of the real world. There was a hot humid feeling in the air, like a stuffy apartment with closed windows after a week long heat wave, without a drop of rain. The odour of pine scented cleaning products mixed with the smell of freshly brewed coffee. There was even a canvas squiggled with “positive vibes only” on the wall, with a backdrop sea view outside the window with the midday sun reflecting off the water. The anomaly? A blond woman sat hugging her knees naked, robotically rocking back and forwards in what appeared to be a loop of terror, with a tall dark haired man sadistically watching this torturous pinnacle of suffering on repeat with a grim grin on his face. The man had all the characteristics of a model. Perfect symmetrical cheek bones, a thick dark head of hair, with a look in his eyes that was simultaneously inviting and terrifying. His abdominals ripped and bulged out of the top of a blue pair of comfortable looking jeans with a dark brown leather belt semi-opened hanging in midair. The dazed blond woman sat in the corner of the room and was equally perfect in appearance. Her long blond hair had dark chestnut brown streaks and she had large sparkling blueish grey eyes. Her cheeks puffed out like a hamster and looked as if they could have been holding a tiny morsel of food. She had two perfectly round symmetrical breasts pressed up against her knees, and although it could not be seen, the imagination told us she had an equally perfect abdomen to match her exposed legs. One thing that was unmistakable was the terror in her eyes, and the twisted pleasure in his, with a soul piercing scream of terror filling the room.

Optiverse, a social media platform turned Virtual Reality company made the bold promise to eradicate hunger, climate change, inequality and sickness using its ground breaking technology, merged with Psychedelic medicine. With the aid of indigenous knowledge and state of the art computer programming they found a way to create artificial dimensions that could be programmed to the taste of the consumer. If you wanted to be a rockstar, a rocket scientist or a God, the world of your desires could be programmed to suit. The company had been collecting copious amounts of data, and putting it through smart algorithms. Their claim was there was nothing left to know, and they had a complete blueprint of all facets of humanness. This could all be downloaded at the click of a button from chess champion to professional cage fighter, all you needed to do was imagine it, and they would plug you in.

Brian Strummingberg was the face of the company, blond hair, bright blue piercing eyes with a pristine dress code. He always wore dark blue trousers, with a white shirt, but never a tie. He would wear his sleeves rolled up if he really wanted to connect with his audience to emphasise the power of the technology they had created, and how much the world needed it. For his shareholders, or when he was summoned to court for questionable Optiverse privacy policies and terms of service he always wore a jacket. He had impeccable speech, tone and rhythm, never stumbling on his words and would paint pictures with his vocabulary. Maybe the most distinct feature of Mr Strummingberg, was his pointed nose, which almost took on the characteristics of a cartoon character. It seemed an anomaly in what otherwise was a picture of perfection, but in some ways made him seem more human. He was squeaky clean and had capitalized on his image to create somewhat of a celebrity status, posing for pictures with billionaire philanthropists and celebrities to his 6.4 million followers. And they lapped up every word on the promise that Optiverse would rid the world of all its problems.

Who am I? My name is Omni, and I saw this coming long before the slick marketing campaigns and the promises of a digital utopia. But no one listened. I was told that the devil would come dressed up as an angel, selling us on the idea of freedom from suffering with no effort on our part. The detail they left out - it will cost you your soul.