Tommy's Girl

Brilliant light shown all around. A fever pitched vibration filled the space that wasn’t really. Warmth. Bliss. Timeless, unending, pleasure. Two souls lost in each other swirled without motion.

When Tommy and Vessa were first introduced to this reality, they filled it with their wildest imaginations. They had come a long way since then.

Outside, their physical bodies slumped on the couch. At the nape of their necks, a cable connected directly into their nervous systems. It allowed a super computer to read messages from both the mind and body and overwrite them too.

Second, thicker tubes protruded from slightly distended stomachs. This nourished the couple with an essential mush. At their ends, sewage pipes made them human toilets. Stably inert in body, their minds were left to their own devices.

While now they relished in transcendence, their desires originated in reality. Tommy had always wanted to fly. In fact, it was the first thing he did in embedded digital consciousness. It took him hours in virtual time but eventually he made the leap.

From standing on the precipice to plummeting it only took a thought to shock him out of his conception of danger and propel him through space. He cried and bellowed and laughed as he victoriously conquered his human condition. Vessa would follow.

They traveled the world. Vessa had always wanted to visit Paris. In a moment they were there. They grew themselves in size and stomped as gentle and then not so gentle giants. There was no harm even during the cries of computer generated screams beneath their feet.

That such experience was their first playful foray into the shadows of humanity. The next time Tommy would jump off the ledge it would be to feel the pain of slamming on the concrete. To an immortal body it was like diving in a cold pool.

Eventually, they discovered that their brains’ interpretation of their nervous system was more malleable than they could have ever dreamt. Tommy grew 4 arms and felt all six distinctly. Vessa became multiple and felt each body separately and at once. They swapped bodies and experienced each other and themselves. Sensations that could only be made up.

With every permutation of desire played out, the means became unsatisfying. With every new experience, with every second that became a year, with every unfathomable sensation, the roots of motive were exposed. The end was all that was left.

Tommy and Vessa committed themselves to a unique class of psychic cosmonaut. They thirsted to break even past endless possibility. There was nothing left but this. They had to remove the safeguards of their reality generators - a true jailbreak. This had to be done illegally having been sanctioned by the regulatory bodies of digital realities.

Without guardrails, the couple learned to stimulate their brains directly. No longer did they need experiences to feel. At a whim, they would flood their senses with pure emotion. Boundary after boundary fell.

The lovers discovered that only together could they experience their greatest bliss. Parallel to meatspace, the melding of their minds produced their paramount pleasure. It is in the brilliant light, the imminent warmth, the pure end of heavenly sensation, that they found themselves lost. Lost they remained for virtual aeons. Ceaseless vibration hinged at a permanent moment.

That is, until it didn’t. Tommy suddenly felt Vessa’s absence. She had been booted from the digital realm. Agonized, Tommy followed her out.

His eyes took minutes to open. Even the dull light from the computer was too much now. Everything was dark. When he could look around, he saw the shadows cast in his living room.

Settling his vision on his wife beside him, he saw the problem. Her neural cable was blinking red, a sign of technical malfunction. Her expression was blank, mouth agape. He followed her glassy gaze.

At the end of it Tommy saw a familiar bassinet. In it, had been Tommy’s baby girl. What lay there now was just her shell. Sunken, her features sharp. Eyes wide, she lay light and lifeless.

Tommy’s girl had tried to satiate herself with her fingers. Under her tiny hands, in her mouth, was a heart-shaped locket. On each side a portrait of her parents. A symbol of their love.