Chapter 5: Commuters

~ Jaden walked to the subway with Andrew in companionable silence. He buried his hands deep in the pockets of his thick fleece jacket. The air was getting colder every day. Later in the morning it would be beautiful out but this early, in the lee of the skyscrapers, with the mist still earthbound, it was downright chilly. He shivered and tucked his chin deeper into his collar.

Andrew began talking about something. Something to do with a vector and an impermeable field force or...something. Jaden tried to understand it, nodding and murmuring assent occasionally, knowing full well that Andrew didn't really need, or expect, him to actually process it all. He just wanted to talk it out, and he looked less crazy talking to Jaden than if he were just chattering away to himself.

Soon enough they were descending into the darkness and boarding their transport. Jaden wished the walk was a bit longer and the ride was a lot shorter. It was tedious and tiring and crowded and it always smelled like a mixture of really old french fries and dirty socks. At the other end, after an eternity of jostling, they were spit out along with everybody else and they rose into the light once again. By the time they were back up on the street Jaden had already sealed up and put away any personal thoughts he might have been indulging in and fixed his attentions on the work that they had to do that day. The transport stop was only two blocks from the Live-ulator lab buildings, in a much classier part of town than where Andrew and Jaden's apartment was.

Jaden judged the wealthiness of a place by the size and number of windows it sported. Live-ulation International Inc. Office Headquarters were made primarily of windows. Tall and tinted and continuous but for flashy chrome frames all around the building. Arranged in back of that building were more buildings, slightly smaller, with slightly fewer windows, but still impressive. Those were where the actual Live-ulation labs were.

The inventor and patent holder to the Live-ulator still held offices here, though he didn't spend a lot of time in them anymore. Most of his time was taken up with figuring out new ways to spend the fortune he'd made. He was stuck between a rock and hard place because it just kept growing every day. A sad tale indeed.

With his invention Warren Bilken had revolutionized the world. A simulation that was real. A constructed alternate mode of being if you will. What went on within a Live-ulation was as real as when it was experienced outside. Since the system actually interfaced with a subject's brain it essentially had control of their body. If you fell in a Live-ulation, it hurt. If you had sex in a Live-ulation, well, hopefully you'd brought a tissue. If you died in a Live-ulation, you were dead.

The only appreciable difference between the live-sims, as they were known, and real life was that in a sim you had a safeword. If you had the sense to use it in time, you could actually be let out if you got into trouble. Obviously the use of Live-ulators required extensive waiver signing.

They were expensive to rent, but not so much so that an average middle class family couldn't go on a "vacation" at least once a year. That was, in fact, what the the live-sims were most employed for. Warren Bilken had single-handedly put more than a few tourist-dependant countries out of business. ~