Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream-Led Zeppelin: Ancient Texts and Media, Classification - Music and Poetry
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin' through Kashmir.
Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
It was amazing how much data the button pushers actually created in the relatively short time they were around. Even with only 8 billion people on earth, these ancient humans were able to amass a lot of disparate data in the form of various media including text and video by the laborious and tedious act of pressing buttons
Mike always was amazed at the statistics around ancient Internet and he was a very avid reader of the historic texts. They didn't even have Connectors or exabyte, let alone, zettabyte speeds but they managed to get by. The only thing they did seem to have was lots of buttons. They even made special devices so that they never ran out of virtual buttons to physically press. The whole thing seemed a bit ludicrous to try and imagine. People running around like lunatics pressing buttons to send messages, staring into small rectangular 2-D screens all day and pressing more buttons. Buttons even won wars; that whole barbaric tradition which had been so thankfully discontinued. Historic record shows however that it was a necessary phase in progress and only a stop along the way.
Mike loved the quaintness of the button idea though and often made worlds on the Outernet based on the historic texts, and filled, most importantly, with buttons and people to press them. He ran many simulations, and even started using virtual buttons himself.
The air was thick in the apartment since Dot's last outburst, and she was constantly inquiring about how "it's" going. He mainly ignored those requests, though they were quite thick with the neediness that Mike had grown used to at this point. It was a favor, and he didn't even know if he wanted to do it yet. Usually he never got involved in other people's business as a motto. He was too busy with his own anyway.
Sure he was good at all kinds of things like hopping, world spoofing, trace removal, and deep thought mining, but it didn't mean he did it for just anyone. Even some of the corporations had shown special interest in him from time to time. Every once in awhile he would land a contract for something fun. He was quite comfortable with Lemma as his sponsor corporation. They had the best support for the type of things Mike liked to do, and his life was never boring.
Dot, however, was so tied up in this whole breakup drama that the only reason it even seemed like she needed him now was because of his promising revenge factor, and general power to reek havoc in the Outernet. But what was he? A delivery boy? A pawn in someone's game? No way.
He was munching away on some vitamin snacks when she walked into the common room again with that sad look on her face. He thought to her:
You know you will get over this and life goes on. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. You know all of this. Just move on!
She ignored him.
It was his first reply in a couple of days. Other than that there had been mainly silence in the apartment. Not that it was rare. In most households silence was coveted. Distractions were the worst thing that could happen to a great Outernet experience. A distraction could ruin anyone's day.
In total there were four people living in their apartment, and each had their own room. It was a nice apartment on the 189th floor of the Kensington building in Downtown New Holland. William, or "the traveler" as his friends referred to him, was a middle-aged man and he was slightly overweight. He wore glasses, though nobody was 100% sure if this eye defect was something his parents decided to let slide when selecting his genes, or the the effect of the fact that he liked his room really bright. Everything in his room was white and most of it glowed.
Then there was Tim, a pretty nice and normal guy who was sponsored by Lumin. He always seemed to be under the impression that Mike was a standup guy, and never ceased to remind Mike of this. Mike was 43.37% sure that it was because Tim was just acting most of the time. Tim and Dot had a fling over a decade ago and Mike still couldn't get over it. William steered far clear of their adolescent quibbles and often tried to remind the three that none of them were over 67. He'd often share full experiences with them of what it's like to be 142.
To William, reaching middle age was part grand accomplishment and part a cause for some concern and proper care. He already knew when he was going to die, but that was beside the fact. It was very important to him to take care of his body and mind, so that he caused the least stress to his heart as possible. Rumor had it that he had a "bum ticker" and would never reach the predetermined age of 307. He kept all of that data locked up tight in his mind though. All of that aside, he also knew how to have fun, and these awkward situations often made him run the other way. It was amazing that sometimes he'd even get up and physically leave his apartment.
William stepped out of his room and for a moment, the entire common room lit up with an indescribable brilliance. The thick steel door slid shut after Bill was safely out of the way, and he sauntered over to the short table in the middle of the dining area where Mike was sitting. He smiled at Mike. Mike had been communicating with Bill for the last hour in one thought-thread, and they had both come to the conclusion that he was crazy for being in love with Dot. Neither Dot nor Tim knew, and Bill wanted Mike to come clean so that this drama could be over. He was leading Mike toward it though.
Dot was lying on the comfortable synth-leather couch across the large common room. There were no monitors, nor even buttons nor art. The walls were blank and grey. There was no need for art or paintings, as anyone could fill the walls with anything that they imagine and see it, thanks to the wonders of their Connector. Mike looked over at her and a discernible frown appeared on his face. He stood up, put his half-eaten vitamin snack back into the floating food compartment, which hovered a couple of feet above the table. He then proceeded to walk briskly out of the front door. Bill's bewildered look was due to the fact that he couldn't get a response from Mike. In the few seconds that it took for Mike to reach the door, Bill had sent him about 40 communication requests, but all of them were blocked. He knew this meant only one thing: more drama. Bill let out a physical sigh.
The warm summer air lapped Mike's cheeks as he stepped out into the open hallway. There was a marvelous view of New Holland at the top of the Kensington building, but from the 189th floor you could only see a row of massive skyscrapers and lots of traffic. He decided to walk along the corridor instead of calling a transport vehicle. He was almost a master at blind-walking. As he walked, he bypassed several security nodes which denied him access to the Outernet worlds. It was strictly forbidden to do physical tasks and browse through Outernet worlds at the same time because it was thought that the mind was literally absent from the physical body, but this was just propaganda as far as Mike was concerned. Many hackers had mastered the art of blind-walking. The trick is that you weren't 100% blind if you installed a special modification software for your Connector which allowed your brain to adapt to existing in two places at once. An Outernet world was as real to your brain as the real world. Some people even doubted the real world was in-fact real, but usually they also had a couple of other psychological problems that would suggest some serious malfunction of their Connectors.
Other elite blind-walkers often made fun of those who couldn't do it by calling them zombies. A well outdated term that they had brought back into style by hacking some corporate historical media archives and using it within their closed group. It was their inside joke. Mike couldn't think about that zombie look on Dot's face as she lay on the couch. She didn't even notice he left.
While walking slowly and carefully, Mike opened up one of his top ten favorite worlds: Shotgun Express. It was quite liberating actually. The whole world was a game of hide and seek with shotguns. It led to some pretty great adrenaline rushes, and Mike couldn't get enough.
Simultaneously while walking down the open corridor, and calling a public transport to the balcony in real life, he was also inside of Shotgun Express, gunning people down. He was on the high ranks list, which of course, had it's advantages. He hadn't been killed in weeks now and he'd gotten the drop on at least 300 victims since his last death. He slowly tiptoed down a dark, muddy trench. The world around him was enormous and the sky was a dimmed red color. Lately people had been hiding in the trenches in the southern territories, or at least that's where the best data pointed.
He was a tall, Moorish man with a burly beard, equipped with a shotgun, his special hip-button and two large shotgun belts strapped around his torso. Few others knew about his button because it was his own character modification. Besides that, most people thought buttons were overrated. If you couldn't do it with your mind, most people wanted nothing to do with it.
The mud beneath him squished and bubbled under the pressure of his boots. A light rain fell which helped mask his footsteps. He was very close to the known whereabouts of a cave system. His team had been searching for the cave entrance for months. The only clue that existed in the world about the entrance was it's general area. He stopped and made a hand signal, looking over his left shoulder at his teammate IOpscPl. The guy was downright weird, and he never let his real name be seen, but he was great at Shotgun Express. IO was a higher rank than Mike, and seemed to be obsessed with Shotgun Express points at any cost. IO hadn't even been shot in over 4 months but had 3 times more kills than anyone on the team.
The ground rumbled, and a deep fissure opened up a couple of feet away from where Mike and IO were standing. This is it! Finally one of these bastards had slipped up! thought Mike to IO. Without waiting to see who would pop out of the fissure, he pressed his hip button, receiving an odd look of bewilderment from IO. This wasn't their first trip out together and IO was not impressed by Mike's button obsession. If the button was a shotgun trigger, IO would understand, but mostly he dismissed this as silliness.
A small hole opened up in Mike's hip and out flew a small drone. Just as the drone reached the opening, two people arose from the darkness with their shotguns at the ready. The drone promptly created a force field around them with itself at the center. They were trapped, and the force field had cut their communications with their teammates off completely. The shorter one of them mouthed the word "cheater" to Mike and he burst into a hardy laugh. He pointed at the hip-button he was so proud of and winked at them, taking aim with his shotgun. Shotgun raised, he looked over and smiled to IO, who just shook his head in defeat and took aim as well.
It was all over in 20 seconds, and Mike's transport finally arrived on the balcony in the real world. He had walked the length of the corridor and was now stepping in. He was proud of himself that he didn't trip even once, nor shout something silly in real life. This Connector modification worked great, and he was getting much better at using it. The driverless transport vehicle lifted off of the balcony with Mike in it, zooming off into the dark grey noon toward some unknown destination. He muted Bill and Dot's incessant requests and closed his eyes to play more Shotgun Express.
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