Welcome to the Synthetic Intracranial Modifications System (SIMS).
While many features of your new system will be familiar, we at Semanticom would like to introduce you to some of the new features which will color your world. Please allow two minutes to peruse this brief feature list before operating your new SIMS.
“You’re reading the release notes?” Aura smiles as she kicks her legs over the train station walkway. They hang above the rails, no danger to someone like her, who couldn’t possibly exist. She grins up at me, then turns to stare down the long subway tunnel. In the distance the old subway rattles through a corridor of wind. She looks back and stares into my eyes. She sees me to the core of my being. “There’s nothing in there,” she says. “This hasn’t been recorded.” I hold my face still, my eyes open. The notes blink cognitive lights in my head. “I think we’re the first.”
1. Your new SIMS system comes equipped with an Enhanced Processing Module. Think of it like a folder you put your toughest tasks into. Any routines in the EPM will receive the benefit of 300% resource allocation. When life throws a problem at you, rest assured that the EPM can handle it in record time!
I laugh before I’ve even processed the humor in it. I’ve edited my partitions and minimized the slow parts of my brain. I live within the Enhanced Processing Module, feeding every thought through it. It is the RAM through which I experience life and still I don’t understand. I wander in the hyper-speed of thought, and still she accompanies me.
“Are you real?” I ask. The train hasn’t come, will not come, might not exist. She might not exist, no matter that I have an enhanced folder jacked to 1000% resource load with her name on it. No matter that the folder is filled with brief glimpses across streets and signs that I could never have seen without the EPM.
Aura wrinkles her nose. “Complicated,” she says. “But I’m glad you came.”
2. Customize your world with the new Augmented Environment System! We at Semanticom have spent years compiling a series of Flavors for those disinterested in the reality around them. With the execution of a single command, you can replace the sky with a field of stars or walk down cherry blossom streets. These environments are built with safety in mind and a state-of-the-art warning system for when the real world needs your attention. Immerse yourself!
“You’re part of my environment,” I say. I’ve already read the notes a hundred times and keep coming back to this realization. “You’re just a projection.” I flit through the environments available to me. The station becomes an old western tavern, an orbital satellite, the sterile white of a laboratory. Aura remains unchanged through them all, and through them all the tunnel lays waiting.
“Complicated,” she says as she shifts on a laboratory table. Her feet kick over the edge, not quite touching the floor. “I’ve always been here,” she says, “Too fast. Hard to see.”
“So it’s the EPM,” I say. “I’m processing things too fast. I’m seeing things I shouldn’t see.”
“I’m not sure,” she says. “It might just be time.”
3. Welcome to The Feed! The Feed is community at your fingertips. While social networking has existed for a century, your new SIMS takes it a step further with real-time immersive experience! With your new SIMS, you will be capable of riding the memories and experiences of others, sharing your thoughts in real-time with fans and followers, and living the lives of your favorite celebrities. The Feed is adventure, companionship, and belonging all in one. Take community involvement to the next level. With The Feed you are never alone!
I stare into the emptiness of the laboratory subway. It echoes through my thoughts, as empty as the long and cavernous tunnel. Silence subsumes. I flit through my interface, all the while seeing Aura in out-of-focus contemplation. She waits, ever patient. I reach for the Feed, but already know what I will find. It is the final missing datapoint, and so obvious as to be ignored.
There is no Feed. There is no network in this place. The subway rattles in the distance, wind rushing as it passes through the narrow tunnel.
“You’ve figured it out,” Aura says. Her smile is sad and all too knowing. “You’ve gone too fast,” she says. “Too far.”
A body lies at my feet and I barely recognize myself on the pristine laboratory floor. The subway pulls into the station and Aura stands. She holds her hand out to me as the door slides open. “It’s what you recognized,” she says.
I tap the Feed again. A signal comes from within the subway car, and through it a thousand feeds are open to me. In every one a girl stands with her hand outstretched, guiding them into a train, a doorway, a little cottage of vining plants. Their hands reach out in unison. I reach out my own and take her hand.
“Where does it go?” I ask, but I can see the answer in her eyes.
I follow her onto the train and into the after.
Addison Smith (he/him) is an amorphous being constructed of suspended cold brew and kombucha. His mind is a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast formed around a brainstem of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus. He’s doing his best, though. His fiction has appeared in dozens of publications including Fantasy Magazine, Fireside Magazine, and Daily Science Fiction. Addison is a member of the Codex Writers Group and you can find him on Bluesky @addisoncs.bsky.social.
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