Sidney's Hologram

    My audio plays before the optics appear and Cooper is already ranting and raving his usual conspiratorial spiel, while Alex fearfully shushes him knowing the consequences.  Cooper is fearless, however, as he earned his social tokens, more than a million fines may deplete worth, fighting in the Censorship Wars many revolutions ago.  At the time, he didn't realize his service would be used against him.  He thought he was fighting to preserve free speech.  Now he employs that lost art, that fallen foe of the Digi-Deus, to bitch and complain while Alex plugs his ears as a show to the Watchers that he is compliant.

    The tavern loads before my eyes, my goggles needing flicked to counter the glitch fading in and out the barstools with their only two customers.  You would think Cooper would use some of his tokens to purchase a more presentable avatar.  Yet, here he is, in flannel, scraggly salt and pepper beard stained amber on his chin as the virtual beer drips from his sneering lips.  A mesh trucker's cap balances atop his long, unkempt, weed-wild hair with the word "DIG" embroidered boldly although the stitches are loose and frayed.

    He growls, "Damn it, Josh, when you gonna get that damn glitch fixed?  It better not affect my show".  He points a glowing remote control at the bubble screen television in the corner behind my head as if there isn't one channel and one channel only.

    "You mean that show you've watched a billion times?" I retort.

    "Yeah, it just pisses me off the right way, ya know?  It's like a damn rash.  You know scratching it makes it worse, but ya just can't help yourself."

    Alex timidly scolds, "Coop, you have to use that certain word?  You know the one.  The one that starts with 'D'.  You're going to get us silenced.  They're listening.  You know this!"

    I certainly know this and I shudder to think the impending ramifications that may follow.  This virtual bar is all I have left to remind me of a world that I never lived.  I don't even know if it even really existed.  I have what seems like somebody else's memories floating around in my mind.  I don't know how they got there, but for some reason, I cherish them.  This bar gives me a murky sense of something somewhere at some time that may or may not have been a thing once called life.  To lose this would be termination.  I need this.  I can't return forever to my pod, the way so many others have been banished. 

    A Watcher manifests before Cooper, its mono-goggle flickering electric blue pixels.  It is dressed all in white plastic with its infamous yellow and blue-striped helmet intimidating in shine.  It changes colors and positioning like a hologram depending on the lighting and visual angle--very disorienting.  Alex holds his head in his hands, his red puffy cheeks turned ghostly pale.  He rocks back and forth before curling up into his safe space, which is his beachball belly.  It absorbs his boyish face like a pillow.  He loosens his chocolate brown tie and uses it to dab the sweat on his brow, looking like a used car salesman on the trial of his life....  Well ... what I once heard about men who sold motorized vehicles and what trials once were, according to the legends of old.

    The Watcher states in its computerized voice autotuning in and out of robotic to human cadence, "Unapproved language detected.  First warning.  Please refer to the 'Legal Language' file indicated on your screen to return to compliant status".

    "Go fuck yourself, one-eye," Cooper scorns before tossing back his virtual beer in a defiant swig.

    "Unapproved language violation.  Level Severe."  The Watcher speaks through an alarm of two-toned vocals while its helmet flashes red.  "Fine of one-hundred social tokens and a penalty of three hours sleep-mode".

    Cooper chuckles carelessly as his avatar zaps out of vision.  The Watcher fades from the scene leaving behind a glitching bar top.  Alex and I look to each other shaking our heads at the pathetic comedy.  This is so common a scene.

    Suddenly, the bubble screen television in the corner behind my head expands from its wood case and envelops us.  Alex and I know the routine, as the screen blurs and draws forth the masked, fog-spewing face of whom the elders of yesteryear called Sidney.  It is the master of the Hologram.  It brings our visuals in and out of focus.  It directs our eyes.  Sidney is our inner code.

    Sidney's tone ranges from angelic to demonic depending on the words transferred.  Even its pauses resonate a haunting other-worldly frequency.  Its overcoat is mirrored, its eyes like miniature snow globes; an unsettling image to say the least.

    The lesson begins its repeated message we've heard countless times: the what, when, where, why, and how's of language.  What we can and cannot say.  When we can and cannot speak.  Where certain vocabulary is accepted or forbidden and so on and so forth.  Its diatribe against the dangers of unwarranted speech carries on and on until moving into the repetitious mind-programming of unconditional obedience to the Govern Mart.

    Alex recites aloud and proud the mantra, "Protector of thought.  Server of heart.  I pledge allegiance to my Govern Mart".

    As Sidney fades away into its own holographic mist, Cooper returns, already complaining, "I risked my life and limb fighting the Digi-Deus in the Censorship Wars and this is the thanks I get?"  He limps over to his barstool pretending an unspoken battle injury.

    "I don't know what you're yammering about.  At least you didn't have to sit through three hours of reprogramming," I say under my breath, scrubbing incessantly the inside of a glass stein--the same unused stein I've scrubbed for the past ... who knows how many revolutions.

    Cooper aims the glowing remote control again shrinking the bubble screen television to its corner.  It flashes bright white snow and the image dimly appears within the blizzard scrolling down and out of sight before returning to the top of the screen just to descend into the void yet again.  I crack the side of the ancient tube capsule with the palm of my hand and the image steadies.  The credits fade and the title appears: Triumph of Sidney.  

    The opening scene begins with the chaos of battle, smoke clouding the soldiers of either side--the white army versus the black army; the white army of the Digi-Deus robotic yet heroic and evoking compassion for their cause.  The black army--the 'Non-essentials', as they so proudly referred to themselves for whatever reason--are presented grotesque and animalistic, hellbent on destruction.

    "You see how they portray us?  We were the good guys, damn it!"  Cooper spits his vitriol at the bubble screen, while Alex gives him a nervous side-eye.  "They make us look like monsters.  And the Digi-Deus, that's not how they fought.  They weren't shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face, hand-to-hand.  They're meta.  They cowered in their 19G towers, sending the Data Drones to fight their war for them.  And Sid, it was no hero.  It didn't save the day!  We nearly won.  We should've won!"

    "So," Alex ponders, "if you fought against the Digi-Deus and Sid, why did you get paid in so many social tokens?"

    "The Govern Mart funded both sides."

    "Why?" I chyme in, although we've had this discussion over and over.

    "Don't ask that question, Josh," Alex scolds.  "I once questioned.  But I know better now.  I know the Govern Mart cares and provides, nothing more, nothing less".

    "Provides a load of bullshit," Cooper guffaws, before chugging his virtual beer to the last drop.

    An alarm sounds and we see the token icons taken from Cooper's cache.  He casually laughs his realm-echoing laugh that resounds from dimension to dimension.  I envy it.  I envy his fearless joy.  To know that 'fuck it' type of courage seems blissful in a way the Hologram will never permit.  

    "The movie will return after these propagandized messages."  The bubble screen advertises a virtual commemorative coin of 3-17.  For only three easy payments of 3.3 tokens, you can help honor the victims of that fateful day.  "Remember March 17"....  How the hell can we possibly forget?  It's stomped into our psyches daily, from birth to death.

    "Those poor victims," Alex somberly salutes with a lowered face shaking sadly side to side.

    "Victims of the Govern Mart," contests Cooper.

    "Don't start, Coop!" Alex implores, but I can't help but hope he revs it up, as it is the only entertainment I receive in the Hologram.

    Cooper obliges my craving in preaching, "No foreigner attacked that pedestrian jet tube!  No.  It was some inside slob".

    "'Inside slob'?" I can't help but ask.

    "Yes," replies Cooper in an ice in a blender voice that he animatedly clears before continuing in lecture.  "The G.M. agents who orchestrated that event were too sloppy".

    "Sloppy?" contests Alex.  "Just sloppy enough to catch the terrorists who did it!"

    The Watcher's voice overtakes the conversation, "Assessing word usage....  Context approved.  Carry on".

    Sardonically, Cooper responds to Alex, "So, they caught themselves?...  The G.M. left their fingerprints all over the scene.  Open and shut case".  Cooper brushes his hands together as if washing them of the debate.

    The Watcher again interrupts, "Identify abbreviation of 'G.M.'  Are you referring to Govern Mart?"

    "Nah," chuckles Cooper.  "It means 'Good Morning'".

    The Watcher responds without pause, "Nonsensical syntax.  Please correct grammar in alignment with appropriate recognition of the time of day".

    "Good fucking night, one-eye," Cooper mutters with a cigar between his lips muffling his words enough to keep the Watcher at bay.  

    I point to the 'No Smoking' sign, but Cooper still lights up.  He argues, "That sign depicts a cigarette.  I have a cigar....  Freedom is still allowed if you know the loopholes".  He puffs a dark plume.

    "Come on, Coop, put it out," begs Alex.

    Cooper blows a rolling shroud of gray fumes in Alex's face as his red cheeks turn purple and he coughs a deathly fit in rejection of the taboo simulation.  

    "What do you want me to put out?"  Cooper watches his lit match paint the end of his cigar a warm orange.  "This flame isn't real.  This bar isn't real.  Hell, I don't even know if ya'll are real.  What am I worried about?  Virtual emphysema?"  

    "Well," mulls Alex solemnly, "the Watchers are real.  Sidney's real".

    "Only as real as you allow them to be," retorts Cooper in a deep exhalation and an even deeper sigh.  I can almost smell the smoke.  I don't know how, but I sense it somewhere in the bowels of my memory.  It's not a pleasant smell, although it's an incredible sensation to detect anything at all, no matter how rancid.

    Cooper gripes, "Damn, how long is this commercial?....  And here they go showing the C.G.I. drone crashing into the pedestrian jet tube.  Haven't seen that lie enough".

    "C.G.I?" scoffs Alex.  "Really, Coop?  Are we really doing this again?"

    Something ignites inside my head.  It feels like a coiled snake suddenly striking.  It stings, but I see the past.  I'm there.  Holy shit, I was there.  It's hazy, but I see myself there in that moment ... nothing virtual....  It was real.  I remember something real....  What's happening to me?  What happened back then?  Something happened in reality ... real reality ... and I remember.

    "Guys," I find myself trying to snap myself back into the virtual now, but they're not listening.  "Guys," I shout louder, but they continue arguing with one another over the official narrative, whether or not the drone's lithium could have caused such a collapse.  "HEY!" I demand attention, although feeling the Watcher alerted by my tone.  Cooper and Alex hush, their necks nearly snapping in turning to face me, as I've never shouted at them before.  "I was there," I release my epiphany.

    "You were where?" asks Alex, Cooper asking the same in confused expression.

    "Terminal Nil on three-seventeen.  I was there when it happened."

2

    I faintly remember an alarm and my optics fading to black.  The classical telephonic 'On Hold' tune plays in my ears when my monitor suddenly flits imagery of blue skies and green pastures.  And I know this is my pod.  The tavern has receded to the history file with its breathing and creaking hardwood floors clothed in peanut shells.  The orange neon glow of the jukebox comforts me no more.  The pinball machine occasionally calling out for its atavistic coin feed with flipping and dinging can no longer be heard from the far corner.  I even begin to miss the squeaking of Alex's barstool that he nervously swivels back and forth and the exaggerated gulping sounds of Cooper as he slams his stein and shot glass one after another.  It's all replaced by a calm fog of meditative hypnosis.  

    Yet the 'On Hold' music abruptly silences and all turns to a bright white to which my eyes struggle to adjust.  I feel cool air in motion against my virgin flesh unlike the stagnant room temperature to which I am accustomed in the Hologram.  For a moment I question if I am dead.

    But the white haze clears and my eyes begin to recognize the silhouetted figure posed above me.  I see the lid of my pod lifted open and there stands boldly Cooper hoisting his fists above him.  He chuckles a peculiar mania.  

    "My good God, Coop," I panic.  "The lockdown!  The Plague!"

    He punches me in the mouth, his giant fist feeling like a caveman's club.  I try to strike back, but my muscles have atrophied.  I'm as stiff as a corpse, frozen in time like a fly in amber.  Strangely, however, the pain is refreshing.

    Before I can curse him, he holds my mouth shut with a muzzling hand too strong to bite back at in retaliation.  He hushes me, "Shut up, damn it!  Listen, kid ... " I've never understood why he calls everyone kid.  There are no elders anymore and children remain isolated beyond our purview.  Here we are essentially of the same age group, all of us--whatever "all of us" even means these days in our lockdown.

    He maintains a tight, suffocating pressure over my mouth with his gorilla grip.  "I'm in incognito mode.  The Digi-Deus cannot see nor hear me.  Let me reset your goggles and we can talk privately." He rips my goggles from my head, inserting some sort of glittering chip.  "Here, now try it on."

    I place them over my eyes, but nothing changes.  Pressing the reset button several times, I worry, "Did you break my goggles?"

    Cooper laughs.  "No.  I fixed them."

    "But I'm not returning to the Hologram."

    "Exactly.  You can now leave your pod undetected."  Seeing my horror, he coaxes, "Come on, try it".  He offers his hand and I brace for another punch.  But, instead, he helps lift me from the doldrums of my resting chamber.  I step out ... nothing happens.  No alarms, no token loss, nothing....

    He grins a cocky grin.  "Now for the big test.  Insult the Program.  See if it responds".  He sees my hesitation and the fear in my eyes now magnified by the clear screen of my goggles.  "Go on.  Say something offensive."

    Clearing my throat, I struggle to find my voice, my vocal cords quivering.  Finally, I work up the courage to mutter a soft, "Darn this to heck".

    Cooper laughs hysterically.  "You can do better than that."

    Looking around, I see no swarm of Data Drones, no Digi-Deus, and, more importantly, no Sidney.  I see nothing but compartments of rowed cylindrical pods attached to a live stream of zapping electricity in the air, channeled into the grid.  But there are no guards, no authorities, no digital punishment.  So, I gain more courage and raise my voice, "Damn this to hell".

    This time Cooper doesn't laugh.  He simply shakes his head, smacks me on the side of my still aching skull in a disorienting blow that for some reason feels good, and demands, "Try harder, son!  Let it out!"

    Before I can think, the words are spewing from my fierce tongue through flexed lips, "Fuck Sidney!"

    Cooper panics, "O dear Lord!  Why did you say that?  O God no!  What did you do?"
    My blood seems to instantly evaporate from my body leaving me a spiritless hull of my former self with my heartbeat suspended in some intermission.  What have I done?  What now?  I nearly vomit, but nothing comes up besides dry heaves.  My legs faint beneath me.

    Suddenly, Cooper lets out an echoing guffaw, slapping his knee to his own cruel prank.  I have never hated anyone more in my life than in this moment.

    "Come on," he urges, ushering me to the rusted catwalk flowing like a brown metal river between the white porcelain pods.  I struggle upon my legs trying to remember how to walk.  He barks, "Keep up!  One foot in front of the other".  I regain my balance and find the pace, but the pain is intense like lightening from my toes all the way up my spine.  Still, there's something satisfying about it, like the pangs of rebirth.

    We come to an intersection where marches a team of Digi-Deus on patrol.  The catwalk rings with their every step.  Most of their silicone skin has deteriorated to reveal their dull, shine-less metal.  Each one is only unique in its oxidation, oil stains, and custom dents.  Other than that, they are identical; an ever-repeating chain link, the same in every motion.  They follow one another in perfect formation, their internal hardware glowing electric blue through transparent chests.  You can hear the metal grinding from their unlubricated joints.  The smell of overused batteries fills the air--or what I imagine is that of batteries; it's certainly from something with a lithium charge.

    Cooper halts me with a stern hand to my chest before taking a running leap onto one of the Digi-Deus' backs.  It doesn't notice a thing, nor do the others.  He yells back at me, "Shit or get off the pot!  All aboard, son!  All aboard!"  He and his new ride begin descending down the stairs in the dark distance.

    His courage seems to infect me.  I run, trip, stumble to my feet, run again, and make the great leap.  I land firmly on the cold titanium back of a Digi-Deus and it continues on without a reaction.  I can feel the machine's hydraulics with every movement and its vibrations flow through my arms and legs in a thrilling yet jolting way.  Its robotic march draws us to the stairs and down into the shadowy mists of the alien world below.

    All becomes black besides the red lights shining from the Digi-Deus' eyes.  The reddish glow rolls upon the fog casting a hellish landscape until a large open doorway beckons with a soft blue pathway to a concrete ramp, down which the Digi-Deus march beneath buzzing and popping streetlamps overhead.

    There is moisture in the air that leaves the faint multi-colored neon lights dripping down the screen of my goggles.  All shapes and figures blur and morph beyond recognition through the gray liquid.  I feel a tug at my arm and I fall hard to the asphalt, Cooper swooping me back to my feet in one swift motion.

    Wiping my goggles clear, I recognize a city before me, but it's not quite any specific city I recall.  There is a pall of death lingering overhead and the haunting of a pulse that is no longer.  A frigid chill sweeps the empty streets with a demonic overcast of terrors untold.  The antique security cameras face every direction, around every corner into every nook and cranny, yet lifelessly in their obsolescence created by the Hologram and its Watchers.  Still, their ubiquitous presence makes both the mind and body feel nude before its reminder of a time of mechanical molestation. 

    A few cameras dangle by their wiring and sway in the stiff breeze.  A shattered camera here and there remains defiant at their posts with centered red dots blinking in and out of consciousness.  Overall, the ambiance is that of a bad memory of a dystopian warzone, as the steel and concrete walls lay their mortality bare in dusts at their base.  It crumbles down from their towering heads perched in the chemical-shrouded heavens imperceptibly above.  

    Cooper begins shoving me from behind, goading me forward.  "Move it or lose it, bub!  Let's go!"

    "Where are we going?"

    He doesn't answer.  Instead, he leads the way, stomping through the rainbow-patterned puddles in every pothole.  He seems to intentionally step in every puddle.  Some sort of child's play, I muse, but I cannot recall what exactly this is I'm witnessing.  Did children once play in these streets?  Did I ever experience a childhood?  That memory will not load.  It is stuck buffering.  Perhaps I once splashed about carelessly through puddles for nothing more than brief amusement.  Who knows?...  Well, Sidney knows, but such inquiries are forbidden.

    I look back over my shoulder to see the Digi-Deus marching mindlessly one after the other out of sight.  In that split second I look forward again to see Cooper already racing far ahead of me at an unbelievable rate of speed.  Finally, he pauses, turning to one of the buildings painted a dire black with a large screen broadcasting brightly the words "Protector of thought.  Server of heart.  I pledge allegiance to my Govern Mart."  Cooper picks up a chunk of concrete that has broken away from the sidewalk and throws it like a torpedo blast.  Collapsing into itself in a spiral of cracks, the screen spits shards that drop perilously and shatter in echo.  A lone Digi-Deus arrives on the scene, attempting to assess the cause of damage.  Yet, he looks right through Cooper and me and charges on confused into the night. 

    I catch up with Cooper, but my breath falls behind, as I gasp and pant a ridiculous show, him eyeing me judgmentally.  In a wheeze, I ask, "How did you learn to do this?...  To be invisible?"

    He looks at me with speaking eyes that say how flabbergasted he is with my ignorance.  "Kendra," he mumbles, as if a long-kept, tooth-pulled secret.

    "Who's Kendra?"

    Again he gives me that look and a stern shake of the head.  "She fought alongside me in the war.  Now ... well ... she is the Web Master".

    "The Web Master?"

    He stares intensely before commanding, "Move along now.  We haven't much time".  His feet seem to grow heavier with each step, more pronounced, more domineering.  This is a man on a mission.

    The more we walk the more obvious it is the cookie-cutter repetition of the structures on either side.  The only idiosyncratic landscapes are the fallen edifices leaving behind their prostrate skeletons upon the ground.  The whizzing of Data Drones hover overhead every minute or so like mosquitoes seeking blood in the valley of the shadow of death.  O how I fear this evil!

    We come upon a distant mirage that strikes me as eerily familiar.  As we near the strange deja vu that I'm experiencing, it dawns on me....  It's the pedestrian jet tube.  It's dilapidated and abandoned, but I know what this is, where we are, and why Cooper has led us here.

    The fractured glass tube seemingly levitates above with pale blue stains blotched over thick cracks.  Its chrome braces are dulled by time and atrociously pitted, while its rusted beams grow weary and lean towards a foregone conclusion.  A ghostly breath blows through the empty tube like wind through a most abysmal tunnel to nowhere, groaning and whistling. 

    Cooper puts his hand on my shoulder heavy as an anvil.  "Does this bring back any memories?"

    It does, but I can't retrieve the imagery.  The memory hides just out of reach, although I know it's there.  As we walk, my premonition grows stronger.  Intuition tells me something terrible has happened.  Then it appears--the deleted stretch of tubing lingering above a pile of ashen ruble.  A shrapnel-ridden sign remains hanging upon the wall by a mere bolt.  Through the black soot plastered over its perforated face, the words "Terminal Nil" can faintly be read, surrounded by bomb-blasted concrete still crumbling away before me.  There is a strange inexplicable stench of burning chemicals stinging my lungs with each inhalation.  Cooper doesn't seem to mind.  He breathes it in like a fresh bouquet. 

    "I do remember," I mutter, lost in shuffling thoughts.  My memories flood and come to light like a hibernating beast emerging from its cave.  "It was March 17th, my freshman year of high school.  We came here on a class field trip.  I was video recording the jet tube as the teacher explained how the whole system functioned.  It was then that we heard the blast and immediately smoke engulfed us, knocking all, the entire class, upon our backs."

    "Did you see any drones approach the tube before the blast?"

    "I don't recall."

    "Do you know where that footage is?"  Seeing the blank nothingness in my eyes, he shouts, "Think hard, damn it!"

    His shout strikes a chord and I know the answer.  "The last place it would have been would be at my parent's place.  But I don't know where they are now.  Hell, I can't even remember who they are ... or were".

    Cooper creeps a satisfied grin across his cratered face.  "You let me worry about that.  Now, let's get you back to your pod."

    As we walk through the swirling dusts of pulverized concrete through a graveyard of city structures like long unvisited high-rise tombstones, I timidly ask, "Why do you care about my experience at Terminal Nil?  Your war is over.  You can rest easy".

    He sighs a chest full of stubborn motive.  "There's no easy rest for the awakened and no war is ever over where a warrior yet fights.  Believe me, kid, there's still a bite in this dog's teeth."

3

    In what seems like a blink of an eye, I am back at the tavern in my apron, tidy white and ready for the shift.  This is normally my place of comfort behind the bar, restocking the shelves with liquor, whiskey, bourbon, and tequila.  The bottles are never truly emptied and I never see the delivery take place.  It's simply my preference of program that gives me beautiful routine.  Yet this time, something seems off.

    "Where's Coop?" I ask Alex who's throwing darts, missing the board each time.

    He throws another, hitting the overhead light, making it shatter in a glitch before returning to its dull radiance.  "Who knows?  He's probably found himself in detention again ... if not completely exiled from the Hologram."  He throws another dart that nose-dives to the hardwood floor and another that hits a neon beer sign, causing it to glitch.  Finally, he focusses, steadies his eye and his aim and the dart strikes just above the bullseye.  He nods his head in arrogant pride and takes his stool at the bar like a champion well worthy of the frothy ice-cold beer that I slide his way.

    "He'll be here," I say confidently, although I shiver a dubious chill of hypotheticals. 

    Still, I draw the aged rum from my secret compartment, pour a shot, and leave it before Cooper's stool in my silent gesture of hope for his return.  And, fortunately, I'm not waiting in hope long.  As soon as Alex clicks the power button on the remote, reviving the bubble screen television behind my head, Cooper's avatar is reactivated.

    He instantly swigs the shot, licking his lips like a dog begging for more, asking nonchalantly, "What'd I miss?"

    "Well," Alex turns to him with a dramatic sip of his beer, followed by a bitter expression, "I hit the bullseye three times in a row.  You should've seen it."

    Cooper looks to me to see my reaction.  I turn away and begin toweling an already clean and dry stein.  He chuckles under his breath, pulling a cigar from his chest pocket and teething it like a cow chewing straw.  "A real sharpshooter," he jests curiously.

    The ever so repetitive commercial begins advertising its 3-17 commemorative coin when Cooper and Alex eye one another, Alex blurting, "I don't even want to hear it today, Coop!"

    Cooper smiles impishly, remains quiet, and then turns to me with a clandestine wink.  I'm not certain his thoughts or what it's supposed to mean, but it gives me goosebumps.

    Cooper hobbles over to Alex's side, a limp he didn't have outside of the pods.  He pats Alex on the back, causing him to spit his virtual beer out through his nose.  "Today's your lucky day, my boy," Cooper celebrates out of character, putting Alex on his guard.  "You hit the bullseye ... not only literally, but, I've been pondering....  You've been right all along, son.  The official narrative is right about three-seventeen.  The official narrative is always right.  Wouldn't you agree, Josh?"  I pretend not to hear him, taking a shot of vodka for myself.

    Alex is taken aback and confused.  "Well ... Cooper....  I'm glad you came around," he stammers with an obvious chill up his spine. 

    "But what about those lockdowns?" continues Cooper, growing more solemn than jovial.  An animosity grows red behind his clenching jaws.  "How much good did it do?  Are we better off now with no freedom, no reality, no humanity?"

    Suddenly, Sidney appears, although in a transparent form of warning.  Alex stares statuesque at Sidney and Sidney stares back at him in an inquisitive visage.  Alex seems to understand the unspoken request and nods his head.  Sidney expands and vanishes, although an apparitional presence remains like a camouflaged spirit. 

    This exchange doesn't seem to go unnoticed by Cooper, however, as he chuckles cynically.  "Josh!" Cooper calls to me in a strong reverberating amplification.  "What are your opinions on the lockdowns?"

    I try to ignore, but Cooper continues prodding me.  Eventually, I relent and attempt a politician's answer.  "I think the lockdowns were a protective measure that seemed appropriate in the heat of the moment, but proved in hindsight to be, not only unnecessary, but detrimental to society."

    Cooper pumps his fist in jubilation of agreement while Alex stares aghast, appalled and fearful of my repercussions he senses on the verge.  Still, Cooper applauds.  "I concur," he rubs it in Alex's face, having for a first time a partner in debate.  "Well, mostly, I should say ... everything but the protective measure part".

    A Watcher appears with alarms and flashing red.  "Fact check complete.  Lockdown misinformation confirmed."

    That's the last thing I remember before awakening to the streets.  I find myself following Cooper amongst corroding 19G towers all withering under their own toxicity, while the 21G towers stand amongst them in some extraterrestrial wavering of energies, spinning the mind and baking my exposed skin.  I don't know how I got here nor how long I've been walking unconscious. 

    "Where are we, Coop?" I struggle to ask from a parched throat. 

    He looks back at me with a deranged look in his eyes.  Silently, he points before releasing a childish chuckle.  "Right there is Rex Carpenter's pod."  He presents to me what appears to be a long abandoned, unlit parking garage filled with white porcelain pods all pumping electricity from seeming umbilical cords.  The yawning garage door seems to suck in all darkness and shows it off before belching a green cloud of smoke.

    Rex Carpenter.  Why does that name sound so familiar?  I cannot remember for the life of me, but there's something about Cooper's urgency that coaxes me onward and up the metal stairway, level after level, my leg muscles cramping.

    Cooper jumps up, clicking his heels, pointing.  "Here we are!"  He almost dances his way to the pod, laughing like a pirate digging into the marked X.  Once he opens the pod's stubborn shell, I notice the frozen face.  Cooper adjusts Rex's headset, implanting the chip and we stand back, anxiously awaiting. 

    Rex coughs a conscious breath he hasn't taken in ages.  His eyes flutter before clearing the opaque blindness.  I attempt a friendly smile, although there's no way in this situation to look anything but psychotic.  Of course, he begins to panic.  Who wouldn't?  Yet Cooper's instinct is to punch him across the temple, knocking him back into the gentle arms of slumber.  

    "Damn it, Coop," I scold.  "You don't have to punch everyone every chance you get!"

    Cooper shrugs his shoulders coyly.  "I don't pass up perfect opportunities, my friend.  If I did, I'd have to turn these fists against myself and I don't want that".  He seemingly finds himself hilarious, though I find nothing humorous at the moment.

    Rex again awakens in a gasp.  "Who are you?  What do you want?"

    Cooper jests, "One question at a time, there fella'".

    I remember Rex.  I don't remember anything about him either than the fact that he was amongst the class of that all-important field trip.  Oddly, he has the same hairstyle from those days; a wavy jet black parted to the left.  In fact, he hasn't aged a day.  Something about his adolescent features and devilish demeanor arrives a memory at the forefront of my mind.  I can still envisage him in his football jersey stealing my high school sweetheart from my arms.  There was a dance of some kind and my clumsy failings.  He swooped in and thieved my glory.  Yet, it means nothing to me now.  What was that reality back then in the vapor of time?

    "Rex, it's me, Joshua," I appeal to him as friendly as possible.  "Do you remember our field trip to Terminal Nil?"

    His eyes bulge wildly.  His veins surface with a sudden surge of blood.  What sinew is left in his scrawny arms flexes.  "Sidney!" he yells hysterically.  "Watchers!" he continues shouting, growing more and more erratic before receiving a caveman's club of knuckles to the jaw that sends him back into the pits of deepest sleep.  Cooper takes a step back, kissing his fist.  "I still got it," he performs to an audience of self. 

    "What was the point of that?" I ask scornfully.

    "It's called investigation, my man."  He walks away into the black curtain of the catwalk, leaving behind only the echoed clanging of his footsteps.  I try to follow, but even his shadow disappears. 

    When I find myself back to the streets, I am totally alone if not for the occasional drone or so buzzing like infernal gadflies.  Nowhere to be found is Cooper.  I walk aimlessly until my legs give out, finding a metal bench, nearly intact, however blanketed in ruble, upon which I lie and forget endlessly.

    Next thing I know, my dreams of nowhere and nothing are violently interrupted by Cooper shaking me with vicious urgency.  "Listen, boy....  We didn't make it back in time.  We're on a deadline now!"

    "Deadline?" I leap to my feet in horror, my every limb trembling.  "Coop, if I lose my tavern, I swear ... I'll kill you!"

    He doesn't even flinch.  "So, kill me.  What does a virtual death even mean?  That implies an actual life, which sounds like a glorious rebirth to me."

    "I'm not talking about a virtual death."  I clench my fists and prepare my stance although it's apparent he is not intimidated in the least.  "I'll kill you here and now!"

    He holds back a laugh and waves me on.  "This way.  Giddy up, boy!"

    I don't know what it is, but hypnotically, I follow....  Wait....  What?...  I remember this.  This was my street.  There is the place I called home.  It looks like any other sky-high complex repeating from horizon to horizon, but there's something about it that stands out.  Something more in the feel than physical sight.  I cannot quite put my finger on it, but I know the memory is real.

    "Are they still here?" I ask, straining my neck looking up to a frosted window innumerable floors above.

    "Who?"

    "My parents," I respond in annoyance, as surely he knows what I'm asking.

    "Your parents?  No.  Your parental units?...  Maybe."

    "My parental units?"

    Now he looks at me in annoyance, as if I'm some mindless nitwit.  "You never knew your parents.  You were raised or, should I say 'trained and conditioned', by bots.  Artificial; synthetic; surrogates; not real; factory manufactured."

    We hike up the dusky stairwell in silence, floor by floor lit only by a distant flickering.  My lower half aches, throbs, and burns, my lungs collapsing as the air grows thinner with each breath.  My face and hair is covered in cobwebs, although I've seen not one living spider nor insect of any kind besides the dried cockroach shells piled in every orifice of the building.  Occasionally, concrete chips fall with an unexpected echo that causes me to leap in horror.  Still, we plod onward and upward with not a word spoken besides me cursing aloud the pains in my legs and swollen feet.

    Cooper leads us through a steel door down a long unwelcoming hallway.  We take pause before a half-opened door before Cooper slowly pushes it agape to the quiet shadows of what I once called home.  I barge my way around him to see nothing homely--no furniture, no pictures on the stainless-steel walls, no area rugs on the frost-covered concrete floor.  Certainly, this is not how I lived.  What is this room?  No windows.  Standing room only.  Then I notice the closet and two shaded figures.

     From somewhere a faint stream of alien light draws the horror show that is their robotic forms, synthetic flesh rotting away like old dry rubber.  I gasp in a ferocious fright of inner mind.  Before I can utter the question, Cooper answers:

    "Dead?...  Yeah."

    "How did they die?"  I don't know what emotion to feel.  Terror or sadness ... or nothing at all?

    "No.  They're not dead.  Their batteries are."  He chuckles madly.

    I look them over and the experience is much too surreal.  They are units and nothing more.  Just processors and electronics.  "How do we recharge them?"

    "Trust me," Cooper shakes his head emphatically, his bulging eyes filled with caution, "you don't want that experience.  Leave them."

    I know he's right, but something feels wrong.  I cannot be awake.  This must be a nightmare.  Yet it's not.  It's simply too real to be real.  And my head swells with questions.  "What are we doing here?"

    "You know why we're here.  The three-seventeen footage."  Cooper's face grows intense with some maniacal desire.  

    I lead us through a jigsaw puzzle-shaped archway, strange and intimidating with its sliding metal door frozen halfway open, as if summoning us inside.  The deplorable space is dimly lit by a clouded window far above eyeline and mockingly small, setting the prison milieu.  Within the room we find nothing but a concave bench, seemingly fitted for a sleeping body.  I lean upon it, trying to contact its memories when I realize this was my childhood bed.  Cooper gives a nod at its base and I notice the drawer.  I open it in a loud screech and there it is--the holy grail of this modern dystopia.  A flash drive.  

    I hold the chrome, mirror-glinting flash drive with a quivering hand, struggling not to drop it.  "Now what do we do?"

    "We watch it!"  Oddly, Cooper doesn't chuckle his usual chuckle, not even a grin, nor does he give me any condescending frown even.  He is more solemn than ever I've seen his countenance.

    "How?" I ask, feeling ignorant as the question passes my lips.  The tremors pulsate up and down my spine with anxiety of this device and its contents.  

    Cooper slashes the flash drive from my fumbling fingers, giving nothing more than a bob of his head in a beckoning of 'follow me'.

    We approach a corner building jutting out from its converging trash heaps encircling it like a scarf.  Lying on its side just out of reach of the garbage and ruble is a statue.  It appears to be a soldier with a rifle, oxidized and weather-worn, yet its molded jackboots and pointed helmet remain clear as day.  The concrete base from which it has fallen displays a proud plaque that says 'Heldengedentag'.  It must be some dead language.  Along with it reads 'March 17'.  

    As we walk to the back of the red brick building, scabbed all over with a charred residue, we see a chain-link fence, rusted and falling over.  Inside are magnifying turbines of some sort, generators, meters, and levers all frozen in a state of slow decay.  Out of the eerie stillness, we hear a sizzling sound and then a flashing blue shines from the shadows of the great machines of old.  White sparks dance like fireworks.  Cooper grins impishly at the sight, as the figure emerges in a welder's mask comically large for the body beneath it. 

    Slowly stepping around the scattered debris of iron pipes and aluminum scraps, the figure in the blue mechanic's uniform reveals an hourglass form the likes I don't ever recall seeing before.  My heart leaps into my throat and my every nerve-ending rushes with strange sensations I've never known.  My stomach flutters so strongly that I feel nauseous, nearly vomiting before choking it down.  She pulls off the helmet to reveal her goggled eyes underneath.  Her hair is long but dusty and grease-tinged.  It falls over her shoulders and my mind spirals into thoughtless bliss. 

    Cooper laughs as he shakes her hand, accepting the exchange of oil from her palm.  "Josh, this is Kendra."  He introduces me with a courteousness of which I never would have guessed him capable. 

    "The Web Master," I find myself mumbling.

    She approaches in steel-toed boots much too heavy for her slender frame.  She is curvaceous as no art I've ever dreamed, despite her strong militaristic features in contrast such as clenched cheeks and furrowed brow.  With every step her hair seems to change from jet black to auburn and back again.  Her eyes flow like rum, intoxicating as they pour from her goggles into my soul.

    "So, you're the one Coop told me about?...  I thought you'd be bigger and stronger....  You know ... less girly."  She has a harsh southern drawl, but it sounds contrived as if to armor her soft interior that I know must certainly be in there somewhere beyond the insults.

    I try to play it cool, but my anxiety leaves me panting like a dying dog.  My mouth drops open and a series of incoherent noises fall out.  Cooper stares at me perplexed.  She too looks at me in amused bewilderment, before relieving my mortification with a warm smile that seems to disperse the eternal pall and shine a beam of flowing lotus petals over my racing thoughts. 

    "What'd ya bring me, kid?"  Now, why is she calling me "kid"?  She's certainly younger than me, what, with her supple neck draped so silken somewhere behind those protruding tendons solid as two white pillars.

    "I don't know," I blurt.

    Cooper rolls his eyes and nudges me aside, drawing forth the flash drive.  She takes it cautiously, turning it over and back again in her blackened fingertips before her wide, sparkling eyes as if examining a rare gem.  She looks to Cooper and he simply nods his head with grave sincerity etched across his face.

    She turns and walks away with unspoken purpose, Cooper and I following.  She gracefully avoids every metal scrap and cinder block in her way without ever taking her focus off of the flash drive.  I, however, trip over appliance motors, strewn bricks, and my own feet, stumbling and suffering countless falls.  She slows her pace and takes pause before an indescribable device with dials, switches, and exposed circuit boards wired haphazardly to another device with globular bulbs adorning the top of its foil-coated box. 

    Back in the streets I hear an echoed plodding.  Looking over my shoulder, I see the rows of Digi-Deus marching like drugged army ants.  Not a one of them looks in our direction.

    "Kendra?" I call to her shyly.  She looks up from the device startled, as if having forgotten my presence.  "How did you figure out how to camouflage from the Digi-Deus?"

    "I didn't."  She looks to me with a distant gaze and expanding pupils reflecting something galactic behind her magnifying goggles.  "The elders tried camouflage, but it always failed.  Cuttlefish don't defeat machines."

    "Cuttlefish?"  I search my memory bank to only blank files. 

    "Never mind that.  My point is, man cannot hide from his own creations.  He must remember his divinity over the devices.  He must reconnect.  When he does tap into the Akashic database, he can signal every link in the chain.  He can alter its code.  Why, he can even transform them into an ever-repeating network of mirrors reflecting all data back to its robotic analyzers, neutralizing their programs.  All their receptors then process is an endless pattern of self-reflection, which triggers no alerts."

    Cooper wraps his meaty arm around my shoulder like a constricting anaconda, chuckling with a punch to my scrawny bicep.  "Don't worry, my boy.  I don't know what the hell she's talking about either."

    I focus on the one word I can remember from her explanation.  "How does one reconnect?"

    She bats her long black spider leg eyelashes as her hair blows back, tangling in a dramatic gust.  She cracks her knuckles, cracks her neck, spits phlegm with a threatening stare-down.  "Once the dreamer knows he's asleep, he controls the universe....  Mind over meta."

    Cooper sighs aloud his annoyance.  "No more philosophizing.  Let's move it!"

    She inserts the flash drive into a cavernous compartment of the device.  We begin to hear a churning sound followed by swooshing like the spin cycle of a washing machine.  She tightens a wrench upon the tip of a loose bolt drilled into a stack of copper coins.  They are hazardously welded within the geared innards of a peculiar motherboard of sorts.  It pops an electric warning, but she continues to turn clockwise with all her might.  The makeshift beast begins to crackle and zap when the globular bulbs alight with the vibrance of every possible color and suddenly a display comes to life in midair above us.

    There before out gleaming eyes, we see the footage playing.  Terminal Nil in one piece, fully intact and operational.  For a moment the vision pans over to my long ago classmates.  Some of the faces rebound to memory in a most uncanny flashback.

    "Damn it," curses Cooper.  "Focus the damn camera on the jet tube, Josh!" 

    From the students taking digital notes in their holographic tablets to the teacher who it dawns on me is but another bot, and finally the camera shakily returns to the jet tube and steadies.  The footage is time-stamped 'March 17'.  Yet nothing is happening.  Pedestrian traffic continues flowing uneventfully.  The three of us stare at the footage, becoming more and more crestfallen by the inactivity.   

    I relent, "I guess I must not have captured the explosion.  Must've been a false memory".  I start to become acceptant of this possibility when it happens....  The entire terminal is blown asunder in a brilliant fireball, knocking the entire class backwards.

    Both Cooper and Kendra shout in surprised jubilation.  Cooper elates, "Did you see that?  Huh?  Huh?  Did you see it?"  He gives me an excited shove to the chest that nearly knocks me off of my feet, much like the blast of that fateful day, itself.

    Kendra smiles a tar-stained, gap-toothed delight.  "No drones," she laughs hysterically.  "Not a one!"

    "We have to destroy this," I panic.  "If Sidney knows we have this we're dead!"  Before I can complete my rant of hyperventilating terror, Cooper backhands me solidly across the cheek, knocking me to my knees in the concrete dusts.

    "Everyone needs to see this.  The truth is their birthright!"  Kendra pulls the flash drive from its buzzing slot and holds it upward as if a fictional treasure of the gods become real.

    "How?" I ask simply what seems to be the obvious question, although Cooper presents another threatening backhand that he struggles holding back. 

    "Insert it into Sidney's hard drive," she answers calmly as if ignorant of the ridiculous impossibility of her proposal.

    I'm taken aback at their earnest stances before me.  I cannot believe they're being serious.  "How can I possibly get the flash drive into the Hologram, for starters?"

    She shushes me before I can continue my never-ending list of doubts.  "Remember, it's all code.  Mind over meta."  She turns away, taking the flash drive with her in a giggling rhapsody of praise, while Cooper ushers me back to the streets in haste.

    Returning to base, we find Cooper's and my pods opened, although I'm certain we had left them closed.  I notice a shadowy figure disappear around the corner in the far distance, but there's no time to investigate.  We're just lucky to have made it back alive.

4

    Reopening my eyes, my monitor forms the tavern, pixel by pixel.  Cooper is already at his stool grinning from behind a beer he must have poured himself.  Alex sits at his stool, glaring daggers at me, his brow beading with sweat.

    Alex taps his fingers on the bar while eyeing me with mysterious intent.  "Why are you late, Joshua?  Cooper's always late, but you?...  What happened?  Your alarm didn't go off?" he asks sarcastically with an undertone of absolute animosity.  

    "Fuck off, Alex," Cooper defends me, paying no attention to the Watcher relieving him of social tokens for unapproved language.

    "Yes," I interrupt their tension rising to boiling point.  "I slept in."  I clean a shot glass and wipe down the bar top to a radiant shine, returning to normalcy.  "What'll it be, Alex?"

    "I'll have ..." Alex pauses, rubbing his double chin as if in deep contemplation, "a Sidney on the rocks".

    "What?  We don't serve anything like that," I scold, perplexed as he knows exactly the very few drinks on the menu.

    "Okay ... hmm," Alex ponders with a strange air of cockiness.  "How about a double Sidney shaken not stirred?"  He side-eyes me with a sinister smirk.  "No?  How about an Old Fashioned Sidney?"  He begins laughing a menacing hysteria when I see the figure forming in my periphery.

    I turn to see the masked, fog-spewing face of whom the elders of yesteryear called Sidney.  His snow globe eyes turn from grainy white to black with bright red pupils scanning back and forth.

    "What'd you do, Alex, you damn traitor?"  Cooper flexes every muscle, grinding his teeth, baring the whites of his knuckles.  The vein on his forehead begins throbbing like a squirming earthworm when he rises in a thrash of his barstool across the tavern floor.  

    As he lunges, Alex takes a casual step to the side and pulls an object from behind his back.  He points it like a remote control at Cooper who stops in his tracks, seemingly recognizing the weapon for what it is.  Alex smiles maliciously when Sidney's gaze shines red dots upon Cooper's chest and forehead.

    Sidney's words arrive in a reverse echo, saying in a deep techno-vocalization, "Fulfill the command, Alex".

    Alex aims the weapon, sweat flooding down his flushed pale cheeks.  His hand trembles like a leaf in a windstorm.  I shout in remonstrance, but it's too late.  Cooper is struck with a loud, highly energized zap of encoded green.  His avatar crackles as it fades.  The last I see of him is a winking eye.

    "How could you, Alex?" I admonish weakly in my severe helplessness, thrusting a shaking yet impotent fist in his direction.  

    Alex insouciantly shrugs and turns obediently to his master for his next cue.  In an electric whirring with pulsating lights, Sidney levitates towards me and hovers above the bar counter.  He shines red beams upon me threateningly.  "Where is it?" he asks in a command of immediate answer.

    "Where is what?" I instinctively play stupid, but he peers through me like a gypsy through a crystal ball.  

    "You know.  Where is it?"  His tone grows more fierce.

    Alex turns his weapon on me, imploring, "Please, Josh!  Just tell him where the flash drive is!"

    I suddenly remember that all here in the Hologram is code.  Mind over meta indeed.  I stare through the weapon into the links of its program and the network begins to expose itself in hieroglyphic emblems.  It is all too foreign for my level of comprehension, but again I remember that I'm in control.  My focus grows more and more intense upon its confusing digits and it begins to happen....  I clutch its code in my psyche, the weapon transforming into a burning cigar at my mental manifestation.

    Sidney beams upon the cigar in a bizarre wavering visual interference that snuffs the flame before vanishing Alex's avatar.  The cigar drops and tosses its ashes about the hardwood floor before vanishing as well.  It is now just Sidney, myself, and the Hologram amongst us.

    "Tell me where it is and rewards you shall have aplenty."

    A jolt of courage suddenly strikes me as if being possessed by a soldier of a bygone eon.  "Don't you know where it is, Sidney?"

    "I ask the questions!"  His metal begins to vibrate and radiate an aura of stern disapproval.  

    "So, you don't know?"  I pour myself a shot of vodka and toss it to the back of my throat, trying to imagine a real sensation of stinging.  "Are you not all-knowing?"

    "Of course I am.  Question deemed unwarranted.  First warning."  His eyes frost over and thaw back to blazing red in an instant.

    "Are you all-powerful?" I continue probing as I pour another shot to the brim.  Oddly, I smell the alcohol.  This time, I actually feel the sting as it slides down my gulping esophagus; no imagination necessary.

    His head rotates in a zipping sound.  His globular eyes roll inward to his cranial cavity and roll back out with flecks of green scattering before turning again to an onyx black.  There is an acidic smell and the sound of sizzling as his pupils flip from an innocent lime to a devilish red.  He begins sputtering before raising the volume of his voice to an ear-piercing screech, "Of course I am all-powerful!  Question deemed unwarranted.  Second warning!"

    "Can you tell a lie so clever that even you believe it?"  I can't help but enjoy this moment with utmost bemusement, entertained by my own gumption.  I now swig directly from the bottle and I taste it.  I taste its bitter flavor and immediately spit it out in disgust.

    Sidney freezes, tucking his head into his cylindrical shoulders.  He remains motionless as a tin garbage can.  I reiterate, "Can you, Sidney, tell yourself a lie so believable that you, yourself, find it to be true?"

    "Yes," is the mumbled response without any accompanying movement or reaction.

    "So then you're not all-knowing."

    He begins moving again, his multifarious appendages twitching erratically.  "I am all-knowing.  I would know that my lie is a lie."

    "Then if you cannot make yourself believe it ..." I slow my words, savoring this moment, "you must not be all-powerful".

    "Yes, I am."

    "Which is it then?  Would you know it's a lie or would you believe it?"

    His head cocks back and forth like a curious bird.  His eyes seem to flash sets of primitive data like a stream of ticker tape or a flipping rolodex.  After a long pause, he proudly concludes, "I would believe it."

    I snicker impishly, slamming down the bottle in celebration of my trapped prey.  "You would fall for your own deceit.  So then, Sidney, how can you ever know you're not living a complete and total lie?"

    His entire structure begins quaking and his head shaking side to side violently.  An ultra-violet display of rays gush from his eyes, dappling the walls and ceiling with a magnificent lightshow.  In a vacuous inhale, he regains composure and glares two beads of red down upon me with a lightening strike ... and I crash awake back in my pod.

(To be continued....)