They'd spent a good portion of their life alone. A life in near-isolation makes it hard for a person to adjust to being around.. so many. Fortunately, their rescuers, the ones that saved their world, are helping with that. -- Anon Guest
My life before the exodus was viewed through screens, and served with machines. I talked to people on screens, I had various needs met by hardware. My booth was my life. Just like it was everyone else's life. Work was a virtual experience. Joysticks, special gloves, keyboards... I had everything I needed.
Or so I thought.
There came the day without work, in which everyone on my contact list was on the party line trying to work out what was going on. We still got food. We still got physical therapy. We still got haptic rewards. What worried everyone was the lack of a bill.
The next day, there was the announcement. Representatives of the Cogniscent Rights Committee had decided that our living conditions were inhumane. Experts would soon be getting us out for therapeutic progress towards a fuller life experience. Whatever that meant. We were all honestly afraid of what that could mean. None of us had any memory of being outside of our booths. We were told all our lives that outside was unsafe.
Nothing could live out there. So we were told.
I hid in a corner when they cut open my booth. The air smelled the same, and the being on the other side looked like the people on my screens. Just... not... flat. I was used to myself being... not flat. I had little idea that others were... not flat. They had to be, but seeing it in person? It was strange and frightening.
So was venturing out of the booth that had been my entire remembered life. They let me take any of my precious things with me, and let me experience the outside as much as I dared.
Learning that your entire life was lived in lies is quite the shock. The first steps out under a blue sky had to be made with the help of a fake virtuality helmet.
I had so much to learn. So much to be brave about.
Next week? I'm going to be brave. I'm going to touch grass.
[Photo by James Yarema on Unsplash]
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