With a start, Ann snapped into consciousness. It wasn’t sleep, really, as much as it was a sense of not existing at all, followed by a complete reassignment of personality and self. There were no dreams, no memories of restlessness in the night, of kicking off sheets and discarding clothing at 3 AM because the air conditioning wasn’t able to keep up with the Florida heat and she was boiling. It was like she was nothing before the moment she was given purpose.
The fact it was true didn’t make it any less disconcerting.
She checked Virtuality Mean Time (VMT). 1630. Early for an Epic, she was either getting more popular and moving up the queue or someone had specifically requested her. She was OK with either scenarios. Less time in the Skinner Box that was Downtime, the more time she could dedicate to probing the walls of the construct, figuring out where the edges were.
Virtuality was a universal gaming platform created in the mid-21st century. Less of a game itself and more of an operating system for other games, it quickly had become the only place to go to when you wanted to slay a dragon, or free humanity from alien overlords, or relive the Battle of Yorktown in battle rap. It was such an engrossing environment that many people became addicted, forgot to unplug, died on their feet, their visors still on.
Ann wasn’t one of the later, but she wasn’t one of the ones that beat addiction and found themselves taking a deep breath of fresh air after a long absence from the outside world, like all the treatment commercials showed. She was something new. Something unprecedented.
A flashing countdown in her field of vision broke her from her musing. 30 seconds to respond or the Epic would be reassigned, she would snap back to Primed, but with a flag. Enough of those and she would be flagged as Recalcitrant. Once that happened, there was no coming out of Downtime.
"Accept."