Kill Switch: Chapter 1

Into the Dark Surround

The shooting begins at midnight, which is hella awk because the DJ is slapping "Goo Me, Goo Me" by Juggo, and I’m busy dancing with a bot.

“What a vibe kill,” the bot scoffs, brushing a strand of pixelated brown hair out of her eye.

I unGlass. The shooter sweeps around the edge of the crowd.

A beam whips past my head, and I reach for my blaster, but before I can get a zap off, the shooter shoves his blaster in his mouth and pulls the trigger.

Pew.

The music stops. The paramedics enter.

And I reGlass so I don’t have to look at the blood and the bodies.

X, my best colleague, is at my shoulder.

“Should we wait?” he asks.

I shrug. “It’ll be thirty minutes before the music starts again.”

“We could go to The Underworld,” he says, and even though I’m hella tired, I agree because I saw Yide, this girl I have a massive crush on, go down there.

The Underworld is in the basement of High Times, but it still takes forever to get downstairs because everybody has the same idea, and by the time I reach the bottom, the adrenaline from the shooting - not to mention the xTonic - has worn off, and I’m totally regretting coming down here.

When I finally reach the bartender, I order another xTonic, hoping that the combination of methamphetamine and opioids will wake and relax.

X taps me on the shoulder. “This way.”

I follow him to a booth, the advertisements on his arms glitching as the aspect ratio of his avatar stretches over his roided biceps, and I’m all, like, “what’s the play, simul?” but X doesn’t hear me because he’s too busy interfacing with someone on dNet. And that’s when I see her, this hella thick woman, but I’m having a hard time focusing because my feed is dinging like crazy. Each ding is, like, a hit of upper, and when I swipe to my profile, I realize what all the dinging is about: my stream of the shooting is getting hella likes. I watch, again, as the shooter blasts laserbeams to the beat of "Goo Me, Goo Me.” The killshot has a nice frame.

X shoves me, jocular, and he's all, like, “hey, simul, you’re the most followed in the pod, hey, simul, tag much?” so I tag X just to get him to shut up, and when I return to the array, the hella thick woman is gone.

And then finally some other colleagues arrive. It’s Taco and Ginger and Yide, and they’re all, like, “hey, Vonn, tag much, Vonn?” and I’m spending the next, like, thirty seconds tagging all of them so that everyone can get some coin.

“Vonn always gets the best streams,” Ginger says, swiping, and then, after taking a bite of goo, she immediately sticks an injector pin into her already emaciated thigh.

I lean toward X. “Did you see that hella thick chick?”

“Nah, what parent company?”

“Mounjie. Which one is that again?”

X laughs. “That’s the new skeleton pharma, all the chicks are taking it. Makes you hella thin.”

“Who’s hella thin?” Yide asks from across the booth.

“Some rando,” X yells over the pounding bass, “but she’s not hella thin, which is, like, ironic or whatever.”

“Why is it ironic?” Yide asks.

“Because she was hella thick,” X says, “and her parent company is Mounjie.”

“Mounjie,” Yide gasps. “I wish Mounjie was my parent company. I hear they give the best deals to their affiliates. I absolutely have to tell Ginger.” And then she slides toward Ginger, who is, apropos of nothing, listing the Top 5 Christmas Gifts for Dog Bot Lovers.

I swipe. The shooter’s identity has been released, along with the names of the six victims. I wait to feel something, but nothing happens.

“Check out these kicks,” X says, tilting his swipe toward me, and I recognize the branding, but I’m not sure where from. “Flash sale. 25% off. Limited time offer. Going fast.” He buys three pairs. “Like, check these out, simul, check out the wings on the back.” He skins the first pair, and I have to admit, the wings look good. “You should get a pair, simul. Going fast. Shit. That’s all my coin.” He blurs toward me. “Think you could boost my tag again?”

“Boost your own tag,” I say, but seconds later, I end up boosting his tag because the thing with X is that it’s usually just easier to deal. “They just released the names.”

“Huh, what?” He’s skinning through the kicks, checking out the different colors.

“The names of the victims. They just released them.”

“Oh, right, yeah. What do you think about the reds?”

“They’re fine.”

“I think they’re hella sick.”

“Right, yeah.”

X’s banner catches my eye, and the image of the cool glass of proprietary chemicals makes me want to order another xTonic, which is exactly what I do, and because I don’t want to jostle at the bar, and I’m still getting hella coin from my latest stream, I pay the upcharge to have the drink delivered by a cute bot in a poodle-skirt.

I swipe, bored, and my finger is shaking so much from the jolt of the xTonic that I accidentally unGlass, and for a moment I see all the white plastic jumpsuits and walls with their sensors, and I feel a dull, empty sensation that makes me want to curl into a ball, and I’m sitting there trying to reGlass, but my finger is twitching like crazy, and that’s when I see the orgy room in my peripheral with all the bodies tapping and rolling, and I’m sitting there thinking to myself, must reGlass, must reGlass, and finally I do reGlass, initiating a mega wave of relief as the colors and textures and skins replace the blank white blankness of the unGlassed world.

And Taco is, like, “hey, Vonn, interface much?” and I realize that everyone is staring at me, and I’m, like, “huh, what’s going on?” and Taco, rolling his artificially green eyes, is all, “simul, catch up, how much content are you pushing out on the reg?” but before I can answer, Ginger jumps in and is, like, “everyone knows skinny-fat is the new skinny,” which gets her and Yide talking, and then Taco and X are swiping, and I’m stuck there sipping on my xTonic with, like, a 3D pressure cooker about to explode in my head, so, to distract, I take a quiz which tells me that I have a rare form of inefficiency called “PSFDG,” and I check my email, unsubscribe from a few that I never signed up for in the first place, think to myself, My First Assault Laser ®, the official sponsor of Derrick 9, and then I hear somebody bring the conversation back to daily content output, and I'm, like, “hey, simuls, what say we unGlass, just for, like, five minutes, you know, unGlass and interface, just to see, like, what happens?”

I’m met with a very long and very uncomfortable silence before Ginger, rolling her eyes, is, like, “Vonn, why would we do that?” and I don’t have a good answer, so all I do is shrug, and then X is, like, “Vonn, you’ve been ransomed all night,” and I can see that everyone is disgusted, so I’m, like, “you know, just as a…joke…or whatever…” and the next silence is even longer and even more uncomfortable, and my head is literally about to explode when the sound of laser beams erupts from the orgy room, making everyone turn away from me, and I’m scrambling down to the floor, and there’s this echo chamber of beams and screams, and “Goo Me, Goo Me” is slapping, and I’m crawling toward the steps, and I hear a scream and see, with horror, a static pulse where one of Taco’s sensors has been hit and I reach out to grab him, but I’m jerked in the opposite direction, another laser beam zooming over my head, and I slide and feel something spike into my incredibly swole lats, and I let out a scream as I fall into a dark surround.