“Radiolarius Qotsae” by brujaja

Upcross

by brujaja

Chapter 1

Throughout the first half of the 21st century, the phrase “astral projection” was the nearly exclusive province of hippies, mystics, and various New-Age types. The theory went that you could leave your body, most commonly while sleeping, and travel (on Earth or on the astral plane) in spirit form. Some spoke of being able to do this consciously; at will, with practice. Tibetan monks were said to be adept at such travels, and there are many related accounts that may very well be true. However, if astral projection had always been available to some, it can also be said that it was not available to many. At some point, this situation was destined to change: as the art and science of computing evolved, increasingly sophisticated feats were achieved and wonderments produced.

Among these wonderments was the Slipdream: a "massively multiplayer interactive consensually constructed alternate reality." It was accessed during periods of non-REM sleep by way of a decoder box rented from Eco-chic, the sole provider of Slipdream. When asked why Slipdream's provinces could not be accessed during waking hours, the answer given to the press was usually simplified as having something to do with alpha brain waves and heightened suggestibility.

In Slipdream, participants' personalities were digitized with a neural scan, uploaded, compressed, and stored on gigantic servers awaiting the dreams of their flesh counterparts. One's consciousness, such as it was, could then wander as far afield as it liked, within the capability of Slipdream to produce and maintain a multitude of maps. The physical world was pretty much covered — great cities, tiny boroughs, forests, oceans, deserts, monuments and temples, and lonely landscapes. There was even a growing list of historical settings and events. In addition, entire worlds had been collectively imagined and built around certain themes.

The vampire world, Nosifer, was immensely popular. There was a gearhead world called Demolitia, and one for the warlike called Strife. There were two kids' worlds, and one made up exclusively of teenaged girls (teenaged boys, if asked, would say that they imagined the girls' world as a never-ending pillow fight with combatants clad in wet t-shirts; in reality, it was more like "Hello Kitty and Barbarella Meet Prince Charming & He Is Smitten").

There was a world to appeal to every walk of life: every income level, race, nationality, age, and persuasion. Even those who generally weren’t into technology or electronic gadgets wound up renting one of Eco-chic’s magic boxes, because who wouldn't want to at least try it? Also, it had the advantage of turning participants’ downtime into what amounted to vacation time: people were, for the most part, a lot happier once they started traveling in their sleep.

Humans being humans, there were those who tried to sleep 24/7 in order to "live" in Slipdream. This resulted in a few deaths, but the majority of people seemed to integrate the night traveling into their lives without any ill effects . . . until Eco-chic decided to reduce the price.