Living Outside

Episode 03: House Party! 2

Mike was at the front door, finally arriving with the beer. Megan opened the door for him. Mike entered looking mostly like his usual self except for his fedora, which sported a buzz saw on a robotic arm. Megan hugged him anyway.

The buzz saw whirred ominously for a second before disappearing into the hat.

Mike said hello to T's second proxy, still standing by the glass case, as he walked to the kitchen. But he was captivated by the sand wall and put the beers down to play with it. He felt the sand run through his fingers via his haptic gloves. T's second proxy jumped over beside him.

Thomas yelled as loud as he could at the wall and then blasted music at it, to no effect. Mike played Mozart through the speakers of a nearby bug he moved close to the wall, and also through his jacket, to no effect.

Sam came into the living room, put her arm around Mike, and scanned through the sand garden's settings. She started playing a death metal song through the wall speaker. The effect was glorious. The sand melted into expanding, sloshing seas of molten glass. The seas ballooned from the wall and expanded rapidly into the room, pulsing and throbbing with the music, splaying out in myriad forms. The living room was filled with crashing waves, whipping plumes, and effervescent bubbling towers, physically pounding out the heavy music. It even extended into the kitchen. Mike felt the beat of the music rattling his ribs. The proxies in the room felt the waves flowing through them, synchronizing all of their sensations with the spirit of the music.

Tendrils snapped through T in beat to the music. It kind of tickled. Sam stopped the music and turned it back into a sand garden. The forms filling the room collapsed into the wall, leaving only chaotic colored trails through the sand and its 9 rocks.

Sam sent a short vid of the visualizer to Dex and accompanied Mike into the kitchen. Saitou had watched the event through the kitchen wall. Saitou's lion agent Mr. Naps, noticing his interest, automatically saved the sand visualizer for him. One of Thomas' proxies followed Sam and Mike into the kitchen. Megan sent her proxy walking through the kitchen wall after them.

Chester's sock puppet agent Sifl alerted her that Sam's party had reached a critical mass of interesting people. Chester decided to leave the 2nd party she was attending, which had gotten kind of lame. Of course, it was 6 a.m. there. The 3rd party she was present at was projected to be awesome around 1 a.m, but that was in three hours.

At the moment, Sam's party was just right. Chester sat up in her chair and looked around the room, pretending to stretch. Her painted face smiled in greeting to Thomas and Megan. Thomas was always surprised at how expressive and engaging a painted face could be. Her chia hair was kind of endearing too. Thomas' 1st proxy, sitting on the coffee table, turned to face her.

Chester leaned over and hugged T. Her body was soft and warm despite its appearance. Chester practiced enhanced hugs, which transferred physical warmth, a soothing full-body constriction, and temporary intermingling of certain body senses when the other person's setting allowed. She settled back into her chair.

T looked over his shoulder at Keen.

T jumped up and down on Keen's head, but Keen did not care to react. Thomas sat down on the table and shoved some cheesecake into his mouth. Many miles away, his physical body did a shot.

One function of proxies was to fill in the gap for the user in cases of lag. Spoken communication is more flexible in terms of lag. Except in cases of being slow to deal with interruptions, it can just appear as if the person speaking is taking a short pause to think. But subtle things like eye contact, non-verbal communication and reflexive posturing could make lag during conversations, or other intimate social interactions, awkward.

A well-trained ghost could help fill in the gaps for its user so that the other side may not even know there's lag. They even help with sex, where a quarter second delay could be very annoying. But if your ghost knows you well enough, they can partially fill in for you. This can be a strange sensation to the user at first, like experiencing an echo of something you were about to do, just before you did it. But if it fits with what the user was going to do, the user's brain more often than not simply gets used to trailing some actions, almost as if it actually had done it. Because it kind of had. Luckily, people's social interactions were, for the most part, limited in their variety, and capable of being modeled to various levels of success. Matching gazes, maintaining appropriate eye contact, angling toward a speaker and generally mirroring other users were commonly compensated for by ghosts.

Chester teleported into the middle of kitchen, shimmering Star Trek style. T wondered if he was the only one with restricted porting  privileges. Chester said hello and passed out enhanced hugs to everyone.

Thomas switched his attention to his second proxy, which was standing by the kitchen table where Sam was seated. Saitou was doing the moonwalk for some reason. There was much merrymaking.

Eventually Thomas noticed that Sam was mixing drinks with a mid-priced rum on the kitchen table. Many miles away he took another shot.

Mike got a message from Dexter and excused himself to see what was going on outside. While Megan wasn't paying attention, Mr. Naps sniffed the back of her knee. The cold lion nose caused her to yelp and jump to the other side of the room.

Saitou picked up Mr. Naps by the scruff of the neck. Naps purred and meowed softly.

Saitou turned away and continued talking to Sam about politics. Chester had moved over to the fridge and had been gesturing for T to come over, so he did.

A large window opened up above Thomas' head and a waterfall of green slime drenched him, but without touching anything else.

Chester walked away to Saitou before T could respond. T wiped a donut on his chest and ate it. It was not the taste sensation he had hoped for. T filtered the slime away. Proxy Megan jumped up and sat on the island counter between the fridge and the kitchen table.

Chester and Saitou stood talking by the table. On a layer private to Meg and himself, T used his index finger as a laser (an ever popular device) and cut the top of Saitou's head off. It fell, molten, onto Chester's leg and set it on fire. Megan snorted in suppressed laughter. Chester looked at T suspiciously while her body blackened and then melted down like the Wicked Witch of the West. Chester's melting body flailed its arms impotently as Saitou's half-head spurted blood on the ceiling. On the same layer, Meg drew a mustache made of cartoon caterpillars on Sam.

Megan restored everyone on their joke layer and created a copy of Chester's proxy next to Chester. It was complete with her ghost (from her SIS). The Chesters started dancing around each other. They started making out (as only marionettes can). Lush tree branches grew out of the Chesters' indicated erogenous zones and wrapped around their bodies until they merged and became a single Chester again, the branches being absorbed back into its body.

Megan removed all of her filters affecting Saitou.

Megan went over to play with Saitou's stars. Thomas noticed that a panel had appeared on the panorama wall, ruining a nice space view of Earth. The panel featured a terminal display complete with a keyboard sticking out beneath it. The terminal simply said, "Keen: Available for chat. Please use the keyboard." Thomas was the only one who noticed it or cared.

Villain ran over and jumped up on the keyboard, ready to hop on the keys to enter T's messages. T sat down at the kitchen table and duplicated the display in front of him so he wouldn't have to stare at the wall.

Keen displayed a schematic for a baby brain vat, and below it an animation of a genetically modified brain growing from a single cell and being integrated with cybernetics. Then it showed a happy virtual baby, unaware that it existed only Outside.

Mike was coming back in to get a new beer.

T did not answer. He moved over by the kitchen sink just before Mike got to the refrigerator and began to whistle the Ghostbuster's theme. He had carefully positioned a bug on the ceiling in front of the refrigerator, but it refused to fall when Mike opened the fridge to get another beer. Falling bugs were too light and soft to hurt anyone, and sometimes having one let go of a surface was the fastest way to move it into a different position, so people were generally allowed to drop them. Sam had, however, added a house restriction against bugs falling near physical people. Probably because of T.

Unfortunately for everyone in the kitchen, the falling bug was only the first part of Thomas' plan, and he had contingencies. The bug began to beep at Mike. Mike didn't even look up. Then the kitchen sink turned on. Mike turned it off with a finger flick. The bug continued beeping. T turned the faucet back on. Mike turned it off. The bug beeped. T turned the faucet back on.

Mike lightly punched T in the chest. In response, T's chest exploded into a raging geyser of blood that splattered half of the kitchen. As he dramatically crumpled to the ground, the rupture across his chest spread to his stomach, and his insides (including his brain) splayed across the kitchen floor, carried by a cascade of blood. His organs and guts were based on his medical scans, so they were fairly accurate. It was disgustingly realistic, except for the ridiculous amount of blood and the strong smell of cinnamon.

Saitou continued talking with Chester, trying to ignore whatever was going on behind him despite being splashed with blood. He took a step back to emphasize a point and slipped on the expanding pool of blood. He nearly hit Sam as he fell. The stars of his body mixed with T's blood. Mr. Naps came over to help him up and lick blood off of his elbow, and then strated lapping the blood on the floor. Mike buried his face in his palm while Thomas lay writhing in his own guts. Megan face palmed.

Sam calmly watched the entire thing happen and let T shame himself for a few more moments before filtering the mess from her house's primary layer. T stood up in his renewed body and brushed himself off. He noted his restricted house privileges. It had been worth it. He should never have had access to the sinks to begin with. But Saitou was an unfortunate casualty.

T turned to his older brother and grinned maniacally.

Mike walked back outside. T yelled after him.

Mr. Naps was prowling around the kitchen. The blood had fueled his appetite for human flesh and now he was looking for someone to eat. This had given Thomas an idea.

Mr. Naps did look pretty hungry.

Megan turned her discomfort all the way off and was pulled to the ground as Mr. Naps set about eating her. He started with her left foot.

Megan's right leg came off after a few chomps. T held it up in the air, took off her sandal, and tickled her foot. She jerked her leg and hit him with her bloody stump.

Mr. Naps started to eat again. Thomas threw Meg's leg into the air and vaporized it with his finger laser. Its ashes fell to the ground. By this point Naps had eaten up to her belly button. He was careful not to let too much viscera spill out on the floor.

T stepped away from Megan's expanding pool of blood. Naps gulped down Megan's arms, leaving only her chest and head.

Now only Megan's head remained.

Naps swallowed her head whole and Megan drifted for a moment in the void. She reinstated her physical body's senses and found herself on the couch in the living room. T sat on the coffee table looking at her.

Megan rubbed her legs thoughtfully. They still felt a little numb.

Chester's living room proxy raised its head.

T looked quizically at her.

Thomas bit his lower lip. Choosing to not have an agent was like choosing to wash all of your dishes by hand. He looked to Chester for help, but he seemed to have left the living room again.

Villain appeared on T's shoulder just long enough to be petted.