Waking up from virtual reality was like waking up from a dream. It became increasingly harder the longer one stayed on the “inside”. Although the Commonwealth mandated that people of a certain age-group spend at least two hours inside, there were also strict limitations to how many hours one could log each week. One hundred and thirty two hours, to be specific.

The reason was simple. While in the simulation pod, the brain sleeps, but without sleeping. All the normal functions that sleeping performs, such as forming new memories, clearing toxins and waste, establishing neural pathways, were reduced, or completely unavailable, when in the virtual world.

In his case, those limitations were lifted simply because the advantages of proper sleep could not outweigh the disadvantages of being awake. Mainly, for two reasons.

First reason: He was in too much pain to be awake. His options were rather simple: Induced coma or virtual world. He had spent a month in a coma, so he was not eager to go back to that.

The second reason did not come with any options. Before he was even aware of the pain inside his right eye, as if his brain was melting, he first became aware of the army of doctors rushing into his room, shouting the names of various medicines, and orders on how to administer them.

He was a lab rat. An experiment. At best, he was a government science project. At worst, a military science project. He was, perhaps, the only person to ever receive an Interfacing Cybernetic Implant. No one knew, or had scientific data of any sort, what fusing a brain with a Trained Agent would do.

In fact, he was lucky to be alive. The only reason he received the surgery was because his childhood friend — the one he spent most of his mandated time with on the Island before the accident — urged her parents to give him the surgery. Her parents, it turns out, were the Heads of Development on cybernetics that used Trained Agents. Her father developed cybernetics, and her mother studied shattering AGMI to obtain Trained Agents, as if they were Uranium molecules. Simply put, they had massive influence and sway in the Commonwealth.

But any thoughts of how lucky he was — or unlucky in his particular case — quickly disappeared. He strained himself to hear if among those approaching he could hear any military sort, like the military cadence of combat boots against sterile floor tiles. After all, he possessed something he shouldn’t. Perhaps, he thought, he should just come clean and admit that something went wrong. Perhaps, that way, they would be merciful.

But then the pain set in, and he screamed. He screamed so hard, he actually felt when his vocal cords tore themselves apart. Again. It wasn’t just his throat; in that much pain, his brain went into fight or flight mode, and when he gripped the handles on the doors of the pod, he did so with such strength that he tore his arm ligaments off the bone, and even his muscles disintegrated. Not that he did any damage to the pod door — it was sturdy. But he wasn’t aware of his actions. It was the only thing he could do. He was faintly aware of the heart monitor beating out a tune to a metronome set to upwards of three beats per second. On the pain scale, he was a solid twenty out of ten.

If he was competing in the World’s Pain Olympics, he would have been the undisputed champion forever. And he really wished that the reward for first place was death.

But no. They would not let him die so easily. He was an investment. Property. Apparently, when he was in his coma, they asked his ghost — which was something they could do — if he would accept this arrangement in exchange for living. And his ghost, foolishly, accepted.

These days, when someone was born to citizens, or became a citizen, they would receive a chip in the nape of their neck. This chip had many functions, many of them important to the Commonwealth, but it also allowed one to become part of the Cybernetic Collective Consciousness, also known as the Cyber Noosphere, and best known as the Cybersphere. Every thought, idea, and dream was now a fortress in one’s mind, and as such, could be shared with others — and monitored — at the speed of thought. One could communicate with others, share whiskey and make love, in virtual mind-constructs so long as they were close to a terminal. It was within these mind-constructs that the ghost existed; a fundamental part of one's identity and self-image; one's consciousness, so to speak.

The old days of slow internet were gone, and now, became just a tiny part of the grander Information Sphere the advent of the Cybersphere created. Crime became a thing of the past, while such things like creativity, originality and individuality were somehow maintained — although, some people suspected the veracity of such claims.

True or not, he, a damaged and broken soul, had nothing to do with it. Even though the Commonwealth claimed to only monitor thoughts passively for crime indicators, such as psychopathy, he was certain that at any moment now, some Colonel or something would burst into the room and summarily execute him for possessing a “Weapon of Mass Destruction”.

Not that he could be certain of anything, when his morphine dosage was maxed out and of no help at all. If he had the presence of mind to say or do anything, surely, he would’ve just screamed: “Please kill me”.

The thought appeared in his mind as if it was his own; it was mocking him. He knew what it meant. Two hours until it all stopped. Two hours until he could forget about the waking world and the pain that came with it. Its origin, however, made a mockery of it. It was not his thought.

In modern science fiction, the idea of possessing AGMI, or the so-called mythical scientific unicorn that was a Machine-Mind Interface, was received with awe and wonder. Kids his age would be overjoyed to hear the words of an Artificial Intelligence in their mind, which would lead to better grades, improved performance at jobs — which no longer existed — and awkward, but heart-warming romance. But he was not one of those people. If anything, he wished he could meet one of those scriptwriters and bust their noses in. Reality was much different than fiction.

Fiction never went into detail about the pain. Fiction never even considered the fundamental problem in this worthless endeavor: how do you translate 1s and 0s to something the brain could understand?

It will take time for your brain to get used to it, the doctors said. Yeah. Right.

He felt someone remove the bandages over his eyes, and light filtered into his optical receptors — the natural one, and the artificial one.

The burning, dimensionless and colorless sphere of electrons firing off photons was someone’s head. He knew this instinctively, but not factually. He could not perceive shapes, or geometry. It was a flaw with the human understanding of reality, born of their meat-space perception. The world, as we knew it, was a fabrication of the brain. Fundamentally, reality was molecules, quantum fields and photons; everything else was a desperate attempt to make sense of it all. For some reason, mathematical constructs — geometry and shapes — were in his case part of that fabrication. At the very least, he thought a sphere should be a sphere, a square a square, and a rectangle a rectangle. But that was not the case.

When the doctor spoke, he could actually see the shockwaves of sound travelling through the fog of baryons and electrons. “The pain is not real, Arnel. The pain is not real. It is just in your mind.”

He repeated the words over and over again, as if it was some kind of mantra. If he was not tied down, he’d punch the doctor right in the face. Yes, it was real. No, the mantra did not help. If anything, it made it even worse.

Also, who the fuck was Arnel?

Oh. The distant memory of his first time in the simulation pod — the one he had at home — came to the surface like a nuclear submarine bursting through ice. He had so much trouble selecting a name for his virtual character that he just ended up going with a sadistic butchering of his nickname — Arn — and ended up with Aren.

It wasn’t just his name he was confused about. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was still expecting the orc ambush, side by side with high ranking military officers to put him out of his misery.

But no one in that room was too concerned with the blurring line of virtual and real, they had other, more pressing concerns.

“Arnel, while we are here, we will reset your pod timer. In the meantime, can you tell me how many fingers I am holding up?” the doctor asked, and Arnel couldn’t tell if they were male or female. He did not so much hear the words as he perceived them or became aware of them. As if it was second-hand knowledge — as if someone, or something, was narrating the words to him.

Of course, he could not see anything except the blinding light that was reality itself, radiating in the entire electromagnetic spectrum. It came as sound, light, taste, smell — everything but touch — and it came all at once. It was overwhelming.

“How about this,” the doctor said, when the answer to his question was only more agonized screaming. “Can you read my name tag?”

What fucking name tag?!

Anger, and thoughts of anger and malevolence, were the only thing that could still pierce the overwhelming veil of pain and sensation. This was, in all honesty, not the kind of person Arnel was. He was a calm, polite person. He would never swear or curse. He held harmony in high regard and wanted to be treated the way he’d treat others. He was forgiving and understanding, even at his young age. But this experience — this cold reality — changed something in him, or at least, brought something to the surface.

< Name: Ermin Saltzer. Occupation: Scientist. Employment: Head of Research at Sector 9 Military Research Institute. Criminal record and employment history: ...>

A long list of jobs, including a history of education and general knowledge about the doctor appeared in Arnel’s mind. Including confidential information.

“Ermin Saltzer!” Arnel shouted at the top of his lungs, because in that moment, he actually fooled himself into believing that, if he passed the test, perhaps they would just let him go back to the virtual world.

A surprised gasp emitted from someone behind the doctor, and somehow, Arnel was aware that the doctor narrowed his eyes. Not that Arnel could see this. It was narrated to him. Something that didn’t happen before. Besides, how does reading a name tag give a full list of job employment and the criminal record? Or even Social Class?

Arnel knew that Ermin Saltzer was a Class E Citizen — basically a millionaire and a critical component of the Commonwealth.

“Actually, my name tag says Ermin Wright. Ermin Saltzer is my real identity,” the doctor said and straightened up.

A tense silence settled in the room. It lasted for all of thirty seconds. Arnel knew that he messed up. Arnel knew that both he and Ermin, and possibly everyone in the room, knew that the information Arnel got was from the AI.

Then, Ermin chuckled and patted Arnel’s shoulder, and gave it a firm squeeze. “Arnel, we are going to do great things together. Just hang in there for a bit longer, all right? I believe in you.” He didn't sound angry, or alarmed. He was proud of Arnel.

The words, especially the last part, resonated with Arnel. They induced a sense of security, even though Arnel knew, in a way, that this was a false sense of security. But still, with nowhere else to go, his mind latched onto the words.

“Reset his pod,” Ermin called out. “Set it to sleep mode for an hour, and then send him back to Singularity.”

“Yes, Sir!” Several voices responded in unison, and before the count of ten, Arnel drifted off into the blessed peace and silence of unconsciousness.