Crash!

Another plate slammed onto the floor. Peter’s mother was in full voice in the kitchen. “You’re late!"

Smash!

"Again!"

Thud!

"I called your office!"

Clang!

"You weren’t there! It’s that damned slinky secretary of yours, isn’t it? You're sleeping with her behind my back!” Every scream was punctuated with flying crockery, cutlery or cookware.

“No, it’s not!” bellowed his father as he dodged another kitchen missile. “My secretary’s name is Steve, and I’m definitely not sleeping with him!”

“Liar!”

“Ugh. I can’t… I just can’t.”

Peter closed the door to his room and flopped onto the bed in the darkness. For all they say on the newscasts that we’re living in a golden age of humanity, it looks like we’re still repeating the same mistakes of yesteryear. Peter’s parents had been fighting more and more over the last few months.

It had started with little niggles. Words spoken louder than intended. Screens switched to soaps right before the end of a sportscast. Shower screens left wet and dinners that contained more quinoa than any sane person could stand. Peter’s father had been voluntold to work slightly longer hours after a co-worker had quit unexpectedly, or so he says.

It had escalated to open war when Peter’s mother had… accidentally… backed into his father’s motorcycle. Though it wasn't badly damaged he had needed to take the bus to work after that. She insisted it wasn’t on purpose. Peter’s dad had started spending even more time at the office after that – probably scared she would ‘accidentally’ back over him. It didn't stop him from mowing over her favourite flower bed one weekend though. ‘Accidentally’ of course.

The lights of the city flickered and flashed across Peter’s ceiling. He watched them in the not-quite-gloom that only life in the capital can provide. He couldn’t be bothered getting up to pull the curtains that would provide actual darkness. Instead he lay still and let the tears pool in his eyes and leak down his cheeks. Not so long ago Peter's life had been, if not perfect, then at least normal.

He lifted his head and scratched at the rough ridge of scar tissue leftover from getting the neural implant that was standard issue for everybody on their sixteenth birthday. There was supposed to be a very fine incision scar if any at all, but there had been a power flicker when the auto-surgeon was making the cut. It had nearly botched the job and could have left Peter a vegetable or a quadriplegic. He had just laid there, mortally afraid, his spinal cord exposed and hoping with all his might that the anaesthetic didn't wear off. The nurse had managed to get the system running on emergency power to finish the implantation and had manually closed the incision herself.

His father had sued for malpractice of course. Unfortunately, the judge had ruled that the clinic couldn’t be held liable and they had had to shoulder the legal fees as well as the cost of the surgery. Ever since the Unaffordable Healthcare Act had passed, medical insurance had become impossible to obtain. Only government officials and billionaires received free medical attention now. There was even an extra fee applied for having a human operate on him, a "luxury" reserved for the ultra-rich.

He guessed that was where this had all started. Peter felt responsible for the tightening of the belts and missed holidays even though his parents said they didn’t blame him. They had needed to move from their much bigger house in the suburbs into this tiny apartment though.

Peter triggered the internet function with a thought. At least the implant functioned just fine. The search page popped up; translucent at first then obscuring his vision as he shut out the world and began to scroll through his social media homepage. Not that he was particularly social on the site. He followed some celebrities and a few friends from before the move. Peter had joined some communities but didn’t post to them very often and didn’t garner many replies when he did. Many friends that he had before the incident had fallen out of contact and he had not been willing nor able to make the effort to get them back. He could see their posts as he scrolled past, bright shining faces having fun, living lives he was no longer part of.

Johnny, with his unusual numerical middle name "OneOneSeven" roller skating in the street and nearly getting hit by a car in the process. Both of his dads losing their minds in the comments section over how he could have been killed.

Sue-Ellen and Billy-Bob, the twins from up the street where he used to live. Their strange family where everyone had two names. Their even stranger great-uncle who used to dress up as a ghost with his friends, with their white robes and pillowcase with eyeholes cut out of them dancing around a big "T" on fire. He did have a nice vintage car though, he called it Lee for some reason, that had even been around long enough to be given a military rank.

Friends of friends swimming in a pool at the foot of a waterfall in Venezuela. They’d taken the Hyperloop down for an overnight trip. Twenty years ago no-one would have believed that the engineers messing about with underground trains in vacuum tunnels would come to anything. Now Loop travel had made air travel obsolete.

A gaggle of young men dressed to the nines rocking out at a Justine Bieber concert. There was even an embedded video of a tribute she sang with her parents Justin and Miley about her grandfather Billy-Ray. They were both fresh out of rehab and weren't exactly on their game, but Justine made up for it.

So much fun that he couldn’t afford to join. Fun that he doubted he could feel even if he could afford it. It was like his emotions had become dulled, ephemeral. Only the sadness remained. Sadness that smothered and overwhelmed him.

Scrolling, ever scrolling through the endless feed of life-that-happens-to-other-people. Instead of distracting him from his predicament, it merely intensified his melancholy. Peter ached for the life he had once enjoyed, a happy family, friends, a future to look forward to. He couldn’t even close his eyes to the stream, it was an image generated in his brain that replaced the input from his optic nerve. He continued to scroll as his mind wandered away. Washed forth on a tide of events he could never be a part of, only watch from the far side of the digital divide.

Peter scrolled mindlessly until a flashing banner caught his attention. A community that he had joined on a whim, after watching an old film about artificial intelligences, had posted an advertisement. A company had announced a brand new Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, or VR-MMORPG, was coming soon. “Brand new” was actually months ago, judging by the date stamp on the post. Peter had obviously been scrolling longer than he thought. He glanced at the clock in the corner of his vision.

01:35.

“Meh,” he thought to himself. “I’ll sleep in class, nobody cares anyway.”

Peter used his virtual hand to tap on the banner and the game’s site popped up in a fresh window. A fanfare announced the page’s loading and a teaser video began to play.