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On the abject absence of warmth
It is incredibly cold.
She awakes inexplicably, and her body is frigid and unresponsive. It doesn't want to move, the only thing she can feel is cold. She gets the sensation that she should be dead. This experience should have killed her. Instead she has awoken, she can taste the memories of bile on her tongue, of blood on her lips. Her eyes water, somehow still movable, and she looks up at the clear night sky. At least, what she can see of it over the rise of the grass on either side of the ditch. She tries to move again, to sit up, to do something, but her body will not respond. It is as if her limbs have been recast in lead and then cooled, refrigerated. She watches the simulated galaxy edge creep a little further across the Siberian sky, and realizes finally, fully, that a series of mistakes once again has found her dead at the roadside. Except this place, it was not designed for death.
Laika closes her eyes and lets her consciousness drift a bit, then suddenly another of her appears standing alongside the ditch in which she lays expiring. She is new again, whole and warm. Though it is extremely, bitterly, violently, furiously cold here. The other of herself finally stills, and abruptly vanishes. Quit.
She nearly met that fate before she uploaded. A miscalculation in times prior, a failing to account for currency exchanges and inflation rates. The surprise inheritor of the family business, a bastard child suddenly laden with wealth and responsibility when her entire "family" was abruptly unmade, caught in the blast of an attack, the only survivor was her. The half-breed, the cheat child, disowned by half and living in another country. She gleefully scraped together all the wealth of the deceased, raked all their assets into her own coffers as offered by the various governing bodies. Took it all for herself, spent a few nights in a nice hotel, invested everything into a controversial rocket launch, then booked a train ticket to Yakutsk. It took longer than expected to get the rockets ready, as it always does. She ran out of money, found herself homeless. Her upload paid for, but unavailable until after the System reached Lagrange stability. That time she was freezing to death on a bench, and was rescued by a cabbie who let her sleep in the garage where the cars were stored.
It paled in comparison to the cold here. Yakutsk winter was brutal, but it had nothing against the howl of the northern Siberian tundra from before the warming. She could feel herself beginning to chill again in such a short time, and this time engaged the safeties. Now she was warm and comfortable despite the ferocious simulated weather. She walked back into town, even though she could have teleported away from where she was. Frost clung to her nose and ears, but did not bite. A lesson, she told herself. Something in her pocket bothers her hand when she stuffs it into her coat for warmth. An empty liquor bottle. She jerks it out and throws it over her shoulder, it hits the ground and disintegrates. Cleaned up by the sim. If all such cleaning were so easy, life would be so much simpler.
Laika steps into a telecom booth outside and shuttered fuel station, a place where people once went to make calls on their mobile devices or through the offered hardwired monitor. Out of the howling wind and cold, where they could be seen and heard without actually entering a building. A queer concept, truly, but at this very moment in time she now understands why they existed. She unpockets one hand, taps at the screen with a padded fingertip. It lights up and responds. She punches in the reference number for her apartment back in public housing, politely minding the sim owner's request to use the telecom booths for entry/exit to the area, and vanishes in a wisp. The screen glows a moment longer in her absence, then once again every trace of unnatural light leaves the simulated space and the abandoned station falls dark. Just the prerecorded galaxy sweeping overhead and coloring the snow.
She arrives at home in unexpectedly good spirits, having once again survived quite the unique ordeal. This time she has a message waiting for her, she chooses to take all but direct emergency messages only at her apartment. Sensorium is not a bad way to communicate, but she mislikes the general public having a direct line to her nervous system. She likes to be able to leave her communication device at home, and go out drifting on her own. A message from the bartender, from Anton. Just checking in to make sure she was safe. She had apparently gotten drunk with surprising speed and was last seen staggering around outside the bar, singing an old Czech funerary hymn into the night sky and draining a bottle of unknown origin.
A soft chuckle to herself. It was an old habit, one she had long kicked before it destroyed her body but that she could now indulge without fear of much consequence beyond social implications. Perhaps she should resume moderating that one, lest it take her again. She sends a message back, offering thanks and apologies and a promise to visit again. However she would be glad to enjoy a few mugs of the warmed, sweet, spiced apple juice that ey had suggested last time. To stay in from the cold this time, enjoy the warmth of the hearth and the crunchy twisty fried potatoes instead of the false comfort that a few rounds of Svedka had to offer. She could repay her social debt in stories and laughter. Retell the tales told to her by her great grandmother, of the beauty of Romania in the before times, and leave her memories of that last winter clawing at her soul back in Yakutsk.
She awakes inexplicably, and her body is frigid and unresponsive. It doesn't want to move, the only thing she can feel is cold. She gets the sensation that she should be dead. This experience should have killed her. Instead she has awoken, she can taste the memories of bile on her tongue, of blood on her lips. Her eyes water, somehow still movable, and she looks up at the clear night sky. At least, what she can see of it over the rise of the grass on either side of the ditch. She tries to move again, to sit up, to do something, but her body will not respond. It is as if her limbs have been recast in lead and then cooled, refrigerated. She watches the simulated galaxy edge creep a little further across the Siberian sky, and realizes finally, fully, that a series of mistakes once again has found her dead at the roadside. Except this place, it was not designed for death.
Laika closes her eyes and lets her consciousness drift a bit, then suddenly another of her appears standing alongside the ditch in which she lays expiring. She is new again, whole and warm. Though it is extremely, bitterly, violently, furiously cold here. The other of herself finally stills, and abruptly vanishes. Quit.
She nearly met that fate before she uploaded. A miscalculation in times prior, a failing to account for currency exchanges and inflation rates. The surprise inheritor of the family business, a bastard child suddenly laden with wealth and responsibility when her entire "family" was abruptly unmade, caught in the blast of an attack, the only survivor was her. The half-breed, the cheat child, disowned by half and living in another country. She gleefully scraped together all the wealth of the deceased, raked all their assets into her own coffers as offered by the various governing bodies. Took it all for herself, spent a few nights in a nice hotel, invested everything into a controversial rocket launch, then booked a train ticket to Yakutsk. It took longer than expected to get the rockets ready, as it always does. She ran out of money, found herself homeless. Her upload paid for, but unavailable until after the System reached Lagrange stability. That time she was freezing to death on a bench, and was rescued by a cabbie who let her sleep in the garage where the cars were stored.
It paled in comparison to the cold here. Yakutsk winter was brutal, but it had nothing against the howl of the northern Siberian tundra from before the warming. She could feel herself beginning to chill again in such a short time, and this time engaged the safeties. Now she was warm and comfortable despite the ferocious simulated weather. She walked back into town, even though she could have teleported away from where she was. Frost clung to her nose and ears, but did not bite. A lesson, she told herself. Something in her pocket bothers her hand when she stuffs it into her coat for warmth. An empty liquor bottle. She jerks it out and throws it over her shoulder, it hits the ground and disintegrates. Cleaned up by the sim. If all such cleaning were so easy, life would be so much simpler.
Laika steps into a telecom booth outside and shuttered fuel station, a place where people once went to make calls on their mobile devices or through the offered hardwired monitor. Out of the howling wind and cold, where they could be seen and heard without actually entering a building. A queer concept, truly, but at this very moment in time she now understands why they existed. She unpockets one hand, taps at the screen with a padded fingertip. It lights up and responds. She punches in the reference number for her apartment back in public housing, politely minding the sim owner's request to use the telecom booths for entry/exit to the area, and vanishes in a wisp. The screen glows a moment longer in her absence, then once again every trace of unnatural light leaves the simulated space and the abandoned station falls dark. Just the prerecorded galaxy sweeping overhead and coloring the snow.
She arrives at home in unexpectedly good spirits, having once again survived quite the unique ordeal. This time she has a message waiting for her, she chooses to take all but direct emergency messages only at her apartment. Sensorium is not a bad way to communicate, but she mislikes the general public having a direct line to her nervous system. She likes to be able to leave her communication device at home, and go out drifting on her own. A message from the bartender, from Anton. Just checking in to make sure she was safe. She had apparently gotten drunk with surprising speed and was last seen staggering around outside the bar, singing an old Czech funerary hymn into the night sky and draining a bottle of unknown origin.
A soft chuckle to herself. It was an old habit, one she had long kicked before it destroyed her body but that she could now indulge without fear of much consequence beyond social implications. Perhaps she should resume moderating that one, lest it take her again. She sends a message back, offering thanks and apologies and a promise to visit again. However she would be glad to enjoy a few mugs of the warmed, sweet, spiced apple juice that ey had suggested last time. To stay in from the cold this time, enjoy the warmth of the hearth and the crunchy twisty fried potatoes instead of the false comfort that a few rounds of Svedka had to offer. She could repay her social debt in stories and laughter. Retell the tales told to her by her great grandmother, of the beauty of Romania in the before times, and leave her memories of that last winter clawing at her soul back in Yakutsk.