I was a fighter pilot. I was a big game hunter. I was pole vaulting a crossbar 20 feet from the ground, my abdomen tensed, legs extended before me — then I was rocketing through the valley of a 90-foot wave, its white-toothed crest collapsing into my surfboard’s wake. I was —
“My turn!” The voice bled through my soundscape, ripping me back to reality. My temples stung where the sticky electrodes had been torn free.
“Horatio, bruh,” I groaned, gulping my lager to quash the vertigo; I ran a hand over my tingling scalp. “What’s your rush?”
We were gathered around the Neuroflix console — Horatio, Enigma and me — with our collections of non-fungible memories laid out on the Persian rug. I’d been halfway through Xtreme Victory, one of those discount, lossy memory reels that OmniMart sold for bulk release. It was all I could afford from my summer job in the university neuro lab.
“Elliott, I beg you, stop buying that crap.” Horatio stuck his ’trodes into place, their suction cups flanking his bushy sideburns. “It’ll dull your senses, and then you won’t appreciate the finer selections. Like mine.”
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“Hold up!” Enigma extended a manicured finger towards Horatio’s deck. “Is this what I think it is?” She picked out a glossy cartridge, squinting at its fine print with one mascara’d eye. “Holy …”
A BlueChip memory. We knew Horatio’s family was loaded, but this was something special — high-fidelity sensoryscape plucked from the mind of some celeb or head of state, only a single copy issued via irreversible destructive upload. These NFMs were auctioned for charity or sold to obsessive private collectors for an absurd sum. But here we were, shooting the shit in Horatio’s room, staring at one.
“No way,” I said. “Whose?”
“Jeremy Ouzanian’s.” Horatio gave us a sheepish grin. “My dad knows a guy who knows a guy.”
Enigma whistled. “Damn, I wonder what that billionaire has been up to lately.” She placed back the cartridge, almost reverent. “Saving it for a special occasion?”
I grabbed for the BlueChip with a grin. “So I can finally sample your finer selections?” But as my hand drew away it unearthed a row of worn cartridges crammed beneath. “Horatio, what’s this?” I picked one up, started to read the text scrawled across its label: indonesia_landslide/’29. “What the hell …”
Black market NFMs. Pirated memories, illicit copies of copies of some hellishly dark stuff: natural disasters, war crimes, terrorism. Commercial trauma-mining was strictly illegal, but bootlegged copies still flooded the dark web.
“What’re you doing with this crap?” Enigma slammed shut his deck like it was Pandora’s box.
Horatio barked a laugh. “You’ve never been curious?” And then he threw me a familiar look, the half-taunt, half-dare that had pulled us into so many testosterone-fuelled doom loops last semester. “Whaddya say, Elliot? Something spicier than Olympic figure skating?” He picked a new cartridge and held it out enticingly: bridge_failure/’28.
I cut off Enigma’s objection with one raised finger, smirking at Horatio. “I’ll play it. But then I get your BlueChip.” The resale value could float me the rest of my college career, and then some.
“Elliott, you’re killing me,” he grumbled, raking a hand through his hair, considering. “But fine. Deal.”
I triumphantly stuck my ’trodes back into place as Horatio slotted the cartridge into the console. Enigma stepped away to retrieve more kelp crisps — her arms crossed, tut-tutting the entire way — agreeing to stick around only out of concern for my psychological safety, because even idiots deserved their mental health (as she put it).
“Ready,” I said, settling myself in front of the console. “And if anything seems off, please just pull me ou —”
I’m driving. Fast, too fast. It’s pitch dark — a nameless back road, no traffic, the empty night broken only by the sweep of my headlights. Ahead, the steel trestle of a bridge stitches the grey fog, spanning a frozen river.
— his brainwaves are out of range —
