So. I figured it's time I teased since I haven't in so long. Also, I promisepromisepromise that I will get back to regularly updating The Raven Desk. Life isn't hectic but there are things going on and I'm learning (slowly) how to juggle all of them. Also. Trying to make life-altering decisions which is very, very difficult. But I'll resume my three day a week schedule soon. Soon. But yes, in lieu of that, the first almost 400 words of Eidolon.
Greta is a D cup. She has blonde hair and blue eyes. Her back hurts, but she smiles anyway and takes her cup of coffee from the barista. The stiletto heels that she’s wearing belong to her mother. And she stole the makeup on her face from her twenty two year old cousin, Paige.
She’s also not me.
For such an empty mind, she was difficult to hack. I expect state secrets, or rendezvous points with drug dealers to take up the virtual space in her head. Instead, all I hear is a constant litany of ‘my back aches’ that is sometimes replaced with ‘my ankles are sore’.
They’re also fat, Greta. Your ankles are also fat.
That’s a fact buried in the corner of her mind. She ignores it with practiced ease and takes an experimental sip of her coffee.
Even though I’m not Greta, I’m sharing her mind. And I can taste the caramel laced through the coffee. And the ice chunks crunching against her teeth. And the way her ankle wobbles when her heel gets caught in the sidewalk crack.
It’s 2158 and we still have side walk cracks.
Why?
I decide I don’t want to deal with her pain. She’s going to fall in eight seconds and scrape her knee. Her coffee will spill all over the front of her new sun dress. She might even cry.
And I’d be forced to cry with her. Even though it’s not my mind, I’m sharing it. There are rules.
I disconnect and log out just before her knees hit the ground. From my vantage point in the Network, I can read the coding of Greta’s mind. She’s fallen. Her knees hurt.
And now she cries.
I block her and let myself float up into the cyber stream.
Literally – physically – there are no levels to the cyber stream. But that’s how I see it. There are levels and wires of coded information swimming in a million different directions.
Even the president is floating somewhere around here. Most of the code is locked up in little bundles, hidden from the casual observer. People nowadays guard against intruders and viruses so everyone has a firewall. But some walls are stronger than others.
