Marmalade. Why was the whole fucking world marmalade? Edron had heard of Virt-worlds that were made out of candy or liquor or narcotics but fucking marmalade?
He stretched out one hand from the bed and watched in fascination as it moved molasses-slow through the thick air. Thick, humid, sticky. Orange. Everything a sickly shade of orange and barely breathable it was so cloying.
‘I didn't order this,’ he managed to murmur into the wet air. ‘Where's my fucking out-contact? I didn't order…’ he trailed off as a figure slipped into being in the corner of his vision. Creepy. Tall and exceedingly thin. It moved towards the edge of the bed like a twitching praying mantis, seeming to flicker in and out of solidity beside him. Cocking an elongate, triangular head. Rasping in some weird language as it slipped from shadow to colour like a flame going from blue to orange and back again. Who the hell came up with this program?
‘Where the fuck am I?’ Edron demanded of the thing. ‘I want to end the program. How did I…’ he trailed off again, suddenly confused. What the hell happened last night? He had been high, maybe higher than usual. Obviously got himself jacked up into some super weird VR. He'd woken up like this before but usually it was just some porn world or a run of the mill celebrity fantasy. Maybe a hell-world colonist simulation if he was feeling pumped. But nothing like this. Not some weird alien, orange world populated by twitchy stick figures.
He tried to collect his thoughts, felt a sharp pain through his head at his neural node points.
‘I want to end the program,’ he repeated thickly.
Next to the bed, the bizarre mantid-thing cocked its head slightly. Chattered at him in that same bizarre tongue.
‘I want to end the fucking program!’ he roared. For a second he became aware the thing had eyes. Two embers searing into his own as an overwhelming sudden sense of surprise and anger surged through him. Then the pain in his head spiked into agony. Edron screamed and the world went instantly dark.
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When he awoke he was unsure of how much time had passed. That was the first unusual thing. The second was that he was thirsty, burning in fact. The VRs usually came with suppressants for those sorts of physical needs so the sensation was both unpleasant and disturbingly real. The bed was gone and now Edron found himself in a chamber, white in all directions. Impossible actually to tell the walls from the floor or ceiling. They all blended, perfectly, endlessly white. The only trace of familiarity from his previous awakening was the same thick, treacle atmosphere.
He stood, shakily, and attempted to walk but the lack of any visual clue as to where the place began or ended proved too disconcerting. He sat again, heavily and tried to piece together what the hell had happened. He didn't recall entering any Virt-worlds. He'd smoked some stuff, the usual assortment and then, maybe… something tugged at the edge of his mind. Felix. At the Blue Rouge Lounge. He'd whispered something into Edron’s ear like a hustling pimp while they were both high on blues and reds and a cocktail of other narcotic fumes.
‘It's new Ed. Totally new and there's nothing else like it. It's a high like no other.’
That's it! I'm fucking high! He almost laughed in relief. A bad trip, all he had to do was come back down, get a hold of himself and this would all be…
As he thought it, a band of white around him turned translucent. He realised there were now dozens of the same, strange flickering beings he'd encountered earlier watching him silently. They all looked slightly mantid in shape, but some bore elaborate head ornamentation, almost horns, others large, stylised eyes, all shifting maddeningly in and out of focus. Some trip. He started to laugh. Some fucking trip. Around him, the things started laughing in sequence, as if picking up on his cue. The noise was utterly alien, but somehow recognizable for what it was.
‘How the hell do I end this?’ he asked, peering from face to alien face. ‘How do I end it? How fucking long does this last?’ He shouted towards the end and with a sickening lurch, the room began spinning. Around him the faces of the mantid creatures swirled in and out of vision, sibilantly repeating his words in a way that suddenly made them a threat:
‘How long does this last? Last? Last? How to end it? End it!’
With an enraged shout, Edron lashed out. Immediately, a bolt of searing pain ripped through him where his neural implants were. Around him dozens of eyes flared.
‘How to end it? How long does it last?'
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
‘Ed,’ the voice familiar as he was being shaken. ‘Ed man, wake the eff up.’
He opened his eyes a third time to the thick sticky atmosphere and murmured a pained ‘Fuck.’ Every thought came thick and groggy. He was in the white room again.
Above him, a concerned face loomed like a coffee-colored moon. ‘Ed man,’ Felix said worried. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Felix? Jesus, Felix, what the hell did you give me man? Is it over?’
He focused on the other man’s worried face. Felix looked spooked. Proper spooked. The enormity of that pierced Edron's fogged mind and he pulled himself into a sitting position.
‘Jesus Ed, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have… I …’
Felix was crouched on his heels, rocking back and forth, clasping and unclasping his hands behind his head as he babbled.
‘I didn't know man. I didn't know… I would never…’
‘Felix, focus man. It's a trip. It's just a trip. What did we take? What was that shit?’
Next to him, the other man shook his head sadly.
‘It isn't a trip anymore Ed. It isn't a trip. You've been out for days…’
Days. The word slapped into Edron's consciousness. ‘What the hell are you talking about Felix? How long till this shit ends man? It's freaking me out.’
For the first time in as far as he could remember, Edron saw a look of pure terror in his friend’s face.
‘It's been days,’ Felix repeated numbly. ‘The smoke, it wasn't a drug, it's not a trip. It was some kind of…. Some kind of gateway Ed. Some kind of fucking interdimensional portal, man, I don't know but…’
‘Felix, what the fuck are you talking about?’ Ed demanded, starting to panic. His voice took on a louder tone and Felix instantly grabbed his arm, the look of fear he wore deepening.
‘Don't shout Ed,’ the other man whispered tersely. His eyes rolled wildly from side to side, as if looking for something in the vast whiteness around them.
‘Don't fucking shout,’ he repeated even softer, ‘They really, really hate that.’
Image from wikimedia commons: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mantis#/media/File%3AMantis_head.jp
This short story is an entry for the 