--The countdown depletes there in the corner of his mind, a mute and steady tick, tick, tick to go with the hiss of his sensory feedback and the rasp of texture against his neck and the hot metal smell of--
Gasoline? A match burning? A knife being sharpened? Rain through city smog? A cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray in a dark room? Synaptic path not found. Tick, tick, tick goes the reset timer against the broken black space of the whole, indescribable world. Maybe he is on a rooftop. Maybe he is in a cold room. Maybe no time has passed at all. Maybe all of it has. Maybe there is nothing left of him and his thoughts are a shape in a dark space that will only exist for as long as he's online.
00:02:01 ]
Hello?
[He thinks he says in the dark to the rise and fall sensation of movement. Up and down are two directions like forward and backward and he can't say which is where and how he relates to them. The crackle and pop of the world under his fingertips is incorrect. Air doesn't snap. There's a short in his textural processing and it will take-- a diagnostic report unfolds in the darkness. It blinks, running in stops and starts like a question mark. Maybe that's ruined too: a picture of him viewed through a pinhole camera made by small hands for a grade school science fair.
He thinks he can hear himself, the sound of his own voice strange and mottled and frightened in a way that is nonstandard. His voice says,] --Are you there?
no subject
. . . .
. . . . . . . .
SYSTEM REBOOT SUCCESSFUL WITH: 14 ERRORS
STAND BY FOR RE-INITIALIZATION IN: 0:02:30
--The countdown depletes there in the corner of his mind, a mute and steady tick, tick, tick to go with the hiss of his sensory feedback and the rasp of texture against his neck and the hot metal smell of--
Gasoline? A match burning? A knife being sharpened? Rain through city smog? A cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray in a dark room? Synaptic path not found. Tick, tick, tick goes the reset timer against the broken black space of the whole, indescribable world. Maybe he is on a rooftop. Maybe he is in a cold room. Maybe no time has passed at all. Maybe all of it has. Maybe there is nothing left of him and his thoughts are a shape in a dark space that will only exist for as long as he's online.
00:02:01 ]
Hello?
[He thinks he says in the dark to the rise and fall sensation of movement. Up and down are two directions like forward and backward and he can't say which is where and how he relates to them. The crackle and pop of the world under his fingertips is incorrect. Air doesn't snap. There's a short in his textural processing and it will take-- a diagnostic report unfolds in the darkness. It blinks, running in stops and starts like a question mark. Maybe that's ruined too: a picture of him viewed through a pinhole camera made by small hands for a grade school science fair.
He thinks he can hear himself, the sound of his own voice strange and mottled and frightened in a way that is nonstandard. His voice says,] --Are you there?