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together to help Mari, another passenger
from the Bard , just a few weeks ago. A tenuous trust had begun, but just
as quickly deteriorated. It was probably Sean’s fault, but he had issues with
getting too close to people, especially ones which reminded him of his dead
brother and father.
    Like most Armadans, David was
open and content, the latter most likely a result of certain aggressor genes
being turned off at birth. Sean envied that. He secretly suspected some of his
problems fitting into society stemmed from being an intercaste hybrid, a
halfcaste. His mother had him classified as a Socialite so he wouldn’t have to
spend his life in the military, but as a result, he never underwent the appropriate
procedures that would have helped him to adjust, that would have calmed him.
    He certainly wasn’t calm now.
Maybe he was overreacting. He could have left the door ajar during his last
visit to the chamber. That seemed unlikely; he was seldom careless. He was
about to hurl another accusation at David when a whir in the back of his brain
clipped off his response. The fragger bosses had just summoned him to another
meeting in a specified world in the V-side. Second one today. Something big was
breaking out.
    “Just…stay the fuck out of
there,” he managed, making a less than graceful exit.
     
    The only time Sean lay on his bed
was to enter the V-side. It was more comfortable to sprawl out on the puffy
mattress than to fold himself up on the couch in the sitting room where he
normally slept. Plus he could get the bedroom dark enough that his pupils
opened to their fullest. The bigger his pupils, the faster the neural
stimulator would kick in.
    With the tips of his fingers, he
slipped the silver v-mitters onto his corneas. The tinny smell of the conductor
fluids was unpleasant, but would allow his brain waves to hitch a ride on an
electro-magnetic stream emanating from the engine room’s secret port.
    Ninety-nine percent of those citizens
who entered the V-side were gamers looking to escape from a bad day into a
fantastical landscape or flex their muscles through neural stimulation. Some
users sought out stimulation of another type, which was why sex worlds proved
so lucrative.
    To fraggers, it was a medium for
discreet training and communication without need of a physical headquarters.
Compliments of the Embassy, the virtual submersion worlds and plethora of drugs
associated with them were meant to serve as an outlet for aggression amongst
the more unruly Uppers and mindless entertainment for the Lowers.
    The original V-side source was
the now defunct comm system from one of Palomin’s worldships. But once new,
unregulated technologies sprouted up all over the V-side, the Embassy attempted
to shut down the virtual arena in order to control the latest advances. The
Sovereign withheld the tech from the normal population until such a time as he
and his corrupt council could profit from it.
    A group of tech savvy individuals
staged a protest by taking over the Media for exactly nineteen minutes and
thirty-three seconds to broadcast anti-Embassy sentiments and to expose Simon
Prollixer’s illegal takeover of the Embassy. The first fraggers were born, and
abruptly died by the hands of the Sovereign’s contractors.
    Fortunately, others listened and
managed to create a secret array with the remaining comm systems scattered
around the six moons. No matter what the Embassy did, they couldn’t bring down
the V-side. For years no protests arose, but all that time the fraggers were
regrouping, Uppers and Lowers, Armadans and Socialites, even a scarce few rogue
contractors, coming together for the same purpose—policing the Embassy and its
oppressive policies.
    Sean relaxed as the sensation of
a cool liquid flowed behind his eyes, preceding the insertion of his avatar,
Zak, into the virtual lobby.
    Okay, Zak, time to go to work .
    It was like a very lucid dream.
Sean was completely immersed as though he were physically there, not