Read The Living for Free Online Page B

of getting to know someone.
    His fantasies are usually as simplistic as he is. In the early stages he liked chasing me, he liked to feel like he was pursuing me. He
creates
something like a jungle for the chase, with long, moist inviz-coloured plants. He puts me in a tacky short ‘busy’-coloured dress. I agree to be the victim, to be pursued, and run from him through the ‘jungle’. I part the grey stalks with my hands, they’re slippery and cold and dead – but I breathe life into them. I paint his dull jungle in the brightest shades of ‘I’m feeling lucky’. I fill his plants with warm, sticky moisture, I make them move, make them wind round my naked legs and creep up under my dress.
    The slippery stalks stroke me as I run… Ef is getting closer, I can hear him breathing hoarsely, he shoves me and I fall down face first. He turns me onto my back and tries to push my legs apart but I squeeze them tightly together. So tightly thatthe stalks crawling between my legs snap – they’re filled with sticky moisture. He leans over me and I look into his mirrored mask…
    I never see his face. Not just in
luxury
– never at all. In first layer he has to wear the mask the whole time, but that doesn’t really matter, we hardly ever meet in first layer. What matters is that he doesn’t have a face in any layer. He has that same mirrored mask in
socio
. It’s a mystery. Even if you assume that his face is deformed, in
socio
he could choose any user pic.
    What would you have to be like to wear a mirror mask in all layers? What would you have to be like to dress strictly in inviz not only in first layer, but in
socio
too? What would you have to be like to turn your
socio
cell into this copy of a standard first-layer living quarters? I’ve been to his cell a few times. A bleak place. So bleak it’s as if there’s no
socio
at all… The first time I even tried to drink water from the tap. To check. Ef watched me and seemed flattered. He said, ‘This is my living quarters in first layer – an exact copy.’
    He said, ‘A real planetman’s cell should be strictly functional.’
    What must you be like to drag all the poverty and simplicity of first layer into a world where nothing is impossible?
    You probably have to be obsessed.
    …I never see his face, but in
luxury
, glap, I can choose what I see for myself. I can make a face for him…
    Luxury
is one of the Living’s greatest
socio
-sacraments. A garden of delights in which the fantasies of every participant in the
act
let out shoots and blossom. They get woven together these fantasies, they grow into each other, become one… ‘Absolute unity – that’s what brings us joy,’ as it says in the
socio
settings. ‘In
luxury
mode you share all of the five senses you have access to with your friends.’
    It doesn’t say in the settings that
luxury
mode activates the part of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens. But I know something about it. As long as the
act
is going on, everythingyou see, hear, smell or touch with your tongue or skin, excites your pleasure centre.
    …I make a face for him. It’s different every time, once I even tried my own. He doesn’t see himself, but he can feel the transformation , he can feel that he is losing control over what is happening. Then he shakes off the face I’ve made, and takes me to a different location with a jerk. Normally it’s something like an abandoned building site or warehouses in some wasteland . Bits of stones, the rusted skeletons of cars, concrete blocks… Solitude. I’ve named this place the Wastes of Solitude. He leaves me there alone – to wait until he appears.
    In first layer (after the
act
I always check the chronometer in the settings) only a couple of minutes pass, but here in
luxury
it lasts a thousand days – that’s what his fantasy is, that’s his move, and whatever I do, however much I try, I’m not able to reduce this period. Maybe it’s all because of the depression which takes