GoKawiilI was a fighter pilot. I was a big game hunter. I was pole vaulting a crossbar 20 feet from the ground, my abdomen tensed, legs extended before me — then I was rocketing through the valley of a 90-foot wave, its white-toothed crest collapsing into my surfboard’s wake. I was —
“My turn!” The voice bled through my soundscape, ripping me back to reality. My temples stung where the sticky electrodes had been torn free.
“Horatio, bruh,” I groaned, gulping my lager to quash the vertigo; I ran a hand over my tingling scalp. “What’s your rush?”
We were gathered around the Neuroflix console — Horatio, Enigma and me — with our collections of non-fungible memories laid out on the Persian rug. I’d been halfway through Xtreme Victory, one of those discount, lossy memory reels that OmniMart sold for bulk release. It was all I could afford from my summer job in the university neuro lab.
“Elliott, I beg you, stop buying that crap.” Horatio stuck his ’trodes into place, their suction cups flanking his bushy sideburns. “It’ll dull your senses, and then you won’t appreciate the finer selections. Like mine.”
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“Hold up!” Enigma extended a manicured finger towards Horatio’s deck. “Is this what I think it is?” She picked out a glossy cartridge, squinting at its fine print with one mascara’d eye. “Holy …”
A BlueChip memory. We knew Horatio’s family was loaded, but this was something special — high-fidelity sensoryscape plucked from the mind of some celeb or head of state, only a single copy issued via irreversible destructive upload. These NFMs were auctioned for charity or sold to obsessive private collectors for an absurd sum. But here we were, shooting the shit in Horatio’s room, staring at one.
“No way,” I said. “Whose?”
“Jeremy Ouzanian’s.” Horatio gave us a sheepish grin. “My dad knows a guy who knows a guy.”
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