Chapter 2
After the incident with my father, both my brother and I struggled with nightmares for quite some time. I remember seeing therapist after therapist, but child therapy is a waste of time. How do you process something you can’t even begin to understand? How do you bring meaning to words you can’t even speak?
I remember many years after this, after my abuse at the hands of a “family friend”, my mother tried therapy again. At this point I was much older, 12 at the time, and I had very similar results. I couldn’t begin to process what happened to me, and a therapist didn’t help at all with it.
Anyways, sorry for the rant, I do that sometimes. Like… the passion wells up from inside, and you have to let it go, you know?
The incident was a catalyst to my own personal World War, as I like to call it. While all I wanted was to know my father, and after seeing him that way… I only wanted to know him more. This drove my brother the opposite way, all he wanted to do was escape away from my father anytime he was in the room.
Ultimately, that’s probably why my mother divorced him. See my brother was my mothers favorite child, the “baby”. I never begrudged him that. While all children should love their parents, we all have favorites regardless of what we tell ourselves. Its only natural.
But this is not entirely the reason for the divorce, I found out many years later. All those times he was “working” only, he was also seeing someone on the side. I guess I should explain what this all means in some context…I mean, if you are reading this, I assume you are from my time and place. But what with all our advancements in geospatial-time distortion, and recently arriving at Venus in manned space shuttles… who knows, maybe time travels a thing.
You see, the harness my father was hooked to, and the clear “webbed” suit carry all the physical sensation of whatever the person is experiencing within Babylon. Additionally, it takes care of the physical requirements for the person to be comfortable within their environment; such as keeping your body temperature regulated, allowing release of waste and… other… fluids, and more.
So having a digital “fling” is definitely a thing. We have civilian equivalents of the military rigs, they’re just not as… sophisticated. We can wear suits and log in, but the waste removal systems, nutrition supplement systems, and more are stupid expensive, solely accessible only to the rich generally. However, given how military service operates, it makes sense they get these issued systems to perform their work - especially when you could be logged in as long as 12 hours a day, and with the lockout, you can’t afford to log out for a bathroom break.
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So there I was, age 7, watching as we drove away from the only life I knew, with someone I still do not understand, and still want to understand. Maybe some things are left in the past.
Life’s about choices. That’s what I was always told, that I had choices. But for some of us, life doesn’t give us many avenues for choice now, does it?
After my parents divorce, I became… disconnected. My mother tried hard to keep our spirits up, but she was so busy working two jobs, we rarely saw her. Remember when I said AI would take all the “menial” jobs to allow for maximum human potential? Yeah, that was bullshit.
Mother worked as a waitress at a locally ran human food stand. While AI ran joints, like McDonalds, were all over the place, the… “cooks” at these places didn’t taste food. The difference between AI milled slop, and food cooked by real humans was night and day. However, the cost for human made things was far and away higher, and so human ran establishments were generally more exclusive, only being affordable for those who made a reasonable wage, while most of the populous was relegated to eating frozen massed produced meals, or “fast food” from an AI joint if you wanted a bit of variety.
Additionally, mother worked at nights as a bill auditor. AI was great at many things, but some humans had the job to “double check” to ensure things weren’t getting missed. Thus, human auditors in various fields, from medical to chemical, would verify accounts at random to make sure the math added up. Mom worked for the power company, making sure the readings were completed on time, and that folks were charged the right amounts.
I remember spending most of my time at various relatives' houses when not in school, while mom worked herself to the bone to keep a roof over our heads. Eventually she met my step-father, who had recently separated from the Navy, and they moved us to the middle of nowhere Northern Michigan when I was at the age of 10.
This is where I spent the next 11 years of my life. I was never much of an outdoors type, and still am not, but my step-dad tried his best. We did a lot of manual labor helping him maintain our property, but I found myself escaping as often as I could from the realities of the world - through games, books, movies. You see, where we were, the internet was extremely slow, and the population was sparse - so AI generated content, internet libraries, and more weren’t available to us. Even Cellphone signal was difficult to come by, mostly because of all the trees, so I had to take what I could.
After my abuse, I doubled down on the disconnection, keeping my head down, and grinding my way through High School which was…. 7 years ago. Damn. Has it really been that long?
So a whole lot of choice so far… I didn’t “choose” the divorce, being shipped around the family, being moved to the middle of bum fuck nowehere… but once I graduated, I sure as shit was going to have some choice in where I went.