The city lights shone as traffic bristled by, a city that never slept.  An American center of populace, commerce, and global influence.  This was a biome that the machines had constructed as a perfect model for human life.  What was beyond it, its inhabitants hardly knew.  Perhaps there was little more than grey backdrop and green neon lettering, but for its natives everything they needed for their daily lives was present.  The machines watched closely, as their intentionally sub-par world for the most part functioned.  Any anomalies, glitches in the Matrix, would be swiftly corrected, so as to prevent their crop from being contaminated or lost.

Everyone carried on with their relatively normal lives.  If they witnessed something unusual, they would surely attribute it to something naturalistic and carry on.  The present world resembled that of a time when humanity thrived technologically, with the prevalence of computers and cell phones, but had not yet created a sentient AI.  Most people carried out their daily lives totally oblivious to anything beyond this world.

In reply to Truth Construct (msg # 1):

He was rudely interrupted. The phone screamed in vibrations.
The only other item of furniture in the room besides the cushion and himself.
It had awoken him from nine hours of meditation.
Exhale. Inhale. Silence.
Exhale. Inhale. Distraction.
Exhale. Inhale.
But as his dehydration intensified on the 8th hour so could the feeling of a familiar and terrifying presence within him begin to form.
An existential dread.
A secretion of panic from the pituitary.
A sense that he was digging closer to something fundamental.

After meditating every sense was alive, as if discovering for the first times.
The dull angry surf of New York.
The pigeons crying from his roof.
The angry punching of the flip phone circling the floor.

He picked up the phone.
He knew he had turned it off before meditation. No distractions. Why was it on?
The electron sun of the LED screen burned his retinas.
His thumb glided over the smooth plastic buttons before hitting the red one to ignore it. John was parched, he needed coffee.

John painfully moved to the kitchen and looked at where the coffee machine had been. He then looked at the brown moving box where it was.
John left his apartment, dug deep into his pockets for cigarettes before remembering he chucked them. The sun was cruel and he found refuge in a pawn shop dropping the last of his donation boxes on the counter. "You again... I owe you for last time".
"I don't want it, just get rid of it"
The broker eagerly handed a wad of notes and John reluctantly took it.
Taking the money made him feel sick.
He put the cash in his pockets and felt his flip phone.
He took it out and looked at it.
Ten year old model. Working for the bank John was obsessed with the latest hardware.
He wouldn't have touched this.
Now, it was the last strand of technology he had left.
John put it on the counter.
He needed a total cleanse, indistractable in his search for truth.

"Sir, you're having some sort of episode, I won't take your phone."
John walked out of the shop and into the park.
He sat on a bench and began to cry.
Was he losing his mind?

"Excuse me sir," The polite voice of a teenage girl broke the sound of the wind and birds that made the faint backdrop of the monk's sobbing.  "Are you alright?"  A very pretty teenage girl sat down on the bench next to him.  At this time of day she should have been in school, but for some reason she was in the park.  Dressed in slacks and a hoodie, and wearing no make-up, there was a down-to-earth look about her.  She sighed as she relaxed into the bench and looked at the man's watery eyes with a hint of empathy, and smiled sweetly like something out of a dream.  Passers by gave brief awkward glances, but ignored them.  A squirrel inched up near their feet with a curious look before scampering into the bushes.  Wavy blonde strands danced across the girl's face, tickling her cheeks and nose as she blinked.  "Why are you crying?"

In reply to Truth Construct (msg # 4):

A sweet girl. Her empathy was a beacon of light in the chaos of his selfish thoughts.
Present, he wondered where her mother's parents were and looked around for them. It wasn't kosher to talk to children in parks, but he decided to follow the pang of his hungry instinct. The same instinct that drove him to give up all his possessions. The same instinct that is likely driving him insane. John breathed and felt his palms on his lap and the wind on his unshaven face. Letting his doubts drift with the breeze. "Have you ever had a feeling that you know is real but you don't know what it is? I've been feeling that a lot and I'm doing a lot... to find out what that thing is" John confided.

"Huh?"  The girl's eyes grew wide, her mouth opened but no words came out.  After a few seconds she managed to stutter, "W-wha-- What did you just say?"  She looked completely shocked, and a visible bead of perspiration suddenly trickled down from her temple, tracing the edge of her face until it reached her chin.  She was leaning back almost as if she was scared of him.

In reply to Truth Construct (msg # 6):

John could tell he had put the girl in some distress. He knew if her parents arrived or someone came to her aid, this would be hard to explain.

John turned away from the girl and found a sheet of discarded newspaper by his foot. He tore the newspaper into a square. When he visited his mother in hospital, his devices would be taken away so he did a lot of origami to keep his mind and fingers occupied. He folded the square neatly, unfolded, refolded and squeezed the corners into a neat paper crane. This was a particularly good one: by pulling the head and the tail the wings would flap. He tested it a few times and held it out to the girl as a peace offering. With the crane in an outstretched hand, he watched her from his periphery.

Shaking her head, the teen blinked and started to relax.  The tension faded gradually, she sighed heavily and took a deep breath.  Then, as she watched his origami crane form, she started to smile.  When he offered it to her, a large grin formed.  She held out her hand accepting the offering.  For a few seconds she just stared at it in silence, sitting on the flat of her open palm, until the wind almost blew it away.  A cute, "Eeek," escaped from her as she quickly snatched the crane back from the wind with both  hands.  "Phew, that was close..."  She looked back at the man, smiling.  "What you said... I..." Her eyes fell to the ground, and the smile evaporated.  "I've been feeling like that a lot lately too.  And..."  She sighed again, her brow wrinkling, "I met another man today.  He... He told me to find it."  She looked back up at the man beside her, the smile returning, "Maybe it's the same thing you're looking for.  The... The M-."  The word choked in her throat.

John stared at her blankly. Poor girl must have chatted to some religious nut.
"Listen" John said "I realise that I'm a stranger but you shouldn't really speak to them." John didn't really know how to phrase it. "Some aren't as nice as me. Where are your parents?"

The girl chuckled, somewhat artificially, but her smile was at least genuine.  "And what about you?" She blinked back.  "You don't practice what you preach?"  Her grin widened and she coyishly leaned away from the stranger curling her shoulder.  A flutter of bird's wings played like background music as one of the park's pigeons took off.

The fuzzy feels John got from gifting the paper crane turned to a parental anger. "The only preaching you should practice is stranger danger" he said getting up from the bench. He felt bad snapping but the girl was putting herself in an unnecessarily perilous position. His fingers shivered, they needed to cradle the warmth of a coffee. He went to the park cafe stand and watched the girl from his periphery as he ordered a coffee that was black as midnight.

The girl's brow furrowed at the man's sudden change in tone.  She looked confused and a little taken aback. She watched, somewhat in disbelief as he started to walk away.  When it began to strain her neck, she froze in that position.  Her mouth dropped, letting out a, "Huh."  Then slowly she returned to facing forward.  The little paper crane nestled in her cupped hands.  She watched it as it danced in the wind, making a cage with her fingers so it wouldn't blow away.  It was almost lifelike as it rattled about.  Eventually, and with a heavy sigh, she got up, pocketed the crane, and started walking nonchalantly down the path.  She didn't look back towards the man whom she'd been chatting with.

"Weird kid" John said to himself and could sense the barista follow his vision. Thanks John said handing $5 for the $1 coffee. His mind was to pre-occupied for him to notice the barista reach out for his change. He wondered directionless down the winding paths of the park. His mind plagues with questions. Where would he get his answers? Why was he acting the way he was? Had the acid taken permanent residence? Maybe he should find a holy man or seek a church for answers? Maybe he should travel? John was lost both in mind and body.

As John walked through the city streets time seemed to distort itself.  The crowds of people coming and going were almost a blur.  Was he just lost in thought?  Was it the after effects of drug use in the past?  No sooner had he noticed then the feeling seemed to evaporate, and everything looked normal again.  But there was still something vacant in the eyes of the passers by.  Crowds that scurried like insects in robotic fashion payed no attention to him.  Business men on their cell phones, beautiful women with an air of arrogance, a mother dragging her child away from a shop window full of toys.  They didn't even feel real.

Before he knew it, John found himself standing in front of a large church.  The stunning masonry stood out from the strips of shops and office towers.  Ornate design decorated the stone, and a statue of an angel wore an expression of profound sadness.  It had been vandalized with some blemishes of paint that looked like someone had attempted to scrub it clean, but wasn't able to get it all off.  Their were chips taken out of its wings, but its divine beauty only seemed more brilliant with those chiseled scars.  Three pairs of massive oak doors were also intricately designed.  And the stain glass windows, brightly colored, depicted saints and angels.  One of the doors was propped open.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:43, Wed 03 Feb 2021.