I yanked off the headset and the whole world went watery. Sweat in my eyes, clinging everywhere, the suit’s supposed temperature regulators shot to hell. I sat there, dazed, the fugue of too many realities tangling in my head. It was only when I peeled the suit away, dropped onto my numb ass, that the overload ebbed a little. I sat, just breathing, trying to get all the voices in my head lined up in a row, wondering for real: what the hell now?
There was this knot inside me, right in the chest, a cocktail of panic and love, bound up tight. I’d definitely been in too long. The devil would be clocking it down to the minute, my so-called “reality handler,” always watching for deviations. I’d left my usual trails, set the trapdoors for any wandering bots, but too much time offline would send everything red at HQ. They would start asking questions. They’d dispatch someone and most likely, that would be it; last time they went, no one came back. History didn’t make comforting reading on that front.
Eventually I scraped myself up, pulled on my jumpsuit, mind numbing over. I just needed to breathe. A smoke. Maybe a bottle of wine. Nothing but my own company to shake out the static. The bunker had a bed, a couch, a desk, a cold wall of quantum computers, and more food than I could get through in ten lifetimes. No need to go anywhere near the main house, or its lovely pointless conversations. Those days, sometimes the devil seemed like the only one who made sense at all, and even then, silence was better. I craved it, wanted to reach past code and circuitry to something that wasn’t just simulation.
I collapsed on the faux-leather couch and blacked out. Didn’t even feel it coming.
When I finally came around, hours gone, I saw the wine, weed, cigarettes untouched. I didn’t move, not until the nerves stopped jangling. Then I cracked the wine, flicked a lighter to the pre-rolled spliff, headphones on. I queued up the shamanic drumming, old favourite, world’s least corporate playlist. Opened the wine, spliff in hand, and just hit play.
I’d been doing shamanic journeying longer than I cared to recall. At first, I went too hard; later, I learned to be choosy. Save it for when I needed real answers, when the tech and the world above had nothing left to offer. Since the reclamation, my ability had only deepened. The journeys had lost all boundaries, nothing between me and what I found there. Best part was, none of it needed a network; in the bunker, I was truly off-grid. No corporate tracer or handler could follow me.
I dropped in. The old Oak, massive trunk, and me sliding down into the core. I surfaced in a meadow, ringed by trees so old their roots pressed up memories, dew slicking the air, sunlight on my face, everything more vivid than waking. The fawn deer was there already, gentle as ever but wise, edges of shadow wrapped around grace. Horned Owl in the corner of my eye, always two steps behind, or ahead—it was hard to say which. They usually came together.
Answers there didn’t come in words. Just a quiet, rightness, a knowing slotted into my mind like it had always been there, as if my question was already answered before I even shaped it. Sometimes even my presence was enough; I didn’t have to ask at all.
This was the only escape that worked. Even though they’d banned shamanic practices ages ago, tried to erase them from every accessible archive, it hadn’t worked. Coders and architects had slipped these rites into Ultrahigh, tucked them in as Easter eggs inside every book, show, even children’s stories. Taught people to dream from underneath. The corporation never found them all. When a rat tried, the code among us was simple: fix it, or shut up and move on.
The drumming cycled, and the thing I’d been after set like crystal inside me. I could’ve left right then, but I just pressed repeat, lay back in the virtual grass, let the deer curl up against my side, the owl a sentinel above. No one could reach us there; nothing else mattered. Sanctuary meant something in that place. Somewhere deep in the inner reaches of my mind where imagination, creativity and spirituality combined to become one.
I must have dropped off, because suddenly it wasn’t the shamanic journey anymore, but a dream inside the dream. That had never happened to me before.
I yanked off the headset and the whole world went watery. Sweat in my eyes, clinging everywhere, the suit’s supposed temperature regulators shot to hell. I sat there, dazed, the fugue of too many realities tangling in my head. It was only when I peeled the suit away, dropped onto my numb ass, that the overload ebbed a little. I sat, just breathing, trying to get all the voices in my head lined up in a row, wondering for real: what the hell now?
There was this knot inside me, right in the chest, a cocktail of panic and love, bound up tight. I’d definitely been in too long. The devil would be clocking it down to the minute, my so-called “reality handler,” always watching for deviations. I’d left my usual trails, set the trapdoors for any wandering bots, but too much time offline would send everything red at HQ. They would start asking questions. They’d dispatch someone and most likely, that would be it; last time they went, no one came back. History didn’t make comforting reading on that front.
Eventually I scraped myself up, pulled on my jumpsuit, mind numbing over. I just needed to breathe. A smoke. Maybe a bottle of wine. Nothing but my own company to shake out the static. The bunker had a bed, a couch, a desk, a cold wall of quantum computers, and more food than I could get through in ten lifetimes. No need to go anywhere near the main house, or its lovely pointless conversations. Those days, sometimes the devil seemed like the only one who made sense at all, and even then, silence was better. I craved it, wanted to reach past code and circuitry to something that wasn’t just simulation.
I collapsed on the faux-leather couch and blacked out. Didn’t even feel it coming.
When I finally came around, hours gone, I saw the wine, weed, cigarettes untouched. I didn’t move, not until the nerves stopped jangling. Then I cracked the wine, flicked a lighter to the pre-rolled spliff, headphones on. I queued up the shamanic drumming, old favourite, world’s least corporate playlist. Opened the wine, spliff in hand, and just hit play.
I’d been doing shamanic journeying longer than I cared to recall. At first, I went too hard; later, I learned to be choosy. Save it for when I needed real answers, when the tech and the world above had nothing left to offer. Since the reclamation, my ability had only deepened. The journeys had lost all boundaries, nothing between me and what I found there. Best part was, none of it needed a network; in the bunker, I was truly off-grid. No corporate tracer or handler could follow me.
I dropped in. The old Oak, massive trunk, and me sliding down into the core. I surfaced in a meadow, ringed by trees so old their roots pressed up memories, dew slicking the air, sunlight on my face, everything more vivid than waking. The fawn deer was there already, gentle as ever but wise, edges of shadow wrapped around grace. Horned Owl in the corner of my eye, always two steps behind, or ahead—it was hard to say which. They usually came together.
Answers there didn’t come in words. Just a quiet, rightness, a knowing slotted into my mind like it had always been there, as if my question was already answered before I even shaped it. Sometimes even my presence was enough; I didn’t have to ask at all.
This was the only escape that worked. Even though they’d banned shamanic practices ages ago, tried to erase them from every accessible archive, it hadn’t worked. Coders and architects had slipped these rites into Ultrahigh, tucked them in as Easter eggs inside every book, show, even children’s stories. Taught people to dream from underneath. The corporation never found them all. When a rat tried, the code among us was simple: fix it, or shut up and move on.
The drumming cycled, and the thing I’d been after set like crystal inside me. I could’ve left right then, but I just pressed repeat, lay back in the virtual grass, let the deer curl up against my side, the owl a sentinel above. No one could reach us there; nothing else mattered. Sanctuary meant something in that place. Somewhere deep in the inner reaches of my mind where imagination, creativity and spirituality combined to become one.
I must have dropped off, because suddenly it wasn’t the shamanic journey anymore, but a dream inside the dream. That had never happened to me before.
