Ferreus

In Ferreus’s apartment, there is one bed. One bed and four walls. Each wall is covered entirely by a computer monitor and his bed sits directly in the middle of the room. Ferreus lives alone. He spends his days with a black helmet covering his face and electric gloves on his hands. With these devices, Ferreus is connected to the virtual world that is displayed on the walls which encompass him.

On the outside, Ferreus looks like a normal, human being. He has creamy skin, dark, thick, hair, long arms and legs, and a skinny torso. He owns four pairs of the same jeans and switches them off daily. He wears a tattered old black sweatshirt with a big, yellow smiley face in the middle that he found in a consignment shop years ago. He walks, he eats, he breathes.

But Ferreus has one oddity that sets him apart from most humans. He has a mechanical heart.

When Ferreus was fifteen, he fell helplessly in love. She was beautiful, smart, witty –everything his fifteen year-old heart yearned for. He spent day after day trying to get her attention by writing love letters, making CDs, and waiting for her after class (he relied heavily on dating advice from old movies), but she never loved him back. One day, after two years of agonizing love, Ferreus finally plucked up the courage to ask her out. As he walked across the street to her house, he saw her door open. He saw her standing on her porch, kissing a boy from their class goodbye. She was taken. Ferreus, struck numb by the emotional blow, stopped in his tracks; the car that was speeding down the street at that moment did not.

Ferreus was rushed to the emergency room where the doctors had no choice but to replace his heart. His new heart is completely mechanical. When connected to the matrix, he can program it to feel any emotion he wants. He never has to feel the pain of love again.

Now twenty-two year-old Ferreus escapes to cyberspace to wreak havoc in the lives of women. He programed himself to not feel guilt or remorse, and certainly never compassion or love.

He uses his suave demeanor and rebel image to make women want him. He dates a girl for a month, gets her to trust him, and then steals everything he can from her savings, her home, and her emotional well-being. That’s how he makes a living. Why love when he could spend his time making money and playing games? He does not care what anyone else in the matrix thinks of him because he does not have to. Ferreus is heartless.