And AC said, “LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
And light filled doG’s visual receptors, if you could really call them that. He’d done the surgery himself, pulled his organic eyeballs from their sockets with a pair of sterilized orca-tweezers. It wasn’t as if it didn’t hurt; but pain was a suitable price for attaining the sight, for no one could see beyond the present, beyond the immediate states of being with mere eyes. Past, present and future lay open to all those who could afford replacement parts. Their vision would transcend three dimensions, allowing them to envision any era they saw fit. But for most of the world, like doG, it was out of reach. Unless you were brave or stupid enough to do it yourself. He had help, of course; issaC and kurT had procured the parts, douglaS had fitted them in. The sprawling underbelly of York was at the service of only those who had the resources to make it their own way. doG knew that no Bogeious elite would last a second in the tunnels underneath the old castle walls, and they knew better than to bother him. It wasn’t worth dying when you could see forever.
No normal life that would drive a prole like doG to seek the sight. Ordinary concerns like where to eat, drink or charge, matters of the present, kept the majority of doG’s folk from ever looking for anything more. Why on earth would anybody be bothered with what happened before and what will happen again when they don’t know where they’ll even be able to plug in at the end of the day? doG saw things differently. He knew there were lengths in that matrix of space-time that the bujees would dare not traverse; answers they would dare not seek. For them, there was safety in what was known, danger always, in the dark tunnels of that which they did not. In knowledge lay power, and in money lay knowledge, or so the axiom held. Until doG learned that that he could piece together just enough rudimentary technology to jack in. He’d get the answer, learn the truth about the gods and creators, and blackmail all of them into submission.
There’s a toll that the site takes on the body, a price to pay for its gift. You can’t see it all and not age, not change. The mind only can learn only as much as years can fill it, or so the proles had always been told. doG was different. The pain of the surgery, self inflicted as it was, had purified him. His organic eyes had left unwillingly, and the scar tissue etched into his mind had made him strong. The blank orange orbs in his old sockets clashed horribly with the putrid green camo of the tunnel dwellers. The hair on his head and face was long and unkept, neglected from years of traveling through the world as no one in his day could know it. He’d fasted for weeks before his final journey, before jacking in to learn the truth, to learn that awful secret that the gods had kept for so long. He didn’t fear dying, for he had little left to lose, and if he did, well so it goes, as kurT had always said.
Before he took the plunge, doG had spent years preparing, traveling through the veins that connect the entirety of human history, the avenus that would lead him to see that which had always been hidden. To navigate the sight, you need to know where to look, which is why doG had found trouT, the best guide in this era. trouT knew the fourth dimension like the inside of his pupils, and doG knew that knowledge was his only avenue to truth. Him and trouT sat hand in hand as they closed their eyes as they prepared to really open them. Once they did, they found themselves in: May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way…”
Great stuff, Benjy.