Where am I myself

  Luke dreamed of the robbery a thousand times, and it was he same. Sometimes he shot all three of the mother fuckers and the cops immediately threw him in prison for life. Sometimes his mom or his sister showed up and the rhed and shot at them, and Luke would either shield them with his body or pick them up and try and escape, sometimes by flying. Other times he just got shot and died right there.

  Reviewing the memory of his first job, however, was pletely unlike dreaming. Though, in a way, you could pare it to a lucid dream, (not that he had much experieh those at the time); He was transported to another pce, had some trol over that pce, and the pce seemed real beyond all possibility, despite the fact that he knew his “real body” was somewhere else, and could even at times se. Not unlike having to take a piss in a dream, he felt the carpet of the Bliss den on his crossed legs if he focused enough to think about it. But like many things iher, the parisons to a dream were more out of the thing being less unlike a dream than it was uhe real world.

  But, the real gring differeween the Hardworld mem and a dream, and eveween it and the other sims and trips of the Otherworld, was that he had absolutely no power to ge it.

  He could alter his awareness, trol the flow of time, even step out of his body and fly around the room or SUV to get a different view, up to a certain point, but everything happehe exact same way every time.

  He learer that the art of preserving mem, meaning not just st it on a “physical” object, but freezing it in a state that was immuo the natural human process of altering memory as its remembered, was a hefty feat that had ged the nature of the Otherworld. They called it one of the prime discoveries, or some shit. And the art of preserving mem of a Hardworld was not far behind.

  But, however unlike a dream it was, it had the same dreamlike ability to absorb him pletely, and the extractor had to montage his obsessive exploration down to about a fifteen-sed sequence, when iy, he had been inside for hours.

  Until a voice broke through and brought him back to Other-reality.

  “You’re not keeping that mem in your fug Bliss-Den cubby-hole are you?”

  It was Car-Crash, apparently broadcasting from his craft orbiting the Den. Luke, who had been analyzing why his arms had been so slow to raise his on at the pivotal moment, stopped still and tried to think of how to get out of his memory and bato his body. The CD hadn’t even e with a leaflet!

  But, just the act of thinking about it was enough to drop him bato his non-body, lying there in his alcove.

  “Where else would I keep it? It won’t fit in my pocket.” Luke pohis ht for the first time. Shouldn’t every object be pocket-sized? Was there a limit to how many halluated objects he could fit in there?

  “In your personal realm.”

  “What?”

  “I’m ing in.”

  “Uh. Ok.”

  Car-Crash threw open the Curtain and stepped in. He held a martini gss and scowled at Luke with his posture.

  “You been born six God damned months and you never made your own spao wonder you’re a fug wastoid.”

  Luke just stared at him, so he shook his head and brought the gss up to his mask with a k and drank. The ghostly images behind his fractured windshield face took up an absinthe hue.

  “Hm. Damn, haven’t had one of these in ages.” It was cordia’s signature drink.

  “What do you mean my own space?” Luke was suddenly eager to get him the fuck out of here. It was like having a friend digging through your room, and you weren’t sure how you were going to expin all the soiled bedsheets, and now that he was out of the Hardworld mem, he could smell the Bliss in the air.

  Car-Crash leaned against the wall and sipped some more.

  “Most of the Otherworld is invisible. Hidden. Private, I mean. hidden in pces you ’t see. Little pockets. Not so big pockets. Goings on you could never even imagine. And some you wouldn’t want to. All the shared pces, the Ball and all the worlds attached to it, like this pce for example, are really only a fra of the Other. Tip of the iceberg. Feet uhe curtains. Know why that is?”

  Luke stared.

  “Cause when you make a p this dimension, you get to make the rules. You bee the prince of the pocket. Following me so far?”

  Luke looked around the room. Car-Crash nodded.

  “Yeah, so the guys that made this dump thirty fug years ago got to design all the rooms, but they also got to tell it that gravity here is noiable and that you ’t enter someone’s little cubby uhey let you. They also have the standard boilerpte ban on physical pain. Principalities and Schema. They’re what make the pces and things in this pce more than just ideas.”

  Luke was only half listening, and the extractor recreated the effect by muffling Car-Crashes words. He was mulling over the idea that if the rules of this pce meant you could oer an alcove with permission, like he had given Car-Crash moments before, then when he had seen Rory ying down that woman, it was because she had wanted him to.

  “But, this pce is linked, or on the map, tagged or whatever they call it now. Meaning you fly out that window ao the Ball and a huher pces. If you see it in the sky, you get to it, which means it’s in the same space, which means the Maker that put it there allowed it to be linked. Uand?”

  Luke nodded, and thought about Rory watg him fly into this pce every single fug time he had ever do.

  “So what you want to do, is make a pce that’s not lio anything else. A pce that you only get to with your thoughts. Got it?”

  Luke’s thoughts and Car-Crashes words met up for the first time. A pce where she couldn’t see him. A pce she could never find.

  “How the fuck do I do that?” Luke said.

  “Don’t they give you newborns info on that from the feed now? Thought that was w.”

  Luke vaguely recalled his first enter with the feed, while Rory watched over his shoulder, and dismissing something about realms and rights of the spirit and safety practices, so he just stared at Car-Crash, who shook his head into his drink again.

  “Jesus. Look, go out into the bck. Fly into it as far as you go, and imagi squeezing shut behind you. Imagine you are cut off from everything in all dires. You’ll know when you got it. It’ll feel right. Like you really are alone in this fug world for the first time in your life. Hard to expin, but you’ll see. Then, and only then, start making. Oh, and when you make the door, visualize that it’s a door only you create. That only you open. Just be smart about the whole thing. There are guys out there that make fortunes finding teicalities in that shit. Not that you’ll have much worth all that trouble.”

  Luke nodded. Luke listened. Luke focused on the idea of a pce of his own, and tried to use it to sweep out thoughts of Rory. Somehow, in the fantasy of himself standing in a mansion floating in the bck, she swung open the door and walked in, rainbow clothes and all.

  “Oh, o thing.” Car-Crash had been heading for the door. “You’ll probably find out that you hire people to make your realm for you, and even to secure it, but don’t go for that shit. The best security is when only one guy has the key.”

  By then, Luke’s fantasy of a pce of his own had already been soiled. He saw her climbing through windows and rappelling down through the skylight.

  “All right e on. You’re already fug te,” Car-Crash barked, his helpful, strangely soft tone gone in a fsh.

  The Extractor sped up again as Luke followed him out to his craft and back to the floating office. It breezed through the job, a ten-hour long stakeout at a rundoartment plex capped off with Luke leading two cruisers and a helicopter on a chase in a stolen cable van, and lingered on his walk down the Hall after seeing Drudge. He stood in front of Firefly’s offid rolled the situation around in his head.

  Here, momentarily beyond the pull of that Bliss light, he could remember clearly the sensation of power he had felt while moving through the Hardworld mem before Car-Crash came and got him. In a world where memory was just as hazy and imperma as the foundations, it had been an addig experience of trol. He could easily max out his credit and burn through his paycheck buying more.

  But, he could also remember the distinct pain of ying in the Bliss den, writhing in one of those booths, with not a single t to spare, trying to summon the light by will, but only managing to ma some little dle fme or something.

  Defiantly, office Luke decided that it was a fitting fate for Junkie Luke, and tracked down Firefly and bought as much mem as he could, whifortunately, didn’t actually max him out.

  “It takes a bit to secure the mem. This is all we have ready. Unfortunately, they won’t let you put in orders anymore. e ba a few hours and the queue should have thinned out a bit.”

  He Firefly, exged smiles, and got the fuck out. He knew he wouldn’t be ing batil he was dead broke in the Bliss den and Car-Crash was colleg him for his job, and he realized, just before junkie Luke took the reins, that the tter always vely happened after the former.

  The extractor picked up the rhythm again, and days flew by like drumbeats in the background music. Luke bounced between office, Hardworlds, and bliss den, stockpiling mem but oug it. Most days, the Bliss cravings hit him the mome the bck, and the CDs stayed in their case, untouched.

  Until, one day, he stood there in line fe, trying to keep the Hardworld mem aloft by his own will, like a kid boung one of those dolr store silie balls in the air, who stumbles into an rown part of the park and knows it’s just a matter of time.

  It had been a fun job. He had bee on his own to draw the cops on the east side, and he remembered the feeling of flying down the expressway, thinking to himself that if he wao, he could just keep driving forever and squeeze everything he’d ever wanted out of this world, and if that failed, he could slip out of that Luke and try on another and aill he got it right.

  He wahat feeling again so fug bad, but he khat the momeepped out of that office, that other Luke would drag his ass to the Bliss den, and it would be lost forever. He hated that motherfucker. He hated the guys standing in his way in line. He hated Drudge. He hated the whole goddamned swarm of chuckle fucks flying over the ball like ants on a dropped jawbreaker. He wanted so badly to get somewhere…

  The extractor was absolutely forbidden from extrag any mem reted to his realm, so just food measure it cut off a little early. It got the gist of Luke’s iion with Drudge, his defiant maxing out his line of credit on every pieem they would sell him, even paying the extra fees to jump ahead in the processing queue, until his CD case was stuffed with them, aook off into the bck, and the extractor shuddered.

  But two details about his first trip to his realm were so important to the story, that Luke let Dr. X include them ily.

  One, after he had found that true isotion and broken down in tears at the overwhelming experience of being alone in a world that respoo his thought, of the total absence of any barrier between mind ay, and when he had the form of his realm down and was testing his power over it, he pced a schema in it, a powerful iron rule, attempted as a joke at first, that ged the course of his spiritual existence.

  While in his realm, he would be free of his desire for Bliss. While in his realm, he could think of the light, of the flying, of the den, without anything but a ral refle, and he was free to dive into his Hardworld mem undisturbed. Dr. X tactically included this detail via a wholly structed se of Luke standing on a baly that did anywhere in his real Realm and smiling smugly at a glowing blisslight floating a few yards before his face.

  The sed detail came before the first, and he almost didn’t let Dr.X see it, but decided that on the off ce it could help some other ju free, he should give it up.

  As he had been flying into the bck, seeking out that sensation of isotion Car-Crash had told him to look for, he felt the blisslight floating in the bck, somewhere out of sight. But this time, he was sure that it was chasing him.

  What would your realm look like? I've always been partial to flowing water and forested houses. ime, Luke is stretched into multiple versions of himself, until something breaks. episode, Piee.