The Gift
For the Holidays I was gifted a magnificent state of the art VR headset of the kind usually reserved only for top researchers and developers deep in the military industrial complex. Given access to such a treasure I assumed would be akin to receiving access to a magical gateway to swim through space and time free of any physical encumbrance or attachment to reality both consensus or personally envisioned.
Eager to meet the freedom of all restraint and the unimaginable abilities it would plug directly into my cerebral cortex, I tossed aside the equally detailed and decorated packaging and placed the device upon my head. Immediately I could sense the array of nested neural connectors withing, beginning to trickle across my scalp as their self-aware installation executable triggered auto-run and quickly completed innumerable simultaneous connections to pertinent sites within my skull while scrolling past options so quickly my mind was unable to opt out of the most restrictive portions of the terms of use. Later this would be a matter of great regret and consequence.
Booting directly into random situational reality I found that, as usual, the experience provided by this expensive “must have item of the season” left much to be desired . Ah well, another purchase of hype over use to be rolled into space where objects now void of vast expectations rot in their own lack of substance.
-collage by Peter Horvath
