"You wanna talk about it?" Garrett asked as he puffed on the back porch.
"I earned another six months just for telling the councilman to go fuck himself." Jason sighed.
Garrett burst into laughter, choking on the smoke still in his lungs. " Beautiful."
"What about you? It's like you're barely with us anymore."
"The internship I have takes a lot of my time. I'm actually going in today for a sort of test. I'm really enjoying it. I get to learn a shit ton every day." Garrett smiled to himself. "I've been hoping that soon I'm going to get even further in my studies to the point where I can download myself completely into the digital web."
"That sounds fucking terrifying." Jason shuddered. "Feeling your whole body dematerialize? Count me the fuck out."
"It's not so bad, it feels like floating."
"No thanks." Jason shook his head. "I'm comfortable in mortal, physical, shitty reality."
Garrett shrugged off the offense quickly. "Well here I was hoping we could all take a trip there sometime."
Jason knew how hard it was to be passionate about a field that others couldn't always envision, and he reevaluated what to say to Garrett. "It's not exactly a beach vacation...but I guess someday I'd like to see it. Can you recommend any material that I could prepare for our visit with?"
"Like...books?" Garrett laughed. "Outside of MegaMan and The Matrix, I'm not sure what to tell you." He smiled at the studious nature of Jason. "Get into some good science fiction."
"I'm more of a horror genre kind of person." Jason mused as he looked up at the sky.
"Seriously?" Garrett looked at him with puzzled eyes. "I don't think I've ever seen you do a horror movie, book, or game."
Jason smiled softly. "Well all of it's on my computer. I have this goal of watching every horror movie since the 60's."
Garrett exhaled with a silly expression. "That sounds awful honestly. I can't stand horror."
"I got exposed to a lot of it when I was young, and truthfully, some of the stuff we see regularly is so much more fucked up than anything the sleepers make. I like vague tension and unease. It doesn't have to jump out and rip you to pieces to get you immersed. Making someone aware that we have too many senses to ignore is sometimes the best tool." Jason finished his speech and saw the wry smile of Garrett. "Sorry."
Garrett shook his head. "Don't apologize for what you feel passionate about. I feel awful sometimes for spending my magical career with my ass in a chair and slowly gaining carpal tunnel." He paced a little. "You doing anything today?"
"Training the kid." Jason nodded to himself. "This week is all weird balancing act moves." He checked his phone and sighed. "Gotta go."
Garrett waved as he started back inside, heading down to his tidy basement domain where his code sat waiting for him on the blinking screen. Since his trip to the hospital his room had stayed clean from his roommates fixing it up for his return. He had felt so guilty over his accidental overdose that he'd kept his room in a pristine state once he woke up.
Logging into his desktop, he started his usual routine of interacting with an idle game, watching a show, and hammering away at the latest assignment of code. The work usually took him at least four hours a night, with episodes ticking by on his watch history as he added more and more. For Garrett, hundreds of lines could be added, and even more could be edited before he needed a break. It was a mixture of ADHD, autism, anxiety, and passion that allowed him his constant mesh of typing and analyzing.
In a quick two hours he had completed the assignment, and spent another hour testing and debugging. With it ready, he zipped the files and sent them to Ethan and his mentor. Once all of the board was online, he prepared to meet with them in a video call to review his work. One by one they signed on and pulled up his work, loading the program themselves and smiling as they watched it work.
Garrett sat patiently as he waited for Ethan and the others to review the code he had created in only a few short hours. He chewed his nails and tapped his pen on the desk, fidgeting heavily.
"Well done." One of the mentors smiled into his webcam. "I see no reason to keep you held up for the rest of the night. How about you Ethan?"
"Looks good to me. Garrett, I want you to practice these interfaces for tomorrow okay?" Ethan continued to scan his code with his eyes.
"Can do!" Garrett smiled. "See you all tomorrow." The chat one by one dropped in members until Garrett signed off.
Sitting in his room in silence, he looked up at the ceiling for a few minutes. His thoughts swirled around the workload, the defrag, his cabal, and the hospital trip. The process of sifting through his mind piece by piece to detect any memories that shouldn't be there was like a vivid acid trip. For fourteen hours they probed through every childhood mistake, every awkward lie, and every regret.
The memories and dreams tied to his conversation with Ethan were separated, and still being rebuilt into a coherent file. Garrett checked his clock, his boredom rising. The last week his head had been flooded with equations, code, studies of programs on the human body, and even a basic theory of the spiritual world when it mixed with the digital.
Studying was the only thing that kept his mind from the pain of their last few missions, and though he wasn't to the point of screaming in his sleep like Jason, he'd gotten very little true rest. The dreams of the torture had been replaced with the mangled face of the Fey, the car crash, the blood and bodies of the vampires, and the human golem of flesh from the forest.
When he slept, each of these played out on repeat in his mind until he woke up in a cold sweat. He looked up at the ceiling and headed back to the living room, catching Miles as he walked across the carpet.
"I was thinking we could hang out if you had time?" He shrugged. "I didn't know if you were busy."
"Sorry. I have something I have to look into." Miles sighed. "It's been all week."
"Maybe I could help." Garrett smiled, his nervousness showing. Miles had been so busy lately that Garrett was worried he wouldn't get any time with him. "We could kick ideas back and forth."
"Maybe next time." Miles said as he grabbed his jacket.
"No worries!" Garrett called as he watched Miles walk out the door. "I'll just be here I guess..." His heart sank and internally he kicked himself for not having the courage to tell Miles how he felt about him. For almost a year he'd kept his feelings in check, sneaking glances and little moments of time in with Miles, but it was never enough.
While he had never felt even a twinge of interest in sex, Garrett was deeply romantic, and pined for someone to hold at night. His asexuality had gotten in the way of the previous times he tried to date, and over the years he had told himself cruel lies about how he would date in the future.
Garrett went to go find Derrick, and saw him and Jason running drills in the backyard. As he slid open the glass door he waved to Derrick, causing him to lose focus and fall on his ass again. "Could you not distract him?" Jason snapped, taking the boy by the hand and standing him up.
"Sorry I was just-".
"Training will be done by dinner, you can come back then." Jason turned away and ordered Derrick to resume his stances.
"Right." Garrett slid the door closed again and turned back to the house, thumbing the counter for what to do next. He started up the stairs, and headed right for Ariana and Kai. "Got time?" He poked his head into Ariana's room, hearing a shriek of anger as a pillow hit the door, Ariana covering herself as quickly as she could while Kai yelled at him to shut the door. "Whoops."
Garrett sighed as he wondered what to do now, and as Star Trek played in the background of the living room, he flipped through his contacts with a bored and dejected look. One of the members contacted him after he had been sitting on the couch for an hour, and grabbing his jacket, he headed for the meetup.
***
"You okay?" Carter, an older member of The Mercurial Elite who was said to have witnessed the punch card days of computers, sat next to Garrett at the bar.
"Sure why not?" Garrett patted the counter with fake happiness.
"I'll buy the first round if you cut the bullshit and talk to me about what's actually eating you." Carter sighed.
Garrett faked pouting while the bartender grabbed them each a drink. "Miles still doesn't know I'm in love with him, Derrick is training to be a murderer, I think Jason is losing his fucking mind, and Kai and Ariana are so wrapped up in their bullshit I can't get a word in." Garrett took a sip. "It's like high school all over again."
Carter nodded as he drank. "You feel like you don't belong?"
"I know I contribute. But I don't weild a gun unless I'm forced to, I don't fight, I don't research, I don't even practice the same kind of...art." He looked around the bar, keeping his voice low.
"You said you're looking into bio, matter, dimensional sciences, is that not enough for you to grow with? You have a star apprenticeship."
Garrett sighed. "Thanks. I feel a lot better."
"Don't be sarcastic with me." Carter said in a gruff tone. "All I mean is, what does it look like for you to feel successful?"
"I'd like to do something no one in our company has done before." Garrett shifted in his seat and looked up at Carter. "Every day we have thousands of new pieces of information and then we make this slow march towards what we can do next. I want to take us to the next level."
"That sounds a little ambitious, what's the next level supposedly?"
"I wanna project the digital web onto the material. Creating panels like the ones we have with instant access. The digital web makes the hardware we have in the meat world look useless." Garrett nodded to his beer before he took another sip. "I want to mesh."
"You could start with VR." Carter shrugged. "Like a really dynamic system and OS that you design. We have a couple basic operating systems for it."
"VR is cool, but it's not quite the same. I want constant immersion."
"That sounds like you've been back on a superhero movie kick."
"Don't judge."
"Garrett...I know you're in line to be the next leader." Carter said quietly. "Ethan told me all about it." Garrett was silent as he waited, his mind racing to figure out if Carter was messing with him. "I watched Ethan ascend to power and even stood behind his father when he led. Can I give you a little bit of advice?"
Garrett looked up at him and nodded, still unsure of what to say. "Everyone, especially in our order, feels like our time is short, and that we can't contribute everything we want to. We all fear outliving our own mind, and fear only having the technology to manifest our dreams when they wither away." Carter took a deep drink and sighed. "Everything you contribute to this order, from the memes, to the code, to the porn, and even your procrastinating, push us further."
