Virtual Life
By J Cafesin
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Indulge in Dessert With NO GUILT!
Ski like a pro, without the risk!
Perform heart surgery with no a medical degree.
Chase tornadoes in Kansas from your couch in Los Angeles.
WELCOME TO VIRTUAL LIFE!
Find out what it takes to become an astronaut.
Experience a lawyer's life before investing in becoming one.
Get into all the exclusive clubs without waiting in line, or rejection at the door.
Immerse Yourself in Another's Reality
Or LIVE STREAM your story, and Create Your Epic.
Now Anyone Can BE SOMEONE!
ENTER VIRTUAL LIFE...
J Cafesin
“Writing fiction is intoxicating. Fully engaging. Hot. Sexual. Physical. Mental. Spatial. Virtually touching real as I enter the scene, and I’m a million miles from solitude.” J. Cafesin is a novelist of taut, edgy, modern fiction, filled with complex, compelling characters so real they’ll linger long after the read.
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Reviews for Virtual Life
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What happens when tech overwhelms your own common sense? Virtual Life is a good quick read, that explores the balance of what tech enables, with the damage it can do to one's psyche.
Book preview
Virtual Life - J Cafesin
VIRTUAL LIFE J. Cafesin
VIRTUAL LIFE
by J. Cafesin
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Copyright ©2015 by J. Cafesin
Published by Entropy Press at Smashwords
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VIRTUAL LIFE is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places, and events portrayed in this novel are
either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Original story idea by Froggy Courtin.
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VIRTUAL LIFE
Copyright ©2015 J. Cafesin
All rights reserved.
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise distributed without written permission
of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to:
Entropy Publications, San Francisco, CA
info@entropypress.com
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Entropy Press® is a registered trademark of Entropy Publications.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
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ISBN-13: 978-0-692-46739-8 (Entropy Press)
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1. Fantasy Series— Fiction. 2. Speculative Fiction— New Adult 3. Young Adult— Fiction
4. Time Travel— Fiction 5. Techno— Fiction 6. Fantasy Fables— Fiction
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Printed in the U.S.A
First Edition, July, 2015
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Cover design by TargetMediaDesign
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jcafesin.com
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VIRTUAL LIFE
j. cafesin
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Racing down a mountain on skis. First person POV. Jumping over ledges, swishing past trees. Fly off a snow bank, spraying sparkling powder, land almost perfect, but wipe out a second later.
Streaming image switches to a screen filled with row after row of small, looping video clips. Black text under each reads: Sports, Nightlife, Travel, Careers, Celebrities...etc. A stylized eye, with a rainbow eyeball, is inset in the upper left of a black banner that runs along the top of the page.
Cursor arrow clicks on Nightlife. More rows of looping videos appear, broken down into categories like Featured, Popular, For You. Click on Trending pulls up another page of small clips. Under each are titles like On the Town with Tiffany, and Erin's Backstage Pass. Each also show the view count below the linked title. Page scrolls down the rows of trending videos. LIVE, in blinking white text on a red banner is across several of the clips, including Party Down with Doug.
Click.
Inside a discotheque. Loud rock music and flashing lights strobe people dancing. POV on a young woman dancing, her breasts practically popping out of her tight top as she bops up and down, obviously being shot from someone she's dancing with, as the image is bobbing to the rhythm. A pause in the music between songs. Man's hand juts out and grabs the hand of the woman and leads her through the crowd to a table in back of the club. The music fades to background as the couple sits. The girl whips out a small plastic baggie of white powder from the cleavage of her breasts, and spills some of it onto the table in narrow lines.
Click, and the screen goes back to more rows of looping videos. Popular on VL. Movies. Actors. Click on Musicians. Scroll down the categories to Alternative Rock, then to The Meme's @CarnegieHall. Click.
POV from a stage overlooking a crowd of thousands of fans. They're all clapping, bouncing around to the punk rock the band is playing. Every few seconds the POV moves to a man's fingers landing chords on the neck of the electric guitar he's playing, then to other band members on the stage with him, then back out to the swaying crowd.
You ready to go to lunch?
A young man's voice in the background.
The video image retracts with a sharp jerk, and the rock concert can be seen in the lenses of the smartglasses being removed from someone's face. He sets the glasses on the table next to a large monitor streaming code.
Yeah.
POV is blurry on the glasses, still streaming the rock concert as he picks them up again. He presses the stem and the image vanishes as he puts the glasses back on. I'm just waiting for something to compile,
he defends.
POV moves to a young Indian man standing at the opening of a U-shaped workstation, one of many in the large open office space.
Right.
Indian scoffs, shakes his head.
What's your problem, Ravi. You do it too.
He says as he gets up.
Yeah, Dylan. I do it too, because we have no life of our own. Sadly.
Ravi shakes his head again, sighs, then slides his smartglasses back up the bridge of his nose. Let's go.
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Used to be it was cellphones that everyone was addicted to,
Dylan says as he looks around the diner. Most everyone is wearing smartglasses in varying colored frames and styles, though all have a camera embedded in, or above, the bridge of their frames.
What?
Ravi asks as he takes a bite of his burger.
Now it's Virtual Life. Look at that guy. He's managing to stuff his face while inside an entirely different reality. He's probably on a 50% immersion opacity, and watching someone eat something amazing instead of the crap this place serves.
Ravi swallows, wipes his mouth on his napkin. How do you know he's on VL? He could be reading a book, or checking his email for all you know.
Probably watching porn—some couple making it somewhere.
Dylan pokes at the remains of his Cobb salad, smashing bits of egg and tiny pieces of bacon into wilted lettuce. "Do you ever want to live the life of the people we