Awakening

Morning was never really Tamar's favorite time. Leaving the wonders of his night time paradise was always difficult, but even here, in the city, readying to travel off-world, he was required to maintain a physical schedule of some sort. He always felt like it would be so much simpler just to stay jacked in - just to keep traveling the byways of the Net, keep "riding the light."

Slowly but surely, Tamar began to surface from last night's vivid network-inspired dreams. Jacking in every night allowed the network to tap unused portions of the brain for processing. On any night, or day for that matter, as there were really no shifts determined by something as ethereal (or generally invisible in all the smog and pollution) as sunlight. Different sections of the populace walked the corridors and streets of the city on different shifts,that was all. So, on any given shift, at least one third of Gaspar City's 12-million residents were jacked in - their fiber optic infraskulls glowing through their scalps, eyes spinning in the depths of REM sleep while Mother Network gave them sweet dreams and used their brains as a kind of living RAM drive. It gave the network virtually limitless processing speed and memory - the only limitation was the speed of light its self.

As his consciousness raised through the layers of awareness the Net guided him through to waking, Tamar began to recall bits of what he'd been dreaming. It was often this way - one of the side-effects of the spending nights in the Net was that the sleeper came away with vivid dreams, often related to the bits of data their synapses has been processing. If one chose, Net could wipe the memories away, but Tamar had always enjoyed knowing - remembering. It gave him a sense that he had control, in some way, of the Net's use of his brain.

Suddenly, he was aware of his surroundings. No more floating, Net had returned physical feeling - he was, for all intents and purposes, awake. Quickly he queried the Network, searching for news of any occurrences during his sleep shift that might delay his launch, scheduled for two weeks from today. All seemed quiet, although there was a report of movement in the ruins about six kilometers from the city. Interesting that anything could survive out there, but the Luds did, and they seemed to be making some kind of organized attempt to rebuild old cities across the blasted face of the planet.

Good luck with that, Tamar thought to himself. This planet is wasted. Even the cockroaches seems to be trying to escape. I'll take my chances on a colonization ship.

Tamar was one of several million applicants set to be blasted off the rock and rubble that was all that remained of Earth, launched into the stars to find habitable worlds elsewhere. With the advent of light drive, journeys took months instead of years, and there were already three New-Earth colonies on habitable worlds in this sector.

Selection for colonization was easy- there were only three requirements: Network-capability (the massive colony ships relied on the brains of their passengers to perform the necessary calculations for Faster-Than-Light drive), genetic clarity going back at least three generations (no congenitals, no mutations - this requirement was a tough one in some regions of the planet. NukeWar ensured a lot of mutations) and the willingness to enlist. All personnel colonizing off-world did so as members of the Earth Force Alliance, the only form of government that survived the NukeWar - military government.

Slipping his uniform jumpsuit on to his light frame, Sergeant Tamar Lucius Dammin decided he'd struggle through one more day of phys-life, if only to return to the Net and its wonders at the end of his duty shift.

He strapped on his flechette gun and body armor, readying himself for yet another tedious shift at the Wall.