Author: David C. Nutt

“So, how many today?”
“Ummmmm, six. No. Seven.”
“Seven? Dude, that’s gotta be a record.”
“Nah. I did twelve in one day last quarter. It’s easy. Find their operational metaphor, login into their universe, use the behavior health override, eject them from the system. Easy-peasy.”
“How do you do it, man? I do any more than four and I am good for nothing for the next 24. All those egos, all that re-arrangement of reality… (sigh.) I gotta hang on tight each time I go in.”
“Your problem is you admire their creativity. You see the ornate world they’ve made for themselves, spend time in their harems, follow them for a while on their quest, kill some dinosaurs, whatever. You get sucked in.”
“How can you not? Just yesterday I was in a world so beautiful and peaceful I even wanted to believe it existed.”
“That’s your problem. You want to believe. Not our job. Our job is to bring reality crashing down on their universe. Make them give up the sword and sorcery and get back to the real world and help us make it a better place.”
“That is so square. Don’t you see what they are all trying to do? Is it their fault that they’re addicted to what could be rather than dealing with what is? Hell, some of our cases need to making decisions out here…oh. Wow.”
“You get it now don’t you? They have to be out here making it better. For every one of those VR dropouts, there’s six of us taking care of them. For every one we smack off-line three more go on.”
“So what do we do? How do we fight the fantasy?”
“Have one more powerful than theirs.”
“Huh?”
“More powerful. Me? I want to burn it all down man. I want to run wild with sledgehammers in the server farms. I want to throw acid on the data storage. I want to piss Hep C into their bio-computers. Every time I drop into one of those MF’s universes that’s what is locked into my mind, man. I’m the wrecking ball, freakin’ death and destroyer of virtual worlds.”
“Chill out! You’re scarin’ me bro.”
“Hey, just livin’ the dream.”