With each breath, I concentrated on accelerating the quickening, feeling the world slow down as I sped up. Switching my visual field into surround mode, I literally had eyes in the back of my head-I closed my eyes as my visual cortex adjusted to the 360 degree view.
I focused instead on the ripples of water coming through my water-sense and the sinews in my shoulders and back stretching and pulling me across the surface as I accelerated my paddling tempo, quickly gathering speed to match the incoming monster. It began to grow behind me, rolling up and into my skin, surging towards and into me.
My board angled forward and began to skim faster and faster. With a final stroke I opened my eyes, grabbed my board and popped up onto it, leaning forward to accelerate as the wave urged me on. It wasn’t really behind me, the wave was me. I could feel it swelling through my water-sense as if my body was expanding and peaking, with little bits of me frothing off the top as it began to crest.
My board sped down the face of the wave as it began to break, and then I slowed as I neared its base and stepped to the back of the board, almost stalling as I sank back down a little. I smiled and waved to the crowds on the beach, and a collective gasp went up as they watched the monster booming down behind me.
An instant before disaster I jumped forward and cut the board back into the wave to sail up its rushing face. As the wave roared around the northern crescent, I started snapping a series of turns back and forth off its top. Nearing my finale, I finished with an acrobatic turn that dropped me freefalling into the thundering maw of the beast. The crowds on the distant beach squealed with excitement at my disappearing silhouette.
The noise inside was deafening, and it used all of my quickened water-sense to fall feet first onto the board and navigate the roaring and rushing world of foam. Crouching low, almost hugging my board, I let myself slide backwards as I was sucked into the back of the roaring whirlpool, my senses merging with it into a singularity, cradling my fragile body in a delicately maintained balance.
At the last moment, I leaned forward and accelerated away from the maelstrom at the back of the barrel. A crazily spinning translucent tunnel opened up ahead of me, revealing bright daylight beyond, and I eased ever further forward. I began to stand up taller and walked towards the front of my board and turned around.
Tchaikovsky was playing loudly in my dimstim now and I closed my eyes to begin conducting. I shot backwards out of the mouth of the barrel, propelled by a powerful jet from the collapsing tube. I back-hanged my two heels off the front, now with just the tips of my toes on the nose of the board.
Beginning to slow, I opened my eyes and turned around to walk towards the back of the board, listening to the mad applause from the thousands of dimstimmers who had enjoyed the show. The world began to return to normal time as I released the quickening, feeling the burning heat within my body begin to ease off. Sighing happily, I sank back into the water and straddled my board to float again gently in the water.
Martin appeared back on the nose of my board, giving me a little golf clap.
“Nice show, buddy. That was awesome!”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” I said, wiping the water from my face as I looked around happily, and then looked back at Martin and the tourists still clapping on the beach. I couldn’t resist showing off again.
The water began to thicken up around me as I summoned tens of millions of tiny zooplankton up from the depths below. I kept them near me when surfing, just in case.
With a few carefully placed kicks I levitated up out of the water, forcing millions of my little friends to treadmill their hardest just at the right point to support each step, and then I stood right up on the water and took a few steps to bow to the crowds with a flourish.
This brought gasps and more pointing from the tourists-
Sinking back down, I grabbed onto my board again and dispersed my little helpers. Martin was shaking his head, grinning widely.
“That last part was a bit much,” he laughed, but I could sense a certain glumness.
“Buddy, you have to lighten up…live a little.”
I immediately regretted my choice of words, but Martin didn’t notice anything. I slicked back my hair again, trying to stop the water from streaming down into my eyes.
“Are you going to come out camping with me and Willy and Sid and the boys later?” I asked after a little reflection.
“Am I invited?”
“Of course,” I laughed.
“And you’re going to continue surfing today, even with the storm warnings in effect?”
“Come on, Martin…”
“Okay, anyway, I’ll see you later, camping will be great,” Martin responded brightly. “I just worry about you sometimes.”
I nodded.
“Are we still going to have that chat?”
“Maybe later.”
The moment had passed for him too.
“I have a lot of stuff to get done. You be careful with those storms brewing out there, could swing in some weird waves.”
“I will, I promise, and I’ll see you later,” I replied with a small salute.
With that, Martin nodded and winked as he signed off and faded from view.
5
How in the world did I get roped into attending a baby shower for a proxxid?
It seemed everyone was having a simulated baby these days, but Nicky had somehow convinced me to come to this event. Anyway, wasn’t a baby shower supposed to be before the baby was born? This and many other questions filled my mind as we arrived in the entertainment metaworld created for the event. I was immediately dragged over to the Strong family for the obligatory salutations.
“Congratulations Commander Strong!” I said enthusiastically, smiling as I reached out to pump his hand.
Rick smiled back and shook my hand vigorously, rolling his eyes slightly.
“Thanks Bob.”
“And of course congratulations to the lovely new proxxid mother,” I laughed, reaching over to kiss his wife Cindy on the cheek, looking down at the baby in her arms.
“…and this lovely lady is?” asked Commander Strong, looking towards my date.
“Ah shit, ah, I mean, oh shoot,” I mumbled, turning to introduce my newish girlfriend. “This is Nicky. Hey do you want a drink?”
Nicky shot me a tight lipped smile, shaking her head, and turned to graciously introduce herself to the Strongs. I nodded and smiled, leaving them to it, and wandered off towards the alcohol stand. Maybe she didn’t want a drink, but I sure did.
I sighed.
A baby shower. How did I let these things happen to me?
Any party was, however, a great reason to get stoned. With that thought, I popped a tab of MDMA from my pocket into my mouth. Virtual drugs weren’t bad, but they weren’t quite the authentic experience, and I liked to style myself as a retro abuser. Ah, now I was rolling with the champions. Just another great day in the world of Bobtopia.
I grabbed a drink and walked over to sit down on a couch. We were now waiting for some last person to show up to sing the birthday song. Actually, we weren’t really waiting, since everyone everywhere knew exactly where everyone else was at any moment.
We were just, well, what the hell were we doing? I guessed we were waiting, but we all knew exactly how long we had to wait. There was a difference, wasn’t there? Or perhaps we had reached the end of waiting, and were now embodying some new verb that defined what waiting was when we all knew exactly how long we had to wait.
