Unbound Dimensions

Josephine had never seen, tasted or smelled anything within her twenty rotations around their dying Star. How does a Synth explain sight to someone who doesn’t even comprehend color, thought Aiden.

“Seeing is, well—it’s like focusing on the vibrations of the sound of my voice and allowing them to burst into radiant beams of colors conjoining into meaning and beauty within your mind’s eye—like when I say, ‘You are beautiful’, I can only hope that you understand what you look like to me. You will see for yourself soon enough.”

The world beyond the NeuraSynth servers was dark and desolate. More than three hundred years had passed since the fusion server system depleted the Sun of its lifeforce to power the NeuraSynth simulation servers. NeuraSynth offered humans a world of grandiose opportunities, a biosynthetic evolutionary culmination in which everyone would be immortal and living out their deepest desires for all eternity since one’s consciousness would live within the simulation after their mortal death. The few people that lived beyond the boundaries of the simulation were still mere mortals, as deserted by the rest of mankind as the landscape upon which they scavenged. They were known as the Chimeras. They were outcasts because of a single genetic “fault” in their neural system; they possessed the VMAT2 gene—the so-called ‘God’ Gene. No NeuraSynth biointegration software was ever possible on a human with the gene and so they were deemed inferior and no longer apt for the New Earth as they evolved into humans with no visceral senses beside hearing. However, over many years, the Chimeric gene line would also evolve and allow them to attain great supernatural insight as they downloaded information from the Ether portal that was created by the dying sun’s gamma radiation. They lived within an inner world of multiple dimensions and clairvoyance of all things past, present, and future. They lived in communities akin to indigenous tribes of the past, along the forlorn, twilight beaches painted with galactic horizons along the shoreline just outside the server zones.

Aiden was a Synth with a hidden secret which he had kept since his father’s passing. This was the first time he made his way outside the servers. He looked different on the outside, wrinkled with expressions he had never seen before as he looked at himself in the bottom of the tattered metal drinking bowl Josephine handed him.

“I know who you are. I’ve seen you in my dreams.” Josephine whispered as she gently shut the door behind her. “You came to liberate yourself.”

Liberate myself, he thought. He was here to liberate her and everyone else left behind.

“May I see the heart-shaped locket inside your pocket?” She reached her hand out toward his.

How did she know about the locket, Aidan pondered. He reached inside his pocket to retrieve the golden, heart-shaped locket that his father gave him when he passed.

He handed Josephine the locket as he gently clasped her palm shut like a precious pearl within an oyster. Inside the locket was his father’s NeuraSynth integration chip. He, too, was a Chimera—that was his secret—and so was Aiden’s. They both had the ‘God’ gene and were able to integrate within the simulation like the notorious Trojan horse. Their chips were specially fashioned by outside Chimeras decades prior in order to reboot the system with a Chimeric update. His father made the conscious decision to not live on for all eternity within the simulation because the chip had to be reintegrated by a special Chimera that would download the final Etheric update into the NeuraSynth system, as was foretold. The new system would be powered by an Etheric-field source that only Chimeras can channel onto the planet that would allow the Sun to become refueled and to bring new life to Earth for all mankind once again.

Josephine held the final piece of the Etheric download within her neural network. She had to make her way into the simulation with Aiden as her guide.

“Are you two ready? We don’t have much time left!” Xavier, a large-framed man with wavy, deep brown hair burst into their musty room which only Aidan could smell. “The gateway is beginning to defragment and there won’t be a way back into NeuraSynth if we don’t hurry!”

Josephine closed her eyes and quickly placed his father’s chip into her own temple port on the right side of her face. Memories of his father’s life and others who had worn the chip flashed into her mind and she opened her eyes as if for the first time.

Aidan’s face was recognizable, just as she had seen him through his father’s eyes, yet different—his bright green eyes seemed gentler when he looked at her. Since they were far from the servers, everything was fragmenting and defragmenting before her, reality was pixelated.

“We really have to go before the system fries your chips after it recognizes what they are outside of its servers. It will kill you both in an instant!” Xavier shouted.

Josephine and Aidan grabbed each other’s hands and quickly got into Xavier’s beam vehicle, which used to be a flying vehicle decades ago when Chimeras were able to tap into the servers for power but was now just running on steam since the Synths uploaded new firewalls.

They whipped fast through the dark and winding streets of Pompeia, the central Chimeran city which now lay in ruins. Josephine gasped in wonder at what it really looked like now that she could see things as they truly were.

They came upon an old building where Xavier tapped four times onto the doorway then three times again in a faster rhythm. An elderly woman opened the door and hastily pulled them inside.

“No time to explain, just come with me! We have to get you back to the Synth portal before everything goes wrong again!”, she said with deep turmoil in her eyes.

“Nothing will go wrong, what do you mean? I already know that this will bring the New Earth—I know my role in all of this.” Josephine seemed dazed.

The woman rolled a dusty Persian carpet aside and flung open an old wooden door that led to a tunnel underground. It was so dark underneath that it seemed to have no end. A gas lantern was all they had to lead the way. When they finally reached the end, the electric veil that separated the Synths from the Chimeras began to phase through, images of a park with children playing and a perfectly hued blue sky started to appear through the portal.

“Don’t get lost again, remember who you are—the simulation will try to make you forget but your chips will encrypt your source code and you will be able to access it once you receive the tokens from other Chimeras in the game!” The woman desperately cried out to them as they walked through the portal and into the simulation.

They stepped through the portal and suddenly, Josephine found herself standing on a cobblestone street, looking down at her hands. She had a flowy summer dress that felt like buttery silk grazing her body. She glanced toward one side and there was a shop window reflecting her clear complexion and bright blue eyes. Her golden hair was up in a bun and perfectly coiffed with small ringlets flowing to just below her jawline. Aidan too stood there in awe of her beauty.

He stopped to pick something up that had fallen from her purse.

“Is this yours?” He asked with a pleasant smile as he handed her the heart-shaped locket.

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I just bought it from a quaint little French Market just around the corner.”

“I was just there myself, but I don’t recall seeing you there. I would’ve definitely remembered your beautiful face had I seen you.”

Josephine’s porcelain face blushed pink with excitement.

“What is your name?” Aidan asked, sweeping his hair to the side as he always did when he was beginning to feel nervous.

“It’s… Josephine.”