SUBCUTANEOUS 1.4

Hello! Not very good today but I'm doing my best! My brain is soppy and sad, but life goes on and we do our best, no? I'm doing my best. Also gonna try to eat today, which I hear is good!

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God damn. Now that was realistic.

If anything, the haptic feedback was way too much. For a moment, Ilia wonders if she should tone it down, go into the game settings or just not wear some, but… shit, she was the one that wanted something immersive, right? Ilia is many things, but someone who goes back on what she decides, on what she really wants? She’s got a shitload of medical debt and a fancy little estrogen bottle to attest to that.

No, the haptics stay on, but… oof, maybe a break. A few minutes off. Sacrilege, to leave a game so soon, but then again, most games don’t do the physical equivalent of electroshock play. Or one of those weird muscle-crafter thingies they advertise on late-night tv. 

Either way, as she peels off the whole rigamarole of the haptics, VR and control gloves, she can’t help but wear one hell of a grin on her face. Sure, partial-pause is annoying, but Dark Spirits did it first, and anything Dark Spirits did, you can bet it’s at least kinda good. Hell, games are still doing ‘entus flasks’ to this day, more than ever even. And the added challenge and again, added immersion both more than make up for the annoyance of not having a system explained. Since when does every game need handholding? Sure, it should be an option if it’s needed, but the whole point of the game is that she shouldn’t know she’s in a game, otherwise what does “most immersive VR ever” even mean?

She finishes off her can of Monstrous and pops the tab on another one, the heavy-metal font written in a neon red this time for ‘strawberry-raspberry” flavor. They all mostly taste like battery acid, but a refined connoisseur should appreciate properly flavored battery acid. Sighing, shaking off some of the sweat (gross, now she’ll need to actually shower), she yanks her laptop from her desk, plopping onto her bed and laying it on her stomach.

Is this writing pose good for her incipient carpal tunnel? No. Is it more relaxing? Fuck yes. 

She boots up the forum, expertly tilting her head at the right angle to be able to drink in bed without spilling a drop. It takes her a few minutes of clicking- the forum pages refresh automatically and constantly, and she had to dig deep to find the particular page of aficionados that she ended up meeting.

There it is, under the full immersion forum tag- fuck-me-in-the-matrix.

Truth be told, the “matrix” part at the end was what sold it for her. Sure, most estrogen pills are blue nowadays- but they sure didn’t use to be, and the directors are phenomenal. Personally, Matrix: Ressurective was her favorite, the fourth installment that no one wanted, least of all the directors and actors in it. It is distinctly and painfully not good, and Ilia is so goddamn proud of everyone involved for making it so perfectly terrible. Just horrific enough to ensure no sequel ever gets made again, not quite horrific or inexpensive enough for anyone to say they didn’t give it a good ol’ try. Considering the studios threats of doing the movie “with or without” the original directors, something they literally make into part of the plot of the movie- well, it’s a joy to watch an artist play a corpo-rat like a fiddle.

She clicks the link, goes to dive in, and-

This forum has been deleted.

…

What?

She opens the terms of service in another tab, staring at each rule in turn. There’s… there’s nothing there about deleting a whole forum. Part of the point of a lot of forum-based chat in this day and age is that it’s preserved, not modifiable or easily deleted like every other kind of social media. This site in particular she chose for that exact reason- there’s a shitload of things that’ll get you archived or the members banned, which has been great against the ongoing anal rash of neo-nazis online, but there is no rule that you should be able to delete a forum thread. Usually you can, but the mods are only supposed to delete posts, not whole threads! What’s the damn point?

She goes back to the prior tab, checking everywhere, but… nothing. And the beauty about screen names, they’re even harder to remember than regular names, something Ilia is terrible at. Not like she was going to friend request everyone there, but… well, she did PM with a few names. Hell, that’s how she bought the game, though she expects that that particular username likely self-deleted the account right after.

She clicks over to that section of the site, searching through recent messages. There has to be someone who knows why they broke the rules for this, but-

Huh. Fuck. In place of the three profile pictures of the last three people she talked to on here, there’s a stock ‘anon’ image, a blank with a person-shaped outline of a head. Easy visual proof that their accounts are gone. She goes to enter the first thread, from the user she bought the game from, and-

What the hell? The chatlog is gone. The username is the only thing left, the rest of the page completely empty- just the words “WEAREALLMEAT” typed out across the top of the page under her own. 

She squints, the brightness of the screen getting to her a bit as she stares at the missing chat. There’s no email signup or payment for the site, their terms of service are pretty basic, just a list of rules. Unlike the thing about forum threads never getting outright deleted, just archived and emptied out, there’s no explicit rule saying that they can’t or won’t delete message threads. But she’s never heard of this before, not from anyone. Again, the whole point of the website, Untor.li is that it’s totally anonymous, accessible mostly to those who use a tor or vpn to keep their ip address hidden, and that it maintains its chatlogs, always open, always there to reference, never consigned to the internet ghost-town of most websites. What’s the point if the admins are just deleting message chains and forums both? It’s not much, but it’s a step beyond an admin stepping into a forum to delete a post or ban someone.

She stares at the screen, trying to puzzle through what in the absolute fuck is going on, and sees something.

Her eyes dart back up to the username, staring intensely at it. She keeps her eyes wide- her ears are for shit, but her eyes, at least with glasses, are fucking sharp. She knows she saw movement out of the corner of her sight.

For a second, she swore that WEAREALLMEAT… twitched. 

…Nothing. Perfectly still and static, just like every other username on-screen.

She makes a drawn out groaning noise, closing the laptop with a bit more force than she probably should and rolling out of bed. She’s still feeling a bit tired from the haptic feedback- part of the dangers of never working out is that yes, electroshock videogaming does in fact have an even higher effect than normal. That effect being “hey my legs are wobbly and crap”.

Still, she staggers out of her room, heading down the hall. Three cans of monstrous, highly caffeinated sugar isn’t great on the bladder, and neither is constantly moving around or getting lightly tazed. A quick break for pee won’t hurt.

She holds herself firmly to this thought as she finds someone else in the hall, heading towards the same restroom door.

Ah, the joy of roommates. 

Ilia awkwardly raises a hand to say hi, dramatically self-aware of the fact she’s wearing just a shirt and panties, but also annoyingly aware that it is well past midnight and usually Sarah’s gone to work by now.

Night shift nursing is no easy job, and for that alone her opinion of Sarah isn’t too bad. Seeing as this is just about all she knows about Sarah, besides the fact that a shitload of her moving boxes are still out in the living room months after she finished moving in, it’s not necessarily a glowing endorsement. Sarah barely makes eye contact, sending out a quick smile that feels somewhere between performative and a knee-jerk response.

“Sorry, did you-”

“No no, all good,” Ilia interrupts, holding her hands up in surrender. “Gonna be a late night, just needed a quick break. You go first.”

Sarah raises an eyebrow, but again, that very polite smile, like a frat-girl with her picture about to be taken. “Sure! Sounds good!”

And then the door clicks closed.

…It’s not quite fair, but the interaction does kinda piss Ilia off a bit. Sarah had more clothing on, is usually gone at this hour, and didn’t so much as do the polite ‘double-insist’ thing. Actually, it’s not fair at all, and Ilia knows that, but the fact that Sarah feels kind in a way that never quite reaches the eyes does grate a bit. She’s tried to reach out to her roommate before, invited her to hang out, offered to share food she made, but… all received very polite and awkward notes of “sorry, thanks, that’s okay!”. If that had been it, it’d be one thing- it’s that, plus the constant lateness of rent and utilities, plus the moving boxes, plus the fact that she never does anything more than pass by- these things together make up the central image.

Sarah is nice, but in a way that covers for minor behavioral frustrations and keeps her very distinctly disconnected from anything like a relationship.

And now she was just polite enough not to be rude when taking the toilet.

Ilia sighs, long and slow.

It’s not like Sarah’s unique. Modern-age type of problems: Ilia’s had dozens of roommates over the years, almost never any that she knew beforehand. Since moving out for college, it’s basically been every six-months to a year that someone, her or a roommate, moves in or out of a place. She’s met and had to live with way worse folks than Sarah with her polite nothingness, and the other roommates are equally fine. Mary-Anne, for example, has a habit of cooking food that is absolutely delicious-smelling. She has some sort of event planning job, and is in her senior year. That is… all that Ilia knows about her, despite multiple attempts to broach conversation.

It’s fine. It’s fine! She doesn’t want to push or make anyone uncomfortable, and if they’re not going to want to be friends in the first place, then trying to press the issue isn’t going to do anything. 

Still… it’s lonely.

Her therapist would happily tell her about the fact that seeking immersion the way she does probably has something to do with her personal life being unfulfilling, which, like… duh. Broke, early twenties, dealing with old trauma and mid-transition, and… and yeah, lonely. 

Not that things are bad! They’re good! She hates her job, but it’s bartending, everyone hates bartending, right? And it pays well enough, at least with three roommates to back her up on the rent. And she can find some joy in escapism sometimes.

This is the point where her inner therapist gives her a “mhmm” sort of look, which she magnanimously decides to disregard. 

It’s fine. It’s not good, but then, things rarely are, big-picture. It’s fine. 

But the interaction does very well remind her that there is something distinctly lonely about being around people, living with people, who do not know you, and don’t want to. No matter how good or neutral or unknown those people might be in turn.

The toilet flushes, the sink rinses, and Sarah steps out, giving an awkward wave and a nod and turning down the hall to her room.

Five minutes later, the toilet’s flushed again, sink’s run one more time. Meds, previously neglected, are gulped down real quick- estrogen and an antidepressant, always a fun combination- and then she’s off.

Brushing is for when you’re about to sleep or just waking up, and Ilia intends to continue enjoying the time where she is doing nothing of the sort. Time to jump back into things.

But first, the whole reason she started checking the forums in the first place. She hops back into bed, laptop primed in her lap and up and running.

She starts a new thread, titling it as (what else) MEAT. 

Best case scenario, her original intent of finding a way to talk to people about the game and send thanks about the recommendation goes out. Worst case scenario, she gets to properly confirm that the mods are up to something shitty. Useful either way, which is the best kind of useful.

She keeps the first post short and sweet, some praise for the game and how it’s so damn good, but warning up front about the haptic feedback concerns and the intensity of it. The whole game is a joy and a half, and she intends to let people know, and she’s been on this particular forum website long enough that her word has maybe a teensy bit of say.

And then… back to it. She doesn’t have work for another two days- good for mental health, not as good for paychecks, even if weekdays are shit for guests. 

Ilia puts the feedback pads back on legs, arms, and torso, limbers up the control-gloves, and puts the helmet back on.

Almost like it was waiting for her, the titular words of the game flicker into being in front of her.

MEAT

BEGIN.