Since the split her life was a daze. You just drift along and wait for the next event to occur. Wake up in the morning and stare at the ceiling, trying to dredge up the memories of the night before, the dreams that are no longer there. Get dressed in the same clothes you wear every Tuesday. Stand on the train surrounded by people dressed exactly the same, feeling the same way, doing the same thing. But still strangers.

She was jealous of the readers, those with heads stuck in books, no longer there, somewhere else, lost among the worlds. She couldn’t lose herself like that anymore. It had all been taken away.

Get to work, spend an hour churning through emails, an hour plugging code into the system, an hour reading the newspapers. Then lunch. Eat and lie in the park, in the foreign sun, and try to dream.

Afternoon meetings surrounded by people talking earnestly about the new hardware, about how many more users they could get online. People she would never understand. Did they actually care about this job? Didn’t they just join up for the hardware, for the knowledge, for the possibilities?

She nodded her head and stared out the window, placing an expression of thought upon her face. Smiled when expected to.

Leave the office early, sneak out while no-one’s looking, catch the early train home, picking up food on the way. The same thing you eat every Tuesday. Eat early and quickly till a wave of tiredness washes over you. Retreat back to bed and start looking again, hunting for the life you lost, the dreams you lost.

Cass knew she had to stop drifting like this, but what were the options? Find a new job? What possible difference would that make? They were all the same, the Corporations. As similar as their blocks on the Grid. You could change addresses but you were always on the same street. The Boulevard didn’t change.

Besides, at least she had access to the latest gear. If anyone was going to find what she was looking for, it was her. The entire back wall of her bedroom was a VR unit, state of the art, she no longer even needed to jack, simply lay back and let the field surround her, let the dreams take her away until she found herself back on the wet streets.

That was how it should be. Now she was simply wiped out by a dark fog, not remembering anything, no connection found. A black, dreamless sleep. An unsuccessful hunt.

She could go out after work and watch other people get along. Sit at the bar and wait for lonely men to approach, but it was unsatisfying, lightweight. They tried to sell her an image she distained, of herself as well as them. And when something did happen, when you drank yourself into enough of a stupor for your heart to allow a connection, even then it ended quickly. Lie there in the dark and stare at the ceiling, waiting for him to finish, wait for sleep to take him away from you so you can stare at his face and wonder what the world looked like through that.

Introversion was overrated. You weren’t supposed to find the answers on your own, you were supposed to socialise, mingle with each other, live through the reflections others glance back off of you. That’s what VR was for, that’s what the Boulevard had been all about. All she could do was keep looking.

She knew this, so she tried to toe the line, waiting for her dreams to come back into focus and take her away.