Overlay
Bright sunlight shone down through a sieve of elm leaves. The air was rich with the joyous melodies of songbirds. Gradually intensifying. Until the racket was nearly deafening.
I woke up. The alarm I had set last night wasn't quite as gentle as I had hoped, but it did get its job done. After getting my head straight with a sip of very hot, very strong coffee, I switched the overlay mode to read the few bits of mail that got through my extensive spam filter. Nothing much, just a few more entries into the filter. Some interesting linguistic randomizer used to compose two pieces of junk mail, completely different in detail, but identical in content. Spent the next five minutes training the language analyzer to filter out such messages. Thinking about implementing an opt-in filter to keep out all unsolicited mail. Coffee finished, starting on a croissant with two slices of cheese and a salad leaf. Reading the newsbits on overlay, not much going on locally. Not much going on globally. Twenty-seven new posts on the community forums overnight. Most of it ranting, logging and post-flood. No more croissant.
Teeth clean. Beard shaved. Donning my well-worn semi long jacket with a big decorative camtex pattern of a round microcircuit flower on the back. Setting the default texture of the flower to quicksilver today. Playing Strauss on the audio overlay, walking the stairs down to street level in beat. ID-system sending auth to the door. Out of the door and onto the street. Toning down brightness and contrast of the urban landscape, selecting an 18th century Italian architecture style for the building camtex overlay. Walking to the grocery store, lazily scanning the shared data of passersby, grabbing a spectator video of yesterday's CTF semifinals. Checking out some interesting plays, when I hear the audio overlay collision alert. Sidestepping to avoid bumping into a man dressed in synthleather jacket with a blazing camtex phoenix pattern. Fiddling around with overlay texture controls, turning people into 1x1x2m blocks of sandstone with dust raising in their wake and public ID carved onto all sides in a blocky rune font. A sandstone column with a green target marker suddenly appears from around a corner. Turning off the sandstone texture of people with markers.
Nostro is wearing her blueish-gray long wool coat. No camtex in sight. We talk and rummage through each other's shared files while on the way to the grocery shop. I show her my sandstone block mod and she giggles at me being a horrible person. Stepping through the shop doors, greeting the shopkeeper, picking up some oranges and pizza, heading back out through the door. Approving the instant debit payment dialog appearing on the overlay. Nostro is sipping from the apple juice carton she bought. We part ways. I head to the park. She goes home.
Chatting on the 'net, dodging lollerskaters, blasting old-skool Prodigy on the overlay. The park has a little stream running through it, roughly ten meters from bank to bank. Some ducks and an occasional swan swimming in it, fed fat by people throwing bread crumbs at them. I sat on a park bench in the shade of a cherry tree. Switched overlay to work mode, started going through work mail, attached the work network screen and checked my todo-list. Changed text input method from vocal chord sensors to finger joint virtual keyboard. Started with editing out done jobs from the todo-list, proceeded with coding some overlay mods. Mostly visual fx, with some audioscape hints and ideas for the sound guys. Spent the afternoon debugging a furry cherry tree mod. Detached the work screen and threw the now empty bag of oranges into a recycler. Took the pizza home, put it in the freezer, hoping it didn't go bad from working with me. Attached the work screen to put some final touches into the cherry tree. Added a 20% encounter rate blackbird into the scene. Set myself down onto the bed.
Cruelly awakened an hour later by the familiar jingle of a game request. Switched overlay to complete external sensor block and dove into the mechanical battlearmor. Thirty minutes and several deaths later, the opposing team succeeded in destroying our last remaining respawn point. Soon after, two enemy armors emerged from behind a hill and blew my right leg joint with a well-aimed AP round. I managed to take out the other enemy armor with some creative mortar juggling, but the other managed to hit my immobile armor with some plasma rounds near the vulnerable ammo deposits. A big boom later I was but another spectator following the desperate struggle of our last remaining armor against a full enemy five armor squad. Five seconds, and the only remainder of our last armor was a big charred hole in the ground. I switched external sensors back on and talked about the game with the guy on my contact list who woke me up.
I put the pizza into the oven, set the overlay to alert me in 12 minutes. Checked the videofeeds. Nothing really interesting going on on commercial live webcasts. The girl two floors down in apartment A12 was setting up her weekly piano performance webcast. She's been steadily improving during the two months I've been living here. Good performance tonight, wired her a two credit micropayment as my thanks for tonight. The pizza hadn't gone bad. Not that it was some miraculous culinary marvel either.
Checked the newsbits. Scriptkiddies DDOSsing people's personal uplinks on the streets to mug them when they can't call the cops via the net. Discussion forums had a link to a patch that sets up an emergency outbound link on the id data channel. Too bad that unauthorized communication on the id data channel is a major villainy. Today's spam had a lot of personal security products. Tasers and such. Easy to fry someone's optics with one. Nasty. Updated the filter list.
Approved the home server patchlist for applying. Approved the personal unit patchlist for applying. Spent 5 millicredits worth of gridtime to compile the patches. Took a shower, set the camtex of the bathroom to a jungle waterfall. Almost hit my head to the wall. Body clean. Teeth clean. Set the overlay to wake me up in eight hours.
---
Ilmari Heikkinen
Last updated: 2003-02-03
