Sneak Preview: Prologue of My Debut Novel "Sumire"

The following is a rough version of the opening chapter of my book. It's highly likely that it will look different when the polished final draft of the book is published (it hasn't been through editing yet), but it does give a good sense of the philosophies and technological dreamings that have poured out of me while writing Sumire, and I am trying my best to get the ball rolling with promoting this thing. 

In case you were wondering, it's pronounced SUE (as in "boy named"), ME (as in "I, you"), and RAY (as in "Romano, gun, X"). It's a Japanese name that I've always loved. I taught a girl once with the same name. She had such a remarkable personality and way of treating me: complete and utter disrespect for me because I was an authority figure, but at the same time complete and utter respect for me because I was a fellow human being. All of this coming from a junior high school student. I'll never forget her. 

Anyway, enjoy the chapter. If you would like updates on the pending book release date and any potential promotional days, please add me on either Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Look for announcements in either late fall 2013 or sometime in winter thereafter.

Prologue of Sumire

Meet young Dustin. He was born into the age of virtual reality, and raised by the rigid social classes in the Phys (that is, the physical world). He found the social stratification on the soil trite and constricting, so he fled to VR (virtual reality) space, the place that can make dreams, the place that can suck you into hallucinations forever. It’s something of a dangerous savior, a blissful demon. Like in anything, Dustin has had to learn to balance. The joys and benefits of VR space can be so great that they can lead to uncontrollable desires, like those from powerfully addictive drugs. And just like a dangerous and gripping drug, VR space can suck you in and leave you with little chance of ever returning to the place you came from -- your own conscious mind. 

Dustin sure thought that, no doubt. And there he sits.  

So there Dustin sits. He is about to tap into VR space for just the third time. It is a new enticement for him, a huge love, an extension of the Internet, which, of course, is an extension of literature, of stories and fables and never before manifested wonders of the imagination, though here it is a magical place where characters in the story become the users, the central figures actively creating the prose with all five of their robust senses, instead of sitting back, following and accepting the plots without choice. In VR space Dustin has the freedom to go wherever he wants, whenever he wants. Until now, access to good information and imagination had always been speeding up and some people thought we were at the verge of the end point, the point of purity and bliss.

When he logs in he finds his consciousness instantaneously shift to a field of down feathers and mattresses made of soft cotton and silk. The women that he’d loved in his past are all there, bits of information extracted from the imagination -- pubescent pipe dreams of teenage lust and want. He plays and touches and smiles for hours, like a newborn being coddled by his ever loving mother.   

By just the fourth time in VR space, Dustin is a victim. The pleasures of the land have formatted his brain into something else, something dependent. He has no hope of ever going back to the Phys. He is a VRling now, a zombie. Sooner or later the people who love him back there will find him and spend the rest of their lives giving him sponge baths and whispering songs of long ago into his deaf ears. He is done in one world but just beginning in another. Is that something to be ashamed of or proud?  He hasn’t yet decided, though he never will, for his consciousness has no idea it has been switched over to a simulation, a fake reality. It’s a seamless transition and should any of the VRlings ever be woken, they would be extremely suspect of our physical world. They would kick and scream and call foul. "How can one world be fake and the other real yet the smell and the touch of each be identical?" they would ask. 

VR space is a natural disaster like none other, a silent killer that brings heaven quickly after death. Existentialism had never been such a hot topic before VR space. What is real? Is any of it? Are we all VR-lings in a simulator from some other reality that we believe is the only true reality? Dustin might never know the answers to these questions unless someone comes along and figures out what is behind all of this. He might be lost in a realm of computerized orgasms and moans, of winning goals and harrowing adventures, for as long as his fleshy shell can stay afloat in the Phys. Maybe it will be a year, maybe thirty, maybe three hundred. Medicine is marching along nearly at the pace of microchips, getting more advanced by the day. All in all it is a groovy time, though! Dustin, may your worldly consciousness rest in peace, but fret not. Welcome to the 2060s!

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