Sinc, Chapter One

            It was a dreary day, though to Solus that’s exactly how every day was. This particular one only served to prove him right as he walked down the crowded street, trying to avoid as much physical contact with passerby as possible. The clouds looked as if they could spill the water that they had engorged themselves on as they had trekked across the sky just to hover over the bustling city at any moment. Just in case such a thing happened he had dropped an umbrella into his bag as he had left his house only a few minutes ago.

            He turned down a few streets before stopping in front of a building with a large digital sign in the front, just like every other store on the street. The only real differentiation was the text on it reading “Atson Electronics”. Solus pushed the door open and was greeted by a rush of cool air and a dull buzzing that was meant to notify employees that a customer had arrived and should be greeted immediately. None of the standing workers seemed to notice him, however, and he simply moved his way towards the back of the store where a door led to a back room. He went through and turned to the right, setting his bag down momentarily before placing his hand on a scanning pad. Almost instantly an electronic female voice informed him that he had been clocked in, and he took his bag towards a set of key-padded lockers. He punched a code into the one marked 17 and a clicking noise could be heard, making it clear the door would now open. He placed his bag inside before taking a crisp, clean uniform from the hanger on the door. The door swung closed and locked itself as he walked towards a door clearly marked as the men’s rest room.

            A few minutes later he was properly dressed in a grey, collared button-down shirt and a pair of black dress pants. His name tag was pinned to the right chest pocket of his shirt, proclaiming his title as Solus for the world to see. With a very unenthusiastic look on his face he stepped out onto the sales floor. A man with a significantly more amount of body mass than the young man greeted him as he crossed to the register.

            “Hey Solus, can you close tonight?” He asked, pausing to restack a few display boxes as he waited for a response.

            “Yeah.” He said, dully checking the register. Almost immediately a girl showed up in front of him, patiently waiting to be acknowledged by him. He took another moment to input his employee number into the machine before clearing his throat. “May I help you?”

            She nodded sheepishly, placing a small box on the counter. “I’d like to buy this.”

            He looked at the box; it was a Sinc terminal. The little machines could be inserted into a hole on the underside of a person’s wrist; everyone had one. The different Sinc terminals improved the connection to a Sinc Virtual Reality server, and some even had some extras built in. The model sitting on the counter came with a small projector tile that need only be plugged into the Sinc terminal to bring holocalls to life when you weren’t at a holocall terminal.

            He nodded at her and placed it under the scan bar, ringing the product up as the girl dug into her pocketbook for a money card. She pulled it out after a few moments of rummaging and promptly held it in front of the registers scan laser. It picked up the barcode before allowing her to place a hand on the scanner to verify she was the card owner. That done, Solus placed the item into a plastic bag and handed it to her, bidding her a good day.

            The day progressed in a similar fashion. Solus rang up items, helped customers find exactly what they were looking for, and sometimes just stood staring out the window as it began to pour. A few travelers who had neglected to bring an umbrella huddle under the awning outside of the store, or even came inside and pretended to look around until the rain let up long enough for them to dash through traffic to their true destination.

            By the time Solus had gotten a chance to shoo all of the last remaining customers out of the store for closing it had darkened so much that he wondered that, if the electric lights didn’t light up the street like miniature suns, he’d be able to see at all after leaving. He turned the register off, locked the front entrance, and headed back to the employees’ locker room to change. It was a quick matter, and after another hand scan to clock out for the night he turned off the back room’s lights and made sure that all was in order to open shop again in the morning on the sales floor. Satisfied, he shut the lights off and let himself out, making sure to lock the door behind him.

            He glanced up and down the street for a few moments. People, even at this hour of the day, were hustling and bustling places; some were headed home, others to work or to do some late night shopping. Only a few of the shops had turned their signs off to let the general populace know that they were done with business for the night. Directly in front of the electronics shop a sign still burned bright, boasting “Sinc Virtual Reality Server Station”. When the street seemed clear of motor traffic, Solus dashed across it and entered the building. His ears were greeted with continuous beeping and other artificial sounds. It almost sounded like a hospital room.

            A quick flash of a members card allowed him into the server rooms, and he quickly found a suitable place to Sinc up to the server. He placed his bag into a small compartment underneath the Sinc terminal hookup and locked it in with a hand print and a short string of numbers before sitting down and taking a small plug out from under his right wrist and placing it in a depression in the arm of the hookup. He leaned back in the chair and let his head lean heavily on the headrest before sliding the Sinc terminal onto the Sinc plug on the armrest. Immediately a long string of numbers flooded his vision, letting him know that the server was communicating correctly. His vision went suddenly black and he ceased to feel anything momentarily.

            Just as soon as it had gone, his vision and bodily sensation returned to him, albeit he wasn’t feeling himself sitting on the terminal hookup; he was standing in a city square with several other people around, talking to each other or else on their way to another destination. He glanced around, quickly deciding that he didn’t feel like being in that particular location. A map appeared before his eyes, and he used his hands to manipulate it until he picked a location to better suit his current mood. Selecting it with a touch of his finger, Solus’ surrounding changed entirely, fading to white before reappearing as a forest filled with great oaks and willow trees. He could hear the sounds of nature echoing around him and feel the leaves crunching beneath his feet as he explored the wooded area.

            Soon he could hear the rush of a river calling to him, and he navigated through the trees in the direction that his ears told him to go. In just a few minutes he reached it, finding himself at the bank of a roaring river that wound like a snake through the landscape. As he looked on from the edge he could see little fish dart through the water going nowhere in particular as far as he could tell. The water appeared to be about twenty feet across at its widest point, so Solus leaned down to pick a few flat, polished stones from the edge of the riverbed, perfect for skipping across the water.

            Holding the pile in his left hand and taking one in his right, he pulled his arm back and threw the stone horizontally, its widest, flattest surface on the bottom side as it flew towards the water at a slight downward angle. To his dismay it simply plopped into the water, making a small splash and scaring all of the nearby fish as the water rippled away from the center point of the stone’s crash location.

            Mildly frustrated by his failure he flung another one, only to garner the same result as before. Intent on getting at least one to skim the water he continued until his hand was emptied of stones. He sighed, resigning that he was certainly lacking talent in the art of stone-skipping and went to sit on the grass a few feet from the water’s edge. He enjoyed the natural silence for a little while, content to stare into the clear liquid and watch the movement of the wildlife that made their home under its surface.

            As he gazed contentedly he began to notice something amiss. A soft sound coming from a little ways away from his current location barely registered in his ears. As he focused on it, however, the noise became clearer. It was coming from his right, and he turned to see what it might be. To his surprise he saw a girl up the river bank on the other side skipping stones just as he had been trying to do, only she was actually managing to get the polished stones to skip two or three times before diving into the river. He frowned, suddenly frustrated with his failure again. He stared off in the distance, observing her for a few moments before deciding to just get up, walk over to her, and ask her if she could let him in on the apparently secret technique.

            Solus stood and stretched his arms and back for a moment before walking along the river’s edge towards the girl. As he got closer, he noticed that she was wearing a grey sweater, despite the weather not being particularly cold, and a pair of ragged looking blue jeans. Her hair was an interesting color; it was a faded cross between red and purple and reached a few inches below her shoulders, and her face was mostly obscured by her bangs.

            As he neared she didn’t appear to notice him. She simply continued to bend down to pick up a few throwing stones each time she ran out and began to throw them again, paying not a single mind to the other side of the river. When Solus finally found himself directly in front of her he called out.

            “Hey! I’d like to know why I suck at that, yet you don’t seem to be having any problems.” He picked up another stone and demonstrated exactly what he meant. Sure enough, the stone dropped into the water without a second thought.

            The girl looked up, the one eye that was visible past her hair showing a bit of surprised. She didn’t seem to be expecting anyone else to be around. Her silence only served to cement the notion, and she stared at Solus looking very unsure as to what she should do.

            After an awkward moment of silence she held up a finger, turned around, and dashed into the tree and brush behind her.

            “H…hey!” He cried after her, forgetting that there was a river in front of him and stepping ankle deep into the cool water. He jumped back, shaking his feet off. His shoes were soaking wet. With a groan he sat down and pulled them off, throwing them beside himself in a show of mild irritation. “I guess it’s to be expected.” He shrugged. People never seemed too keen on interaction with him, although he still wasn’t quite sure why. Even still, he didn’t mind much. Most people he found quite boring and bland. He would rather spend his time wandering around the virtual reality servers than deal with the hustle and bustle of the real world. He could do so many more interesting things when he was Sinced. Being online even made other real people more tolerable, somehow.

            Just as Solus was about to get up to leave he felt a tap on his right shoulder. He started and turned around to see the girl who had just moments ago dashed in the opposite direction. “Woah. Where did you come from?” He asked, jumping up and turning to face her. At this range he could see that her eyes were in fact a slightly dark shade of red.

            “I came from over there. You just saw me, didn’t you? Do you have short term memory loss or something?” She pointed across the river to where she had been standing throwing stones.

            Solus frowned. “I meant…you got over here pretty fast. I didn’t even see you cross the river.” He said, shrugging. “Oh nevermind.”

            She blinked deliberately a few times, carefully examining the boy in front of her. Her gaze made Solus slightly uncomfortable, so he turned and walked a few paces away from her and took another handful of stones from the river bank. She joined him, standing about a foot away. He held out half of stones to her, balancing the rest in his other hand. She took them quietly, playing with one between her fingers.

            “Have you ever actually been able to get it to work before? Stone skipping, I mean.” She threw another, which skipped twice before sinking with a small splash. Solus shrugged.

            “No. They don’t like me I guess.” He threw one into the air and caught it a few times. “It didn’t look that hard, but apparently looks deceive. Lying little rocks, they are.”

            The girl giggled a little. “You just have to get it at exactly the right angle.” She demonstrated the position for him, prompting him to do precisely as she was doing. “See?” Once he had mimicked her she pulled back and let the stone fly, and it jumped three times this time. “Now you try.” She instructed, repeating the motions without a stone this time.

            Solus followed her lead and let it go, and to his surprise it bounced once before falling. “Well, better than before.” He said, readying another in the same way. The second one didn’t quite do as he had wanted, going back entirely on the progress he had thought he’d made.

            “Just keep trying.” She walked around to his right side and positioned his hand for him. As she did, Solus felt his cheeks warm slightly. What was that about? “Throw it again. Try not to move out of position too much.” She said, stepping out of his arm’s range.

            About another half hour went on in a similar fashion, and by the end of it Solus was skipping rocks like a pro. If skipping rocks was a sport and had professionals doing it, that is.

            After they had skipped their last handful of stones they sat on the bank, watching the fish swim underneath the rippling water.

            “Hey, I never got your name.” Solus said, rummaging around in the dirt and rocks of the water’s edge.

            The girl looked at him, her red eyes seeming brighter than they had been earlier. “It’s Tempest. What’s yours?” She asked just before letting herself fall backwards on her back to stare at the sky.

            He paused for a moment, glancing at her as she closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. “It’s Solus.”

            Her eyes fluttered open. “No you aren’t.” She said.

Solus smirked. You have no idea. He thought. “I should be getting home.” He stood up and stretched his back out.

            “Already? Aw…okay. Will you be back tomorrow?” She asked, sitting up again and looking up at him expectantly. Her eyes seemed to plead for his presence again. Solus was surprised by the reaction, and nodded slightly with a blank look on his face. “Yay!” She jumped up and wrapped him in a hug.

            “Uh….yeah.” He stood still, waiting for her to release him from her grip. When she finally did, he gave a curt wave, and mentally told the server to log him off.

Tempest watched as he disappeared before going back to a nice nap on the riverbank.