The Book of Immersion
VOLUME 1
We are blind and still we see
Deaf and yet we hear
We do not touch
And yet we feel
For we are brave
Not scared to fear
Welcome to our world
Music and song lyrics by the Tale Teller Club
Illustrations by iServalan Homotech 23
© 2024 Sarnia de la Mare
Tale Teller Club Publishing
Lose yourself in the safety of books
CONTENTS
Renyke Wakes in the Alley (Purpose)
Flex and the Robo-Dog (Making Decisions)
The Zoners (Meeting Strangers)
The Tiger Queen (Memories)
Trouble at the Bank (Animal Instincts)
Jarome and the Scritters, (Trade and Barter)
Shabra (Laws of Attraction)
Lust and Loins (Limerence)
Dinfant Trouble (Synthetic Love)
The Crossroads (Gut Feelings)
The Basement People (Emotions)
The Fight (Hormones)
The Journey to the Edge (Fear of Death)
The Ship of Sirens (Superstition)
Friendship (Empathy)
Swimming (Pleasure and Pain)
Freaky Celebrations (Stimulation)
Peer Pressure
(Existentialism)
The Perimeter (Ego)
You wake up in the morning
You don’t know where you are
You do a quick 360
Looks like you’re making art
You’re Caught in a bubble
‘tween real and fake
You’re never really sure
Which ducker’s on the take
It’s just life my friend
But it’s the only one you get
It’s just life my friend
You only get one shot
So you get up off the floor
The sun is coming through
You get these freaky feelings
You don’t know what to do
You’d better watch your back
Cos bruises gonna hurt
It’s gonna take a while for you
To prove your worth.
We’re all in the dark
Just walking in the park
The more you try
It just gets worse
The more you want
The deeper the curse
It’s just life my friend
But it’s the only one you got
Welcome to Immersion You Have Reached Strata 1
Renyke Wakes in the Alley (Purpose)
What is your purpose here? What drives your desires and achievements? Is there a greater good you seek? Is there anything more important than yourself? You are but a fleck of dust within a universe you cannot control.
And yet, decisions you make today will affect everything around you in an unprecedented future. Your past actions, the very existence of you, have made a difference to the world. What is your past? Have you learned lessons? Are you controlled by unrecognisable forces or are you your own God?
Welcome to Immersion, may your journey go well.
Renyke's inner motors began to whirr.
He had put himself into voluntary shutdown during the dark-cycle in order to save power.
POSition within the human household as a domestic servant had been more than suitable and had sustained him all of his life till now, albeit a short one in human years. He was around a decade old which was quite a long life for an android. New technologies and updates marked regular upgrades and there was little call for used 'droids'.
Now, here on the cold paved ground in the open air, Renyke could feel changes in his body and surroundings. There were unfamiliar sounds and an ever-present white noise from the activities of strangers in a cityscape he had not seen before.
An unrecognised sense of trepidation washed around him and occupied his thoughts. Renyke was not programmed to experience fear, the feeling must have been something else.
From the start of his operational cycle, Renyke had performed the necessary housekeeping duties within an interior domain.
It was a twenty-four-hour installation that bound him by duty and programming to put humans first. To any human, until today, Renyke had been subordinate.
Things had become difficult after the arrival of another android, a female version 12 named *Ableteen, who was considered the fastest domestic to date, (this 6th day of the 11th *Moonturn 2289).
Ableteens were able to preserve battery power with a hybrid electro-solar panel on the back and shoulders. This worked well in the new modern glassed apartments of the suburban zones. These cutting-edge designer houses were maximising sunlight like never before in the new *Midcast Housing Projects.
Some of the new apartments even came with the Ableteens installed and ready to help the occupiers enjoy the best life possible.
Renyke was not the only older domestic robotic servant to have had their contract abruptly terminated. Some were simply dismantled, some were thrown into crushers still working, and some were being recycled into experimental hybrids for illegal purposes.
Renyke noted that although he was now a vulnerable street-bot, he was spared a wasted end. Perhaps, now without enslavement, there would be new experiences. He had never cared before, after all, he was an emotionless droid. But today here in unfamiliar surroundings there was some sort of excitement. Something was calling him towards adventure.
All robots since 2050 had been installed with a clear-mode which enabled eco-friendly destruction. Parts had to be handed into the municipal facility to avoid issues with landfills and accidental hybrids.
There was talk of an underclass of feral bots who were made out of parts from the old dumping grounds before the eco-legislation had been implemented. They say that some of these bots were made by the bots themselves; innards and parts that had communicated and joined forces across the debris of twisted metal and wires.
Mabel, the daughter from the family Renyke had worked for, had un-twinned him from the household appliances and deleted the software that had once meant he could never leave.
Together they had upgraded his operating system with drivers available via an underground organisation called Redact.
Renyke had been created to blend in, in the midcasts, but Mabel had decided to mess him up a bit for a new life in the outer zones. Safety was in the camouflage of the ordinary.
Some robots had been designed to look aggressive, others looked like adult child hybrids who were designed as pleasure bots. Generally speaking, all robots found the open streets difficult. Artificial intelligence-led service androids were legally programmed to be submissive and they were picked on and abused in their short lifespan. Even strong exteriors would eventually break under such conditions.
The streets in the outer zones were crime-ridden. Since the pandemics, no law-abiding human citizen walked outside. For the most part, humans in the zones were there to partake in vice and black market trading. Androids were there to be used, abused and discarded.
Renyke's insides were a complex mass of wires and electrical paraphernalia that ran a well-balanced functioning machine.
But the outside world was alien and Renyke needed to explore it to become fully educated on the customs and the environment. He was programmed to learn. His algorithms had been set to gain an advantage in unchartered terrain by observing closely the details of situations. This was key to making robust decisions for survival. He also had a reliable and omniscient personal operating system to guide him.
Together, Mabel and Renyke had researched what they could but there were pockets of the outside world that had been effectively erased because of a system of cloaking. Areas beyond
the midcast projects were cloaked in fake maps that even the most sophisticated satellites were unable to penetrate or decipher. Distances and information about the terrain were usually falsified.
The records had become unreliable because of the sabotage of information that had all been digitised after the warmings.
It had become a confusing mass of fake news and blurred living memories.
But after the tech wars with China and Russia, and the pandemics, there were so few old people left and memorial information was mostly unreliable.
Many myths prevailed.
Inside the Midcast Projects, things were different, they were much more organised.
Legislators and the executive had rectified the situation and made records of everything.
The government had recorded every human being’s iris print and DNA before they were born. It was a strict government rule that any pregnant human, male or female, had to inform the legislators and they were scanned immediately. It was impossible to get through life in the Midcast Projects without being categorised and having all your data recorded for the rest of your life and beyond.
But beyond midcasts, here in this unfamiliar natural light, even the smells were unrecognisable.
It took just a few seconds to warm up and reboot.
The surroundings were scanned as Renyke checked the 360-degree orbital range from the silent detectors inside his *POS.
He was fully charged and his battery life would last months.
Suddenly there was a warning....
Unknown Danger Approaching ...... Left Ground Level
Renyke engaged his internal antenna and watched a furry creature scurry past. His scanners perused the information app.
POS informed Renyke about the creature.
Rat, rodent, possible food source
Renyke engaged his arm extension and snatched the rat from the ground.
He brought it close to his face, and studied it, carefully analysing its properties.
to be continued
© 2025 Sarnia de la Maré
