Are You 'Sperienced?

Jake was only 26, and he already knew how to read. It earned him concern from his friends, who feared it would stunt his intellectual and spiritual growth; that was why they drove over one Monday, with the intent of breaking him of the bad habit.

The ’67 Ibex slid over the pavement and slowly lowered itself to the ground outside Jake’s house. Its two occupants opened the doors from the inside and climbed out. One of the men tapped the other on the shoulder to get his attention, and then began to march in an exaggerated goosestep toward the front door. The watcher quickly doubled up with laughter, as did the entertainer, after he had surveyed the results of his joke. Five minutes later, they rose from the ground, wiping tears from their eyes, breathing shallowly to ease the pain in their aching sides, and resumed their progress toward the door. They found it unlocked, and walked in.

Jake was asleep, and as near as they could tell, had been that way for the last few hours. One of his friends decided it was his turn to make the other laugh, and bent over Jake to make an obscene noise in his ear.

So when Jake awoke, his friends were writhing about on the floor, laughing hysterically. He waited patiently for them to get up.

“Hey, Jake,” one of the men said from the floor, almost finished with his bout of laughter.

“Hey, Jeff, George,” grumbled Jake. “’sperienced anything lately?” he asked both his friends.

“Oh, have we ever,” George responded, then suddenly became sober. “But I haven’t seen you ‘sperience anything lately, and that worries me.” Jeff sat up and nodded his head.

“George is right,” he said. “Ever since you started this reading stuff, we haven’t ‘sperienced you the same. In fact, ever since you moved out of the compound, we’ve hardly ‘sperienced you at all.” Jeff referred to the communal homes bought by groups of friends. Friends who lived together could experience each other directly, and not through the deceitful medium of video or audio communication. Many had forgotten how to even use their vidphones, and as a result, could not call for help in emergencies. Fires, therefore, nearly always resulted in total destruction of the property involved, because the Technocrats never noticed a fire until it had already grown large enough to show up on their satellite displays.

“But we think we’ve found the cure,” said Jeff. “You’re going to come with us, and Sploadbike.” They lifted Jake up and carried him out to the car. He didn’t bother to resist.

They drove out to the closest Sploadbike range, which happened to be one of the largest in the world. The Ibex, a versatile off-road floater, easily handled the dried mud and sand of the desert. Finally, it reached its destination, a desolate, yet delightfully flat stretch of land.

“I can’t believe it,” Jeff exclaimed. “No craters! Nobody’s been here before! Ok, launch the Sploads.” George pressed a button on the dash. On the top of the floater, two racks flipped upright. Each held thirty rockets, which rapidly issued from their tubes, streaking up into the sky. Once they reached a certain height, they spun around crazily as they fell to the earth. This motion caused the rockets to fall randomly within a large circle of ground.

The three men then got out of the floater, retrieving their bikes from the cargo stowage area. Mounting their mechanical steeds, they flipped down electronic visors over their eyes which showed them the location of each of the sixty mines which were now buried beneath the sand. Jeff and George were the first to go, their Sploadbikes tearing up the ground with their engines. Navigating as close as possible to each mine without setting it off, they drove in a track which would pass all the mines. They did well at first, but George’s steering grew sloppy and detonated a mine. The explosion welled up like a bubble, spewing shrapnel. One of the fragments struck George’s bike, knocking it to the side. George quickly recovered.

“SPLOAD!” he yelled over his helmet mike, exhilarated. Jeff managed to finish the course without hitting a mine, and pulled his bike to a stop.

“Beat that, Jake,” Jeff said, flipping up his visor and wiping the sweat from his temples. Jake obligingly pulled down his visor, and without a word, throttled off on the course.

It soon became apparent that Jake was out of practice when he strayed from the course and detonated a mine as his bike passed directly over it. The impact destroyed his bike and tossed it into the air, where it gyrated wildly before it rocketed to the ground, bursting apart in a huge explosion. Jeff and George simultaneously grimaced.

“Damn, I guess we brought him back too quickly.”

“Yeah, damn,” echoed George. He whipped out his datapad, which he used only infrequently, and scribbled out a message: “Jake Johnson, 26 DDE” – “died during experience,” the world’s leading cause of death. In the car, he sent the message to the Technocrats, who were the only ones who cared about second-hand experience these days, anyway.