more bendable

The doorway opened with a hiss as the panel scanned my OI and okayed the temporary clearance Andreas had granted me for today’s visit. As I stepped into the Artificial Environment, the first thing to strike me was the heat. Did Andreas really work in here all day? Now, I was no stranger to variations in temperature, but this was different, almost like the air was full of water. It stuck to your skin. It was nearly suffocating at first, but I got used to it after a few deep breaths.

I surveyed the vast Environment as I walked. The colors were just... too bright. I wished I could turn down the saturation and the hue. From every side, numberless bold, stark, unidentifiable objects confronted me, each boring its visage into my eyes. There was an abundance of green, but even that fails to describe the scene. It’d be closer to say there was more types of green than I would have ever imagined could exist outside of a vidscreen, all within ten meters of each other, with blue things and red things and yellow things all spaced throughout, in case you ever got close to staring it all down. I kept my eyes on the path that led me deeper inside.

The general cacophony of the area assaulted me next. It’s nearly impossible to describe, but I’ll try: imagine a large symphony. Now quintuple its size. Also, no one knows what they are playing, and no one can hear anyone else. Now take away their instruments – they can only hum, cough, sneeze, snort, and click their tongues. You with me so far? Now imagine it’s not even people anymore. They’re all – what did he call them? – “animals.”

The thought made me stop abruptly. I’d been assured there would be no danger, but all the same it was time to seek out my old colleague. I pinged him on the Local. He responded after a few seconds with a small groupshare invite. I accepted and overlaid his location. He was just 113 meters eastish, but I probably would never have seen him by just wandering through anyway, since he was off the path. Tentatively, I stepped off the walkway and struck out in his direction across the soft ground. It was a strange combination of dirt and plants, but I liked the way it felt beneath my shoes. Andreas’s voice came through on my OI.

“Les, my friend! I see you have finally decided to stop by and see my work!” As always, he sounded warm and energetic. “Keep going the way you are going, you will find me at the pond. I, ergh. Hey, stop it-”

It sounded like he was struggling with something. I looked up and could now see him in the distance, grappling with some strange animal. I quickened my stride.

“You okay over there?” I asked.

“Urg. Yes. No problem.” The animal made a strange cry, which I heard through the OI and from a little farther ahead of me. “All part of the job.”

As I approached Andreas and breached the voicecast threshold, the echo clicked off and he turned his head to just shout at me over the noisy animal. He released it and it bounded off into the pond in a wobbly kind of way, joining a handful of others like it.

“That,” he said while dusting off his hands and indicating the strange creature, “is a ‘flamingo’! It is a bird!”

I was underwhelmed. Except for its color, which was a really quite extravagant pink, I had been expecting something more. This is what Andreas had been so excited about?

“I thought birds were the ones with the big wings?”

“Not all of them, friend. And these ones have wings, they are just tucked in against the side right now.”

“Can they fly?”

“Well…” Andreas paused, considering his words. “These here, they cannot. We’re still working out the bugs. We only have still photographs of this bird in the records, and very limited biological remnants. We have had to make a lot of… educated guesses.”

“I see.” I looked more closely at the birds gathered in the pond. They stood unsteadily on long legs. One dipped its head into the water shakily and swayed with the motion, flapping its wing on one side a little to keep upright. Another drew one leg up against its body and struggled valiantly to hold its balance before flopping gently into the pond sideways. I frowned. “Don’t you think the legs are a little too… wobbly?”

“Like I said, there are some bugs.” But ever the optimist, Andreas just smiled enthusiastically. “We’re working on it!”