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Last thing Tyler heard on the forum, they were working on solar powering of the glasses at Episolar Labs, but that they wouldn't be ready until at least Q3 of next year. But he and his local furry mailing list in Nashville couldn't wait until then to try their cSpecs out at Furmeet St. Louis. Another larger, Missouri-based mailing list had already asked the FSL organizing committee for an autonomous room party to test out the cSpec's enhanced body tracking features for the showing-off of wearable virtual costumes (that is, to wear your avatar), most of which were imported from various personally-preferred grids, including the various OpenSim, OpenCobalt, and other server platforms.

Episolar was lucky to have beaten their potential, larger competitors to the punch a few years back with the first transparent OLED lenses to be marketed initially to business and academia on an en masse basis. When Episolar went public and posted an IPO, consumer glasses with embedded flash drives were sold like hot cakes, and further features were added by Episolar to their professional and consumer cSpec lines, compelling previously-non-competing glasses makers to work on integrating transparent OLED into their prescription lenses, as well as inviting Ultrasoft, Pear and Shannonical to all launch their own fiercely-competing software platforms for augmented reality displays on OLED data-equipped lenses. Episolar, however, went one step further and partnered with Tindell Labs and Georgia Tech to bring proper integration of Fifth World visuals into the real world through a native port of FW to hook into Episolar's installations of ARToolkit.

Tyler, and, no doubt, some of the members of both his and the other mailing list in another state, were some of those who were most knowledgeable about circumventing the eSpec's DRM in order to hook to other servers and server platforms; warranties were for illiterates. Furthermore, the eSpec owners from both lists agreed to use a recent extension - an embedded BitTorrent client - to stream their avatars and scenes so as to let everyone join into the fun without worrying about server lag.

Anyway, the wifi around the hotel seemed as crowded and laggy as the crowds which had arrived at the Holiday Inn from throughout the U.S. (although FSL was only started two years prior, and was not as big and notable as Midwest Furfest). After having left his glasses on the USB tether all night, power and content loss shouldn't have figured in his walk throughout the halls of the hotel for the next few hours.

Testing the glasses, he saw the animated models of "talking books" at the comic and novel stand, replete with swordfighting, asskicking, jug-jiggling virtual miniatures playing out select scenes from the books in the most chibi, most startlingly-realistic manner ever beheld by Tyler's eyes (yet). He wondered if the writers and illustrators had also crafted the models and their animations, and if they ever got much sleep between the paid-hobby tasks of their busy whirlwind of a schedule.

Sure, the traditional fursuits - er...the ones that looked obviously realistic - were out in force with their bright colors, pop cultural allusions and mascotty silent-but-huggable charm. Tyler had to take off his glasses to fully appreciate that the fursuiters had an advantage over what the slowly gathering group in his eventual destination - 15B - would be doing: people could feel them, touch them, hug them, pet them, ruffle their fur and feathers. He took note that he hadn't heard of any of that being possible with the headtracking feature or the wearable avatar plugin. He recognized one of the traditional fursuiters as the costume of his older, nearly greymuzzle friend Bernie, and the two posed for a camera shot in the hallway.

After that and the panels and seeing feature and fan films being hosted in other parts of the hotel, Tyler headed to 15B and stuck his glasses back onto his face, and what he saw was even more extravagant and superfluous than the traditional fursuiters. Big avatars, small avatars, green avatars, winged avatars, all these avatars from FW now milling around the hardly-cavernous room in last minute preparations before the dance party (or, should it be said, the "experimental physical endurance testing of virtual avatars on real bodies", as called by one of the eSpec owners who put forth the idea). Everyone in there was wearing eSpecs, some of them just bought and replete with newer features compared to others like his own hardy eSpecs from last model year. He was lucky to have bought the prescription consumer eSpecs when they had first come out, and his nearsightedness was still substantially corrected by this set so far. The start of the room party was less than an hour away, so he took a seat way in the back to rest up for the coming hubbub.

This room party had soda in two coolers, liquor in two other coolers, so Tyler knew that there would be a few normies-turned-crazies tonight, eSpec wearers too drunk and sweaty to tell the difference between reality and the virtual overlay which had been installed in the form of an exactly-sized virtual room via OpenEarth.

Interesting situation....

Tyler, whose virtual name was Nashcoon LaVey (ooh, it just sounds so dark and broody!), recognized one of the avatars walking around as his college classmate for this semester. He and Chrissy Perlstone - virtual name: Lighteagle Birmingham - had talked in private in the hall one day about their particular fandoms and interests on the way to the cafeteria, and that was where they had discovered their mutual interest in "teh furry". Next thing that happens, he invites her to the mailing list, she comes to the next meetup, and then she brought some of her friends (and even her brother!) to the meetup afterward, all decked up in masks and facepaints. Tyler (who wasn't interested in anyone at the time, but privately considered himself bicurious by default) was astounded at this sudden growth of interest in his mailing list. He had no trouble in getting a large chunk of the mailing list to come to the convention, some of them (including Lighteagle) bringing their eSpecs along for the big "experiment". She was dressed in her favorite avatar design, courtesy of Duskwood - a bird with long, green-and-yellow hairfeathers, clangy dangly bits on her pantslegs, big nosering in her upper beak, glowsticks at the ready.

"Lighteagle, I assume?" "It's presume, Nash. How's it hangin'?" "Party's a bit slow but --" "Dude, the party hasn't even started yet...by the way, why aren't you wearing yours yet?" "My what?" "Your avatar." "I'm still waiting for my avatar to load. And besides, I tend to tear up in these larger glasses..they're like coke bottle goggles." "You know that they have prescription glasses with OLED," - she pronounced it as "oh-lehd" - "so that you could see correctly, right?" "These are prescription lenses. From last year. Apparently, my eyes are getting worse faster than they could sell newer, more expensive sets." "Here, try mine!" "Um...I don't know...." "Come on, just try it out!"

He put her glasses on...

"Woah!!! My eyes! I'm gonna go blind! and wow. You look amazing from the inside!" "Hahahaha! OK, at least you can see better in mine." Distorted and fishy as the glasses may have seemed, her eSpecs were able to see clear to the stage, the stereos, the laptops hooked up with controllers and turntables - obviously, they were streaming the avatars, scene and music live both to and from FW (hopefully, someone with some chopped-and-screwed skills was here to demonstrate) - and WOW. The avatars looked so much closer, so much more realistic, even the virtual glowsticks emanated with deceptively true-ish luminescence.

"Wow, this is what I should've gotten." "These just came out early this year. Probably not within your family's budget, though." "Yeah, I kinda figured that. Anyway, I'm gonna go to the restroom right quick. Shouldn't be too long before everyone here gets coke bottles, winkwinknudgenudge, hahaha!" "Wait, you don't drink?" "Nah, my family has a bad history with it, from what I've heard. So I avoid smelling it, let alone drinking it." "Yeah, same here. Got a cousin who's on meth, probably on some street southside." "Eeeugh, meth. Sorry about that." "It's OK, don't apologize. She was once doing well in college, and we're trying to get her help, and I'd be surprised if she can survive the winter down there." "Yeah, alot of them are kinda fucked by the snow that came down last week, I'm sure." "Anyway, you might want to get ready and stuff. Lotsa fun to be had here tonight." "OK, seeya then, then." "Ay, one more thing. Have you seen the guy who got this party together?" "Nope, but I'm certain that I'll run into him sometime this evening."

Sure enough, on the way to the bathroom, he met him. "Hey, have you seen the guy who heads the Nashville list?" "Oh, I'm Nashcoon." "Hey! I'm Gryphalcon, head of the Missouri mailing list. Well, actually, I'm from Edmonton --" "Alberta?" "Yep, hometown. Been there? "Nah, been to Europe on a family trip, but I've wanted to go up there to Canada...especially to Vancouver, heh."

They both walk into the bathroom, down to the very last stalls.

"Ahh yes, Vancouver. Who doesn't? You tried the stuff before?" "Once or twice, got high, never got the chance to go 'deep' with it before I went to a communter college." "Heh, makes sense. Listen though, Nash - can I call you Nash? - this experiment that I helped with creating is gonna be huge - I mean, like, what's gonna happen is gonna change everything." "OK, first off, is a bomb or gas involved?" "No, I'm not a terrorist! No one's going to die from this, most of them won't even know or notice what's happening. But me, I've been preparing for this for the past year." "What are you talking about doing?" "Can't tell you, or even my mailing list members, the exact details, since you'll probably try to stop me from doing this. But I can tell you this. Have you heard of chaos magic?" "Yeah, I've heard of it. Some abstract esotericism and Law of Attraction stuff, in which you imagine and perform rituals before you bury it in your subconscious and - supposedly - let it take place in some random sort of way." "Kinda like that. Well, I'm into it. Deep into it. And I'm also finding out more about those ultrasound emitters in the temple arms." "The ones that let you control the graphics with your mind?" "Yes. But, from what I've read, they also go both ways." "Really?!" "Yes. Signals can be sent directly into your brain through these emitters." "So...lemme guess and you don't have to say anything...you plan to use those emitters to send signals over the network directly into the brain. You plan to hack into their minds!" "That's not even half of what I'm going to do tonight. The purpose of my mission.....is far more revolutionary than what I can tell you with a straight face and clear eyes. My chaos magic is the major player in this situation, but I can't tell you what I'm going to do with it." "Hold up, now you're telling me that you can't tell me what you're going to do with the chaos magic, but you can tell me what you're going to do with people's heads? I'm not even superstitious, so I don't get -- HEY!"

Suddenly, Tyler experienced a full-body tingle, then a jolt when he was levitated from his stall onto the ceiling in 5 seconds flat. He 'laid' prostrate upon the flat surface as Gryphalcon stood up from his stall, flushed it and washed his hands.

"What the fuck?! What's happening?!" "I'm doing this for your protection, and mine as well. Don't interfere with my endeavor. I'll tell you what you want to know after I'm done with the party-goers." "Don't tell me you just did this with your chaos magic just that quick!" "OK, I won't. But you shouldn't be all that worried and fretting about their minds. Instead, you should celebrate in advance for what is about to happen to their bodies and souls." "But why are you telling me all this? There are other mailing list heads here." "You're the only one who has an older model of the eSpecs. And just like how you hang on to older models for fear of heavy expenses, you also hold on to older beliefs for fear of the expensive changes to be made to your current reality. I can't help the former, but I can buy that change of atmosphere for you. "That is, if you want it as well; I'm rich like that. Or at least, you can be a sole witness to the most mind-blowing tech demo-slash-magic show to ever take place." "Wait...are you otherkin?" "I'm beyond otherkin AND otakukin. They can reminisce and attempt to reclaim all they want, just as I did at one time. They don't have the money, knowhow and sheer drive that I have. I want to be Ted Turner, Howard Hughes, Tony Stark and Dr. Moreau all at once, all wrapped up with a tinge of crazy and a splash of effectiveness." "I don't know.....I don't get it....this is just impossible." "It's up to you, but you have less than 5 minutes to do what you need to do."

Gryphalcon left the bathroom, and Tyler fell, falling suddenly into a pile of hotel pillows which had appeared out of nowhere on the floor underneath. Catching his breath, he realized and considered that the late 20's-looking guy with the morphing gryphon avatar costume was dead set on being all those guys that he name-checked in his moment of psychological introversion.....and yes, that Gryphalcon had some extremely sophisticated tools at his disposal, including whatever that may have been that levitated his body out of the bathroom.

Tyler then turned to the stall to unlock it and flush the toilet, only to be startled when he couldn't budge the knob. He felt it, but it felt like it was fused into the door in front of him. Odd, he thought.

Then he peeked underneath in order to get to the inside, only to find someone's feet resting in front of the toilet.....and they had the same shoe design as his own......"Oh hell no!"

Peeking further, his own body appeared in fuller view, shouldering the iron rail in an obviously unconscious state. Tyler was outside his own body.

"Oh my god, I'm dead!!!! I'm fucking DEAD!", Tyler shrieked. He collapsed in a fit of tears, fears and rage at how Gryphalcon had hacked him out of his own body. This was not how he wanted to start off his weekend in St. Louis.

But then he heard a hint of breathing from his flesh-and-bones. He saw it stir and shiver a bit. Could it be that he was having an out of body experience brought on by Gryphalcon's action?

Then he realized the further breadth of the impending predicament. If Gryphalcon could phase him out of his body (this guy was fucking hardcore!), then perhaps this was what he wanted to do to the party-goers back in 15B upstairs. People like Chrissy were in danger since they had the most recent, most receptive models that Gryphalcon could hack.

But he's an otherkin, or someone who felt that they were human embodiments of souls from other species (both real and mythological). Otherkin had a reputation for discussing the spiritual side of the furry fandom, sometimes dressing the part in order to feel their own souls bond with these costumes.

What if....what if Gryphalcon was attempting to do this, to bond the disembodied and exposed innards of the ethereal with the various virtual overlays chosen by mostly non-otherkin furries? Was this what he meant when he offered Tyler the "change of atmosphere"?

If so, could Tyler live with himself if he took the offer; could he live with himself if he survived and didn't take the offer?

He had no time to waste. He left his body by crawling out of the stall and dashing out of the bathroom to the stairs, to the destiny in 15B.

Crackle....

Shit....that sound could likely have been.....no!

He stared at some 30+ dancing avatars, milling around the room like nothing had happened, like no sound had gone off with such fidelity. Wolves, dragons, tigers, nagas, rubber and latex creatures, inflatable balloon dolphins, studly otters, they were present and accounted for in the most diverse array of colors, textures, shapes, sizes. Then.....

...he saw the bodies underneath. No Data.... They were unconscious, covered in thick lines of black. Apparently, whatever hack that he had instituted had resulted in total oblivion and non-recognition of the collapsed bodies.

Gryphalcon stood in the back of the room, now changed into a fully anthropomorphic biped gryphon. Despite the sudden size disparity, Tyler ran to him, caught him by the collar, and dragged him behind the stage.

"I know what you just did! You fucking asshole!" "Lay off the collar. They don't know, and don't care for now. I'm sure you're just mad that you weren't here for the main event." "MAD?! Lemme fucking tell you who's going to be pissed when they see these bodies on the ground --" "I know that the police and parents of these subjects will be upset about the coma. But why are you worried about what those assholes think?" "Because you've just unleashed something that will shut down FW and the data glasses industry! Even if you reverse this, they will be conscious about this incident, and they'll be afraid of the glasses. They won't buy the glasses or use FW anymore, and they'll both be shut down! You've just fucked everything up. EVERYTHING! INCLUDING YOURSELF!"

Gryphalcon realized that Nashcoon had a point. After this realization, he slowly knelt to the ground, suddenly turning from a gryphon beaming with pride in his work to a remorseful, pensive creature.

"Is there a way out of this, Nashcoon?" Tyler sighed and gathered himself. "I can try to convince the....party-animals...that there was bit too much drink and smoke going around when they wake up, and that the capacity has been exceeded. I'm sure that they'll believe me, but only if I'm in my own real body." "OK." "And I won't tell the authorities about your role in this if you leave the convention immediately after you wrap up." "Why?" "You've played...toyed with lives tonight, Gryph. I know what you're capable of, and I'm certain...afraid that you could do it again. I don't think we're ready for what you're bringing." "But I like myself better this way. I've never felt this powerful, this real, this fulfilled." "Be what you want. But don't bring everyone else into this without their knowledge. It's not fair to them, and they'll try to bring the walls down on you and them when they find out the truth." "Hurry up, you don't have much time."

Gryph pulled out a slip of shiny virtual paper from his pocket, slapped it onto Tyler's chest, and, with a wave of his paw, sent Tyler flying out of the room and into the bathroom downstairs.

*Gasp!* Tyler woke up with a start and a wheezing cough. Yes. He felt his body in full in the stall where he left it. Without time to waste, he ran up the stairs back to 15B before anyone could notice. He looked through the glasses and saw the avatars...now collapsed around the unconscious bodies. He quickly opened the windows and the doors so as to set the facade.

"Hey, everybody! May I have your attention, please? Come on people, wake up." Tyler clapped around the sleepers, and they slowly woke with the heaviest of achy groans.

"OK, there was a lot of liquor and smoke going around, and ya'll were overcome because nobody though of opening the doors and windows. So, the party's over for the night. Please exit the door on your right, and we'll see you in the morning; please feel free to help us clean up in here so that we won't get tossed out by management. Thanks, have a good night!"

The crowd left, with no dataless bodies being left behind. Well, except for one...

"Gryph? Are you alright? Wake up!" "I'm still here." Tyler turned around to still see Gryph in his externalized gryphon form. "Wait? What are you doing? This is not what I meant!" "No, but that's how I've taken it. I'm going into the server." "What about your body?" "What about yours?" "I still have a family to feed when I get a job. That's why I'm in college, and can't leave my life." "But that's besides the point. You can get that done quickly. But what about after you've set everything up for your family? What's left to do?" "I don't quite follow you..." "That offer is still open to you, if you want to join me in the future. You're the only one who knows what I did, what I'm capable of, and how I get my capabilities. I know that you have an interest in what I'm pursuing, and I think that your skills in other areas can help me as well." "Maybe in a few years..." "Promise me that you'll join me when you're ready. Please promise me that." "Are you gay, by any chance? Cause I'm bi, but --" "Yes. You seem like the type that could find fault with what I do, but still show alot of concern for my and your well-being. You just restrained my wildest urge, and helped me understand your concern, just as I've made you aware about what could be done in this virtual world in which I want to live. "And I think I want to get to know you better." Tyler thought about that last part. There was nothing spectacular about himself or his life. He felt that he was just as prone to falling through the cracks as anyone else, despite what he knew about the world and what he could potentially accomplish. But maybe, together, they could boost each other upward against any circumstance in the ever-growing virtual world. "OK, I promise that I'll join you when I wrap up here. But first off, how are you going to get home? And how can you stay online when your body has to move between or out of wifi areas?" "I can come back to real life now, but I still want to come into this plane as often as possible." "Well, let's work that out later. Right now, they're closing up the room, so you might want to get a move on."

Gryph moved back into his body, and they walked out of the darkened room. Gryph didn't have a roommate, so Tyler promised his own roommate that he'd pay his part of the occupancy in their room while also staying in Gryph's room. They would work out how they would work things out before and when they would phase out of their bodies for the long-term. Gryph, whose real name was Ronald, would go back to his home in Jefferson City and wait for the big day, while Tyler would go back to college in Nashville, finish his education, meet up with Gryph at night online, get a good-paying job in IT, pay various insurances for himself and his mother, and then move out to Jefferson City and live with Gryph (although he wouldn't let the two meet each other for fear of her freaking out). That would be when they could stay longer periods walking around FW in their avatars, Gryph in his gryphon avatar and Nashcoon as his raccoon.

After the kissing, groping, scritching, licking, and just plain sex that went down into the wee hours, they would begin their inaugural adventure into FW, hand in hand. They both felt, deeply and wholeheartedly, that they would enjoy many more moons of these walkabouts.