Samantha Strolls in Silver Fields

A demigod of rock thrust his guitar pick down in one final stroke, and the Stratocaster screamed under the arena’s flashing strobes, a thunderous roll of drums finishing behind him. Uproarious applause exploded from the crowd. He gazed out at them, raking sweaty tendrils of hair from his face, letting the applause crash over him in staggered waves. In the light of the strobes, dozens of young women with Hollywood faces screamed at him, their eyes aglow with lust, hands groping at the stage.

BEEP.

He had played perfectly, and in that moment, he owned the crowd. The look on their faces —

A startling silence and a blur of white light stole over the world in an instant.

John Archer blinked up at the sterile white glow of halogen tubes, and for a moment had no idea where he was. He sat reclined in a sleek black lounger, his fingers splayed over warm globes of semisoft blue gel.

“Time’s up,” a cheery voice said. “I’m afraid the demonstration only lasts ten minutes.”

The salesman peeked into Archer’s field of view, a thin man wearing a gray suit and an expectant grin. “Pretty amazing, right?” he said.

“Yes,” Archer heard himself say. The salesman laughed.

By degrees it all came back: He was John Archer, forty-nine, one of several hundred thousand wage slaves for the Kittridge-Hamashiro pharmaceutical zaibatsu. He had lied to his supervisor about an appointment for laser corrective surgery and stolen away from work and into the Dreamscape Neurotech showroom on this Wednesday afternoon. His deception would be discovered and he would be reprimanded; bad liars like Archer were always found out. There would be punishment, yes, but he wouldn’t be let go. He’d find a way to stumble through some excuse about a scheduling mix-up; a problem at the surgeon’s office; whatever. He’d likely be tuning in to the network for a few extra Sundays when everyone else was sleeping in or watching hexeball games or whatever his fellow peons did with their free time.

A sickly wave of dejection washed over him at the realization, something akin to the reliable disappointment of shuffling into the bathroom of his tiny apartment every morning, only to find the reflection of a fat, balding, overworked John Archer staring sleepily at him from the mirror. The man that eyed him disgustedly from that bathroom mirror had never held a real guitar or won a pretty girl’s affection in all his life.