The brain is but a personal road map to the universe, a holographic microcosm of the entire spacetime continuum. At least that's how Tina felt after coming down off a 3-day acid binge, during which time she swore she'd left her body and gone on a multi-century tour of at least 36 different parallel dimensions. "Parallel" wasn't really the right word, she felt, since they weren't really parallel at all, but integrated and concurrant, like the dye in the fabric of a shirt. To the woven material, the colored dye might be invisible, non-existant, but it's integral and yet separate at the same time, fused at the cellular level. Only to an outside observer would it seem that the color and the fabric it was dyed into were one. Even that was a woefully inadequate description of her new deep understanding of the Way of the Universe, but it would have to suffice.

In the meantime, Tina was finding it difficult to concentrate at work anymore. She was a systems analyst for a major insurance company, and her new ability to see beyond superficialities inherent in everyday existence was severely impeding on her ability to care about the abstractions and anal retentive fixations required in analysis. In short, she didn't give a fuck about it at all.

But she still needed to pay the rent. What to do? She contemplated selling her Lexus and auctioning off her mother's silver left to her when her mom died 6 years ago, moving to a commune in the country and growing lettuce. You couldn't really go wrong with lettuce: It was yummy, healthy, and pleased the flow of life gurgling up from the nexus of the universe. How did she know this? A powerful intuition had been unleashed in those 3 days she'd spent hoola-hooping non-stop out in the upper Mojave. Being primarily a thinker and not a feeler, this was a profound development in her growth as a human being. There was no answer to be sought, for there were no longer any questions. There just "is."

Raymond couldn't believe his luck; the founder and CEO of StringlOGic Inc. was so reclusive that no journalist in the 15 year lifespan of the company had gotten the chance to interview him. In fact, save the occasional social or charity event, it had been years since anyone had gotten an up close look at Marcus Browning, one of the 5 richest men in the world. So it was with a certain amount of excitement that Raymond looked forward to what would surely be a career-making interview with the most sought after subject of the era, a man cloaked in so much mystery that Raymond had to agree to an extraordinary list of requirements and agreements to meet him. Oddest among them was the demand that he be blindfolded for the chauffered 2 hour trip to his personal offices. Couldn't they simply transport him in a windowless van? Strip-searched and body-scanned, de-bugged and debriefed, Raymond sat fidgeting in the backseat of the town car, blindfolded, and wondering exactly what it was he might have gotten himself into. Just about when he'd almost decided that he'd had enough, he felt the car stop. Through his earplugs he could hear the driver exit his door, come around the car and open Raymond's door.

"We've made it sir," he said. "Time to take this off."

As the blindfold came off, Raymond had to blink against the harsh sun. He stepped out of the car and stretched, taking in his surroundings.

It was not a good idea to try talking to Phil before he had his first morning cup of coffee. Even then, one would tread lightly, perhaps opening with a bon mot about the weather or the weekend's football game before gingerly slipping in a soft query about an unpaid invoice or unsigned check. Best to wait until after he'd had his morning doughnut, accompanied by that crucial second cup of coffee before venturing into more complicated territory, like how the fuck the business was going to stay solvent through the pending bankruptcy. Funny how much power accountants wield. Scratch that; there's nothing funny about it.

Phil, on the other hand, found the complete and total financial meltdown of this small business utterly hilarious. Not publicly, mind you. Phil was a pro, meaning that he cloaked his glee behind piles of important-looking paperwork and rubber stamps with red ink that read PAID or INCOMPLETE or PENDING. Phil signed the paychecks, so I don't need to tell you where that power comes from. Any man that lords over the dough rules the bakery.

So it should go without saying that when Carol, the first shift receptionist, came in first thing this morning and found Phil dangling by his neck, hung by a phone cord tied to the ceiling, dead and blue, Management became a bit worried.

It had been a while since she up-linked to the mainframe. She'd given up fighting the oppressive monotony of the messages and advertisements, preferring the old-fashioned mode of autonomous thought, free of the psychic chatter that often accompanied Softsync. It was dangerous, but that's how she wanted it.

Softsync was viewed in the marketplace as a breakthrough in psychic uplink systems and population organization. It dolled out assignments and soothed aching minds better than last year's Polysync, and without the residual neurosis that ended up getting the latter yanked from shelves by the Government-ordered recall.

She hadn't put the implant back in since she'd downbooted, and was a little scared to use her old one. The scar in the back of her neck was almost healed, so she had to numb it with a local before digging under the skin. It slipped back in as if it had never left, then she sealed the opening with a quick touch of the OptiHealer.

Now, it was time to upboot and get critical. She laid down on her bunk and closed her eyes, summoning the Door.

When it finally occured to James that he may in fact be dead it was too late to do anything about it. Acceptance was simply common sense, nothing Zen about it. You either accepted the circumstances or created your own hell trying to battle them. So it was with some sense of relief that James felt he could grow to accept being dead. He wasn't quite sure what it was all about, but James, for once, was being a team player. He was willing to do whatever it took to finally get along in a way he never could seem to while living; he was ready for this whole death situation.

Thing is, it was all so new. The no body thing, that would take some getting used to. Turns out, once you get rid of the sleeping, fucking, shitting, eating and scavanging for food and water (i.e. shopping at Trader Joe's), what else was there to life? Sure, after maybe 45 solid minutes of hard core totally intense yoga he'd finally have the sort of quiet, internal experience people wrote about in books on meditation or whatever. But it was fleeting and felt like illusion. It didn't take long for the desires and needs of living to crash his little Om party. But it did, in some weird way, prepare him for death.

So no body, check. But he was thinking, he was conscious. So what's the deal with that? Was this heaven. He could sort of sense that he was floating in some kind of space, but it was more like...goo. Psychic goo, like his mind/spirit/soul was floating through a thick pudding. Lame as it sounds, that's as good an analogy as he felt like coming up with at that particular moment, and frankly, he was just too dead to care about originality.

Carol never understood decaf. What's the point? The same with people who pour lo-fat milk over their Captain Crunch Berries. Maybe it's mental solice. She finds no comfort in denying her the full spice of her vices. She may as well suck on a cigarette without lighting it.

She pours herself an extra strong cup of coffee and is about to add her 2 packs of sugar - not Splenda, not NutriSweet, not Sweet-and-low - good old fucking fashioned sugar, when who walks into the employee break room but Amber, the bitchy blond from Finance, wearing a blouse cut so low her nipple almost show, teetering on stilletos so sharp they could punch holes through a 300 page manuscript.

Amber is about to open her mouth and speak. Carol knows this by the way Amber swings her hair around, as if that blow-dried sprayed out nest of bleached white frizzed mess is blocking her mouth from uttering the following bit of brilliance:

"I'm like, so stressed out today."