In a very dark far future, due to a hopelessly toxic and polluted world, man has been forced to live deep underground, where in his grim new existence he now lives entirely through a highly advanced online mental interface which works as a kind of virtual reality that provides all the dreams and sensations he could ever need in his sunless realm, and originally it was celebrated as a technological wonder that 'freed' the mind of a cloistered mankind...but at some point along the way something has gone horribly wrong and the artificial dreamscape has somehow turned the tables on its creators and it has now become the users that exist entirely to serve the almighty system as they desperately depend upon it like a drug for the precious stimuli it can provide in such a cold nightmarish world, and like a cruel tyrant it demands a high price for their mental freedom, one that if they are unable to pay it has the power to take away the very things that make them human one by one, as well as the very umbilical-like cords that are grotesquely embedded in their skulls that provide them with life-giving nutrients, until they are left to wither and die on the ground, deaf blind and helpless... It seems that in his efforts to free himself through his technology, man had only inadvertently created his own hell. With pretty unmistakable shades of The Matrix as well as possibly Total Recall, this well made and rather saddening dark science fiction short presents a very scary future, one that takes the idea of getting 'into' computers and overly relying on web communities too much to the creepy extreme, and I think it was pretty slickly done and intense. It poses an eerie question that to me doesn't feel all that far out of the realms of possibility...is this what we could all become? Scary, awesome and very much worth checking out if you like dark sci-fi. Don't forget to switch the phone off from time to time and smell the bluebells! X
