"Can the otaku still experience deep resonance? Were they the ones behind the experiment?"
"Without our permission? Why?"
Anger burned in his gut. He'd make his own decisions about modifications to his wetware, thank you very fragging much.
"Can the otaku repair whatever the frag went wrong?"
DUNNO. TELL US MO Bloodyguts howled in pain as the jaw of the skull began to move. Its teeth ground against his balled fist, turning it to hamburger. He could feel the bones splinter and his fingers popped like squashed sausages. The pain was unbearable, excruciating…
Swearing, he yanked his hand free. The pain stopped, and he saw that he had been tricked. The hand of his persona was still whole. But whether his meat-bod hand still functioned-or was a squashed mess, or even gangrenous- was impossible to tell.
The skull he had punched had repaired itself. Realizing that he had lost his only contact with the outside world, Bloodyguts slammed his fist back into it. But his hand hit what felt like concrete. The skull did not give. And in all of his thrashing, as he hung from the wall one-handed, the fiber-optic cable that he had plugged into his chest had fallen free. It hung below him, spewing out blurps of maggots.
Then the skull in which his fingers were wedged blinked, ejecting them.
Bloodyguts fell through space. As he raced down toward the mirrored floor of the virtualscape, his reflected image flew "up" to meet him from its depths. He wondered if he would shatter into pieces when he hit…