Chapter 5
Outside, the Sydney summer night was much cooler than it had been during the daytime.
“Where is your car?” asked Nathan.
“Car? Nobody drives cars anymore. I ordered us a taxi,” Gary said. Then Nathan saw a taxi pull over and stop beside them.
“I noticed there are hardly any people on the streets, and no tourists at all. So what happened?” Nathan asked after they got inside the taxi.
“It’s because they are all in OBU,” Dave said mysteriously.
“OBU? What is that?” asked Nathan.
Gary spoke over Dave. “Nathan, is it for real that you have never heard of OBU, O, B, U, OBU?”
Nathan shook his head firmly. “No, mate; never heard about it.”
Gary looked at Dave and laughed. “In that case we will have a hell of a lot to tell you.”
“And lots to show you.” Dave spoke with enthusiasm.
“What’s all this about?” Nathan felt more frustrated by the minute.
“Be patient, Nathan; when we get to our place, you will know.”
The taxi stopped in front of a high-rise residential apartment building. Gary led the way through double glass doors, while nodding to the two armed guards standing at each side. Nathan couldn’t believe that Gary and Dave would live in a building that had armed security guards, but he didn’t ask because everything would make sense to him soon enough, at least he hoped so.
They walked into a lift. Gary inserted a plastic card into the slot, and then pushed their floor number. Their apartment was on the thirty-third floor.
The heavy, framed security door on their apartment surprised Nathan again. Maybe this was the standard arrangement in the future, Nathan thought.
After everyone was inside the apartment, Gary made sure all the locks on the doors were latched, both inside and outside of the two-layer security doors.
“You guys seem really big on the security,” said Nathan.
‘You will know why soon,” Dave said. “Anything to drink?”
“No drinking here; it’s far better to drink in OBU,” Gary said.
“What hell is this OBU?” asked Nathan. He couldn’t wait any longer to find out.
“Sit here, make yourself comfortable; it’ll be a long night.” Gary sat on the sofa in the living area.
Nathan looked around; it was just like any other apartment he had been to fifteen years ago. But he did notice the heavy, framed security windows. Security seemed like the priority in the future; maybe the crime rates were very high.
“Nathan, have you ever heard about OBE, out of body experience?” asked Gary.
“Of course I’ve heard about OBE.” Nathan wondered where the conversation was going.
“Do you know exactly what OBE is?” Dave asked.
Nathan thought about it for a few seconds. “Isn’t that when someone experiences their mind leaving their physical body, so they can see their own bodies from above or from a distance?”
“Yes, it is,” Gary said. “People have been obsessed with OBE throughout history in all cultures and religions around the world. There were so many documents and reports about people’s OBEs. Religious people thought they got calls from their gods; dying people thought they were flying to heaven; but in fact OBE is quite simple in scientific terms.”
“Come on, Gary, we don’t have the whole night to go through these boring theories,” Dave said.
Gary put his hand up to silence Dave, and then turned to Nathan. “It is very important for you to understand OBE. People may experience their mind or soul floating out of their bodies and watching themselves from somewhere else, but the truth is that it is just a trick of the mind.”
“What do you mean?” asked Nathan.
“Well, your mind hasn’t left your body and isn’t watching you from outside of your body. It’s your mind creating this illusion that, in an imaginary world in your mind, you are observing your own body from the ceiling or the corner of the room…” Gary said.
“Stop it, Gary; just let Nathan see it for himself.” Dave went through one of the bedroom doors and came back with a helmet in his hand.
It looked almost like a normal construction site safety helmet to Nathan, except there was a socket at the back and an eye-shield at the front of it. Dave pulled out a cable from behind the sofa and plugged it into the socket on the helmet. He put the helmet on his own head, and flapped the eye-shield up and down a few times. “After you flap the eye-shield down, you’ll be in the Out of Body Universe, OBU, right away.”
“But first make sure you are sitting comfortably; in fact it’s better to lie down on the carpet, because you don’t want to find out that you have strained your muscles while you are away from your body.” Gary watched as Nathan lay in a comfortable position.
“Here you go, enjoy the ride, my dear OBU virgin.” Dave mounted the helmet on top of Nathan’s head.
Apart from wearing the helmet, Nathan hadn’t felt anything special until Dave flapped the eye-shield down and plunged him into complete darkness, until a tiny light appeared in the centre of his eyes. The light spot was enlarging fast, and soon flooded the room with bright light, so bright that Nathan had to put his hand in front of his eyes to shield the blinding light. Just as he was doing so, he saw his body lying right on the carpet beside the sofa, and he was watching himself from the corner of the room. Nathan turned around, scanning the room; he saw Dave and Gary standing where they were before his helmet was on.
“This is fantastic, guys. Look, I can see my own hands, legs, arms, everything; I am walking around outside of my body…” Nathan suddenly stopped talking; from Dave and Gary’s blank expressions, they could neither see nor hear him at all, as if he was a ghost, but then Nathan heard Gary’s voice.
“Nathan, Dave and I will join you right away.”
Nathan knew that Gary was unable to see him because he was looking in the wrong direction while speaking to him. He saw Gary and Dave go into their bedrooms, and then come out with a helmet each. After dragging two more cables from behind the sofa and plugging them into their helmets, they both lay on the carpet beside Nathan, and then flapped their eye-shields closed.
In no time, Gary and Dave stood in front of Nathan.
“How is this possible?” Nathan rubbed his hands together. “I can feel my own hands touching each other; I can feel the cool air from the air-conditioner; I can feel my feet touching the carpet, while my body is lying right in front of me. Is this my soul that’s left my own body?”
Gary walked over and sat on the sofa, right beside the three bodies that belonged to the three of them. “Come here, and touch your own body.”
The concept was just too strange for Nathan to contemplate; staring at his own body only a few inches away, Nathan couldn’t believe that’s where he had been residing for his whole life. At that exact moment, he suddenly understood people’s belief in the separation of soul and body; for many religions, bodies are just temporary hosts for people’s souls.
Nathan put his hand out slowly, and poked at the cheek of his own face; he didn’t feel anything himself, just like touching someone else’s skin. The best and closest experience Nathan could come up with was when, after he had his tooth extracted, half of his face was under local anaesthetic, he had poked his face and couldn’t feel anything, as if it was just a piece of rubber sticking to his face. That was exactly what he felt right now: the body in front of him, although he knew it belonged to him, was just like a corpse.
“I would have believed in heaven and hell if I’d had this experience without your explanations,” Nathan said to Gary.
“Tell me about it,” Dave said. “We were all astonished when entering OBU the first time.”
“Nathan, the body you are in now is not your soul, but your self-projection; the image of you as you perceive yourself…” said Gary.
“Come on, Gary, I am getting bored with all this talking; let’s take Nathan out and show him around OBU for
real,” said Dave.
Nathan walked towards the door, but Dave stopped him. “Where are you going, mate?”
“Aren’t you going to show me around in OBU?” said Nathan.
“Yeah, but we are not going to walk through that door to OBU,” said Gary. “I suppose you could if you really wanted to.” Gary waved his arm and a large screen appeared in front of them. A transparent screen that hung in mid-air, displaying something like the Internet Nathan was familiar with, that’s the best he could describe it.
Gary moved his hand and brought a few different screens up, like navigating the web, and then the globe of the world was floating in mid-air. “Nathan, where would you like to go?”
“Nathan wouldn’t have any ideas; let’s just go to Little Amsterdam,” said Dave.
“Amsterdam? Are we going to visit the Netherlands?” asked Nathan.
“What’s the big deal with visiting the Netherlands? It’s OBU age, and we can go anywhere in the world, it’s all just a click away,” said Dave.
“Dave is not entirely correct; we are not going to Amsterdam, but ‘Little Amsterdam’. In other words, we are not going to visit the real Netherlands,” said Gary.
“I am confused; what’s the difference between Amsterdam and this ‘Little Amsterdam’?” asked Nathan.
“It’s all to do with costs. You see, it’d cost a lot to maintain the giant databases and also refresh them regularly so they are exactly like it is in the real world. As a result, we would have to pay quite a bit to visit the real Netherlands in OBU, but on the other hand, ‘Little Amsterdam’ is only a replica of the real Amsterdam, a snapshot of the city, and does not need the expensive refreshing and updating all the time; maybe twice a year, so it’s much cheaper to visit there,” said Gary.
“I see, like a theme park, rather than the real thing,” said Nathan.
“Well, better than a theme park because it’s a snapshot of the real thing, just not updated as regularly as the real city in OBU,” said Dave. “But who cares about the city; it’s the people we are going there for.”
“Okay, it’s fine with me; I am happy to go wherever you guys want to go,” said Nathan.
“Before we go, you had better put this mask on.” Gary took a mask from his jeans pocket. It was a skin-coloured face mask. “Quite simple, you just put it over your face and it’s done.”
Nathan watched Dave as he also took a mask out of his pocket and put it on his face; in the blink of an eye, not only had Dave’s face changed to a much younger and more handsome face, but also his body. The large midriff was gone and replaced with a well –developed, muscular, athletic body. He was now wearing a black suit like secret agent James Bond; it must have been Dave’s secret inner desire, being an ultra-sexy, famous spy. Turning around, Gary was now a longhaired hippie with tattoos and sunglasses; maybe a rock star from the last fifteen years Nathan had no idea about.
Nathan put his own mask on. He didn’t feel anything on his face, as if the mask had melted into his skin; he quickly went to the large mirror in the living room that must have been put there for this exact purpose. In the mirror, Nathan saw a stranger staring back at him: a blond beach surfer boy. It seemed the mask had left his body untouched, only changed his face and hair colour.
“Well, a spy, a rock star and a surfer boy. Let’s go and have some real fun.” Gary spun the floating globe in mid-air, zooming in on Amsterdam, and then touched the dot of the city gently. Like switching scenes in a movie, Nathan found he was no longer in the high-security apartment in Sydney. Now he stood in a large field, like a giant car park, except there were no cars, only countless shiny metal poles as far as Nathan’s eyes were able to see, sticking out of the ground like a forest.
“Where is this place?” asked Nathan.
“It’s nowhere; just like the place you go before you get to heaven or hell,” Gary chuckled.
“It’s the entry point, like in the olden days when you had to log in for the paid websites.” Dave put his left wrist close to the metal pole. A green light beam came out and scanned his wrist. Before Nathan could blink Dave had disappeared from their sight.
Nathan turned, looking at Gary who said, “All masks have their own unique ID, and you load money into its account, and then you can spend it in OBU, including the entry fee.”
“Like the multi-riders for the bus, or rail passes for the train,” said Nathan.
“Yes, just like the passes, mate.” Gary was about to put his wrist against a pole but Nathan stopped him.
“One last question: why are there so many poles for only three of us to log in?”
“Well, it’s the privacy law requirement. Because we could randomly log in from any of these poles, it’s impossible for anyone to trace our login origin. See you there.” Gary also disappeared.
Nathan stared at his own wrist; there was nothing on his skin as far as he could see, so there must be some invisible barcode or imbedded chip of some sort. Anyway, he decided there was not much point wondering about it at the moment, so he put his wrist against a pole next to him; the transition was similar to how he had been transferred from the apartment to the login area. In no time, Nathan found he was on a street among millions people walking around him.
Out of Body Universe - Part One Page 6