Augmented Glimpses

a collection of microfiction by Phillip Michael Ryan

Dinner on Demand

Here’s the thing: my dad worked food delivery like twenty years ago, so he thinks he understands my job. Hilarious. Simply dropping food at a door and dashing? What even is that?

From my bag, I produce a pod of green liquid. The client reclines on a luxury sofa bed, neon glow emitting from the compact headset covering his eyes. My dad’s primitive way of delivering food would kill this guy. How would he feed himself while living full time in the other world? 

I replace the old nutrient pod hanging above his head with the new one. As the liquid begins pumping through the tube connected to...somewhere on his body, a notification pings onto my lens that my credits have transferred.

Some of the third-day sludge from the old bag cakes onto my hand, its stench corroding my nostrils. Okay, maybe delivering tacos wouldn’t be so bad.

Contactless Delivery

I remember sitting in the same classroom as my professor. Reach to the left, you could tap a classmate on the shoulder. Reach to the right, same thing.

Now, I’m the professor, but I stand in the solitude of a clean white room: truly the wonder of metaverse learning. It’s perhaps impressive and sometimes necessary. But I never expected teaching at a university to feel like a trickster god granting my one wish and cackling its way home.

I swipe through the screened podium’s interface, the room’s only feature other than myself. Selecting Present transforms the room, students now filling seats before me in a cavernous lecturing hall. 

I shift the wrong way, and the image flickers. They aren’t students; they’re tricks of light. Reach to the right or left, they’ll never touch anything. 

Standing alone in what I know is a blank room, I worry that I won’t either.

Two Realms

They lived in-between two realms —
one you could touch, one not so much.
They lived to escape real nightmares,
end-of-the-world type shit:
Hollywood through and through.
Trouble was Hollywood owned the other realm too.

Rage Room

I started my internship today, and I’m crushing it. A wordless client steps up to my desk, not holding eye contact either. Why would she be ashamed? I give her an access card and lead her to one of our empty rooms. My comment to take as long as she needs seems to put her at ease.

Because of autonomous driving, I’ve never dealt with the old traffic jams, and this violent release puzzles me. Who knew the road rage that used to be so common was therapy for those drivers, a way to detox... something worse?

The hallway back to the lobby is silent. I can’t hear the prolonged screams echoing on the other side of every single soundproofed door that I pass. I suppress a shiver.

Returning to my desk with a smile, I try not to think about the monsters being purged fifty feet away from me.

Artificial High

Thinking about the fact that I died last week still trips me out. I’m grateful I’m still around — don’t get my wrong — but it does feel weird. I can’t tell a difference between this synthetic body compared to my other “real” one.

Or maybe I don’t want to tell a difference, so my brain tricks me into believing that I don’t.

Getting tripped out again, I take another pull on my joint. I let my mind feather into relaxation and trickle it to every inch of my body. Oh god, wait. Can this synthetic body even get high? 

What if my brain just knows how a joint is supposed to make me feel and then simulates that feeling? So either I’m not actually high right now, or... none of us are ever high: our brains just assure us we are, and we believe it...

Something else to trip out about.