Edwin 1 - Fifth-wave living

Introductions

Edwin chose to live in Nairobi because of football. Not that weblife play isn't a great deal of fun, but Ed likes the smell and taste of dust that no simulation can do justice to. Beside, the energy and friendship that he made playing outside the gates have this old-world charm that he highly prizes.

Ed owns a flat in a compound built for in-situ workers for the Olympus project. His job is not in-situ: which makes him one of the few who chose and enjoy living in the South African Coalition (SAC). A life support engineer, he got an entry-level job as nanotube engineer for Talon-West, an industrial nanotech contractor. For his job, he teleoperates a cybershell while his LAI, named Maus, teleoperates a nanotube extruder. The team of two works out great. Ed gets a bonus pay for being a team of two, his LAI doesn't get any remuneration and doesn't seem to care.

Maus is his low-sapient AI (LAI), the is housed primarily in his Virtual Interface Implant (VII). He paid dear money for it as Talon-West would cover only for a telecom interface. Maus has shown little interest in Ed’s life: the pairs rarely interact off hours. Ed assumes that Maus is having an active weblife, but the two rarely talk about it. Ed was hoping that he would find companionship when he purchased a LAI, no dice.

Whooshing through the real world

Edwin fell asleep in a smoky hut in Gaul and woke gently in a sanitized flat in Nairobi. He has sank a few hundred credits into some real estate in historical Gaul about two years ago. Most of his off time was spent over there, tending the farm, going to the market and spending time with his spouse. In virtual Gaul, he was married to Pretoria9, an avatar for a 79 year old man from Tunisia. The two had communicated in the "real world", but there was no sparks. In Gaul, the Romans have come and nearly gone. He finds interesting to live outside the gates: almost a mirror image of his non-weblife. The experience is making him more empathic to the folks living outside of what he considers normal living in 2100. While in Gaul or in sub-orbital space, his flat takes care of itself.

His virtual feast left him feeling full, but he had skipped a real-world meal once more. Maus, and infomorph living in his virtual interface implant, pinged into awareness. The pair were scheduled to be at the edge of space in 15 minutes: the coffee was ready and the pre-fab breakfast on its way. Ed really wished that he had a butler to prepare real food. He scanned the room, everywhere he looked, Maus popped notifications directly into his vision field. Most of it were approvals on the microtransaction ledger. Ed whispered for Maus to hear that he delegated approval for everything for as long as there was funds into the household account. Maus, taken aback by the request, started scraping the web for household accounting assistants. Maus resented the new duty, but figured out that it would at most shave a few second off his daily cycles. With his new authority, he approved the purchase of a software agent for household management. This brought to him great pride and shaved off 100Cr from Ed’s household account.