Into the machine

You prepared yourself for the worst, ready to signal Specs to break your connection if something went awry. Slowly you opened your eyes, not sure exactly what to expect, and then you began to survey your surroundings. You were standing on a street corner, and as far as you could see down both roads, it looked like something out of an early suburbia photo from centuries back. All the buildings looked alike, with the same layout for windows or doors, and even their color featured the same plain white siding and black trim. The only thing unique on each were their addresses. Based on the translation you'd established, each of these buildings represented a node in 6T9's system.

Moving up and down each the street, different sized vehicles continually traveled to and from various buildings, but they didn't appear to have any drivers. From the mapping you'd set up, those were the message packets carrying various data between the nodes and other points in the system.

There were also some smaller, unrecognizable objects traveling on the streets between the vehicles. You remembered seeing some small messages earlier, but you still didn't know their purpose. For now you selected a simple sphere to represent them. Each had a number printed on it, but you didn't know the meaning of that either. To help categorize them, you decided to group them into ranges and assigned some basic colors for each group to differentiate them. Soon the street was filled with a mix of vehicles intertwined with colored spheres moving to and fro.

Looking down, you discovered that you were completely nude, and your Gargo cock looked gigantic, hanging down to your knees. You realized you hadn't setup an avatar for yourself, so this must have been something that MPAD-24 had done based on the memories it had identified from your VR sessions back on the Odyssey where you always augmented your package by a significant amount. However, unlike those VR sessions, you weren't here for pleasure. Hopefully, it wouldn't get in the way.

"MPAD-24, take me to this address," you ordered and repeated the address of the node that had been successfully moved.

Immediately a new vehicle appeared waiting at the curb. It was just large enough for you to fit. Once inside, it took off, beginning a wild ride with the car alternating between full speed and rapid stops, intermixed with sudden turns that took you left, right, up and down. All the while, the scenery looked eerily similar filled with buildings that appeared alike. However, you eventually reached an area where things began to change. A few building started to show damage like broken windows, holes in the roof, or even burn marks on the outer walls. In one area, the buildings on the right side of the street showed even heavier damage with doors falling from their hinges, sections of their rooftops blown off, or even some with their walls completely missing. At the next intersection, you could not see any more buildings to the right, and even the street was blocked off from allowing vehicles to drive further in that direction.

After a few more turns, the car abruptly stopped outside another damaged building, and after checking the address, you realized you had arrived.