Welcome to the real world

The moment John's vision went black, he felt a terrible, gut-wrenching sensation, like falling down some lightless, bottomless chasm. Then, abruptly, it was gone, and John found himself lying on his back, his spine resting against a contoured foam support. As his senses returned, he heard a loud, gurgling sound, and opened his eyes to see that he was inside a small, fluid-filled cylinder about three feet in diameter and seven feet long, just big enough to hold a single person, lit by tiny LED's scattered around its interior. The gurgling sound was the noise of translucent blue nutrient fluid being pumped out, and in moments, he was lying naked on his back, growing cold without the heated liquid to warm his body.

Suddenly, dozens of high-pressure jets activated, scouring his skin with hot water and removing any remaining trace of the gooey blue fluid. Then a blast of hot air blew from the "top" of the horizontal cylinder toward the end where his feet rested. John was now dry, slightly warm from the blow-drying, and beginning to get his bearings.

He felt the cylinder shudder as it slid "down" in the direction of his feet, then his weight shifted from his back to his soles as the entire mechanism rotated on its center axis. A gentle thump sounded as the bottom of the cylinder came to rest on something. Then the entire front half - the half which currently filled John's vision - split down the middle and hinged outward. He squinted painfully as bright white light replaced the dim illumination inside the cylinder. He blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted.

By now, John knew exactly where he was. Like most residents of the Mainframe who still possessed physical bodies, he had left his in a "tube hotel". The narrow, brightly lit corridor in which he now stood featured hundreds of circular apertures - the bottom ends of stasis cylinders, each with its occupant's name on a small rectangular plaque, their external control panels visible though useless without a specific password. Stacked vertically on their sides, the cylinders went up four rows, and the corridor walls were lined with them.

A mechanical whirring sound approached from his left, and a device that looked like a cross between a hat rack and a robot arm slid up to John on a grooved track set into the floor. It carried three large suitcases, as well as a full set of clothes - the last ones he had worn before climbing into his stasis cylinder.

"John Doe," an electronic voice intoned - not too different from Tina, he thought - "You have been ejected from the Mainframe for ... misconduct unspecified. Please dress, take your belongings, and vacate these premises."

John swore. Like everything else in the Mainframe, guns weren't really physical objects. They were visual representations of the programs that law enforcement officials used to terminate the accounts of virtual criminals. The one the lady had shot him with must have been a bootleg copy that tricked the system into thinking that he had been ejected from the Mainframe for some "unspecified" wrongdoing.

He dressed quickly as his cylinder closed up, rotated and slid back into the wall. He'd contact the Department, all right, and tell Jones that Kinson's goons were using illegal copies of police software. Then he'd get his account reactivated, log back in, and personally see to it that RIB got its collective ass handed to it before it could do any more damage.

Picking up his suitcases, he trudged over to the elevator, rode down to the ground floor, and headed out to find a public terminal. On the way, he passed a holographic check-in clerk, smiling cheerfully at him as he passed. "Thank you for staying at the Los Angeles Mainframe Hotel. Please come again ... again ... again!" she stuttered, her nonexistent body flickering with each glitch.

Once outside, John spotted a pay terminal across the street. Checking to make sure that his wallet still had some coins in it after all these years, he began walking over. Unlike the Mainframe's perfect blue atmosphere, the sky over downtown L.A. was filled with smog. The sun shone down as a pale white circle in the sky, casting a dirty gray light over everything.

Just before John reached the crosswalk, a voice called out to him. "Mister Doe?"

John turned around. As though out of nowhere, two men in suits had appeared. The one on the right was tall and dark-skinned, his head shaved, with his eyes hidden behind heavy black sunglasses. His partner also wore shades, though his spiky red hair and youthful appearance made him seem more like a punk kid than a government agent.

The black man spoke again. "We need you to come with us, sir. There's some nasty shit going down, and you may be the only one who can help us sort things out."