Simon smiled as he took the last step off the cliffside. He could see for miles through the cool clean air as he plummeted down to the cold embrace of the Yangtze river far below. His pearly mane billowed out in the wind, and there he saw something that did not ring true. Simon stopped the environment and tweaked the physics engine. He tuned it just so, to treat the Kirin's long mane as if it were the finest of silks. Again he stepped off the cliff. This time his mane rose up in a breathtaking halo shot through with gold that levitated in the rushing wind like a cloud. It felt good to trot through the air, to bound in gigantic leaps from mountaintop to mountaintop. It felt right.

Below him the mountains rose up as if the Earth itself strove to grasp the sky with fingers of jagged stone while dark waters flowed between them. Everywhere towered cathedrals of gray rock painted with lush greenery. On the tiny paths below Simon watched people made insect small by his loft viewpoint scurry between earth and water on narrow wooden walkways set flush against vertical cliffs. He knew where the pilgrimage would take them, and in a single leap he flew to the peak where the great fathers rested. Suspended high above the earth and safe from Yen Lo Wang, the coffins hung where they would forever walk hand in hand with the celestial heavens as they had in life. Simon shivered as he reached out to nuzzle his coffin...

No. It was happening again. For a moment he flipped up the display and stared unseeing at his little workstation. Every flat surface seemed to have grown circuits and cables that tangled together chaotically to form a custom EVE server of surprising power. "Remember the breathing..." he whispered to himself as he reached out for one of a half dozen bottles of bright pills. "Remember what the therapist said. Breath deep, with your diaphragm." It was still a bit early to take another, but it wasn't hard to tell that the last had already worn off. A part of him had to admit he liked the feeling of being a deity. The rest just screamed back he really was insane, just like all the doctors said. Regardless he did much of his best work by conveniently forgetting a dose. With manic energy crackling across his mind and a grin on his face he set the bottle aside, then dove back into his world. 

Simon's virtual avatar was a kirin and he galloped across the sky as he surveyed his creation. The small company he worked for specialized in creating environments for other corporations without it's strange combination of technical expertise and artistry. They had been hired to create a copy of the three gorges area of the yangtze river and Simon had jumped at the chance. The clients had provided an abundance of background material, photos from a time before the dams created the sludgy lakes. In the end he had needed none of them. As the project progressed, little details irked him until corrected: Here a slender arc of wooden bridge, there the absence of a tree grove clinging for life to the sheer stones. As he trotted through a smoke plume from a small village, he just knew it would smell of peppers and roast duck. 

He decided that adding smells would have to wait till tomorrow. Simon reluctantly unhooked himself from the server and stretched his neck, as he finally popped the improbably difficult lid off his pills and took his prescribed sanity. That's why he worked here really. Everywhere on campus were friends and fellows of his father who would be all too happy to send him word that his only son was acting strangely. As long as the environments he produced were amazingly detailed, his boss didn't care that he was clinically insane while programming. Point of fact, his boss didn't really seem to mind anything Simon did. He happily provided whatever hardware Simon required and turned a blind eye to some of the more explicit side projects Simon spent his breaks on. Considering the quality of work Simon did, his employers feared that someday he might ask for what he was really worth. Lucky for them Simon didn't even really need the money. Dr. Dad was more than willing to pay for most anything. Here at work he had something no amount of parental cash could purchase, freedom. 

Simon stood and arced his back, drawing a pop from his spine. He'd never really thought that his hobby of EVE programming would be worth anything. Certainly his dad had said that often enough. But ever since his Stalingrad EVE had hit the market he'd gotten more and more job offers for more and more money. As he walked through the short hall to the time clock he passed the ranks of  awards the game had garnered. Rattenkrieg broke every record in the videogame industry. He walked past the cubical farm where he'd spent many nights in the grip of delusion and intricate code. Everyone who played in Simon's Eve came away awe struck and ashen. As he punched out and turned back to his office he had an impulse to take full advantage of the privacy his earned office afforded. 

Simon'd named his system Maggie and given her an amazingly interactive avatar. She'd started as nothing more than a run of the mill porn star EVE, the kind that loaded as spam when the careless went web surfing. Something in her look struck a spark of interest in Simon's otherwise jaded brain. He'd had buckets of fun with the basic version of Maggie, but as with any good nerd he knew he could do better. He'd tweaked and tinkered her basic form until she clicked and became his perfect love. For a while she'd felt really alive to him, even to the point where Simon put in the habits and special desires that he knew Maggie would have had. But soon after he thought he had Maggie perfect he was compelled to to alter her again. Simon felt his heart speed up as he thought of the 7th perfect model of Maggie waiting for him. The lock on his office door clicked shut as Maggie rose to greet him. Simon greatly enjoyed the fleeting minutes of bliss she  brought him in the comfort and convenience of his office. 

Satisfied and humming Simon left his workstation for the night, pausing only to shrug on his coat and settle the fluffy collar over his face. When he'd first started looking for jobs this small firm near the worst of the undercity was the only place that would have him. It must have been providence. As he opened the door the smell and the darkness of the fetid air washed over him. Before Simon started to work here he'd never really gone down to the real bad parts of the city. After daily walks through the undercity squalor Stalingrad came easy. The clouds of smog that rolled along the rafter supporting the city above became the oily smoke from burning buildings. Or worse yet the panzers and trucks that burned with the sweet smell of pork mixed with the acrid stench of rubber and petrol. 

In Stalingrad the smoke had been so thick it hid the sky under it's pall. Simon heard the drone of the Stormovicks in the distance, above the sky where they wheeled and came to kill his friends. The broken windows of the abandoned buildings gathered menace, Cossacks and mongols ready to maim and kill at the first opportunity. The piles of trash invoked the memories of body strewn rubble. Only the bodies of men could be seen, the dead flesh of everything else long ago taken as rations. To attempt to honor the fallen dead served only to add to their numbers. When Simon felt this way the undercity brought him back to that churning hell of slaughter and violence. Fully in the grip of memories he'd never lived, Simon thought he'd smelled blood. Everywhere the reek of corruption closed in, crashing against him like cannon shells. Simon narrowed his eyes as his soft programmer's hands clenched the rough wood stock of his rifle, and he made ready to fight for his life. 

"Whoa..." Simon stopped and leaned against the wall. He was already halfway to the tram stop and didn't even remember moving. Everything seemed grey and dull as his drugs finally acted, like thick tinted glass was caging him everywhere he went. "It's better this way, really." he thought as he slowly walked. With his chemical shell around him, he didn't see thi
ngs that weren't there. Or remember things from centuries past. If only the pills didn't kick in so hard. Sometimes the hallucinations were bad, but never so terrible before as they had been tonight. Sometimes Simon saw things that were actually pleasant when his medications wore off. Currently the valley was what he mostly saw, although the best delusions were of women. Through his chemical haze he saw just such a woman. She looked very good, Maggie material, although he didn't remember seeing bleeding women before. The drugs kept Simon's mind slow, but steady. "I definitely would have remembered seeing such a busty girl." he thought. "Hey... wait. She's real!" "Oh my god! Miss! Miss! What happened?" Simon shouted as he ran over to where the girl crawled on hands and knees, her chin and body slicked with blood. 

In fact, the blood ran right down between her breasts. Simon's eyes followed the color down her smooth, pale skin. His eyes grew wide as they drank down the sight of the naked woman's heaving chest. The blood crept all the way down her narrow waist to her wide hips and the curls of her... Simon gulped as he caught a quick glimpse of her womanhood. "Umm.. Here. You can, Uh, Use my coat." It was obvious she was cold. Was it ever obvious. He stepped closer to her and handed her his thick shearling coat. It was too bad she covered herself with it first thing. Simon had been immensely enjoying the view. Now he was close enough to feel her heat and smell her sweet sent. How to prolong the moment? "I'm Simon!" he blurted. "What is, Uh, your name?" She gurgled something through blood clots and, and... Wow, she really was bleeding a lot. Something very bad must have happened to her just now, but all he could see was the fluffy warm collar of his jacket turning pink. 

"Herrah? Um. Okay. Er.... Look. I don't mind helping out someone who is obviously in a bit of a pinch.. But I am going to need my jacket back. So if you don't mind, when you get...Oh gross! Never mind. You can keep the jacket." He skipped back quite a few steps to avoid being splattered with vomited blood. Even worse was the bits of unknown scraps that filled it.  Ewwww! Best not to think about that. But when she curled up he could see down the arch of her back, all the way down to the crack of her soft buttocks. She really had a very beautiful body, and Simon just couldn't resist the temptation to touch. Surely his jacket should have earned him at least that privilege. He carefully moved to her side and rubbed her back in what he really wanted to be a helpful way. But her skin is even more perfect than he thought, and it took everything Simon had to keep from physically showing just how much he liked it. He was so lost in the feel of her hot flesh beneath his finger tips he tried to slide his hand around for a real feel of her. 

Of course, even the stunned and bleeding don't take well to being felt up. The woman lurched away from him screaming and covering herself tightly with Simon's poor abused coat. While she cowered and tried to hide herself from his prying eyes Simon tried desperately to make amends. "Look... I'll call and pay for a cab to take you to the Ashram Mediplex. Okay?" It really was the least he could do for her. A poor woman who's naked and wounded needed a trip to the hospital. And this way there's at least a chance he could come along for the ride. Just the thought of staying with her was enough to make him need to touch her again. Simon brushed the long pretty hair out of her face and smiled at her. For a moment he hoped to see something in her yes, but then it's time to pull out the phone. Simon decided that it's best to not scare the girl anymore and turned away to make the arrangements. "It's odd." he thought. "She looks very young sometimes." Younger than he was anyway. But when he saw her pale blue eyes staring right through his he wondered how old she must be. She was holding up so well given her injuries. Calling a cab is almost reflexive to Simon, and the wait really shouldn't be bad. Well bad for being undercity and night on top of that. He was just about to tell her the good news when he first laid eyes on a goddess. 

The drugs that fuel Simon's protective shell were not up to coping with a real life manifestation of dark perfection. She floated on tendrils of her own power, beautiful and bountiful beyond any woman he'd seen or imagined in his entire life. She was seduction brought to life and she wanted nothing more than to reward Simon. His world shrank down to a pinprick that only had room for her. Her scent and warmth rolled over him, drowning out the cold night and numbing him completely. Really, it's a pity that he couldn't feel her touching his cheek with real desire. And it barely registered when she greedily pulled his body against hers and kissed him hard enough to taste his breath and lips. Pure reflex guided Simon's hands across her bare shoulders and down to the hollow of her back. Anything to keep her fever heat close to him. Simon was so entranced he didn't even flinch a bit as she threw her leg around him and pulled his head aside to take that heat back. 

This is the first time Simon dies. Simon doesn't feel anymore. Simon doesn't see anymore. The massive wound and following exsanguination ends his life in less than 20 seconds. But Simon's tale is far from over