TV DeathDrive: Home is Now The Machine.

When they arrived at the facility in the Jungle M was surprised by its sleek modern architecture.

A high metal fence went all the way around to keep out intruders. A gate with a sentry box served as the welcome centre at the front gate. The whole place looked familiar to M.

The white square walls, the palm trees and the Aloe Vera plants growing out of pink gravel all gave M this feeling of deja vu, and for good reason.

M had once squatted a TV studio on Gran Canaria, the Spanish territorial island close to Africa, along with some punks from Warsaw University, they had secured the perimeter of the derelict studio and the four of them had lived there for nine months.

"Does it look familiar?" Asked 6 with a smile.

M just nodded and felt the gravel crunch under his boots, he felt clear headed after his adjustment to crossing over into the game. He was slightly nauseous but overall had a feeling of being improved and enhanced, physically stronger and intellectually and mentally fully boosted, after the Ultrasoak had caused his brain to implode.

"Your body is now meat death, for the birds." Said 6 with a sly smile. 

M didn't like his upbeat tone but said nothing.

"Let's get you inside, K is waiting for you."

M took in the cool white interior of the place, the corridor that seemed too long for the building that he'd seen from the outside.

"Where are we, underground?" He asked 6.

"Clever lad, remember Gran Canaria?"

They all walked on until they came to an electric golf buggy that seemed to be waiting for them. 6 and M climbed inside with 6 taking the driver's seat. He turned the key and they sped off downhill, descending rapidly under fluorescent strip lights.

"It's all a bit Bond villain, boomer tech." Said M.

"Nothing is real anymore, this is the waking dream you'll see." Said 6 picking up speed on the squeaky clean floor tiles.

"Is this Sandoz?" Asked M.

"I mean is it some sort of inner sanctum of Sandoz?"

"Well put! Yes this is where you're going to be based in-between missions."

"What missions? What is this game?"

"You'll see we're here now, very shortly all will be revealed."

They both disembarked from the golf buggy and 6 pressed a green button to open the door in front of them  Inside the room was the TV studio in all its dingey, sweaty dilapidation. The squat was how he remembered it. A lobby covered in Krylon spray paint, empty beer cans, drug paraphernalia and ripped up pornagraphic pillowcases. Showing hentai schoolgirls with large blue eyes. He pushed the dirty rag of a japanese printed face with his boot until it seemed to scowl at him. T9 from Warsaw University had introduced him to the Hentai, The drugs, the games, to everything. 6 had now disappeared when M saw the large, muscular figure come shambling down the central staircase, it was his old friend T9.

"M mate what the fuck?" Said the big Pole in his mock English accent.

"How long has it been?"

M stared at the Polish Ubermensch and he didn't seem to have aged a day never mind fifteen years. His large square head was still crested with a short blonde mohawk and his face seemed to be missing the tattoos that used to cover it like occult symbols carved into a tree.

"I don't need that shit now". Said T, wincing at the thought of the memory of his youthful face.

"I regenerated into the game like a hundred kilo baby boy!" He said laughing.

"Are you dead like me? What the fuck is this? Are you working for Sandoz too? Are you trying to break me down with some more of these fake memories? If you are you can all fuck off!"

"Don't be like that mate" said T, 

"This place is just how you and I left it in our minds. Remember the TV studio when we did all the important work. The mind mapping? The meditation? The martial arts? The knives? The fucking sex! The music? The parties?"

M nodded and looked at the main conference room where they would all sit hooked up to their portable Sandoz headsets, sometimes for weeks at a time. The walls had crumbling plaster from where metal scrappers had ripped out every cable from the walls to weigh them in for cash credits. Black webs of damp consumed the high up corners of the walls. The long plastic table was half destroyed and barely standing after years of gamers putting their feet up on it. The small kitchen area still had all the synthetic teas from lab grown drinks from around the globe and the Furycaff coffee which was derived from lab grown cocaine.

"Where the fuck is K?" Said M as T put his headset on like the old days. Raising his two big feet up to rest on the table.

"Soon, soon, mate, we have to know that you don't intend to try and harm him, unplug him I mean, after everything that happened between you two it won't help you if you're still thinking of getting revenge."

"Don't be ridiculous, that's the past now." Said M.

"Glad to hear it mate because here off grid we are all linked up to the same program, it's a defence measure they've factored in to keep us in line. So if one of us maybe felt like causing trouble in paradise we'll all be mining Zariuum in the colonies of hot planets for a thousand years!"

M watched as his old friend became engrossed in the game he was playing but noticed that the lead from the headset wasn't plugged in to any power source. M grabbed the Polish punk and shook him. "Where the fuck is K you bastard!" 

T started laughing and pulled off his headset. His head rolled back and melted into erased space. The room started to dissolve in square pixel blocks. Over and over, every small object down to teaspoons and dead flies started to disintegrate in these tumbling cubes of digital light until all that was left was a cell like room with four walls stretching to infinity and no floor or ceiling to speak of. The whole memory of the TV studio had dissolved now. M was three dimensional in a floating void. How is that even possible he thought before staring at the back of one of his hands. Then slowly the jungle grew around him once more. All the animal calls, humid dampness and the smell of decay assaulted his senses like a wrap around drug and he found himself in a bamboo box suspended a metre above the ground. He was a prisoner now; hot and thirsty, covered in sweat and grime that's when he saw K's face through the bamboo bars of the cage.