Unnatural, I thought.
Laying on the fresh humid grass I could feel it tickling the back of my neck. With my eyes closed I tried to absorb the bright east sun into my cells, it was so strong the inside of my eyelids were shining. None of it was natural. No VR session would ever get close to those sensations. If I held my breath I was sure I could feel my skin agitating under the sun's touch. My body had never felt that, having myself all covered by the sunlight was definitely the first time. The building towers obstructed most of the natural light, it was impossible to see the sky from below.
Too many strange things were happening inside me. For some reason I began to feel hot, my face was burning and my armpits were sweating like I had been running this whole time instead of laying down. I must confess I panicked a bit and started taking my jacket off along with my under shirt and my sneakers just to relieve some of the heat. Maybe I was having an allergic reaction to the grass since it was my first contact with it in 24 years and I had been rubbing it all over my face since I got off the bus. Everything was new.
That whole place was foreign to me and to pretty much everyone in Tier-1. Not just the grass but the open corn fields that looked much taller than me and I was a 5 '7 kid so that was one hell of a cornstalk, also there were real trees further down the hill which was a better spot to get away from the grass and the sun.
As I stood up picking up my bag and recording goggles. It was time to move on from the bus stop where I had been laying down that whole time. My feet were touching the potential allergic factor. It tickled my exposed skin making me laugh at how fucking crazy that place was. No wonder it was so out of reach, the work I had to crack the security system behind the controlling office was worth a month's salary but looking at that much open space was enough payment for me. The satisfaction of putting on my VR goggles and actually experiencing something new and exciting was more fun than I predicted.
Giggles aside, I had to try as many things as possible to pay off the trip and the food for the next week. I put my clothes back on. Did the same with the torn down sneakers and stood up again for one more look around. Before I firmed my feet, a sudden piercing pain behind my eyes made me lose my balance for a second. I stepped back quickly avoiding the fall at the last minute. Once again my body showed how unprepared it was for the country life or any life for that matter.
Dizzy and heating up like a battery getting charged with full power I had no idea what was happening. So it hit me. It was not an allergic reaction, it was the bloody sun! It was warming me up this whole time. How insane was that, I giggled once more at my lack of experience with nature.
My discovery about the obvious effects of sitting under direct sunlight made me remove my layers once more to avoid further dizziness before starting the journey downhill. Aiming for the trees, I planned some activities that would highlight mother nature's best features.
This part of the city's territory wasn't accessible to the majority of population, only residents, workers and the specialized personnel were allowed to visit the plantations. If you wanted to access the area there was a protocol to follow and also had to file for permission, all very bureaucratic because it involved a background check. I couldn't risk it, since my criminal record wasn't exactly clean I had a new one made up just for the occasion.
Primarily I wanted to walk around covering long distances of pure wild nature but I didn't count with the gigantic metal constructions that, in my very superficial opinion, looked like reservoirs, probably for the beans planted in the area. Those monstrous cans of metal were everywhere on the horizon ruining the immersive feeling. Not to mention the trucks and harvesters that were mechanical versions of insects spread all over the fields. One type looked like a beetle, the front had a mouth larger than the rest of the body which was high and curved with a booth right above the front mouth. Some other machine was like a spider, with a small centered body with the booth on the front and ten long structures like arms spreading over lines and lines of cornstalks.
Those constructions pushed me to change my approach and look for more details. Thinking it through I had never watched a tree's leaf from up close. Damn, I had never held a leaf in my hand, at least not a real one. Seeing the anatomy of that thing was crazy. They were organisms, living ones. As I focused my vision and enhanced the goggles zoom in, it revealed its tiny thin veins that spread all over it like a spinal cord perfectly designed. After examining the tree from top to bottom, which took longer than I expected because there was more to a tree than just leaves, such as soil and roots. As I was slowly rising from the ground I felt something on my shoulder. I turned my head thinking some leaf had fallen on me and my response system made me jump and crash my back against the trunk when I noticed something much bigger was behind me.
Following the initial scare, my eyes managed to focus on the thing in front of my nose, a long shotgun. Frozen, I fell on my ass with no air in my lungs.
- I'm a VR maker. - that came out louder than I wanted - I'm authorized to be here, please don't shoot!