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<h1>4 </h1>
<p class="content">Lunchtime. I ate later in the day so I could test XK-1 without being interrupted. </p>
<p class="content">It didn’t take long to load up. The building had plenty of spare computing power.</p>
<p class="content">The way it worked was I plugged in and XK-1 would read my brain, tie together my thoughts and create an environment. Truth be told, I didn’t really know how it worked to begin with. A patchwork of things I’d read about and somehow the soup tasted good. </p>
<p class="content">What would feel like hours in XK-1 would only be a second or so of wall-clock time. Like a lingering blink. The thing was, when it stopped, I never had a full recollection of what happened. Like waking up from a good dream. Everything real but not, yet, who’s to say it wasn’t?</p>
<p class="content">Each time an environment finished, I’d write down what I remembered from it.</p>
<p class="content"><i>Skydiving.</i></p>
<p class="content"><i>Falling.</i></p>
<p class="content"><i>On your own.</i></p>
<p class="content">That was it. Three things as if I’d become a paratrooper. I don’t know why. Every time the environment was different. I had no idea what might happen when I went in. Some might’ve considered the mysteriousness a bug. Not me, I liked it that way.</p>
<p class="content">I drew a line across the top of my notepad and wrote down what XK-1 needed. I’d built a black box bridge to the unknown yet I still tried figuring out what next. </p>
<ul>
<li><i>Figure out how to prolong sessions in the environment.</i></li>
<li><i>Find out what actually happened in each environment?</i></li>
<li><i>Reduce the clutter of steps required on start up.</i></li>
</ul>
<p class="content">The question mark was intentional. Still undecided whether I wanted to kill the surprise. Maybe it could be a setting?</p>
<p class="content">I stood up and closed my laptop. Time for a walk.</p>
<p class="content">A few times a day at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and perhaps another time I’d do the circuit I always did. A lap around the building, down the hill. Especially after a session in XK-1. Any thought-altering session took its toll on the brain. The ritual became walk, work. Walk, work. Work, walk. Like the push and pull of an accordion, each required the other.</p>
<p class="content">I’d get close to the water whenever I could. I didn’t need to be calmed but the water offered it anyway. All the life forms under the sea whilst we were up here, their own world, ours too, organised chaos, I thought. I kept walking. Thinking. Walking. Mostly about nothing. Sometimes I’d think of something thought provoking halfway through the circuit. And if it was worthwhile, it’d stick around until I got back to write it down. All of my best ideas came from walking. The last XK-1 session came up.</p>
<p class="content">Skydiving.</p>
<p class="content">Falling.</p>
<p class="content">On your own.</p>
<p class="content">Was there a meaning there? Despite my first rule, Rule One: No explanations, I found it fun to attach one to things. How? Through narrative.</p>
<p class="content">What would Sarah think? I’d been thinking about her. Every time I met a girl who said more than hello to me, I thought about her for days. Sometimes longer. Some from years ago. As if my next few actions would be subject to their judgement. A clear sign I hadn’t learned anything from my past lives.</p>
<p class="content">I got back to work and stayed there for a few more hours.</p>
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