Second Chapter, Part 1

800 more words and I've been awake less than four hours. I'm on FIRE.

    "Another clothing store? But I'm starving!" Teo complained.
    Roshan paused and glanced at him. "I'm a little peckish myself," she said thoughtfully. "Alright, we'll take a lunch break."
    "Finally!" Bahden said, slightly behind the other two as they walked along the brick roadway. A vehicle scurried by them, headed for its destination with singleminded purpose.
    The vehicle, like most technology on Aphrodite, was a hybrid of mechanical and biological parts. The mechanical processes were powered by synfuel, a clean gasoline produced from methanol. The biological processes were partially powered by chlorophyll; the rest of the biological processes were powered by hay and oats fed to the biomachine as food. As the vehicle moved on eight spider-like legs, its broad leafy wings (used to gather sunlight, not to fly) rustled softly together on its back. A translucent bubble at the front of the vehicle held three humans, belted to fragile-looking aluminum seats. Copper wiring stood out against the green leafy wings and silver metal frame.
    Roshan barely glanced at the vehicle, but Teo and Bahden watched, entranced by its rich colors and soft noise. "It reminds me of home," Teo said, almost wistful.
    "It reminds me of food," Bahden said, mind focused on eating despite the passing vehicle.
    "Right! Food," Teo said. "Where are we going?"
    "I'm setting the two of you free for an hour," Roshan said. "I had better not see either of you for that entire time. Try something new, set out on your own, explore a little!"
    "What do you want to eat?" Bahden asked Teo. "I'd like a toasted wrap of some kind."
    "I think I want meat garnished with herbs. Preferably chicken," Teo replied. "And I'm really in the mood for some coffee."
    "Yuck, I forgot you like that stuff," Bahden said. "It gives me a headache."
    Roshan smiled. "I'll meet you at that corner," she said, gesturing with her left hand, "in an hour. Remember the road signs: 20th and Elm."
    Teo stopped walking and turned to Bahden, who mirrored him without thought. "I think we should go separate ways too," he said. "Neither of us has properly immersed ourselves in the culture that we came here to feel part of. Let's try to get a better feel for this side of Aphrodite. We can keep mental notes and compare them later," Teo suggested.
    Bahden nodded. "Sounds good to me," he said. "I'll go north and you go south."
    Roshan had continued walking while the other two stopped. She was already several people ahead of them on the side of the brick road. Teo turned to the south and began to walk. The crowd bothered him immensely. On Gnay 54 Piscium, the colony-ship-turned-space-station he was born in, there were 50 people total. Fifty people to eat with, to play with, and to work with. Crowds were something he had grown up knowing about as a concept but never experiencing first hand. But ground-side, in Aphrodite's oldest and largest city, crowds were unavoidable.
    The worst part about it was that so many of the people he encountered were strangers. He had not grown up around them, he did not know the details of many of their family histories, and the net he relied on to supplement his native knowledge was hardly to be found. A diminished version of the Net sat at the heart of his consciousness, leaving him feeling like a shadow of his former self. He knew that Bahden was feeling the same disorientation and discomfort. They had not spoken about it, for there was nothing to say. 'I feel empty' hardly described the sensation, and 'disconnected' was such an understatement that saying it would feel like an insult. Roshan's dismissal of their trouble with the Net as being of little consequence had confused him almost more than it had hurt him. She mocked the Net, and them, rather than offering a true explanation. Why would anyone choose to be this stripped of knowledge and sensation, this distant from other people and information? He could not comprehend the feeling even as he felt it. He was half blind and half deaf.
    Though he and his friends had planned to stay at least a decade ground-side, splitting their time between the two human settlements on Aphrodite, Teo was beginning to think he could not bear to be on the near-Netless, devoutly religious side for much longer. No inner sensation of peace or connectedness could compare to the expansion of self that a fully operational Net enabled.
    His whole life, the Net on this side of Aphrodite had been ***disintegrating***. The birthrate increased, yet the number of new nodes on the Net -- new people added to the pool of being that the Net was -- diminished. Watching it from a distance had been confusing. Experiencing the impact of the change firsthand was well beyond jarring.

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