My Secret Work Life

The passageway begins at what appears to be a driveway to a house. I drive down the pathway for about 500 feet until I am in front of a small cottage-like house with a connected garage. I pull up to the garage I hear the electronic scanner above the cottage turn on and it analyzes my car and scans over my eyes to confirm my identity. Within milliseconds, the door opens up and I drive in. I open the door to my car, take five steps until I am standing on a welcome mat that sits in front of what would be an entranceway to the cottage-like house.

Instantly, I am transported to ‘work’. I start to lose all awareness of my physical senses, and then, before I even have time to think about it I enter my digital identity. I am now surrounded in a virtual world of the past. One where all of the ‘continents’ and ‘countries’ from the past still exist. One where the tensions amongst political, economic, and social issues still prevail. One where war and military still persist, but in a different way than the past.

While I lose all sense of feeling in this virtual world, I can still imagine feelings that I recollect from my human-self. Every time I enter this virtual world, I imagine a sort of empty feeling, as if I am a hollow metal box. I conceptualize a feeling of coldness, similar to the feeling of metal that has been in the freezer. My digital self is still able to see in this virtual world, however the images I see in this world are of no comparison to the human world. In this virtual world, I interact with military personnel on a daily basis, but it usually involves fighting and violence. While I miss all aspects of the untarnished human world, I must put this wistfulness to the side in order to complete my job, and eventually return to the ideal world.

When I enter the virtual world, I am automatically put into a military uniform with endless technological gadgets hidden all over. My military uniform denotes my association to the United States of America, a country that used to exist in the human world long ago, but now only endures in this virtual world.

I click a button on my watch that signals my tasks for the day to pop up on a hologram in front of my eyes. Today I have a briefing with the United States Military Unit 3, next I have a meeting to discuss economics with military personnel from Iran, and lastly, I have to assist the United States Military Unit 17 in combat against a German Military Unit. Once I complete all of my tasks, I will report my day to my Unit’s commander, recite my oath to secrecy, and then return back to the human world.