“What was it like then?” Her voicebox was still being re-trained and it sounded like copper. “The World, I mean.”

“It wasn’t called that yet,” I chuckled. My dry mouth opened and then closed. I couldn’t explain much more. Things were pretty raw back then. Virtual reality wasn’t virtual because it was unreal, but because it was meritorious, virtuous. It had valor. The ancient Romans had it right already. Virtus, moral perfection, whose root was already vir, man. Not virtual reality but manly reality, a reality designed by and made for real men. Not the real men of masonry and of football, with their lumbering bodies and thick hands. The men of knowledge and invention. The Creators, the Disruptors, the Founders. Finally we could make a World for us.

The scenarios that appeared on the headsets were catalyzing. They brought us together, we Men of Virtue. First, cornflower and plum and lime hues as the apparatus warmed up, a cortical palate cleanser to separate the harsh, unfair world outside from the paradise within. Then: twitch-contests of power to replace cruel sport. Then: sultry diversion to replace boring schooling. Then: warm, white sand beaches, and then purple wisps of sunset, and then the long, tan legs of the women we knew we really deserved, and then everything in between and in between them. Anonymous brown beards framing mouths agape, drenched with the lust of power and pleasure and recognition. Social Media.

Suddenly I realized: The image Huxley had found was partial, probably having been damaged by data loss or edited by the Restoration algorithm when the volume was restored from the Internet Fragments. Or else it had been censored before then, the left third of the image replaced by a pattern generated by the neural nets that were popular in those days. We still weren’t allowed to possess idols of the Founders. That was probably it. And so, a sea of Kyles and Jakes and Dereks and Adams and Kevins, flood-filling the remainder left by Zuckerberg’s deletion.

I searched for the original, using some tricks I still remembered from before the Upload. Huxley couldn’t believe how fast my fingers worked the old keyboard. “You’re like a sorcerer,” she whispered, and all those memories of power and prowess made my face flush.

She hid behind me when it appeared on the cracked screen, clutching at the cotton folds that clung to my now even more substantial body. I should have realized that she wasn’t used to seeing strange, bare faces anymore. Let alone this one.

That Zuckerberg chose to forego the Treatment way back then should have been a sign. The virtues of virtual reality blinded us to its reality: It wasn’t a panorama, but a prison. There are the Founders, and there are the Bearers, and the former are spared the shame of walking among the latter. But back then everything still intermingled, just like the sweat and heat that we finally foreswore for its clean, cortical alternative.