Only too eager to have the machine
installed in their brains,
they did what they could, 
and, instead, installed
their brains into the machine.

Data sparkled in the mind void,
bouncing about and careening 
into other bytes and clusters.

But the crash cascades always came,
a cannibalistic consumption 
of fact,
transmogrifying it into
a shabby soup of 
quasi-reality.

Brain-pans paining,
densely packed with
alternate realities
that could never 
be rectified.

By the time they realized
the virtue of going out 
to play,
they were no longer sure what
"outside" 
meant --
Outside of what?
Where's the exit?
Where is there something else?
-something simple?
How's one get off this speeding bus? 

It became the pain
that ruled that
last lost generation.