Immersive Holiday

The diving holiday had been a good idea, Hal decided. There was a fascination to watching the living corals and the fish and invertebrates among them in their own element, a thrill to entering an unfamiliar world you could never reach on screens. He swam on leisurely, trying not to startle the permanent residents too much, looking for fresh sights.

He nearly had a heart attack when something found him, a slim shadow bigger than a human, bristling spines and sharp teeth, shooting from its hiding place at him. After the initial shock, he recognised his wife. Her ID seemed distorted over the fanciful sea-monster face, as his must be, too, but still unambiguously hers. When she reached for him, he raised a webbed hand to trace the symbol's lines, not embedded into the skin as they were used to, but applied decals.

Those hired bodies were quite something.