I am in the environment, I am in the environment, I am in the environment, I keep telling myself. I’m trying to stay one step ahead of the environment. The environment is smart however. Super-smart. It is one of the very latest, smartest ones. It is trying to adjust itself to me so as to facilitate the perfect adaptive fit. It is trying to close the gap between ‘Actual’ and ‘Expected’ and when it does this then it will all be over. It is an adaptive virtual environment and this is what AVEs do – they adapt themselves to you so that you don’t know that they are there. So that they becomes invisible. That is how AVEs work – they adapt themselves flawlessly to your expectations and become functionally undetectable. You can’t see them. You can’t know they’re there. They have you then. Once they reach the perfect adaptive fit you’ve had it – you haven’t a chance. You haven’t a hope. You’re lost then. Lost forever. The game’s over. I’m in the environment, I’m in the environment, I’m in the environment, I keep telling myself. I’m trying to stop having any expectations. I’m trying to catch it out, trying to outsmart it. I can feel it probing me and then withdrawing, fine-tuning itself before trying again. It hovers around me, visible as a faint shimmery presence on the periphery of my vision. It probes, reads me again then adjusts a bit further. Manufacturing its own version of reality. A bubble of pseudo-reality. A perfect trap. Closing the gap all the time. Getting smarter at its game. Figuring me out. Getting my number. Closing the gap, closing the gap, closing the gap. Forever closing the gap between how it presents itself and how it knows my reality to be. Trying to make that gap zero. Trying to make it not be there any more. Then it wins. They usually win…