deep story nr. 170 | exhaustion | by John Evexc

Since I did not want to attract further negative attention at my
first ComRa event, I got back to work. Like a busy ant, I carried
more beer than my own body weight and looked for a way through
the raving crowd to the bars. For a while, this task required my
full concentration, but soon the hand movements turned into
routine and my mind got more space to wander again. Questions
that I had successfully suppressed through the hard work made
their way into my consciousness. What is it about the strange
datacenter that I had discovered? Are they perhaps related to the
mysterious data stored on the capsules, for which I lacked the
authority to access? Why is so much data being collected on the
ravers in the first place? And what kind of daily target was the
man in the control room talking about?
As I walked across dance floors like a robot, mulling over past
events in my head, I stumbled across someone lying on the ground.
Suddenly, my thoughts were back in the here and now and I
recognized the person who was lying on the floor. The young man
was completely sweaty and didn't seem to have an ounce of
strength left in his body. The other people around us, did not
notice the man on the floor at all. They continued to dance
ecstatically. I helped the man back on his feet and recognized
the person. We had met many times before at raves. He was unable
to walk without my help. I brought him to the edge of the dance
floor where he could sit down without being trampled. Slowly he
regained his strength.
When I asked him what happened, he replied that he couldn't stop
dancing. Every track that was played was just rousing and the set
got more intense by the minute. There was reportedly no thought
of a break, partly because ComRa staff kept coming by to motivate
them to keep dancing. At some point his strength simply left him
and he collapsed.
The next moment my colleague ‘Lighter’ was standing next to us.
"Good thing you acted so quickly, I'll take care from him from
here." He leaned over to me and whispered in my ear "Looks like
someone's had too much to drink. I'll make sure he gets water and
then gets home safely." Before I could say anything back, Lighter
was already leaving the scene with the guest. He walked him over
to the nearest bar, leaving me standing alone. I started to have
doubts about Lighter's version of this incident. The man never
drank alcohol at past events. That's how much I remembered about
the raver from our previous encounters. I was really sure about
that, even if I couldn't recall his name. Why did the ComRa staff
keep asking him to keep to dance while he was obviously already
completely exhausted?