Free to read over at Clarkesworld, and also in the collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight.
Another short from “The Universe of Xuya”.
One of the really good things about these huge sci-fi universes is that there’s always a space somewhere to tell a story about anything you want to. Immersion is a story that very much warns humanity of its folly with modern technology and how we use it to hide the truth of our selves from others while also, at the same time, allowing it to filter out the truth of others from ourselves. Facebook, and it’s other entities, are very much the beginning of the immersion technology discussed in this story: the way people have created their on-line personas that they window dress to impress others for a few more likes, covering up the truth about their shitty little dull lives while eagerly consuming an equally fictional illusion of the reality of other people’s lives.
It’s all lies, all bullshit, all an illusion!!!
How far down this rabbit hole do people go? How lost in the addiction? At what point does it end? How many suicides? How much depression? How deep the anxiety? When will people pull the plug and get back to living their real lives and is that even possible any more with the internet being so pervasive? People are now having their fridges and other appliances hooked up to wifi and the internet, FFS — Oooh, look at all the nice food in my fridge, gloat, gloat, gloat, please hit that like button please, please, please!!!
Or maybe i’m just over-thinking everything too much while i’m under house arrest.
Ho hum. One day we will be free. Sadly, it will most probably be the day we die.
And thus endeth my cheerful review. 
Seriously though, it’s a good story and one well worth reading for a lot of people.
Next up, On a Red Station, Drifting.
