Memories of that farm haunted him. Pete wished he could forget it. It was the only thing that kept him from fully embracing the gooning. If it weren't for those sunburnt days in Sicily, drinking cold orange soda that was so carbonated his tongue would almost burn, he might be able to believe this ethereal dream as real.

instead he was stuck. Purgatory. Unable to be back at the farm literally... but also unable to be fully integrated into the matrix. He put an ice cube in his mouth and started chewing. He wondered if every gooner processed this thought: if only I didn't have these real human memories then I could just goon. He couldn't be special he thought... but that's how he felt.

Pete wasn't like a lot of these Americans who had known no real life. A lot of these Americans from what he could tell had just been raised on a more analog form of the matrix, of this gooning society. They had grown up just watching TV and eating cereal and watching sports. They had never been on a sicilian farm helping to harvest olives. They didn't live special lives like he had. So they could be fully bought into the gooning.

He crushed the ice cube with his teeth and smiled. But once the ice was gone his teeth hurt. And he thought of all the real memories these real Americans might've had. Like that one time they ran back from the game as the hail poured. And they all ran into a minivan as the dad yelled "get to the choppa!"