He seemed unsure whether I was being sarcastic or not, but he could sense my mood lightening.
“My recommendation is that you try it out. Should I fill in a prescription for its usage?”
Absolutely you will. “So I’ll have complete control over it?”
“Of course.”
There was a pause while we looked at each other.
“Are you ready?”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now, if you’re ready...”
Another pause, and then I slowly nodded.
He stood holding an unpretentious package in one hand, then turned to pick up a paper cup that he filled from a small sink behind his desk. He walked over and stood in front of me, leaned back on his desk, and handed me the paper cup and a small white tablet.
“Just swallow this. It includes a sedative to help keep you immobile during the initial data-gathering session.”
I took the pill and cup from him. He looked me directly in the eye.
“Olympia, do you give your consent to give your personal data to the program?”
I nodded again.
“This includes background personal data, you understand?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“As a beta system, we won’t be able to activate it today. You’ll have to come back later in the week, but we can install it now,” he said.
I studied the pill briefly, then popped it into my mouth and washed it down.
“Okay, so now what?” I demanded, handing the empty cup back to him.
“Follow me,” he replied.
He stood up and led me out of his office and into a smaller room containing a human-shaped pod. It looked like one of those old tanning beds.
“Now you need to completely undress,” he said.
I quickly and lazily complied. The sedative was already taking hold and my brain had started swimming peacefully. I lay down in the pod, and the slightly gooey gel inside it conformed around my body.
“Now just relax.” He lowered the top of the enclosure.
It suctioned onto me, completely enveloping my body. In a dream-like state I felt tiny fingers probing and tickling me, lights and patterns flashing in my eyes and sounds like some kind of hearing test. My muscles twitched as small electric shocks raced back and forth across my body. Sweet and salty liquids washed through my mouth as my nostrils filled with acrid smoke, and the whole thing cycled from hot to cold and back again.
I quickly fell asleep and dreamt of flying above fields of golden daisies with sunshine filling a perfect golden sky. I dreamt of babies with blue eyes, alive but never living, their blue eyes filling blue seas with blue pain.
Chapter 4
“OLYMPIA…”
“OLYMPIA,” CAME the voice again.
I was floating, peacefully alone, and some pestering thing had broken the tranquility. My brain tried to ignore it, but…
“Olympia?”
I reluctantly opened my eyes to find an angel hovering above me, an angel that strangely reminded me of my cat, Mr. Tweedles. No wait, not an angel, it was a nurse. That’s right. I was back at the doctor’s office getting that thing activated, and they’d sedated me again. Closing my eyes, I brought up a hand to rub them, and then opened them and sighed irritably.
“Yes?”
“Seems like someone needs a little more sleepy time,” laughed the nurse. “Come on, I’ll get you up and dressed.”
I propped myself up on my elbows and frowned at her. “How long was I out?”
“Hmm...” she considered. “About two hours I’d say. Everything seems to be working perfectly. In fact we just activated the system. Your proxxi will explain everything to you once you get home. I would have woken you sooner, but you just seemed so peaceful.”
Shaking my head, I swung my legs off the side of the pod as I sat up, pushing off her attempts to help me. Shrugging, she handed me my clothes.
“I can take it from here, thank you very much,” I stated flatly, waving her away.
She looked at me and narrowed her eyes, but then her smile returned and she shrugged again and began to leave.
“I’m going to bring you in to speak to the doctor before you leave—he needs to have a final word,” she said on her way out and closed the door behind her.
I finished getting dressed and followed her. The nurse watched me carefully from a distance, studying me. Silly cow. I stopped at the doctor’s office and half-hung my head inside.
“How do you feel?” he asked immediately, looking up from some paperwork. “Please, come in.”
“No, no, I’m fine. I mean, I just want to get going. This was supposed to be under an hour,” I complained. “I’ve got things to do. So just tell me quick, what do I need to know?”
He paused.
“You have a very powerful new tool at your disposal. Be careful with it, and don’t activate any of the distributed consciousness features yet.”
“Distributed consciousness,” I snorted, looking back towards the nurse who’d positioned herself behind me in the hallway. I bet she had no clue what we were talking about. “Where do they get these ideas?”
“If you want to talk with me,” continued the doctor as I looked back towards him, “just say my name anytime of the day or night and you will be instantly patched through to me.”
With some effort, I disengaged myself from looking at the sweaty reflection off his head.
“Great,” I replied impatiently. “Got it.”
“When you get home today, just say ‘pssi instructions’ and you will get all the information you need from your new proxxi.”
“Perfect.” I felt almost cheerful, sensing an imminent exit. “I’ll be in touch.”
With the tiniest of waves I bid him good-bye, and marched off down the hallway and out the door, purposely ignoring the nurse who watched me the whole way out.
The air outside was crisp and fresh, and for the first time in ages I felt a surge of optimism. I should walk home—I can use a breath of fresh air.
I stopped to light up a cigarette.
I’d decided that I hadn’t made a mistake with Alex. I really needed my space, to be alone for a while. Anyway, he never supported or defended me. My whole life it had always been up to me to defend my own place. Nobody had ever helped me with anything.
Fall was in full swing, and the leaves on the trees lining the streets were turning beautiful shades of crimson and yellow. The air had a refreshing edge. I strode energetically along the sidewalks, enjoying myself, looking at everything around me.
I didn’t feel any different, and a part of me doubted that whatever they had done would work as well as it was billed—despite the fact that I was personally marketing it. The crowds on the Upper East Side were dense but navigable, with billboards and holograms cluttering the view, but it still made for a nice walk. Eventually, I arrived at the personal oasis of my brownstone walk-up.
Mr. Tweedles, my shorthaired Bengal, sprang at me the moment I opened the door and began purring loudly as he rubbed himself against my pant leg. I closed the door and emptied my pockets. The cat had been my friend Mary’s idea. To provide some companionship, she’d said. I’d grown fond of him, but the thing was just so needy. I shooed him away, hating the thought of all the hair he was depositing on me with each purring caress.
Immediately, I made for the bottle of wine on my kitchen counter, opened the day before, and poured myself a glass. Collapsing onto my couch, I drank a big mouthful and savored the taste of the earthy Tempranillo. Rummaging around in my purse, I found the last cigarette in my pack. With all this technological wizardry, you’d think they could invent an endless cigarette. Shaking my head, I crumpled up the empty cardboard packaging and threw it onto the table.
Might as well get it over with, I thought, realizing I had to review the installation instructions for my new toy.
“Pssi instructions,” I called out, lighting up my smoke.
“System activated,” I heard from a
voice that seemed to be inside my head. “I will now appear on the chair beside you. Please do not be alarmed.”
With that, something materialized beside me sitting on my matching armchair, something that looked sort of like me. In fact, it looked exactly like me.
“I am your new polysynthetic sensory interface—or pssi—proxxi,” it said. “I will now explain the system features to you. You can stop me at any time.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I objected, waving my smoke in front of me, “hold on a sec.”
I wanted to get Kenny from work in on this. I fumbled around in my purse for my mobile.
“You don’t need your mobile anymore,” suggested my new proxxi, seeming to know what I was thinking. That stopped me in my tracks.
“Kenny?” I called out tentatively, and his projection instantly appeared floating in the middle of my living room. Always dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, with eternally messy hair, Kenny constantly frustrated my requests for more formal office attire. He was dedicated, however, and a consummate nerd when it came to technology, so I put up with him.
“Yes, boss?” he asked, his eyes growing behind his square-rimmed glasses. “Whoa, you got some kind of fancy lens display system going on?”
I’d tripped his geek-chic alarm.
“Yeah, Kenny, great, just get over it, okay? Please listen to what, this, ah, woman is saying,” I said, pointing towards my new proxxi. “Pssi interface, or proxxi, or whatever, please continue.”
Kenny’s eyes grew wide as the proxxi began speaking and describing the system controls. I just sat back and let my eyes glaze over, enjoying one glass of wine and then another. Presently, the proxxi faded away and I turned to Kenny to finish up.
“Kenny, I hate dealing with all this technical stuff,” I complained. “Can I give you root access to my system and you handle the settings and dealing with this proxxi? I don’t want to have anything to do with it, and quite frankly I find it, or her, or whatever, disturbing.”
“Not sure, boss. From what I understood, you can’t hand off all the root functions, but give me a day or two to look into it.”
His geek love was sparking hard.
“Just don’t waste too much time on it, right?” He’d just used this as an excuse to duck out of other work, the little weasel.
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Any problem I have, I just call your name and you pop up, right?”
“Exactly. Anytime, anywhere.”
“Perfect.”
I was about to dismiss him, but he was staring at me intently.
“What?” I asked irritably.
“You were you paying attention to the safety stuff, right?” he asked. “If you need to reset the system there’s this hardwired gesture recognition.” He began motioning in the air, reaching towards his chest and twisting and pulling. It looked ridiculous.
“Look, Kenny, I’ve got you, right? Or Dr. Simmons, or failing that, I just call this proxxi thing, correct?”
He stopped what he was doing in mid-motion. “Sure. But you were listening to that part?”
“Yes, Kenny, I was listening, but just take care of it for me, okay?”
“Right, boss,” he replied with a shrug.
“Now, please, set it so it removes all advertising as my doctor prescribed.”
There was a short pause while he spoke to my new proxxi on his end.
“All done,” he replied quickly. He smiled and raised his eyebrows.
That was fast. I had to admit I liked not needing the mobile bud anymore, and the technology looked amazing, even from just the proxxi session.
Waving Kenny away, I settled back into the couch. Mr. Tweedles made an attempt to come up for some affection and I shoved him away. Not on my new authentic leather couch. What the hell was he thinking?
It had been a long day. I was tired. Picking my reading tablet up from the coffee table, I walked into my bedroom, undressed quickly, and slipped under the covers. The tablet automatically rolled open and lit itself up to the page of a trashy novel set in a silly multiverse romance world that I was trying to finish. Books like this were a secret and guilty pleasure—not the sort of thing I would ever admit to reading.
As I started reading, the pages of text soon began to blur, and I fell off to sleep amid dreams of a far-flung romance.
Chapter 5
THE NEXT MORNING I awoke early, feeling unusually refreshed. At this time of year, the rising sun just snuck into the alleyway between the buildings next to me and cast cheerful rays in through my bedroom window.
Laid out peacefully under the covers, my body was lethargic. I dreamily watched motes of dust settle and spin in the sunlight streaming through the blinds. My mind was completely at ease for the first time in longer than I could remember. Something was different, but what?
Then slowly, very slowly, the noise of the world outside rose in volume, gradually growing until it filled the same space in my consciousness that it usually did. I realized then that the pssi interface had been keeping it quiet while I was asleep. No wonder I feel so refreshed!
Energized, I pulled back the sheets. Time to face the day! Swinging my legs off the bed, I called out to Mr. Tweedles, who trotted in obediently to rub up against me. I leaned down to pet him, then stretched and yawned, sitting for a moment on the edge of the bed as I collected myself and put on my slippers and housecoat.
“Okay, okay, enough!” I complained at Mr. Tweedles. I shooed him off and got up to walk into the kitchen, picking up my morning cup of coffee that was waiting for me.
As I rooted around for the holographic remote in the bowl of junk in the middle of the kitchen counter, my morning Phuture News Network sprang into life by itself, dissolving the opposite wall of my living room. Surprised, I blinked and realized this must be another feature of my new pssi system.
A message flashed up on the display. Mary had called again. I didn’t make friends easily, but we’d met a few months ago at a coffee shop nearby. We’d struck up an immediate friendship, but she was beginning to annoy me as we got to know each other better. I was finding her to be a bit of a hypocrite, and judgmental as well. I ignored the message.
Sitting down on a stool at my breakfast countertop, I passed my bowl of instant oats under the tap and a short jet of water filled it to the prescribed level. The oatmeal began sputtering and bubbling as the thermo-reactive particles in it prepared themselves. I stirred it absentmindedly while I watched predictions of the day’s news to come on Phuture News.
This new pssi display is amazing, I thought. It looked so realistic that I felt as if I could get up and walk right from my living room into whatever I was looking it. At that moment it was a swirling storm system somewhere out in the Atlantic, grinding its way towards some unfortunate Caribbean island.
The image was far superior to my old holographic display and much better than the contact lens systems I found so irritating and headache-inducing.
“By the end of the week,” predicted the Phuture News weather anchor who floated to one side of the display, “tropical storm Ignacia will reach hurricane status and progress into the third major storm of the season.” They were projecting it would wash all the way up the coast and threaten New York.
An almost regular occurrence those days.
In an overlaid display, Phuture News described soon-to-be-emerging conflicts in the Weather Wars, along with a list of predicted famines and disasters. It was all they ever talked about. No wonder everyone was anxious and depressed, never mind the advertising.
Oh well, I thought, spooning my oatmeal rhythmically into my mouth as they detailed the death and destruction. What can I do about it?
“Good morning. I hope you didn’t mind, but I filtered out the street noise last night. I thought it would help you sleep better.”
I looked up from my oatmeal to find myself looking at me, or rather, a version of myself. My proxxi was strikingly composed in a tight, fashionable business suit with her hair done up in a se
vere bun. She looks amazing. Oatmeal dripped off my spoon as I took her in, uncomfortably aware that my own hair was a frizzy mess.
“I also took the liberty of preparing a relevant summary of world events that happened while you were sleeping,” she said brightly. I stared at her, feeling violated and annoyed. I just wanted to have my oatmeal in peace. I hadn’t requested any of this.
“I think that these may be most relevant regarding your work today,” she continued, and a blur of images hung in an augmented display space in front of me. I put my spoon down. “Instead of talking, it would be easier if we could commingle my subjective reality with yours—”
“Look," I cut her off, “I just wanted to try this for the advertising block. I realize you are the main system interface, but please deal through Kenny, okay?” Anyway, my doctor had said to avoid the distributed consciousness features, which was what her commingling of realities sounded like.
She smiled. “Of course, Olympia. My apologies. I will interface with Kenny from now on until I hear otherwise from you.”
With that, she faded away. This proxxi thing was unnerving, but at least she hadn’t given me any attitude. I returned my gaze to Phuture News and started eating my oatmeal again.
“News off!” I announced, wondering how the pssi system would respond.
Magically, the display faded and my wall returned, but the system left behind a persistent visual overlay that was both visible and somehow invisible at the same time. This technology really is amazing. Information about some war that was about to start in Africa hung in my new overlaid display.
“Maybe I shouldn’t start my days with Phuture News,” I muttered aloud, and immediately a Phuture News feed at the bottom of my display said there was a 90 percent chance I would anyway. I laughed. The system was a comedian as well.
Picking up the new edition of Marketing Miracles from the counter, a rare print magazine, I leafed through it. That’s odd. Something wasn’t right.
And then I figured it out.
“Kenny,” I announced into thin air, “could you switch the advertisement blocking system off?”
Before my eyes, the pages of the magazine began to morph, shifting and dissolving until the same page appeared before me, but this time with the advertisements on it.
“And, Kenny, put the advertisement block back on, please.”
The images and text on the page quickly shape-shifted back and the adverts dissolved away.