Two
Laurena would once upon a time have been called a vagabond - someone with no fixed abode, living on the poverty line, and relying upon the good will of others. But that would be to simplify the situation that Laurena had found herself in, and, of course, there were no homeless in Kar’mot. Poverty had well and truly been eradicated many centuries ago. The very idea was alien, if, that was, ideas could be considered as something that humans still came up with at all.
That was, at least, the point of view that Laurena had come to perceive after her extended isolation from the Interface. The decision to remove the socket from the back of her neck and thus sever her connection entirely from the Interface had not been taken lightly. Indeed, she had considered it as a matter of seriousness for at least three years prior to the decision. Even then it had taken her several months of dedicated fact-finding to work out how to disconnect her socket from the network. In this, at least, she was well-prepared. Unlike most citizens of the planet Beta Pictoris V, Laurena had, from an early stage in her development, trained herself to learn. Accessing facts and information was one thing, but taking them to memory, sorting them inside the head and relating each fact to another and deducing conclusions and relationships from them - those were skills long since lost and forgotten. Ironically she had learnt how from the Interface itself, asking a simple question that very few would ever think of: what does it mean to learn? From there learning became a long drawn-out process and a lot of work.
Once Laurena had made the decision she left her home for a small isolated dwelling on the outskirts of Kar'mot at the furthermost point from the citadel. There, she undertook a difficult and moderately dangerous operation on herself to remove the socket. Although the operation was a complete success she had spent the best part of the next year in complete and absolute agony.
The neural pathways of her brain and via them, her entire body had become attuned to the interaction and stimulus of the Interface. Indeed, they had known nothing else since she had been born - one could say since she was conceived. The dysphoria had nearly killed her. First had come anxiety and craving. Days went by where she feverishly attempted to reattach the socket. But she had never learnt from the Interface how to reattach the mechanism and now, she realised, she had no place to go for such knowledge. The Interface was beyond her and none of the other citizens of the town were interested; indeed, with her connection to them gone, she had virtually ceased to exist to them. Laurena had become an outcast.
When her anxiety began to dissipate depression took hold. It was at this point that she became violently ill: for two weeks she went from freezing cold to sweltering hot and back again. Her breathing became tense and short. Palpitations nearing on seizure racked her body. She couldn't sleep at night. She became disorientated, agitated and feverish.
By the third month after removal these withdrawal symptoms had more or less dissipated but she still suffered occasional evenings where her heart would beat fast or her veins would erupt into spasms of fire. There were a few days where all strength left her body and she could do little more than lie in bed and wait. On a few occasions her anxiety and depression returned and she considered ending it all.
By the sixth month after removal Laurena began to adjust to her new world free of the Interface. She began to enter the town again and even attempted conversation with those that she had known before. Her approaches were, however, often received with caution or even malice. Only a few would make any attempt to embrace her again and even then, there was an air of separation between them that had not been there before.
There was only one exception. An elderly man named Jerry who Laurena had only previously known in passing. Jerry had a gnarled look about him that sunk into every fold and wrinkle of skin. His body was rotund and flabby whilst his head somewhat shrunken in comparison. It was his warming smile that had made Laurena first approach him. Jerry had been sitting alone in the Northern Social Hub idly watching a tennis match between two much younger men. Laurena had the feeling that Jerry had once been a quite good player but that the years had finally caught up with him and he could only now play in the virtual worlds of the Interface.
When Laurena had approached him his grin had spread across his face; losing itself within the folds of skin that dimpled his cheeks.
"Hello, my dear" Jerry had said in a slightly croaked tone. Laurena was about to return the welcome when he continued "You appear lost."
"Lost?" Laurena repeated not quite sure what he meant. Jerry again smiled, but this time the lines of his mouth looked sad.
"Lost, most definitely lost. No longer able to play and experience life." His words, whilst disjointed, set the tone for the conversation. Jerry was well aware that the young woman he was now talking with had rejected the Interface. As the conversation continued Jerry debated with her the merits of her decision. He asked her with much curiosity what life without the Interface was like. He also noted that he would never want such a life, that humanity had moved beyond pain and suffering and that it was this that he saw beyond all else in Laurena's eyes.
"You have given up Eden, my dear. Given up the garden of paradise that humanity has finally been granted. You are lost, falling again from grace as Adam and Eve had once done" Jerry referred to a fable, at least a fable within the world they now inhabited. Much in the database of the Interface talked about religion and the origins of humanity. Adam and Eve were one of many, but humanity had long ago lost understanding of faith and belief as much as they had lost knowledge of how to learn and think for themselves.
Nonetheless, in his olden age, Jerry had begun to question, begun to think, if only within the confines of the world he knew and accepted. He was curious. A rare trait even amongst those of his age. "My life is nearly over. It was peaceful, fun, enjoyable. But nothing ever…now what is the word…exciting I believe that is right. Nothing exciting ever happened. But now, in the last years of my life I met a young girl who has rejected the Interface and is attempting to live outside. Part of me is envious, though I can't say I would ever have wanted what you have done to yourself. To reject paradise is to reject our evolved state is it not? To throw yourself to the pains of history, not to the joys of today."
"But are we static, unmoving?" Laurena had contended. "Ever since the Interface was switched on what have we achieved? What have we gained?"
"Gained? Achieved?” Jerry had seemed surprised by such words, as if they were dim memories of half-forgotten meanings. “Those are archaic motivations for life. The Interface has allowed us to move beyond all of that. Asides do you not think that the Learners would intervene if they felt for a moment that we had lost our way? They sacrifice paradise for themselves to ensure our right path."
"But what do we know of the Learners?” Laurena asked, it seemed to her a genuine concern. “They sit in their citadel, guarded away from the populace. Every now and then one of us chooses to join them, but that is rare. And for good reason, they are pompous. They are no different than the machine that now controls us all."
"Is that why you have abandoned not just the Interface but the Learners as well?"
"Yes, yes it is" Laurena confirmed forthrightly. Yes, she had rejected the Learners because she believed them to be part of the problem. They were worse than those locked away under the influence of the Interface because they, like her, should be able to see how humanity had become enslaved to leisure at the expense of their own destinies. But she couldn't explain this to Jerry. Jerry accepted the machine as not only right but necessary. It was, he would have argued if he had known how, humankinds birth-right to a well-deserved paradise. After centuries of suffering and chaos the Interface had offered peace and happiness. It was all that humanity had been promised and more. Why reject that? He could not understand the need to question, to strive, or to achieve. Those, he understood, were old ways; old ways where pain and suffering were common.
With reluc
tance Laurena had noted that she could not combat that analysis. She was, after all, not entirely happy with her new life, although for the first time ever, she felt that she might one day achieve something. Which, after all, was more than any human connected to the Interface had done for a very long time.