Chapter 20
"Thomas? How are you doing there, guy?" Thomas groaned. "Oh good, we're alright. Now, can you tell me what day it is?"
"What?" He muttered.
"OK, close enough! I think we're all done here! We just need you to get up, stretch, and try out your new implant so we can make sure it's not defective."
Thomas moaned and tried to get used to the light in the room. He made out the figures of the nurse from before and a new person that Thomas assumed was the doctor. Thomas slowly stood, his head swimming and throbbing.
"That's good, real good! OK, now we want you to try some things out here. Look over towards Inge, the nurse." Thomas looked towards her and noticed that she was still grinning. She clearly got too much pleasure out of this job. "Now Inge is going to speak some German to you, and your implant should automatically start translating. Let me know if it doesn't."
Inge opened her mouth and began spewing forth words in her native tongue. Thomas didn't recognize any of it at all. He looked at her in confusion, when suddenly a string of green characters appeared as if out of thin air, scrolling across his field of vision.
"Thus if your implant functions, sir, you should be able to read a raw translation of what I say. Does the implant function?"
Thomas took a minute to register that he was supposed to respond. "Oh, yes, yes it works fine, I guess. Slightly funny translation, but it seems to work."
"Yes, well that's normal, machine translation still is far from perfect but it gets the job done most of the time. There are few things it routinely gets wrong, but you'll begin to pick up on what it really means eventually. It'll keep getting better though, the firmware for the implant is usually updated about once a month, and they include updates to the translation software with that. OK, now lets see, incoming calls on your implant are blocked at the moment while we verify that it works, but let’s try an outgoing call. Use the voice command to call this number." The doctor handed Thomas a slip of paper with instructions and a number. Thomas quickly read it.
"Call 516947612654" he blurted out, and the green text was back again.
"Calling 516947612654..." he read and waited. Moments later the line was picked up and Thomas heard a voice speaking clearly.
"Good afternoon! Today is Tuesday, August 16th, 2208. The current temperature is 27 degrees. Today's forecast calls for a 37% chance of rain towards the evening, cool and breezy with winds to the south at 15 to 25 kilometers per hour and a temperature of 13 degrees. Are you feeling down and ugly? Well worry no more! Simply trust the products from Beauty Inc.! We'll make you better than natural! Our current specials include pink hair modifier for--"
"ACK! HANG UP!" Thomas yelped and, surprisingly, the call ended with no hassles.
"Excellent!" said the doctor enthusiastically. The doctor had a secret hobby of cataloging the reactions to the Time and Temperature computer, a hobby that brought a small amount of amusement to his otherwise dull and drab day. This was a new reaction he would enjoy writing about later. "Well let's see… Your projector, speaker, and microphone all seem to be working just fine. I think we can safely activate it now." The doctor got out what looked like a tablet computer and began entering in information. "OK! We're all set! Here are some brochures containing some information you might find helpful. Have a great day!" No sooner than the doctor exited, the green text appeared again.
Incoming call from 845315316456...
Thomas had no idea who this could be, and he certainly didn't want to talk to them right now.
"Ignore?" he said doubtfully. It was a good guess, the green text quickly disappeared. Suddenly it popped back up again.
Incoming call from 864749167421...
Exasperated, Thomas decided to just ignore it without audibly saying so. He looked down at the pile of brochures he was holding and then back to the nurse who had opened the door and was waiting for him to follow her out. As he walked along the corridor, he thumbed through the stack and found one that he would definitely have to read as soon as possible: "Signing Up For the International Do-Not-Call Registry." Upon rejoining the others, he discovered that Doug and Vera were apparently having the same problems.
"Ugh, why do you still have telemarketers in the future?" Vera whined.
"Heh, this is pretty funny," Darin laughed. "Don't worry, we'll get you set up with the Do-Not-Call registry soon. Come on, let's get something to eat and go home." The group made their way out of the implant office and used the POD system again to get home. All the while, Doug, Thomas, and Vera were being called by someone, somewhere, who no doubt had something very important to tell them about a special deal that they just had to act upon in the next fifteen minutes!
They finally got home and Darin immediately went to sign them up for the registry. Doug, Vera, and Thomas sat and looked over the brochures that explained the features of their new implants, added each other to their phone books, and played around with the translation feature using what little bits of foreign languages they knew. Lyla sat and watched them for a little bit, slightly amused for a time, but she quickly grew bored. She summoned Toby, called her mother, and reviewed her schedule with her to see if there was any point at which she could come for a visit. It was rather quickly determined that no, she could not, she was just simply too busy. She ended that call and then called her brother to talk about how much mom always wanted them to come over.
"Hey!" Doug suddenly shouted. "The calls stopped!" Thomas and Vera suddenly realized that this was, in fact, the case. They had grown very effective at ignoring the calls by that point and hadn’t noticed. Suddenly the green text notified them of the voice mails they now had to wade through. About an hour later, that was taken care of, and Darin reappeared out of nowhere.
"You should be all set!" He said.
"Thanks!" Doug said relieved. "How did you even register for that anyhow?"
"Got onto the Governet on my computer upstairs and registered there."
"The Governet?"
"Yeah, it's the portal for all of the government's organizations. You can do nearly anything on it without having to go to the actual office in person."
"So is it separated from the rest of the Internet for added security?"
"Internet?" Darin was puzzled by this term, but fortunately Lyla remembered reading about it in one of her history classes in college.
"Oh, no, the Internet was destroyed during World War Three," Lyla explained. "The governments decided that it was a threat to global instability and dismantled it."
"Don't you mean global stability?" Vera asked.
"No?"
"Never mind..." Vera sighed.
"Anyhow, the Internet as you guys know it was destroyed but they began the Portal System in the 2050s after the personal computer made a comeback. There are quite a few different portals available, and most of them are fine tuned to work well on the implants since that's where nearly all of the traffic on the Portals comes from."
"Wait, so we can get on the Inter--Portal System with our implants?" Doug asked, suddenly intrigued by yet another technological advancement.
"Some of them, yeah, it depends if they specifically work with implants or not. The most common Portal that people use on their implants is the World Wide Wiki."
"OK, so how do I do that?"
"Just say 'Access Portal' and then the name of the portal you want. So you could say 'Access Portal: World Wide Wiki' and you'd be there." Doug decided to try this out immediately.
"Access Portal: World Wide Wiki," he said, and was instantly greeted with the front page displayed in green text.
Welcome to the World Wide Wiki! Please choose your language!
"English?" The display flickered and changed.
World Wide Wiki, Tuesday, August 16th, 2208.
Today's Featured Article: Beauty, Inc.
Did You Know... Melvin Frey was the first man to walk on Mars in the year 2061?
In The News: Government declares month of September to be Internatio
nal Government Appreciation Month
On This Day: 2083 – Earth's climate declared stable thanks to the Great Green Movement of 2055
Say "Lookup [Article Name]" to learn more about any subject!
"That's so awesome..." Doug said quietly.
"Yeah," Darin said, "so you guys can get answers to all your questions on there instead of asking us!" Lyla looked at him and the two of them smirked.
"Yeah, yeah, very funny. Well anyhow, we can finally travel and see the world now right? We got our implants and ID numbers and everything, so let’s go!"
"Well, yeah, sure I guess, but we should probably try to get things straightened out at the bank first before we go so that you can actually, you know, pay for it."
"Oh yeah!" said Thomas. "But how are we going to do that?"
"We got all the information in a file from Frank, so it should be pretty straightforward..." Darin said. "We’ll go to the bank tomorrow and take care of it then. In the meantime, you all can play with your implants. Lyla and I will meet you down here tomorrow at 9 AM." They parted and went up to their rooms. Thomas, Doug, and Vera stayed up for several hours, experimenting with the other features listed in the brochures they had received at the clinic. Finally, after some time, Thomas decided that he’d better get some rest. He felt unusually tired, but attributed it to the drugs that awful nurse had given him. He said good night to the others, and made his way to his room, eagerly anticipating a good night’s sleep.