Authors: Aarti Patel
Misha
said nothing. Lydia was right; she didn’t understand what was important
about the screen. She knew she was currently inside of it, and it helped her
earn a living. “Is there something I can change in the report?” asked
Misha
earnestly. Lydia shook her head. “
Misha
—it’s
disappointing. You’re one of our best writers and programmers. There’s nothing
technically wrong with your report. However, it just doesn’t reflect current
trends in screen industry. You haven’t grown at Mind Memo and you haven’t grown
with the times. You also haven’t kept up with technological advances. I still
have to contact you using a telephone app. That’s so 2008. Can you tell me
what’s going on?”
Misha
blinked, she felt helpless in this environment, truly without answers.
“Lydia, this is my best work. I’ll go for more training if you need me to.” She
really was trying. Lydia shook her head again. “I’m sorry,
Misha
,
we have to let you go. There are more qualified applicants at the moment who
are able to keep up with the screen. You don’t belong here.” And just like
that,
Misha
was handed her last paycheck and the
automatic door slid open for her exit. The tiny glimmer of Lydia’s humanity
slammed shut as she went back to her work and the black eyeliner resumed its
skimming of screen reports.
Misha’s
report slid off her lap and onto the floor as she got up to
go. “
Misha
?” Lydia called to her as she was almost
out the door. “Yes?”
Misha
replied, hopeful. “Please
meet with security to disable your screen access codes before you leave.” Her
thin cracked lips pressed together in a final impatient
smile.
--------------------------
Carol
Myer stood by the water cooler outside Lydia’s office, self-consciously sipping
water from a paper cup. “How’d the meeting go?” she asked
Misha
nonchalantly.
Misha
walked past her and rounded the
maze of cubicles to her own desk, with Carol following a few steps behind.
“Maybe we can re-work that report together. I have some ideas. Do you
wanna
grab some lunch?”
Misha
emptied out the contents of her desk. Carol was oozing loneliness all over the
place. People chose strange times to be friendly or vulnerable, even more so in
the screen. “Carol—you know I just lost my job. You helped make it happen.”
Misha
wanted to get out of there as fast as she could.
“What? No!” As Carol’s face was rounded into an incredulous O shape,
Misha
walked to the elevators and caught the next one going
down to the security department.
The
security department was situated in the back of the basement and was so dimly
lit that it was hard for
Misha
to see her hand in
front of her face. Mind Memo saved money by cutting corners in bizarre ways.
Some floors were so brightly illuminated that it was like staring into the sun,
and others were treated like dungeons. “Earl?”
Misha
called out the head security guard’s name so she could follow his voice to the
correct office. “Yes?” A voice came bellowing out of room B11. Earl was a tall
elderly black man with a shiny head and huge hands. As he shook
Misha’s
hand, his body heat emanated to warm the air all
around her. In the screen environment, where so much stood stagnant and cold,
anything comforting felt accentuated a hundred fold. Earl smiled, experiencing
a similar effect from
Misha’s
presence.
Misha
was a rare Mind Memo employee in being privy to Earl’s secret wisdom
down there in the basement. Earl shared his pearls of real conversation, depth,
and history with her alone. When
Misha
first started
working at the company, she had visited the security department intending to
leave in ten minutes with a name tag and had ended up staying for a full lunch
hour. During her repeated visits, Earl told her of his days growing up in a
world without the screen. His stories described people who truly enjoyed each
other’s company, or truly detested it—but they showed it either way. Earl
explained the big screen’s timeline, how in its nascent phase it was just a
television for entertainment purposes. Its versatility grew with the advent of
computers and advanced programming. The internet gave the screen extra meaning
in people’s lives as a way to access information, spread new or regurgitated
information in an instant, and most importantly—connect with one another around
the world. People began to carry around tablets of miniature screens that
allowed them to use these features wherever they went. For many, if a friend
wasn’t around, well…technically a tablet offered enough entertainment and
activities to fill an entire weekend.
Technology
began to blend, morph, and borrow, such that devices like phones and cameras
were no longer useful as just single purchases and were being bundled into more
advanced gadgets by manufacturers. Once the technology age’s momentum started,
its growth skyrocketed faster than anyone thought it would. What was new on the
market would become outdated two months later, or even less. Technology began
to “sense” things increasingly, with built-in programming to enable screens to
detect the push of a finger or the wave of a hand. Scientists and engineers
together dreamt of the day they could breathe enough life into technology to
create a
truly
virtual reality.
Then one
day the Sacred Touch Company, who had designed the first electronic news
publication in holographic touch-screen tablet form, came up with the solution
and did a public demonstration to prove it. The event was covered extensively
by the media and so the scheduled nightly programming was interrupted on that
fateful Monday to showcase a brave individual serving as the guinea pig for the
highly prized new technology. A famous celebrity
yogini
,
Hali
Seltzer, had volunteered to be the first person
to travel inside the screen and show the world what an enriching environment
was contained within, and how safe it was to travel there and back.
Hali
was dressed in flowing yoga pants with a jingly gold coin belt around
her middle. Her hair flowed in long ringlets around her face and down her back.
She supported spirituality in every way whether it was to a higher being,
heart-centered, or even technological. Barefoot and smiling, she stepped onto
the blue zoom mat as the lead inventor, Matt Stills, explained how the big
screen worked.
Scientists
had finally found a common thread between electric energy flowing through
computer circuitry and the living electricity flowing through the human nervous
system, Stills began. They had isolated a specific way in which both computers
and humans could think, and therefore sense, alike. Sacred Touch had researched
this emerging technology for close to a decade with much funding help from the
government and undisclosed grants. Using their discovery, they had created a
virtual environment inside the screen, much like in a very realistic
three-dimensional video game. The environment ceased to be simply virtual,
however, when the screen’s circuitry tapped into the human nervous system and
introduced a subject’s sensory perception straight into the environment. It was
essentially a
bundling
of two very advanced gadgets, Stills chuckled
wittily, flashing a charming smile.
The
audience roared in unanimous applause and in the broadcast, countless were seen
giving Matt Stills a standing ovation for his speech. To understand what he was
saying was to be intelligent and tech savvy, a mark of a truly enlightened
individual.
Hali
nodded and clapped along, content
that she was contributing to history and to the evolution of human beings into
a more unified species. Stills then turned on the big screen to the hush of the
crowd. He asked
Hali
whether she was ready to go, and
in response
Hali
closed her eyes and pressed together
the palms of her hands in prayer form. She lowered her head and softly uttered,
“Namaste,” which translated from the Hindi language to mean, “The divine in me
bows to the divine in you.” Matt Stills solemnly returned the gesture, failing
to see that
Hali
had been conveying the sentiment
toward the screen.
Stills
pushed the power button to activate the system and numbers flashed on the
screen, representing
Hali’s
height, weight, and
dimensions. A thin blue neon line appeared, moving from left to right and
scanning
Hali’s
teeth without her having to open her
mouth. An environment suddenly flashed on the screen, a coffee hall with high
ceilings, chandelier lighting, and knotted wood tables. A bar curved around one
wall, and a diverse night crowd gathered in small groups to chat or show off
pictures and videos on their phones. Hands started to shoot up in the
amphitheater, all clambering to ask Stills questions about what they were
seeing. He waved them away for the moment and pressed a remote control button,
unveiling large screens all around the hall.
“What we
see now is
Hali
moving through the coffee hall
environment, actually experiencing it as if it’s real.”
Stills’s
voice echoed through the audience as their eyes turned toward the large
screens. The scene on the screens looked like a movie, with the camera
perspective shifting and turning as
Hali
wound her
way through the crowd. Everyone could look through
Hali’s
eyes as she hailed a bar-barista and was handed a foaming drink topped with
whipped cream and a drizzle of chocolate sauce.
Hali’s
voice boomed through the speakers as she gushed, “Thank you so much!” The
audience observed
Hali’s
live body on the stage with
mounting confusion, wondering how she was still standing upright.
The
crowd was becoming antsy and a voice shot out from the front to ask, “Is
Hali
really drinking that?” Stills smiled. “She thinks she
is,” he replied. Other questions followed, “Why is her body still upright?”
Stills explained how her conscious human mind was mostly in the screen, while
her physical body remained semi-paralyzed out in the real world. “How are
people using phones and video features in the virtual environment?” Stills had
anticipated this question and beamed about the research currently being done to
make technology available to users inside the virtual environment. “How will
virtual technology correlate with technology in the real world?” Stills
explained how all virtual data would be stored in a master database connected
to the real world. One day people would be able to hold full-time jobs in virtual
environments. "Are the other people in the coffee house real?" Stills
shook his head and described the simulated beings that would populate the
screen until enough live members like
Hali
moved in
and took over.
In
Earl’s memory, one audience member’s question stood out more than any other. A
tall bronzed young man with clear eyes and spiky black hair shouted out his
question during one of the silent pauses and it cut through the amphitheater
like a knife through air. Unlike the other questions that had reverberated in
the big hall, his question was punctuated with a period and hung in the air
like a taunt. “Who is she while she’s in the screen?” For the first time,
Stills’s
eyes roamed the crowd to see who was asking the
question. An attendant pointed out to him who the culprit was. Stills looked
down from the stage with his hands on his hips and answered matter-of-factly,
“Why, she is herself, of course.”
--------------------------
Earl
sighed and slowly shook his head, “I got the order from Lydia a few minutes
ago. I’m sorry, Shorty.” Earl had always called her Shorty as she stood only
slightly above five feet tall. “It’s okay, Earl, I sensed it coming for a while
now,”
Misha
assured him. They looked at each other in
helpless understanding of the world in which their virtual selves now stood.
“What now?” Earl asked her.
Misha
shrugged her
shoulders, she really didn’t know. It had gotten increasingly difficult to find
a viable job in this world without becoming a slave to the screen. She had
never taken a liking to this environment and had tried to work positions out in
the real world as long as she could, but they kept dwindling in number. Maybe
she should apply for a waitress position at Minnie’s, thought
Misha
. What did this world produce anymore? What did it do
for a living?
Misha
had learned a long time ago that
endless questioning led nowhere.
“Earl—thanks
for being my friend,”
Misha
concluded. Earl nodded,
adding, “Likewise. I’ll miss your visits.” Out in the real world, there was
little chance of them bumping into one another. Earl took
Misha’s
nametag and stuck it in the obliterator. It was as if she had never existed at
this company, according to the system. Anything tied to her identity would be
destroyed or if it proved useful, would be archived in the master database. “
Misha
, call me if you ever need anything. I have a phone
too.” Earl handed her a business card and winked, and she turned to leave the
basement forever with five minutes left to zoom out to her house. Back when she
was in her more sentimental years, she would say goodbye to spaces she would
never see again. The offices of Mind Memo left her no such desire and she
stepped onto the blue mat by the elevators without ceremony.