“Whoa, what gives?”
Spotting a small park, Taciturn leads them out of the main hub and towards a bench. Sitting down, James finally lets go of Matilda.
She looks at him with something between concern and alarm.
“You okay, dude?”
He nods.
“I… I don’t really do crowds. Look, just give me a minute…”
Whatever he needs, Matilda’s concerned expression is the exact opposite of it. James digs for his pack of cigarettes, partly to temporarily avoid her scrutiny. Only one cigarette remains. Taciturn doesn’t look up when Matilda speaks.
“When was the last time you had water?”
He shakes his head and finally looks at her.
“Seriously, I’m fine.”
Matilda offers a smile.
“Sure you are, dude. I’ll tell you what. I’m thirsty, so just wait right here, and I’ll be right back.”
Taciturn appreciates her not pressing the issue.
“Fine, but buy me some smokes. Here…”
He reaches into his inventory, creates a dedicated group account, and transfers some credits into it.
“If you’re flyin’, I’m buyin’.”
Matilda smiles wider and accepts the pending invitation.
“Okay, Gramps. Stay put. With your old age, I don’t need you wandering off.”
As Matilda enters the convenience store across from the station, Taciturn allows himself a rare, genuine laugh in spite of himself. It feels good.
He lights his last cigarette, waiting for the nicotine to even him out. There isn’t a much more reassuring way to put it. Too much time in the wilds of the Cyberside has left him ill-equipped for a crowd of this magnitude. James looks down at his indexation watch and sees the numbers lagging slightly – the collective effect of a massive amount of entities submitting requests to the System. He weighs the chances of potential anomalies in the swarm of people around him, slowly exhaling smoke, trying to refocus his thoughts.
When humankind could no longer hold back the mounting environmental catastrophes of a dying world, waves of new inhabitants flooded the Cyberside to escape. Like lizards molting, they shed their physical bodies without question. However, the safety of the mass migration was far from certain. Even the most optimistic Fall Water Lake analysts estimated that, with the increase in demand and the bandwidth necessary to process requests, up to 5% of transfers would almost certainly end in failure. The result of each of these transfer failures would be a consciousness partially lost – or worse, a transformation into an anomaly.
While that projected 5% failure-rate still terrified the statisticians, it was inarguably preferable to the alternative, guaranteed 100% failure rate of staying in the real world – insignificant, compared to waiting around to see if the catastrophic greenhousing would outrun the biodiversity implosion. What’s 5 out of every 100 participants? Not many. Who wouldn’t be ready to roll those dice? But when the sample size proved to trend into the millions, the results were as predictable as they were horrific. Friends, coworkers, and family members became psychopaths, mutants or monsters. Was it worth the price of salvation?
James feels another memory rearing its unwelcome head, and he takes another deep, lung-filling hit of the tobacco. He tries to recall something else, anything else – but his thoughts take barbed hold, reeling him back to a place both familiar and terrible. His hand opens, trembles, and closes into a fist. James feels the bytes of data start trickling back to the forefront of his mind.
In his current state, Taciturn can’t do a thing to stop it.
It’s one of his exceedingly rare days off, and his wife, Sarah, is smiling. James has taken her and their son, Timothy, out of town to the famous Reserve. A rare opportunity, even for the wealthy, to visit, however fleetingly, with the past. The Reserve still has green grass, and visitors are able to walk around without protection. It’s a heavily guarded and environmentally-quarantined zone that houses a park, a small lakeside resort, an actual forest, and much-coveted fresh air – all of it protected by a carefully constructed, camouflaged dome that encloses the sector.
They’ve come for a three-day vacation, the longest one James has taken in recent memory. As they settle into the small bed and breakfast, James takes in the décor. Their room is themed in a stylistic flurry of early twenty-first century motifs. Anywhere else, it might seem in poor taste, things being what they are – but here, it’s a perfect part of the jigsaw charm. His family finishes unpacking their bags, and they couldn’t be happier. Timothy has set up his prized selection of toys on his bed, while Sarah has already slipped into her swimsuit and bathrobe. Unpacking his suitcase, James pulls out his phone – the device which tethers him to Fall Water Lake’s relentless work-cycle. It’s gotten to the point where the sound of an email notification causes a nervous twitch in his hand. Laughing, he tosses the device into the suitcase. The Reserve has designated cellular and Wi-Fi areas, and this isn’t one of them. James intends to spend the trip without distractions.
As his son’s green army men mount their coverlet-wide offensive against a stuffed T-Rex, his wife hums in the bathroom. James beams with satisfaction. Soon, they’ll go to dinner at the local diner, Jannuzzi’s. He’ll splurge and order a juicy, real-meat burger and fries and watch his son make a complete mess devouring his favorite dish – spaghetti and meatballs. Later, he’ll enjoy a bottle of wine or two with his wife, and they’ll luxuriate under the holographic projection of a pixel-perfect sunset.
This is what all the hard work has been about. The countless overtime hours are finally paying off. Standing in an expensive ‘roadside’ motel room, James wants to hold onto this memory forever.
But his son’s laughter begins to fade, and the walls crumble away before his eyes.
Something unseen grabs his shoulder and shakes him, pulling him back into the Cyberside.
He’s on a bench, looking groggily up. Matilda stands over him, one hand holding a plastic bag, the other shaking his shoulder.
“Come on – let’s find you a real place to rest, and actually come up with a plan.”
Taciturn starts to protest, half of him still in another world, the memory still a critical drain on his reserves. Spotting a battered-looking motel not two blocks distant, James points at its unpromising neon sign without saying a word. Abruptly, he finds himself on his feet, walking slowly towards the motel. Eyes fixed on the ground, he finds Matilda walking alongside him, helping maintain his balance. They enter the motel lobby through old wooden doors that announce their arrival with an irritating chime.
Standing behind the nearby counter is a scruffy, elderly man who watches James with piercing blue eyes. Eyes that recognize a Taciturn, and Taciturn and know enough not to ask unwarranted questions.
James concentrates on the old man to help refocus his mind on this reality. Something about the man seems familiar. “We’d like a room, please.”
The clerk nods and extends a hand holding a room key. That’s when James notices the crossed rhombus tattoo on the man’s right forearm – a sign that he’s dealing with a Hermit. An enigmatic group, Hermits have resigned to live in this new data obsessed digital world of the Cyberside, but avoid filling their consciousness with meaningless information. The tattoo is a program designed to safeguard their cherished memories by minimizing the impact of day to day events on the Hermit’s storage capacity. At the end of each System-day, they carefully select what is committed to their permanent memory. Exactly how a Hermit determines what is important enough to commit to memory is a mystery to James.
With a calm, measured voice, the man answers. “Room number nine. Up the stairs, to the left.”