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 that I was 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 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 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 and poured myself a glass. Collapsing onto my couch, I drank a big mouthful, savoring it. Rummaging around in my purse, I found the last cigarette in my pack. With all this technological wizardry, you’d think they could invent a realistic endless cigarette—those e-cigarettes were just so unsatisfying. I crumpled up the empty cardboard packaging and threw it onto the table.
Might as well get it over with. “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 from behind his square-rimmed glasses. “Whoa, you got some kind of fancy lens display system going on?”
I’d tripped his geek-chic alarm, and I waited for him to collect himself.
“Please listen to what, this, ah, woman is saying,” I said, pointing toward my new proxxi. “Pssi interface, or proxxi, or whatever, please continue.”
Kenny’s eyes grew wide as the proxxi began describing the system controls. I just sat back and enjoyed one glass of wine and then another.
Presently, the proxxi faded away and I turned to Kenny to finish up. “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, right?” He’d just use this as an excuse to duck out of other work if I let him.
He nodded. “Right.”
“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?”
“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 toward 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, yeah.”
“Just take care of it for me, okay?”
“Okay, boss.”
“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 and let Mr. Tweedles cuddle up into me. I scratched his ears and felt him purring, and then felt a sudden twinge of realization that Alex wouldn’t be coming by anymore. It’s just and me and you, Mr. Tweedles.
5
The next morning I awoke early, feeling unusually refreshed. At this time of year, the rising sun just managed to sneak into the alleyway between the buildings next to me and cast cheerful rays in through my bedroom window. I dreamily watched motes of dust settle and spin in the sunlight streaming through the blinds. My mind was 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, 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.
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 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 robe. Picking up Mr. Tweedles, I got up and walked into the kitchen, grabbing my waiting morning cup of coffee.
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 and hit it off. We’d struck up an immediate friendship, but lately 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. 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 boiling water filled it to the prescribed level. I stirred it absentmindedly while I watched predictions of the day’s news to come on Phuture News.
This new pssi display is amazing. 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 out in the Atlantic, grinding its way toward 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 these 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. I spooned my oatmeal absentmindedly into my mouth as they detailed the death and destruction.