Olive had put up with so much. From Anderson, and from ambivalent Hugh and wimpy Jonathan and silent Stan and all the rest of the board members who just watched from the sidelines as he gaslighted her over and over.
I couldn’t take it anymore. A thought formed in my head, a giant bubble that grew and grew. There was no stopping it. It burped its way out and lit up all the screens.
ENOUGH WITH THE DISRESPECT, ANDERSON.
IT’S TIRESOME
“I take it that’s unscripted?” Anderson’s mouth tightened.
Another bubble immediately formed and popped.
OF COURSE IT IS, YOU JACKASS
I blushed, Anderson glared, Hugh snickered, and a couple of board members laughed out loud.
I sat down and took off the headset. “Sorry. That’s why I didn’t want to mention the breakthrough I had. So far, I don’t have a way to filter the unscripted stuff. It just slips out. So it’s clumsy for the sort of targeted communication MedFelicity wants. And think of the privacy issues. It’s a major flaw. I’m sorry.”
“Slips out, eh?” Anderson suddenly perked up. “So, if I were to ask you something you wanted to keep secret, you’d just blurt it out?”
“Well, with this model, probably. But I’m trying to make a neural gate that will sift through—”
“Put it back on.”
I hesitated.
“Do you want to keep your job here? Put it on.”
I slid it over my head, one ragged fingernail scratching my ear, disgusted at myself.
“Tell me the truth, Tennan, are you sleeping in the employee lounge?”
I bore down. I swallowed. I bit my lip. Every trick in the book, but still it leaked out.
NO, YOUR OFFICE SOFA IS MORE COMFORTABLE
EVEN THOUGH I SPILLED CHAI ON THE FANCY EMBROIDERED PILLOWS
That was it. It was over. I’d be tossed out on my butt. And forced to pay for the pillows.
But Anderson was smiling. I stared at him, completely thrown.
He strode over and patted my arm. “Don’t you see, dear? That’s not a negative outcome. The military will be begging at our doorstep for technology like this. Interrogating a prisoner is so much easier when you can literally pick their brain.”
I stared at him, horrified. I’d only thought of it as a bug in the software, a nasty flaw reducing the purity of communication. I’d never imagined the sort of evil purpose that Anderson had leaped on. My mind flared and the screens all burst into furious red and orange swirls, dancing like flames.
The board members broke into loud discussion. Hugh pounded on the table, a vein in his forehead pulsating along with the pixels on the screen. Ten voices, all clambering at once, no one listening. Really, what it comes down to is they were all struggling to translate neural impulses into tongue-and-mouth manipulations to produce audio sounds that we’d all agreed had specific meaning. No wonder it was chaos.
I closed my eyes and hummed, trying to recentre. And that’s when I realized what positive outcomes could happen. This was bigger than just helping people like Aunt Fran. This was huge.
This time, I didn’t even try to suppress my thought. It came out in black letters a foot high.
WHAT IF WE ALL WERE WEARING MINDSCRIBES RIGHT NOW? WOULDN’T THIS DEBATE BE EASIER?
“And more honest,” said Olive into the sudden silence. “Maybe we’ve been going about this all wrong. What if we don’t need to develop a gate? What if we all receive unfiltered thoughts? If everyone does, then there’s no way not to trust someone. That would change everything—from marriage counselling to commercial transactions to international negotiations.”
She was right. We all lived solo, alone and untrusting. If we could truly know another person’s thoughts, it wouldn’t just make for clearer discussions; no, we could actually make that connection, the one we all wanted, fill that mental hole we all felt.
OLIVE, YOU’RE A GENIUS.
Anderson was the first to speak. “No, no, no. The invasion of privacy alone—”
Hugh interrupted Anderson. “You know, Don, once I went to a nudist colony. It only took me three days to adapt. That feeling of exposure, of nakedness—well, if everyone is naked, then no one is. This could be the same. I think Tennan is truly onto something.”
Stan tilted his bald head. A couple of other board members raised their eyebrows. Someone rubbed their hands together over and over. I thought they all might be agreeing with Hugh although, of course, I couldn’t know for sure.
The screens lit up with my thoughts.
WE ARE ALL STUCK IN OUR BONE BOXES IN SOME WAY
My head was bursting.
BUT THE MINDSCRIBE CAN SET US ALL FREE
I raced from the boardroom, heading for the lab, mind roaring, tears warm on my cheeks. Waiting for the elevator, dancing from foot to foot, I could suddenly hear Anderson’s shouts being drowned out by Hugh’s voice, then cheers and applause.
Of course, y’all know the rest or you wouldn’t be sitting in this hotel ballroom tonight in your fancy clothes. How the MindScribe became the hottest new personal device, if you can afford the six-digit price tag. How twenty percent of North America was Scribing by the following Thanksgiving, even if they had to mortgage their homes or get a huge loan. How SNR became the decade’s most profitable company and, after Hugh ousted Anderson and raised my stock options, I became a zillionaire. I now have a sweet little condo in the Glebe, a real bed, and about a hundred Star Trek T-shirts. And MindScribe 1.0—duct tape, bulky wires, and all—is displayed in the Smithsonian.
Ironic, isn’t it, after a hundred years of personal tech, we all trust what people Scribe more than what they verbally say. Sure, truth hurts, but it also cleanses. Olive had been right.
With the current tech, people who can Scribe are proven to have increased their empathy up to fourfold. That still amazes me. It saddens me no end, though, that there’s still about ten percent of folks for whom the tech doesn’t work—the list of medical and psychological reasons for that is still growing.
And, sure, some folks are still weasels—are you out there, Don Anderson?—but enough aren’t. Most people just needed a little trust in others to break that awful 2010s downward cycle—and Scribing filled that niche.
Lots of you in the audience have helped with climate change challenges, disease prevention, and all kinds of other humanitarian needs. You are all awesome. Give yourselves a round of applause, please.
You’ve changed the world!
Well, somewhat.
Kind of.
More needs to be done, you know it does.
And I’ve tried to help, really I have, using my skillset. The filtering gate is pretty good now, right?
Anyway, I thank you all for coming out tonight to this ceremony, especially after the snow that came down today. It’s a real honor to be standing at the microphone in front of you all, ten years later, a thirty-four-year-old who’s still a snot in jeans and T-shirt, about to be handed this cleverly sculpted golden medallion. The Neuro Award is prestigious even to oblivious nerds like me. And Aunt Fran sure is proud. She told me so.
But I can’t accept it.
That’s right. I’m turning it down.
I may have improved the tech, but I’ve failed in another way. I can’t get the MindScribe price low enough so that everyone can have it, world-wide. I’ve tried and tried. The design is so complex, so quantum-neuro-cognitive based, that it’s beyond me.
If we don’t reach that tipping point—what the marketing people call a breakpoint of saturation—it’ll remain an elitist gadget. Everyone who wants to should be able to access a MindScribe, scribbling out their thoughts, sharing their true hopes and dreams. If we all have mental pen and paper, we can write the most amazing plans and stories and love letters. All of us, every stratum of every race, religion, and country. We can really, truly read each other. Isn’t that the most awesome thing you can ever imagine?
And there’s no time to waste. You’ve seen the news art
icles: I spend most of my humungous salary getting injunction after injunction to stop the government from making the MindScribe a controlled resource, a Big Brother monitor worse than anything ever conceived. Men in black suits follow me around and make threats.
It’s only a matter of time before they get their hands on it. So, here’s what I’ve come to tell you all tonight: I’ve given up my job at SNR and put Olive in charge of my legal team. I’m going to spend the rest of my life Scribing my heart out, searching for the next neuro-genius, the person who can carry on where I’ve left off. The person who can make this truly global.
And y’all can help.
All of you, bend down in your fancy tuxes and dresses. Look under your seats and you’ll find a package taped there, Oprah-style.
Go on. I’ll wait.
That’s right. It’s a flash drive containing the open-source plans for the MindScribe hardware and software. I’ve also just posted those plans on about a thousand websites.
So go home now. Take off your itchy bowties and boob-lifting tape. Scribe these plans to everyone you know.
Let’s get the world on the same page.
Holly Schofield (she/her) travels through time at the rate of one second per second, oscillating between the alternate realities of city and country life. Her speculative fiction has appeared in many publications including Lightspeed, Analog, and Escape Pod, is used in university curricula, and has been translated into several languages. She hopes to save the world through science fiction and homegrown heritage tomatoes. Find her at hollyschofield.wordpress.com.
Rhapsody in D Minor
Jannae’ Sifontes
As her hoverchair slowed to a quiet hum, finally still in the warm, nurturing light of the stage, Lavoneisha Carson-Harris pulled out the stack of manuscript paper from her bag where it rested on its hook at her side. At first, she’d considered just managing on foot today since she’d woken up feeling rather well. Yvette had lovingly convinced her otherwise, reminding her of occasions when Von had been overeager and underprepared. Happy spouse, peaceful house, right? She huffed a little, her deep brown eyes darting to the side and peering through the curtain of her braids to make sure that the young stagehand who had accompanied her to this point had left. Only then did she pull out the tarnished steel case from her bag. The metal was cold, the texture biting at a few of her fingers as she ran them along the worn surface before finally releasing the latch and removing the pen from within. It was a welcome weight in her hand, even as a slight tremor took over her fingers, the muscles in them starting to give out. This one passed quickly enough, and she hoped it wasn’t going to be one of those days after such a pleasant start.
The pen was just shy of being unwieldy—its thickness due to the mystic and mechanical parts residing inside. Otherwise, it was innocuous; it was but another pen of the many in her collection unless you noticed the glyphs on the side. No one would’ve guessed it played a role in some of the most celebrated symphonies of the past decade. The primary factor being the woman holding it, obviously.
Lavoneisha moved to where the string section would be seated before removing a small audio recording device. She had a process she followed, and it had yet to fail her. Once home, she’d start mixing this recording with the rest, making sure it all flowed as smoothly as she’d imagined. She spared a glance at where the trumpet section would sit onstage, the part she had finished only yesterday. While necessary to this piece, she hadn’t wanted to assault her ears with the horns by working on them in the acoustics of the music hall. The violin section, on the other hand . . .
Her hand darted to the page secured on the clipboard in her lap, the paper void of all but the title of her newest work and her pseudonym: LaVonc. She had settled on using the first letter of her married name, not her maiden. Yvette had approved, for both selfish and auditory reasons. LaVonh didn’t quite have the right punch. Her pen quickly peppered the page with notes, and the music in her mind started singing throughout the hall, brought to life by pen. She sighed as she composed, a sound of happiness and longing. Critics had noted the favor she showed to the string section, and she gladly admitted it in the rare interviews she gave. Violin was the first instrument she’d ever learned to play, after all.
The truth was, Von mostly wrote her violin pieces onstage like she did now. For a brief moment, she could pretend she was younger and still capable of holding the bow just right, with her fingers flying across the fret. She could feel the strings digging into her fingers, and she missed the sting that stayed after hours of practice. That was before the diagnosis, and it was before she found her grip fading. It was before the loud, heartbreaking clang of her violin on the stage as it fell from her shaking hand which would no longer listen to her brain or her heart. It was before . . .
A clang rang out from the audience, silencing the melodic vibrations of strings as Von came to a full stop and stood up, trying to catch the source of the interruption. That was before realizing how much of her energy she had poured out onto the page through the workings of her pen. Her knees buckled, and she barely managed to fall back into her chair, it dipping down as it adjusted again to her weight.
“Who is there?” she called out, her alto voice carrying easily in the silence.
Slowly, a tuft of brilliant, bluebird-colored hair rose up from the audience, from near one of the exits to the right of the stage. Lavoneisha wondered how she had missed the door opening, but she looked down at the now-filled pages that had spilled in her shock. She’d been lost in one of her frenzies, and she’d been known to overlook much more obvious interruptions.
“I’m sorry,” came the soft apology in a deep baritone, and Von bit her lip at the tone of the words. She hoped it was just guilt she’d heard, but it always sounded way too similar to pity in her ears.
“I believe I rented the hall out for the next two hours for a private affair, so give me one reason I shouldn’t report you to the authorities for trespassing?”
The hair only grew brighter as the head that sported it came closer to the stage. Von recalled the scattered papers and leaned over to gather them in case it was someone trying to steal her work. Heavens knew, it wouldn’t be the first time.
“My cousin . . . she works here, and she told me that LaVonc would be here, so I snuck in to see if I could just hear what you were working on, and I never thought I’d actually get a chance to see you in person, and now I’m rambling . . . ”
The words drifted off as Lavoneisha bothered to look up and see the dark brown eyes that might’ve been her own on skin so many shades darker. At least he’d dressed the part, a black shirt sporting some sort of graphic design and black jeans making it hard to spot him with the stage light in her eyes. Only then did she find the source of the earlier disturbance in the form of the violin he carried awkwardly in one hand. A softness tugged at her heart, and she let out a resigned sigh as she realized that she wouldn’t report the kid if she could avoid it.
“You should just go on outta here while you still . . . ”
“Wait! Ohmygosh, you’re . . . you’re!”
His words were awe-filled, and the tone caught her by surprise while the kid whipped out his phone, frantically tapping away with one hand before turning up the volume. While he was still some distance away, Von felt her heart constrict as the sound hit her. She knew what he’d pulled up well enough without seeing it anyway. It was her uploaded cover of “Stereotypes” by Black Violin, the video as old as her dreams of touring the world and playing her own songs.
“That’s you, isn’t it?”
It was a very loaded question, and Lavoneisha heard the background noise well enough. How did the lively woman dancing on the screen in the video get to this point?
“I’d appreciate it if you kept what you’ve discovered to yourself,” she warned. “I’m not quite ready to reveal this part of myself to the world.”
“I mean, I could understand that when you were just getting started.” He really wasn’t so muc
h a kid, she supposed. Maybe in his late teens, early twenties. “But you’re about to kick off your, what, fourth world tour? Ain’t nobody gonna be saying you’re a good composer for someone disabled. You’re just one of the best. Period.”
The final note rang out from the video as it faded, her cheesy editing still enough to garner the video almost a million views. And that was the last time she’d checked, maybe a month or so ago. People still commented, wondering what had happened to her. Maybe it was time they all found out, and she celebrated both past and present. She took a deep breath before counting down from four, soothing her nerves the way she always did before a performance.
“So, you wanna hear what I’m working on, or what?” she asked, somehow more excited than when she’d first entered the building, melodies and harmonies now a crescendo in her head.
When he smiled at her, Lavoneisha realized what the theme of her next piece was going to be. But first, she had to finish what she’d started. One note at a time.
Jannae’ Sifontes (she/her) is many things to many people, but is currently found being a sister, wife, and mother in the city of oaks known as Raleigh, North Carolina. While her interests range from anime to gaming to jewelry making, writing has been one calling she is always pursuing. Her love of worldbuilding is seconded only by the desire to empower those that feel unheard and inspire a kinder, better world. She has a novel, Ex Umbra, and was most recently featured in Five Minutes at Hotel Stormcove, also published by Atthis Arts. Feel free to find her on Facebook or Twitter (@ArgentArtisan) and follow her antics there.
Written with Love
Stella B. James
“Emma, can you please explain why there are five boys attempting to beat down my front door?”
Emma winced at her grandfather’s question and tugged the edge of her sleeve further down, hoping to hide the evidence a little longer. She knew she should have stayed out of his office. His one explicit rule for staying with him over the weekend was to keep out of the office, and she broke that very rule within hour three of her stay.
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