Their eyes darted around faster than normal and wouldn't stop on anything even for a second. Some shoulders were strangely hunched, while others were way too straight and strained. Feet shuffled with anxiety that Meliora had seen only in children with ACD right after the doctors gave them the pills, and fingers were clenching into fists just like some of those children's fingers. She'd never seen this in person, but parents loved posting videos of their children on the interweb.
The children were "healed" when they got the pills. But usually it was one child at a time and place who needed healing, or perhaps two. There were a doctor or two and the children's parents, all of whom were bigger than the children, stronger. Mel imagined doctors streaming into the shopping mall now, bigger and stronger than adults, many doctors who would stop the shuffling, the shouts, the gestures that were suddenly becoming too close to punches and kicks. She knew about punches and kicks only from the decades-old articles.
No doctors came. Mel was still trembling, with an unfamiliar feeling that she suddenly knew as fear.
She walked on. She knew exactly where she was going, and she fingered the pills in her pocket. They were what the old articles called her lucky charm. She'd had them for eight years now, ever since the only doctor she'd seen for her own ACD had given them to her and she'd decided not to take them.
She finally reached the stranger who had bumped into her before the outage.
"What did you do?" Meliora asked. "How did you do it?"
The boy looked at her—and didn't look away. They stared at each other for a long time, in the middle of the computers' silence and people's noise.
"How do you know I did anything?" he said. His voice was the strange one that boys acquired just before they became men. He looked a few years older than her.
"I asked my questions first. Reply to me first."
"Oh, and you even remember you asked a question a few seconds ago, don't you!?" He shouted now, and it was different from the shouts of everyone else. Others' shouts were aimless, just like their owners. This shout was pointed. It came at you and shoved you into a wall.
Meliora didn't move. Or rather, she only moved a little, together with the boy as if they had agreed on it. They stopped next to a potted plant in a corner away from other people.
"Yes," she said. "I remember a few seconds ago. Now answer me."
"But then what I did should be clear to you! I stopped the interweb! I can start it again any moment I wish, of course—and just like that, I can stop it again." He smiled. He looked happy—pointedly, sharply happy, nothing like the happiness of the shoppers before.
"How?"
"A question for a question, Meliora. I answered one. You answer me now before I say anything else."
"Fine, but you already answered yourself. Meliora. You know my name, and you knew my interweb address just by glancing at my computer. Well, I very well know that, unlike most people, I don't have my address printed on the hardware." Of course she didn't. The articles about enemies said that labeling a computer, of all things, would only make it easier for them to find you when you threw that computer away.
She fixed the boy's eyes again. "You sent a message to a stranger without having an obvious way to find her address. I thought you were strange and interesting, so I followed you to see what you were up to. Now, I think that you were showing off and that was stupid of you. If I could find you, your enemies can, too."
"Let them."
"I am letting them," she said quietly. "But you shouldn't. They'll close you off into your own mind."
The boy laughed. "Oh, yeah? Will they? Well, little girl, let me tell you that they can't do much worse than they already have. I am closed inside my own mind. So are you. If you weren't, you'd be out there!" He pointed randomly towards the people.
"I am not closed off. I am always careful, so that I won't be." She was being careful now, too. He wasn't. He was pointing at people, but she was the one seeing people. Louder shouts. Quick, jerking motions. Fists more tightly clenched. And—there—the first shove. The victim didn't seem to notice at first. No one ever shoved you inside a shopping mall. No one ever shoved you anywhere but in those old, old articles with farms, economy, and enemies.
"Start the interweb. Now."
"Why? Are you afraid?" The boy smiled strangely. "I don't take orders, Meliora."
"I am afraid, yes! And if you had enough of a mind, whether or not you're closed off inside it, you would also be afraid, Nicolas. Yes, I know your name. You sent me a message and I replied, remember? Start it! Start it now!"
"You can't make me do it. No one can." That smile again.
Maybe she could. Maybe she could shove him, just like they did in the old articles. Maybe it would work—but she didn't. It would hurt him, and hurting was wrong.
"Start it, Nicolas. Otherwise... Something will happen, I know it!" The world wouldn't stay silent for long.
"For a moment there, I thought you were special." The boy looked at her with contempt. "Obviously, you're just like everyone else."
She opened her mouth, then closed it. For the first time in her life, she didn't know what to reply.
Then, the computer in her hand beeped.
@Meliora12453: where are you? Mel, why aren't you answering? What's going on!?
@BunnyCuteSmart24: it's all right, Mom. Calm down.
The boy looked at her again. His eyes held a bit more respect for her than a moment ago. Then, he ran.
She didn't run after him. One running person might be more difficult to pinpoint and catch than two people running together, especially if they had been talking together earlier. Nicolas hadn't said it—but Meliora knew that it wasn't him who had brought back the interweb.
It wasn't her, either.
***
Yes, Mom, truly, it's all right. Just the interweb in the mall stopped. The GreatLifeExperiences, Inc. theater is broadcasting now, take a look there.
The GreatLifeExperiences, Inc. theater was the theater in the mall. People went there for entertainment. A person would sit in a soft, nice chair beside other people sitting in soft, nice chairs, and a few tiny pieces of some computing device would be glued to their skin, so they could feel things like winter freezing temperatures, unbearable summer heat, being in a mild car accident, smelling a nasty unclean toilet, and so on. People could never feel these anywhere else. It would be unsafe to program them into individual computers. At least, so GreatLifeExperiences, Inc. said. The theater, however, was a safe, controlled environment, and its medstats could dispense relaxation pills stronger than those of the home medstats if someone thought they'd experienced a bit too much.
A unique, new, UNHEARD OF experience! the theater was broadcasting now. WHAT would life BE without the interweb? ONLY in GreatLifeExperiences, Inc. shopping mall and theater. Coming soon! Tested with great success today in the shopping mall itself!
But from now on, the corporation said, this wonderful experience would only happen in the theater. People were already buying tickets.
Annabella
The boy Nicolas 0x12A14762, with interweb address Nicolas351, was from another city. It wasn't hard to find where he lived if one knew where to look. Mel did. She read his feed, too, but his old posts were natural—and after the outage the boy broadcasted nothing. It was almost impossible to believe. Had he been found? Had he been put into prison or into his own mind? Could one no longer post on their feed if that happened?
She didn't know, and the old articles didn't explain. The fairytales did. He could have died, they said. He could have even been killed, which was like dying, only someone else did it to the person.
Some tales said that dying was going to a place where white-clad children played music and sang. Mel wondered. Didn't they have musicstats in Death or even normal computers—and how could children play music, anyway? Mel had examined both musicstats and computers. Musicstats had better hardware for music than computers, but whatever their differences, they both had hardware children
lacked.
Other tales mentioned Death as a place where grown men went to drink and hunt. Hunting, as Mel understood it, was people going to find food. It sounded like a supermarket. Mel could not imagine Nicolas going to the Death where children played—and how long could a boy spend in a supermarket? A day, two at most, if he wanted to eat several times before he chose what to buy. A few more, if he forgot what he wanted, or if he took a nap in the supermarket's hotel.
Mel had a feeling that Nicolas wouldn't forget anything. He must be back soon.
Yet, time passed, a long time, and the boy didn't return in the interweb. He never replied to Mel's messages, never again posted on his feed. She couldn't break into his private message box, either, though she could break into anyone else's. Not that she cared to break into other people's message boxes, except for Mom's. People's messages were boring. Mom's were, too—but Mel had a responsibility for Mom. She had to care for her, to make sure Mom was happy, and checking her messages was a part of it. Mom still missed Dad. Mel knew it though Mom would never, ever say it. It was unnatural. Natural people didn't miss their mates like this, and Mel was better at being unnatural than Mom was, so she thought she must care for both of them.
Mel had feeling that Nicolas's message box could be interesting, but she never got access to it. It was as if he just...didn't exist any more. She found some of his friends through the feeds. They hadn't seen him or heard from him, they said. Those who remembered him at all. By the time she wrote to them, most had forgotten him.
When Mel turned fifteen, she went to Nicolas' city. She had to be at least fifteen in order to leave her own city and then come back. Nicolas must have been about fifteen when she met him, seventeen now.
There weren't many other cities. Three of them, to be precise. The old articles mentioned more, but in school the teachers said three and insisted on three. This was the truth, they said, the real truth.
At fifteen, people graduated from school. They became adults, and they could travel. The morning after graduation, Mel went to her neighborhood train station and bought a ticket to Annabella City.
She started on a normal Lucastan underground train. She used them sometimes, especially if she wanted to be late for school. She was too punctual if she rode her bicycle through the mostly empty long-distance bike lanes. The short-distance ones were usually filled with kids out there for obligatory sports, but for longer distances, such as the one-mile distance to school, people preferred the trains.
The trains were slow. They had a schedule but it was a guideline, not a rule. No one was supposed to be on time in Lucasta. Punctuality had only been expected eighty years ago or earlier. Now it was natural to be late. And why not? The wagons were large and brightly lit, the seats red or blue or green, upholstered with the logo of whoever was the sponsor this week. The musicstats played tones even crisper than at home. People talked to other people on the train, communicated on the interweb, slept, shopped, ate the good food—people felt comfortable.
At least, naturals did.
At Lucasta's main station, where Meliora was about to transfer to the train to Annabella, she was told that she'd be even more comfortable than that.
"You will be asleep all the time, dear, dreaming the best kind of dreams," the beautiful woman at the door to the intercity terminal said. "Isn't that lovely?"
"But I want to be awake and see the scenery," Mel said.
"There is no scenery, dear. The beautiful pictures on the underground walls and the great movies you see there only exist in cities. There is nothing on the walls out there, dear." She said there as if the word was giving her one of the wonderful experiences of the GreatLifeExperiences, Inc. theater.
"Well, if it is so exciting, I certainly want to see it," Mel said.
"There is nothing, dear. But there will be fun excitement in your dreams, of course."
"And who are you to tell me what is and what isn't out there—or anywhere!," Mel suddenly shouted. The woman jumped back. "I won't sleep! I don't want to sleep! I am tired of pretending to sleep! Am I not an adult now!? Have I not graduated and earned my trip to a new city!? I want to see what there is when there is no city at all!"
"Walls, dear," the woman said softly. "Now shall we get your pills, dear? Wait just a tiny moment, dear..."
"I won't wait!" Mel grabbed the pills from the woman's hand and thrust them into the wall. The packaging broke. The pills spilled on the spotless floor. "I am tired of waiting for you people, of slowing down for you, of pretending for you! Why are you normal, and I unnatural!?"
The woman was crying now, snot trickling down her smooth white face while she hummed, hiccuping into her microphone. Another woman came, a man with her. The new woman reached towards Meliora, and Mel shoved her in the chest.
***
She woke up in a room she remembered, and her eyes fell on a man with a familiar face.
"Hello, Doc," Mel said.
"Ah, young lady. You're awake, and everything is fine. You may go home."
He smiled at her, then of course looked away. He wasn't humming into his microphone, but Mel had watched people for a long time without people caring to watch her. She knew he was interacting with his computer in some way.
"What is this, Doc, a new interface? I know doctors get them before the rest of us."
"Ah, so you noticed. Of course you would..." He looked at her briefly, then smiled in the direction of one of the walls. "Thoughtmotion interface, young lady. Thoughts and emotions. Better than our music. Better than our humming, I should say. People don't play music. Machines do."
"How about Death?"
"What!?"
"Children playing music, in Death. Death is a city, I suppose. Or was. What happened to the cities that the articles of decades ago mention, Doc? They mention more than four cities, but the teachers are vehement about what the truth is today. What is truth, Doc? I know it changes all the time. If I go and write, right now, that Death City still exists, will it exist, Doc?"
The doctor had become pale.
"Oh, doc, it is all right, I am sorry! Wait a moment, I'll get you your pills, just a moment. Medstat!"
The machine wheeled towards her.
Pallor, she was going to say but didn't need to. The medstat had already dispensed the familiar pills. Mom took them often. Mom became pale often, especially after she heard Meliora say something unnatural. The doctor stared at his computer, then away, then at the computer again. She noticed he didn't have the many physical screens any more. Perhaps just one suited him better. Just one suited her better, but of course she'd used more when it was fashionable. Otherwise, someone might notice.
"Will the thoughts interface work better than the hummie, Doctor?" she said. "The hummie messes things up. I would think of something in my mind, but when I hum the message for my mom, she receives different text in her computer. The words she sees are more like something she would have said. Years ago, with the typing interfaces, or even with the speech ones, we used to send our words to our friends. Now the computers translate too much. I am wondering how they do this at all."
"Words are imperfect, young lady. Feelings are what is true—and what will be true. Words, on the other hand... Have you thought of what you want to do now that you're an adult, Mel?"
"Whatever adults do," she'd have replied a day ago. "See a new city, find a mate, have a child created, have a job whenever the fashions deem it necessary, buy food for the child, take the child to school for the first time when the time comes." Now, she said nothing.
"What do you think of becoming a doctor?"
"Me? A doctor? Doc, in case you have forgotten, doctors are supposed to make people better, while I shoved a person into a wall today! Did it make her better, you think? Isn't there supposed to be...to be...punishment for me now?"
"Punishment?" He was genuinely puzzled. "What for?"
"I did something bad. There must be punishment for bad deeds. I feel guilty, Doc."
"You should not, Melio
ra. It helps no one, least of all you. As for punishment—you read too many old articles. Punishment is old. Doesn't work. Never did. Other things do."
"What things?"
He didn't answer. He must have become tired of talking for so long about something that wasn't a new computer or new pants. He was squeezing his computer now, eyes closed.
I could shove you even stronger than I shoved that woman.
She didn't even know where this thought had come from, or why. It wasn't natural—and for the first time in her life, her own abnormality frightened her.
"Did you do this to me!?" Meliora screamed. "What did you do to me? Did you manage to finally give me your pills? Did you mess with my mind enough to make me hate myself!?"
"Hate? Yourself? Meliora, hate is not good. Hating anything, whatever it is, goes beyond unnatural. No one in Lucasta would ever do this to you. Lucasta wants you to be happy, Mel—the city doesn't want you to hate yourself or feel guilty, nothing like this. People have felt all these things, and they never did people anything good."
She believed him. Lucastans didn't lie.
"Mel, all we did was make you sleep and rest. Those pills wear off quickly. They have worn off already. You should message your mom now."
Mel had seventeen messages from her. Mom was worried and had no idea what had happened to Meliora. Three hours had passed since Mel took the first train, and she hadn't messaged about entering the sleeper. Mom would know about the sleeper-trains—but she wouldn't know about shoving. It is all right, Mom, Mel hummed. I might be becoming a doctor.
Mom answered, partly appeased, but still the message showed worry. It was Mel's fault. Mel started crying.
"It is your pills. It is because of your pills! I never cry!"
There were no pills this time. The medstat approached her from behind and administered a shot. It didn't hurt. They were made so that they didn't hurt. Shots, like pills, were supposed to help people, not harm them.
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