by Richard Gohl
With this simple procedure out of the way, a woman was then free to live unburdened with the discomfort of the motherhood drive.
Mia’s birth experience had been of a caesarean section, as complications had arisen during labor where the child’s umbilical cord had begun to tighten around his neck. However, despite this alarming complication, the child had emerged perfectly from her womb and had been placed in her arms for that special period of bonding before he was handed over to a besotted father, waiting to give the baby his first bath.
However, the engineers at synapse freedom detailed and personalized though their work was, had not managed to round off the narrative in a sufficiently holistic manner; the memory just ended in the toddler phase. Although from the mother’s perspective there was no grief associated with the experience, women reported more a sense of “awkwardness” around the lack of closure, many seeking compensation. Software developers argued that they had fulfilled their brief, that the implant was not about creating a neat little story but rather constructing a genuine maternal feeling. Most agreed—and synapse freedom proved in court—that it was better than nothing.
Chapter 6
Electrotelepathy
ELECTROTELEPATHY HAD BEEN the biggest thing since laser projection building. A company called Telecasa revolutionized the communication industry with a slogan “don’t talk; be heard” and a product to back it up: electrotelepathy, or ETP. Human thoughts were found to have a frequency which, when channeled and amplified, could be heard. Humans had a number of bits and pieces inserted subcutaneously, one of which acted like a tuner and enabled a person’s thoughts to travel on a given, transmittable frequency.
Ways of managing this technology included applications such as the “I am” loop: a thought projection—a mix of words and images summarizing your present self. Also popular was the traditional mass mail-out of your thoughts at 4 P.M. daily. Similar was the “thought blog,” for a more targeted exchange. The “partner program”—one of many such programs— provided couples with an ETP framework and included key questions prompting users and keeping the session on track. These were all popular uses of the technology and led to a huge increase in the homogenization of Napean society.
ETP allowed a tremendous flow of simultaneous conceptual volume, providing Napeans with a very fast way of connecting with and understanding others. ETP provided people not just with information but also with a sense of how other people felt.
People would ask each other: “What do my thoughts sound like? Does it sound like my normal voice? What about when I’m angry?” Mostly Napeans said their friends or loved ones’ thoughts sounded like their speaking voices. Also, paradoxically, there was no voice but more a sense of that person: “I just know it’s you... it feels like you.... I feel differently when I’m on ETP with you than I do with someone else.” Other descriptions: “Your words form in my head in a ticklish sort of a way in a way that my own thoughts don’t.”
There was a theory that because totally new areas of the brain were being used and opened through ETP, there was a useful hangover effect. So even when not using ETP, some of its characteristics were still present. Regular ETP users reported the ability to not just an increased intuition of the thoughts, feelings, and moods of others, but also an ability to know what was being said—before it was said.
ETP created true empathy. Traditionally it was believed that language creates meaning, but ETP changed this perception. By receiving the words of another as “thoughts,” one received the feeling of realization and awareness of that other person. It was said to bring out the best in people. You could “hook up” with people close to you and virtually share your whole day quickly and with little effort, such as in the partner program.
In the very early days of the network, ETP had its drawbacks. Nefarious uses of ETP sprang up everywhere. It was used to rob banks, subvert the legal process in court rooms, and deceive casino officials, to name a few. Anywhere Napeans could secretly conspire for personal gain, or steal someone’s ideas for profit, they did. The parent company, Telecasa, lost a fortune compensating victims of crime before their programmers reclaimed the mountains of money, re-marketing security products such as Scrambler, Buffer, and White-out, which limited or prevented the use of ETP in certain areas, be they personal or public.
ETP also required tremendous focus. Without concentration it could become very confusing. Training was needed to use the new technology because otherwise any immediate thought one had could be heard by the other person. A sense of calmness was required to be a successful ETP user. Whether transmitting or receiving, open ETP put a person in the telepathic stream of consciousness of another person without editing. Many a romance had its beginnings, and its end, through ETP. It could cause great fatigue; some users reported suffering migraines as a result of using it for more than one hour due to the intense level of energy required.
There had been early instances of Subs infiltrating the network and leaving nasty surprises. They created “trip leaks” where a Napean could accidentally pick up a thought or chain of voices very difficult to control. There were warnings and messages in Napea to “turn off your ETP unit before going to bed or you may never wake up,” and to “never get involved with someone you don’t know.” Some things never changed.
For Shane it was something he would use with his wife after work—it was a quick and painless way of letting Mia know exactly how he and his day had gone. Aside from work, he seldom used it for communicating with anyone else. It was too intense for him to use socially. Mia, on the other hand, used it more often.
She would lie on her bed, eyes open, and activate IN and remotely contact one of her friends. There was no greeting. No “hi, how are you?” There was a period of listening for meaning, and then a faint click like a change in air pressure from an altitude shift. Whispers. Echoes. Today it was Linda. Mia was mid-stream in her consciousness and at point of contact knew exactly what she was talking about. Linda was obsessed with a new man, and of course, not just any man.
Linda: His soul, a youth mix… a wisdom… physical qualities are not like the bond I used to share with Harry, but it’s there instantly… whenever I know he’s there like with you, Mia… it’s been a long time, Mia… come and hear him speak… hear Aiden… he speaks about how we can all be… all one… …and the Subs… we are Subs too. He talks about how we can achieve it. Through collective contemplation… they travelled lightyears, and as a group they soared beyond the Milky Way… an end in itself. No, of course Aiden’s not the first, but under his guidance, we can make sense of the enigma. You don’t think he’s genuine, which is why you must come and share his space. It builds on traditional meditation—not demotivating but empowering. That there is no right or wrong—analysis creates evil. Everything that will happen has already happened. It’s not fatalistic because there is still beautiful chaos. Come experience Aiden; he makes it all clear.
This information passed from Linda to Mia in seconds. And although Mia had “said” little, her presence and acquiescence were also clear to Linda. For Mia, each space between each word gave an image and a feeling. Where face-to-face verbal communication was two-dimensional, ETP added the third.
Mia now knew what this “Aiden” looked like and felt like she knew him. For Linda, like many Napeans, religious and metaphysical ideas came in and out of fashion. The guru, Aiden, had reinvented an older idea based on the “one moment” philosophy. The roots of the religion were many and varied, but the main inspiration had come from a physics equation which proved that linear time was a fallacy. Many Napeans chose to interpret this as a type of fatalism where the past, the present, and the future were all happening at the same time.
Aiden was one of the new non-materialist Napean philosophers. The ancient concept of nirvana was just around the corner, if only people would stop playing pointless games. Aiden believed that if Napeans could be rid of these facile desires and be rid of the thirst for novelty, amazing phenomena could
take place. A world of pure intellect, spirit, and transcendence could be attained. He believed that it could be reached as a whole population, simultaneously, and that this would evolve the human species to a higher wisdom. Part of their doctrine was a belief that more should be done to help the Subs, to guarantee a place for all in the new world. A place where traditional forms of humanity, such as death and aging, coexisted with Napean lifestyles.
Lifestyle applications of the One Moment philosophy tended to revolve around meditation, harmony, and love. Unfortunately Napeans weren’t quite ready for One Moment. Many of them still had over-bearing sex drives, destructive urges for personal power, and continual but fleeting desires for novelty. And all of these hungers could be easily fed by pressing a few buttons or navigating an arrow around the roof of one’s mouth. In fact, the Napean sex drive had been shown to have been accentuated—whether as a result of N.E.T. or boredom, no one was quite sure.
Aiden was another in a long line of idealist visionaries, the type of guy that Linda was attracted to, that Mia found amusing, and that Shane couldn’t stand. To Shane, their main activity seemed to be inactivity.
Mia liked to keep in touch with friends but in a world full of novelties and amusements, she was still bored. There was one thing she wanted but was not allowed to have.
Mia responded:
He sounds fascinating. I’m happy for you. Where? When? Right now I just am... no passion… enagagement… lacking spice… depression. Shane is elsewhere. I’m out of endorphins. I know I look great but can’t shake this feeling. Mia could feel her friend’s disappointment and desire to fight the depression. Was he there? No? She was on her way around, on a mission to show her friend the root cause of the problem. It was, and always would be, Shane.
It was wrong of her to deflect the cause of the problem onto Shane. But it just wasn’t safe to discuss some things in the public domain. You never really knew who might be listening. Shane wasn’t the cause of Mia’s discontent. Mia’s real problem was a Napean taboo.
Chapter 7
Telesync
VIA A FLEET of twenty thousand space probes, the Service were surveying planets in the Milky Way, creating an ever-increasing demand for data processing space. In the year 2100 The Service claimed they had “unlocked” the mind. The brain, as was long suspected, turned out to be far more capable, in terms of processing and storage, than anything mechanical. Through Electrotelepathy, the Peoples’ Service had remote access to the Napean body.
As brains were linked, each Napean city in the world operated like one organism as every Napean brain in the city was switched on and open, for temporary data storage, in a process resembling an old technique called seeding. The Service called this “Telesync.”
Every night in each participating country, the brains of thousands of people processed information from deep space. The spaceships were surveying new worlds seeking a home for humanity, and all Telesync contributors were, for their trouble, guaranteed a place in the new world. Napeans had lived through the solar flare holocaust. They had seen how it had nearly finished the planet. Prior to this, pollution had damaged the Earth beyond repair. The combination of these factors meant that humans had to evolve and move on or die out. Napeans were now so transportable that the solution and indeed the common belief was that it was time to go.
There was little of the necessary protective magnetosphere left. The lack of plant life meant a lack of food and also a major O2 crisis. Despite the chemical processing of sea water to create oxygen and fresh water, Napeans were united in their drive to find the location of a new and better world. Telesync was how they would find it.
There was always at least one country performing a Telesync. Masses of data were sent back from the explorer ships. Spaceship planet fly-bys picked up geo-physical, electrical, biological, magnetic, mortific, photographic, chemical, gravitational, and radioactivity data for analysis. Every night, each brain was used as a temporary storage unit, seeding this information to allow the necessary scale for information processing. Once the data had been gathered in total, it was all relayed back to centralized locations.
Although so many facets of Napean life were dependent on something mechanically generated, many Napeans—and Mia was one of them—still liked to think that all the answers could be found “within,” either in the memory or the soul.
Shane undressed for bed and said jokingly, “Y’know, often when I wake up from Telesync I see round shapes floating in my brain, imprints from…”
“Round shapes?”
“All those planets that come through every night.” He closed his eyes and put his fingers up to his temples. “I can see them now, circles floating…”
“It’s either that or a throwback to doughnut days. You’re probably hungry,” said Mia playfully.
“Doughnut? What’s ‘doughnut’?”
“Round, sugar-coated food. I was reading about it yesterday. We used to eat a lot of sugar.”
“No, I don’t dream about food. Why would I dream about food? I don’t need food.”
“Weird how we used to eat,” reflected Mia.
“And drink,” he said. Shane liked how she got him thinking. “Do you remember it?” she asked.
“What, eating? No, a hundred years ago now. Seems strange putting live things in your mouth…”
“Yeah, or dead things!” She grimaced.
“That’s right. Cows and sheep! Back then, we didn’t know any better,” Shane recalled. “Yeah, it was fun, though. I remember picnics,” she went on. “We had picnics. Y’know,
you could pack a bag of your food, take it somewhere, and eat it there—like out in the open somewhere.”
“You mean like in a forest or a desert?” asked Shane.
“Probably not a desert, but... yeah, I remember doing that once. When I was a kid. We went to these special gardens in the middle of the old city—down on the plains, there were plants from all around the world—big trees, ponds, flowers, grass… and you shared the food and ate it together.”
“Wow! Wish I could remember stuff like that.”
“You probably could if you thought about it.”
“Nah, it’s all been wiped now,” said Shane. He gestured with his hand, sweeping it across the top of his head. Shane continued, “But I would’ve done all that, wouldn’t I? I’m sure I would have!” He tilted his head and he looked down at the floor, thinking. He said, “I might just have an implant—you know, just for old time’s sake.”
“Like I said,” replied Mia, “It’s in there. You’ve just lost access to it.”
“Nah. The sheer amount that goes in every night… you can’t physically hold all that information. You know I can’t remember anything about my childhood?”
“Well, that’s sad.”
“Yeah, well, you think you can. Half of that stuff probably never happened.”
“I think I’d remember my own parents.” It annoyed her that he wouldn’t acknowledge her memories.
“You would think so,” he said, and changed the subject. “Anyway, in we go again tonight. Good ol’ Telesync.”
“Yeah. They go in, rape our minds, and then leave.”
“Rape’s a bit strong—I don t think they leave anything behind; hope not, anyway.” His head hit the pillow with a loud thud.
“Well, it is rape.”
“Well, it’s not—you allow them to use your mind, and it’s for a good cause.”
“Oh, do I have any choice?” Her tone suddenly bordered on tearful.
“Well, not anymore, no…” Shane’s voice trailed off.
“It seemed like a good idea fifty years ago.” Mia lay down on the bed. “It’s brutal...”
“Oh well. When we’re having a picnic on the new planet and eating—what are they? Doughnuts?—under a friendly bush, I’ll remind you of the brutal regime that got you off this burnt-up rock we’re stuck on now.” Mia leant over and kissed her husband. His simple optimism was a comfort. “A friendly bush, huh? Good
night, you.”
The pair inserted remote link earplugs. These emitted a sleep-inducing white noise. They were out in seconds.
One hour later, as they lay sleeping, two telewave beams from a satellite two hundred and fifty kilometers directly above them, flooded their synapses with enough information that, had it been electrical, their heads would have lit up like Christmas trees. Enough data to fill a house with books sparkled away in their brains, fizzled there for fifteen minutes, and then left as quietly as it had come.
Chapter 8
Mia Wants a Baby
TO MIA, IT seemed like the greatest scam in history that Napean women had to endure the painful charade of the reproductive cycle without any of the benefits. It was relentless; every month, the same cramps and feelings of doom, followed by the bleeding. She didn’t understand why the Service couldn’t simply just work out a way to stop it.
“I can’t have a child!” she yelled from the bathroom to her husband. “Why do I still have to go through this?”
Shane rushed in with arms outstretched. “Darling! Keep it down! We’ve been through it before!” Then, in a hushed tone: “Yes, he’s a machine, but he has feelings.”
Mia sighed. “I know, sorry.”
“There’s nothing worse than a depressed robot. Just be careful—his ears are incredible.”
“I get it!” she snapped. “Sorry I’m irritable!” she snapped again. “It’s just this bloody
period! It’s pointless!”
“I guess it’s your right as a woman,” said Shane. “To what?”
“To, you know, menstruate...”
“That is like being able to catch trains but not being allowed to get off at your stop.”
“Mmmm… I’m not sure if it is like that...” Shane knew what she meant but couldn’t see
what was so bad about being on a train.