Unnaturals (2 page)

Mommy started nodding.

"It is an imperfection," the doctor said, "but not unnatural, not yet. Perhaps in the future, when the baby corporations find even better ways..."

Mommy shuddered.

"No worries about the future, Madam," the doctor quickly added. "I apologize for mentioning it. It is the
now
that matters, right? '
Always, the now
'," he chanted a recently popular tune from the advertising feeds. Mommy relaxed. "And, in the now, I am giving Mel these little pills. They won't remove the disorder completely, but they will control it, so that she can function as a natural member of society. Here, Mel."

The doctor placed the pills on the table between them.

Mommy smiled. "They look like candy, Mel. Isn't this lovely?"

The doctor smiled, too, then glanced at each of the eight screens in his hands and started humming. He was tired, Mel could suddenly tell. He must be tired of looking imperfection in the eye for so many seconds. Mommy, too, was looking at her screen and typing.

A serving device approached Mel with a glass of juice. Mel took the glass but didn't drink the juice. The serving device remained by the table, waiting for the empty glass. Its metal eyes watched her as fixedly as no human eyes could.

Mel poured the glass beside the table and handed the glass to the server. She'd read, in those articles of who knew how long ago, that sometimes drinks contained things you'd prefer not to drink. Especially if there were also pills. Mel didn't know if that was true—the doctor hadn't explained how to tell what was true and what wasn't.

The machine took the glass and wheeled away. Mel looked at the pills. They looked like candy, and that was lovely. Mel had candy in her pockets, so she took the candy out and put the pills in. Then she waited for Mommy to finish typing and take her home.

Part I: City of Happiness

Silence

Meliora was thirteen when the interweb outage happened.

She was in a shopping mall, which was extremely normal for a normal girl of that age. She was alone, but she didn't look alone. No one in Lucasta ever did. You might choose to go shopping with your physical friends, or with your virtual friends. Or both. Either way, you'd hum discreetly into your microphone while you browsed the clothes, shoes, perfumes, earrings, necklaces, new computers, bicycles, flying bicycles.

Mel hummed into her microphone. Sometimes she even sent a real message to someone—and recently she was making sure to do it more often, often enough not to look strange to anyone tracking people's feeds on the interweb.

She didn't know if anyone was really tracking the feeds. She'd read it in some of those decades-old articles, which were full of suspicion, fear, and mistrust. They told you that if you but looked around, you would see an enemy. Or many enemies. They claimed that you were watched, always watched, that if you tried to make but one step aside, you'd be tripped. They talked of dark, cold prisons and chains, and of even worse prisons, of your own mind being used to hold you in, to save valuable space and physical resources.

The whole city is a prison,
one article author said.
This city is not even real,
another claimed.
We are all living in a dream.

There's a new computer model, as big as my little finger,
Mel messaged to her mother.
Its logo is a pear, Mom, a real one, not a picture of a pear. Buy yourself one. The seller says that the computer with the orange is so last-week now.

There, Mom wouldn't worry about her now. Mom grew worried if Mel didn't message, or sent a message that sounded unnatural. Mom would worry if Mel told her that for instance, the week before last, the computer logo in fashion had been a strawberry. That was too long ago. Natural people didn't remember, didn't care, about such a distant past.

It had been a real strawberry. It could last a whole month, which WholeNaturalFruitsForUs, Inc. had determined to be the best duration for fruit.

Not that anyone waited that long, even Meliora. What you didn't eat today, you threw away, and then you bought new food. You used a computer for about a week, and then you threw it away, too. So that the economy would develop. The advertising feeds and even people's feeds mentioned this once in a blue moon, when it was fashionable for people to be smart. Using words like
economy
made people
feel
smart. The old, old articles mentioned economy, too, but Mel of course didn't know if she could believe them. They also mentioned things like
farms
and
out there in the wild,
which were difficult even for Mel to imagine.

A boy slightly older than Meliora bumped into her, then glanced at the computer in her palm and messaged her an apology. She replied. It was the polite thing to do.

Ten seconds later, as he almost disappeared into the crowd, she turned and quickly followed him. She didn't know this person and had never given him her interweb address. He was not supposed to be able to message her.

A minute later the outage happened. Everyone nearby lost their access to the interweb.

Silence. It had never been like this, for the whole thirteen years of her life. No messages. No articles. No Mom. No friends, no advertisers in the little light piece of metal in her palm, not even those enemies that were everywhere, who
might
be recording everybody's feeds and using them for nefarious purposes. Nothing. Meliora stared at her computer and started trembling.

The other people didn't stare. They rarely did. They started talking, instead, all of them together, in voices louder and shriller than anything she'd ever heard from many people in one place.

She walked on. Few people walked with a purpose. They were just rambling, like they did even in their best times. However, while they usually rambled carelessly, happily, looking now at this, now at that, messaging, chatting, shopping physically and through the feeds, now they weren't happy.

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.