Insistence of Vision, Page 3

  “But I really like Tasselhoff. She’s farknotic.”

  “You-say?” The girl notches an eyebrow, perhaps suspecting my use of a spec-prompt. I worry she’s about to lift her own glasses... but no. She continues to stare-bare, cocking her head in mock defiance.

  “You do realize Tasselhoff cheats? She ai-tunes the cadence of her artwork to sync with the viewer’s neural wave! Some say it’s not even legal.”

  Bright, educated, and opinionated. I am drawn.

  Several blurs pass nearby, then a visible couple. The man sidles in to use the drinking fountain. So many people—it gives me an idea.

  “But Tasselhoff does offer a unique... say, it’s awful crowded here. Are you walking somewhere? I was strolling by the Park.”

  Ambiguous. Whichever way she’s heading, that’s my direction too.

  Brief hesitation. Her hand touches the digi-spectacles. I keep smiling. Please don’t. Please don’t.

  The hand drops. Eyes remain bare-brave, open to the world and just the world.

  She nods. “Sure. I can take the long way. I’m Jayann.”

  “Sigismund,” I answer. We shake in the new, quasi-roman fashion, more sanitary, hands not contacting hands but lightly squeezing each others’ wrists.

  “Sigismund. Really?”

  “Cannot tell a lie.” I laugh and so does she, unaware how literal I’m being.

  I can lie. But it’s not allowed.

  She doesn’t notice what happens next, but I do. As we both turn to leave the Museum steps, I glimpse the penguin-garbed man staring at me through his pair of specs. He frowns. Appears to mumble something...

  ...before he and his wife abruptly become blurs.

  ᚖ

  Walking together now, Jayann and I are chatting and flirting amiably. Our path follows the edge of Freedom Park. We stay to the right as joggers pound along, most of them visible but some blurred into vague clouds of color—Collision-Avoidance Yellow. I hear them all, of course—barefoot or shod, blurred or unblurred—pounding along the trail, panting away.

  I offer a comparison of deGornay to Kavanaugh, deliberately naive, so she’ll lecture for a while as we skirt a realm of leafy lanes. Specs don’t work in there. No augmentations at all. That’s why it’s called Freedom Park. Few would expect to find a creature like me at the edge of what, for me, is cursed ground. And that’s why I come.

  To my left the city roars with stimuli, both real and virtual, every building overlaid with meta-data or uber-info. I can tune my specs to an extent. Omit adverts, for example. But my tools are limited, even primitive. Half the buildings are just solid blocks of prison gray to me.

  My walls.

  No matter, I’m concentrating on what Jayann says. Her enthusiasm is catching. Even endearing. Mostly listening, I only have to comment now and then.

  I hear voices and glance back, stepping aside for two hurrying adults—one of them a clot of vagueness, the other unedited and brave. Visible as a lanky-dark young man. My specs even reveal his name and public profile.

  Wow. Just like in better times. Before I lost the power that everyone around me takes for granted.

  Godlike omniscience.

  “Well, I have get back to work,” Jayann says. “I’ll shortcut through here.” She indicates a tree-lined path, clearly inviting me to come along.

  “What do you do?” I ask, diverting the subject. I take two steps, following her. Already there’s a drop in visual resolution. I daren’t go much farther.

  “I work in sales. But I’m studying art history so I can teach. You?”

  “Used to teach. Now I help a public service agency.”

  “Volunteer work? That’s farky and sweet.” She smiles. Though backing down the path, she’s starting to grow fuzzy. I’d better talk fast.

  “But I manage to come here—to the park and Museum—every Tuesday, same time.”

  And there it is. Totally lame and stunningly old-fashioned, but maybe that will intrigue her.

  She grins.

  “Okay, Mister Mysterious Sigismund. Maybe I’ll bump into you again, some Tuesday.”

  It’s all I could hope for. A chance.

  Then hope crashes. She grabs her specs.

  “Wait. Just to be sure, let me give you my—”

  “Say, is that a bed of gladiolas? This early?” I ask, purposely stepping past Jayann, walking down the path, counting steps and memorizing it as best I can. The Park’s e-interference grows more intense. Then, abruptly, my specs cut off completely. I’m blind. But it’s worth it if she follows. If that prevents her from looking at me through those glasses.

  I keep walking, several more paces, toward the memorized flower bed. Bending over, I take off the now-useless ai-ware, pretending to look. But I chatter on, as if able to see bare-eyed, hoping she followed me down here, where specs don’t work.

  “You know, they remind me of that deGornay –”

  “Bastard!”

  A pair of fists hammer my back, then a foot slams into my knee from behind, sending me crashing into the shrubbery. Pain mixes with humiliated disappointment. And even worse...

  ... my specs are gone! I grope for them.

  “How dare you!” She continues screaming. “You... you liar!”

  My left hand probes among the crumpled flowers, searching.

  “I... I never lied, Jayann.”

  “What were you planning? To get all my info, my address, to break in and murder me?”

  “My crimes weren’t violent. Look them up. Please, Jayann....”

  “Don’t you dare speak my name! What are you doing?”

  “My specs. Please help me find them. Without them...”

  “You mean these?” A rustling sound. Turning toward it.

  “I can’t see without them.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Her voice drips with anger. “Instead of prison, take convicts and blind them. Let ‘em only see what special specs deliver direct to the brain. So they can’t see anyone who chooses not to let a criminal see them.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You stole that right from me!”

  Against better judgment, I argue.

  “You could have looked... with specs... seen my warning marks...”

  She howls incoherent fury. I envision her there on the path, clutching my specs, shaking them. “I ought to smash these!”

  “Please give them to me, Jayann... and guide me back to the street. I’ll never bother you again, I swear....”

  I try to sympathize with her sense of betrayal. But her rage seems extreme, for a social offense... charming a young woman into talking to me, bare-eyed, for a while. Mea culpa. I would pay for it. But did I deserve a pounding with fists? Screamed threats?

  Making a best-guess, I run. Gravel underfoot for eight good steps, then grass. I correct, meeting path again...

  ...before tripping over her outstretched leg and sprawling face-first. “Jayann.... I’m sorry!”

  “Not half as sorry as you’re—”

  I leap up, stagger forward again. There was a slope down from the street, I recall. And now I hear the joggers panting. Traffic sounds beyond. With that bearing, I run again.

  No more hope of getting my specs back or reporting for work. My sole thought is to reach the sidewalk and then just sit down, pathetic and still. Word will reach my probation officer. Ellie will come get me. Lecture me. Possibly impose punishment. Though it’s all recorded and I swear, I don’t think I committed any actual—

  Traffic noise is louder. Joggers curse as they weave around me. I wish I could see even blurs.

  Someone plants a hand against my back and shoves. I hear brakes squeal.

  ᚖ

  Lying in a hospital bed, I listen as Ellie explains about how lucky I am. What a fool I was. How close I came to breaking rules and lengthening my sentence. Or losing my life.

  “Would you prefer a cell? The savagery of prison life? At least you can work. Pay taxes. Live among us.”

  That makes me l
augh.

  “Among you. Right. Among the blurs.”

  She lets that sit a while, then asks.

  “Why, with so little time left on your sentence... why take such chances?”

  How to answer, except with a shrug. Was Robinson Crusoe ever lonelier than I feel, here in the big city, imprisoned by electronic disdain?

  Ellie takes silence as my answer. Then she tells me the final outcome of the fateful afternoon at Freedom Park.

  ᚖ

  Months later, I see her at the museum. Jayann sits a few steps up from where we met. Despite a thick sweater, I can tell she’s lost weight.

  I slip on my new specs. Super-farky, they supply a wealth of information. God-like tsunamis of it. Nametags under every face that passes by, and more if I simply blink and ask for it. The basic right of any free citizen.

  Under her name, flaring red:

  CONVICTED FELON

  Attempted 3rd degree murder

  I almost feel guilty. My thoughtless, desperate, well-intended flirtations led to this.

  But then, did anyone deserve what she tried to do, that day in a fit of offended pride?

  As my own punishment chastened me—perhaps made me better—will she learn as well? There are second chances. There is second sight.

  She looks around, seeming (except for those virtual scarlet letters) like a regular young woman, taking in the sun and breeze, though with a melancholy sigh. Her spec-mediated gaze passes over me...

  ...then onward. For to her, I’m just another blur.

  I turn, leaning on my cane, to leave. Only then, glancing at the calendar within my virtuality, I realize.

  It’s Tuesday.

  Story Notes

  I like exploring complicated characters who are aware of the shaky moral tightrope they’re trying to cross. At the same time, I also believe we will use technology in the future to alter our approaches to age-old problems. Imprisonment for crimes began fairly recently. For most of human history, felonies were not punished by long terms in prison. Societies simply couldn’t afford it. Either your clan bought off your guilt-debt – or for a vast range of crimes, a felon was simply executed. Prison terms for non-capital crimes were a step forward, offering some chance for rehabilitation, but our descendants will likely consider it barbaric. Nothing comes without a cost.

  Are there alternatives? Beneath an intimately tragic personal story, “Insistence of Vision” explores one plausible – if creepy – possibility. Its advantages and attractive aspects only make it creepier. Our children will face interesting decisions.

  This tale first appeared in the special 2013 Science Fiction issue of MIT’s Technology Review.

  Next comes a lighter tale, though still about technology changing things we take for granted. And how one thing changes more reluctantly than anything else –

  – our obstinate human nature.

  Transition Generation

  ᚖ

  “I don’t know how much more of this day I can take. I swear, I’m this close to throwing myself out that window!”

  Carmody yanked his thumb toward the opening, twenty-three stories above a noisy downtown intersection. Flecks of rubber insulation still clung in places, from when old Joe Levy first pried it open, during the market crash of ‘65. Fifteen years later, the heavy glass pane still beckoned, now gaping open about a hands-breadth, letting in a faintly traffic-sweetened breeze. A favorite spot for jumpers, the window seemed to beckon, offering a harried, unhappy man like Carmody the tempting, easy way out.

  They should have sealed it, ages ago.

  Though really, would that make a difference?

  “Tell somebody who cares,” snarked Bessie Smith, who managed the Food & Agriculture accounts via a wire jacked into her right temple. She allocated investments in giant vats of sun-fed meat from Kansas to Luna, grunting and gesturing while a throng of little robots swarmed across her head, probe-palpating her chin, cheeks and brow, crafting her third new face of the day. Carmody still found the sight indecently discomforting. A person’s face ought to be good for months. And the transforming process really should be private.

  “Yeah, well you don’t have to handle the transportation witches,” he retorted. “They’ve stuck me with a doomed portfolio that… aw hell!”

  Symbols crowded into Carmody’s perceptual periphery, real-time charts reporting yet another drop in Airline futures. His morning put-and-call orders had wagered that the industry’s long slide was about to stop, but there they go again! Sinking faster than a plummeting plane. At this rate, he could forget about a performance bonus for the sixth week in a row. Gaia would sigh and cancel her latest art purchase, then wistfully mention some past boyfriend.

  And she could be right, fellah. Maybe your wife and kid would be better off…

  As if summoned by his glowering thought, Gaia’s image sprang into being before his tired gaze. Her dazzling virtual aivatar shoved aside dozens of graphs and investment profiles that, in turn, overlay the mundane suite of homely office cubicles where Carmody worked. At least, he assumed that the ersatz goddess manifesting in augmented reality was Gaia; her face looked similar to the woman who sat across from him at breakfast this morning, bleary-eyed from all-night meetings with fellow agitators on twelve continents, fighting to extend the Higher Animal Citizenship Laws one more level, this time below that of seals and prairie dogs.

  So what next? Voting privileges for crows and cows and canids? How was that going to work, again?

  Now apparently back in fine fettle, Gaia shone at him with active hair follicles framing her head like sea-weed, while rippling from blonde to brunette and rainbow shades between. A blast of enhanced charisma-from-a-bottle made Carmody curse and shut off the smell-o-vision feature of his immersive goggles.

  She knows I hate that.

  His wife made a pointed gesture with one, upraised finger. Gaia’s aivatar waved the finger like a wand, casting forth a series of reminder blips:

  STOP AT AUTODOC TO ADJUST YOUR IMPLANTS.

  FIX THAT DAMN MALFUNCTIONING MOOD FILTER!

  ELDER-CARE SAYS PICK UP YOUR DAD, OR WE’LL PAY STORAGE OVERCHARGES.

  GET EGGS

  Carmody winced, hating whoever invented avatar-mail, endowing the voluptuously realistic duplicates with artificial intelligence. Of course, he could spend time mastering the latest tricks… like assigning an aivatar of his own to reply automatically, fending off work interruptions....

  Maybe I can hire a service to set it up for me, he thought, trying to will her image to a far-back corner of the percept. Mr. Patel will have my hide if I don’t file my report on transportation trends. I still think they indicate a turnaround in air freight that –

  Resisting his efforts to dismiss her, Gaia’s aivatar clung to one of his maglev-zep performance charts, continuing to wand a series of chiding reminders while his impatient, leave-me-alone wind pushed her backward. That chart collapsed and surrounding data got caught up in the meme-storm as she blew backward in a blur of data-splattered robes.

  All of a sudden, Carmody’s percept reached some kind of overload. One corner contorted as graphs and prospectus appraisals started whirling around each other, crumpling into a funnel-cyclone, like dirty water circling a drain, sucking away his entire week’s labor – and his wife’s protesting analogue – vacuuming them all toward some unknown infosphere singularity.

  “Cancel!” Carmody shouted. “Restore backup five minutes ago!”

  He kept grunting and issuing frantic commands but nothing worked. Reaching and grabbing after the maelstrom, he did something wrong, some mis-cued gesture, triggering a cyber lash-back! Searing bolts of lightning seemed to lance between his eyes.

  Shouting in pain, Carmody tore off the immersion goggles, clutching them in both hands. Laying his face onto the cool surface of the desk, he suppressed a sob.

  I used to think I was so hip and skilled with specs and goggs. Only now, kids are replacing them with contaict lenses and, even eyeball implants that
juggle ten times as much input.

  Can I really be so obsolete, so soon?

  “Bob?” A real voice, grating in his real ears. “Bob!”

  Even worse, it was Kevin’s voice. Standing next to the desk.

  Carmody didn’t move.

  “Are you okay, Bob? Is there a problem, man?”

  Glancing up, eyes still smarting and misty, Carmody shook his head.

  “Fine. Just resting a sec,” he put up a brave face of complacent humor, knowing better than to show any weakness to this young jerk, supposedly his assistant, but clearly angling for Carmody’s job. Still, an inner voice moaned.

  I can’t take this anymore.

  “Well, I’m glad of that,” the younger man said. But a smug expression told Carmody everything. The breakdown of his percept and loss of all that work… he suddenly knew it was Kevin’s doing! Some trick, some hackworthy sabotage that Carmody would never be able to prove.

  Does he have to gloat so openly?

  Still smirking, Kevin continued.

  “I thought I better let you know, Mr. Patel is on his way down. He wants a word with both of us.” Kevin’s look of eager anticipation was so blatant, Carmody had to quash a sudden, troglodytic urge to erase it with his fist. Kevin might have at least learned some surface tact, if he had gone to university or worked at a regular people job. But no. His generation just absorbs technical skills directly, like suckling from a –

  The right metaphor wouldn’t come, no matter how hard he beckoned one. And strangely, that was the last straw for Carmody.

  Enough is enough.

  “You look terrible,” the younger man added, with faux concern. “Maybe you better visit the loo and clean up, before… Bob? Mr. Carmody? Where are you going? Mr. Patel wants…”

  Carmody had one hand on the window pane and the other on its frame. Staring through the gap and down twenty-three stories, he inhaled deeply, feeling resolution build, overcoming the panic, layering upon the panic, amplifying his sense of panic into something that abruptly felt more manly.