Screen

Screen

by R.T.
Patel

Copyright © 2014 R.T. Patel

This is a work of fiction.  Names,
characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.  No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, without permission from the copyright owner.

Misha
sat cross-legged on the floor and examined her fingers as she always did
when she returned. One of her fingernails was longer than the rest, and this
was the first time she had noticed but otherwise all was fine.
Misha’s
fluffy white dog, Poof, sniffed her fingers as he
enjoyed partaking in any shared activity. His floppy ears flew up and down as
he yipped excitedly in circles around her. The amount of time that had passed
was still mysterious to her, so
Misha
wandered to the
small adjoining kitchen, her joints a little stiff and unyielding to her weight
as if they had taken time off from supporting her body. It was one o’ clock,
not a second too early or too late. Sometimes she wished the clock would
develop a mind of its own and fool everyone.

Here at
home, the skies were clear and blended easily with the sunshine for a perfect
San Francisco afternoon. You could stick your hand out and imagine it on a
two-dimensional plane with the rest of the world around you, like a postcard.
Not real enough.
Misha
sighed and flipped on the big
screen, bypassing her inbox, task lists, and everything else so she could catch
some entertaining shows for a change. A re-run of Trivia Time aired on channel
7, three digital contestants mounted on podiums and ready to buzz in the
correct answer. India was currently in the lead, but Japan was a close second
as the dapper host flashed the next question on the Trivia screen. “Who was the
first celebrity actor to fly to the moon during the year 2013?”

Misha
stared at the digital contestants as each screen tallied the
corresponding country’s correct answers. “How boring,” thought
Misha
. She turned off the big screen and sat on the couch
for a second. Her nerves were tingling a little too much these days and were
keeping her up at night. A buzz ran from her neck to her shoulder blades, and
would shoot off to unexpected places from there. Rummaging through her purse,
she picked up a small bottle and ran her finger around the cap. This bottle was
illegal, but it had helped her get through the past two years of her life. The
body buzz was getting worse, and she didn’t know what it was ultimately
progressing toward. Some people fried slowly, others short-circuited abruptly. She
knew her buzz was a warning from her body, but she was scared to attend to it
and didn’t know what to do anyway. As these thoughts lingered on her nerve
endings, they seemed to fry the synapses even more. After all, the buzz had
taken the place of cancer as the leading cause of death in the world. Almost
everyone had it to some extent. She couldn’t handle too much more today,
Misha
thought, as she heard her phone ring on the big
screen.

Misha
followed the sound of the incessantly beeping phone toward the living
room and hovered her finger above the phone application icon on the big screen.
“Hello?”
Misha’s
face scrunched up with the question.
It had been close to ten years since she enjoyed interacting with other human
beings, but she had not uttered this to anyone except Poof.
Misha
paused in silence as the person on the other end seemed to be communicating
something with returned silence. “Hello?”
Misha
quickly tired of these games. She had noticed a trend starting when she was in
college and it had gotten worse ever since: People would call you and have
nothing to say when you answered the phone. The telephone seemed obsolete,
electronic mail had turned into drifted smoke never to be read or answered, and
mailed letters had died off decades ago, at least from what
Misha
had learned at the city’s Technological History Museum.

It had
been months since anyone had called her, and certainly cancelling the phone app
would save her a little money; in this world, a little was a lot.
Misha
rolled her eyes and made one more attempt. “Hello?
Hello?” Someone cleared her throat delicately on the other end. “Can you hear
me?”
Misha
asked. “Yes...,” the response trailed from
the caller.
Misha
felt a little relief and continued,
“How can I help you?”

“
Misha
,” the caller attempted, “this is Tsai.”
Misha
felt a softening of all her nerve endings, as if a
perfect breeze had picked up from underneath some window and had stripped her
of all rigid defenses with its ease of lightness. The name ‘Tsai’ catapulted her
years back to a time she could hardly recall, it had been so long. Tsai had
been the Taiwanese last name of her close friend, Ann.
Misha
had rarely called her friend "Ann," preferring instead to call her
"Tee-
sai
," a mispronunciation of Ann's last
name. Tsai used to think it was funny.
Misha's
brain
tapped at her urgently to close the memory back up. Family members had
reconnected with her in years past, and friends had unexpectedly been in touch,
each time bringing back that familiar yet historical feeling of interaction.
Yet the communications that had been set in motion each time had somehow been
foiled, muddled and confused like a trail or a scent never to be traced again.
After all this time,
Misha
could not grasp who
destroyed the evidence or thwarted it after its very inception.

“
Misha
, it’s really me—Tsai. Please don’t hang up.”
Misha
had no intention of hanging up. She was just too
paralyzed to know what action to take next. The history between her and Tsai
was not easy to sum up, and after the movement of the world in its own
direction, it was hard to know what turn the friendship had taken. While plenty
of people still immersed themselves in social activity through the big screen,
Misha’s
social life was virtually empty.

“Hi
Tsai…how’ve you been?”
Misha
was nervous and her
heart began to beat unwittingly as if clear and imminent danger were present.
Tsai was obviously nervous too, and she strung together a bunch of ums and
uhs
as she began to explain her reason for calling.
Misha
interrupted her abruptly, “Tsai, it’s okay. It’s been
a long time.” Tsai sighed and continued, “
Misha
, I’ve
thought about you so often and I wanted to call you so many times. You’re one
of the only people who still has a phone, it would have been so easy. I’m
sorry, I chickened out. You’ve been on my mind. Can we meet?”

Misha’s
mind blasted to what she imagined for their proposed
meeting. Out of anyone she could see right now, she most welcomed a meeting
with Tsai. “Sure, how about one o’ clock tomorrow at Minnie’s, where Chestnut
meets the Embarcadero? It’s a real coffee shop, not one in the big screen. Do
you still live around here?”

“I do—I
can meet you then.” Their conversation ended and both girls hung up, sitting
respectively in expectant silence wondering what tomorrow’s meeting was going
to lead to. For
Misha
, there was no need to eke out a
phone conversation that was fifteen years too late in its ability to be casual.
As a young girl,
Misha
would have described a lot of
her human interactions as both awkward and natural all at once. These days, she
didn’t know how to describe them and felt inept for it. Her family no longer
contacted her, as she seemed to make their lives scarier and more precarious
somehow. Not that she meant to.

Poof
turned up at
Misha’s
knee as she knelt on the carpet,
rubbing against it like a cat. Poof had always been more like a cat than a dog.
He also had a keen sense for significant human moments when they broke the
monotony of days strung together, much like a cat. Poof looked at
Misha
inquisitively, asking for some sign of what it was
all about.
Misha
reached into a bag of dog treats
instead as the dog would be unable to process any human answer. She had managed
to skip her own lunch as usual, and it was already time to head back to work.

--------------------------

The big
screen loomed in the distance in her living room, never quite fitting into or
setting décor for the space. Its dimensions almost reached the proportions of
the wall it stood against, yet some homes had even larger ones or those that
covered multiple walls. A circular blue “zoom” mat stood arm’s distance from
the screen and had been calibrated by some high-tech company exactly for
Misha’s
weight and build. It was to send her into the
screen, where her job was located.
Misha
snuggled her
dog affectionately before leaving -- it was never easy for her to tear herself
away from the natural feel of four real walls, a sensitive canine, and smells.
Beyond the screen, the world was devoid of scent, leaving the body absent of
one of its important sensory skills.

As
Misha
stepped onto the zoom mat, the mat calibrated to
standardized dimensions and accepted her weight and build as unique
identification. After the screen performed a quick dental scan, the horizon of
the virtual world melted with that of reality in less than a second, without
Misha
having to press a single button. The clock was set to
zoom her into the screen environment at the exact appointed second, and if she
was not present—well, she knew from experience what would take place in that
event. Her nerve endings vibrated and she developed a poignant eye twitch in
her right eye. The eye twitch spread like wildfire through her whole body as
the two environments married into one.

Misha
examined her fingers, and noticed the same fingernail that needed
clipping. She liked to check in with her body after each zooming to make sure
she was all there. There were days she forgot to self-calibrate in this way,
but on the days she did so, she felt healthier and needed less medication for
her buzz.
Misha
worked for a company called Mind
Memo. She could hardly remember what she'd been working on before leaving for
lunch break. Seated up on her desk to the right was Carol Myer, her legs
crossed and a report hanging off her fingertips like a snotty tissue. It would
have been refreshing if one day at two o’clock, Carol wasn’t seated in that
position. “Hey!” Carol chirped.

Carol
was a step above
Misha
in Mind Memo’s elaborate
company hierarchy, but that step was impediment enough to
Misha
performing her job freely. As
Misha
reached for the
report, Carol jerked it a few inches away. “What?”
Misha
snapped. Carol’s eyes pierced into her knowingly and smiled. “Oh—it’s just that
Lydia wants to see you in her office about this report.” Carol batted her eyes
playfully and
Misha
knew that Carol had a hand in
whatever issue Lydia wanted to discuss.
Misha’s
stomach tried to turn, but real anxiety was hard to feel in the screen.

Misha
snatched the report and walked over to Lydia’s office door. The screen
on the door scanned her face and offered her a waiting time of two minutes.
Waiting in the hallway in front of Lydia’s door produced some of the most
loathed moments in
Misha’s
week. A short Asian man
named Alex scurried past her with some files, giving her a quick salute. Though
not in a smiling mood,
Misha
smiled at him. It felt
good sometimes, to stretch the mouth into that facial expression. As Alex
passed and she released it, her jaw felt sore.

Lydia’s
door silently glided open and
Misha
caught the first
hints of Lydia’s silver hair, her pitted face, her sleek business suit, her
cluttered desk, and finally her blue eyes.
Misha
entered the office and turned around to shut the door so she could avoid the
ugly gaze that had met hers, forgetting that the doors in this building were
automatic. She slowly turned back around and sat down in the seat in front of
Lydia’s desk. At times,
Misha
pictured there were
invisible physical restraints built into this chair, as it somehow sucked the
breath out of her and allowed no free movement.

Lydia’s
face got uglier by the day, and the act of zooming into this world didn’t seem
to help matters. Her uneven black eyeliner shifted up and down as she blinked
and her mouth twitched into absurd expressions when the buzz got a hold of her
too suddenly. The promise of the tense discussion ahead was locked in her eyes,
and she seemed to have all the accusations and rebuttals planned out in
advance. Lydia waited and watched
Misha
squirm just
long enough before she started speaking.

“
Misha
—do you know what we do here?” The question hung in
the air like an insult instead of a question.
Misha
churned the question over in her mind and realized that she had no idea what
they did there—at least not what it amounted to. But she knew the expected
reply and gave it without pretense. “We clean computer databases for companies
that have been lazy over the years in doing so. We organize the information in
new ways for easier storage and retrieval. We set up Mind Memos that will
remind employees from those companies how to maintain these databases on their
own. Mind Memos are a big screen application, so we have to tailor the app to
fit each company.”  How tedious, thought
Misha
to herself.

Lydia
looked displeased. “Take a look at your report,” she commanded.
Misha
looked at the report in her lap. It had taken her two
weeks to finish it. She looked back up at Lydia and waited some more. She often
wondered if people knew how much time they could save by just saying what they
wanted to say. “
Misha
—you have worked here for two
years. There is still no reflection in your work that you have grasped the
significance of the screen in daily life and business. Carol pointed this out
to me in your quarterly evaluation. As we taught you extensively during
training, the screen is essential to our business model. It’s the platform upon
which the whole world runs. That should be self-evident, even to you.”