Screen (4 page)

Misha
walked through the café entrance and saw a petite figure sitting at the
coffee bar. Tsai looked smaller than she remembered, hunched over in an awkward
position.
Misha
suddenly felt vulnerable and ill, but
continued to walk toward the bar and stopped right behind her friend. “Tsai?”
As Tsai turned around, welled up tears left her eyes and traveled down her
cheeks. Her eyes were red and her whole face looked swollen as if she was
allergic and a bee had stung her.
Misha
sat down on
the barstool next to her, alarmed. “Tsai, what is it?” Tsai limply fell forward
and her head landed on
Misha’s
shoulder. The
re-introductions had been bypassed for now and
Misha
patiently waited for Tsai’s sobbing to end. “Tsai, what is it? You can trust
me, I won’t tell anyone. What’s wrong?”

Tsai
wiped away her tears and began her story as if the two of them were still
sitting in their Ballard office uninterrupted from fifteen years ago. “
Misha
, I have the buzz. I know everyone has the buzz, but
mine is getting worse. I’m getting twitches everywhere. My eyes, my knees, my
lips…even parts of my body I never knew I had. It’s so painful. It’s really
bad,
Misha
, I’m so scared. And I’ve begun to hear
things. I think they’re trying to enter my brain and read what’s there. I feel
like I’m going crazy.”

Misha
sat across from Tsai, wide-eyed. These were the symptoms that she
herself had been experiencing too. She wasn’t alone or crazy. “Tsai—who’s
‘they?'” Tsai gulped back her sobs and answered frantically, “I don’t know! I’m
freaked out,
Misha
. I feel like they’re telling me
things and brainwashing me. I’m going to see a doctor, but you have to go with
me. Please! I’m too scared to go alone. I can’t handle this on my own.” Tsai’s
eyes welled up again and tears plopped like rain into the coffee mug she held
in her tiny hands.

“Okay,
Tsai,”
Misha
reassured her, “don’t worry. I’ll come
with you. You don’t have to go through this on your own.”
Misha
gave Tsai a hug and past Tsai’s trembling shoulders, she could see a café
patron open up a portable screen on a coffee table with violently twitching
hands.

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

Three
o’clock the next afternoon,
Misha
sat across from
Earl at Morton’s Steakhouse. She felt discombobulated after seeing Tsai the day
before and was shocked at how tiring social interaction had become for her. She
recalled it being energizing when she was younger. It was okay, she told
herself. Reconnecting with Tsai had given her a chance to help an old friend
out, one who had helped her years ago.

A
waitress dropped off a couple platters of comfort food on the table and left.
Misha
picked up a napkin and laid it across her lap, then
spooned some food onto her plate. Earl did the same and they sat there in
silence. The setting of the steakhouse seemed to drop away while a single
question rose into the forefront.
Misha
said it out
loud first, “Who is she while she’s in the screen, Earl?”

Earl
scooted his chair closer to the table and his usually bellowing voice dropped
down to barely above a whisper. “
Misha
, I want you to
be careful, okay?”
Misha’s
eyebrows rose in
disbelief. “Earl—what are you talking about?” Earl lifted his finger up to his
lips to gesture
Misha
have a more hushed tone. “Don’t
worry, I’ll tell you everything, but you have to keep this between us and watch
your back right now. I’m on your side, so promise me.” 
Misha’s
mind felt dazed and uncertain about everything and
everyone. “Yes, I promise,” she assured Earl.

Earl
nodded and began, “Before the big screen was invented, people were already
entering the screen, so to speak. Different websites existed that were
collectively part of what was called ‘social networking’ and people posted
their pictures on them, invited friends to join, and chronicled their life
experiences. “Real Face” was one of them. People all around the world connected
to other people through these sites, both people they knew and those they
didn’t. Sure, these pages helped old friends reconnect and made it easier for
family members to keep in touch across long distances. They even helped some
people find dates.

“There
were other effects too, though. An identity page allowed an individual to tell
others who he or she was, or wasn’t. In real life, you can try and guess who
someone is when you meet them based on your own perception, but identity pages
took the guesswork out of the process. The websites encouraged people to
visually balance out the traits they didn’t want others to see about them by
only highlighting the ones they did. An identity page declared, even demanded,
how others should perceive it. If you didn’t want to be seen as a smart nerdy
type anymore, you could change all that overnight with your identity page. Or
if you wanted to spell out for others how the
nerdiness
should be seen, you could easily do that too. You could sculpt your identity
and your blossoming celebrity all at once. If someone didn’t buy into what was
on the screen, well then—too bad for them. Guilt usually set in for those who
didn’t believe, because everyone else supposedly did.

“As the
big screen entered the world and people grew accustomed to it, identities went
beyond Real Face and became larger than life.
Hali
Seltzer added a yoga studio to the virtual environment, and claimed it was the
best yoga she had ever done in her life. She grew even more famous than she was
before, and not just for yoga but for anything she wished in the moment to be
famous for. It would all magically work out for her overnight: Notoriety for
being a bestselling author, acclaim at directing and producing feature films,
media attention on her new yoga-inspired cooking show, admiration for her
unmatched philanthropy. The dabbling in new areas of work and creation was
endless. It was a renaissance—the virtual renaissance. But if you had seen
Hali’s
feature film, it would have made you question
whether that was a good thing.

“Other
people followed
Hali’s
lead and dove into the screen,
hiring programmers to create new virtual environments specifically for them
that people could join. People wanted to be famous, and it was never easier
than in the virtual world. It was like a drug that never wore off. Except that
all drugs wear off eventually.
Hali
was the first to
show signs, but it was not widely publicized what had happened to her—only that
she had developed an unnamed neurodegenerative disorder. In other words, she
had the buzz. As the buzz increasingly grabbed a hold of
Hali’s
body, her hold on fame both in and out of the virtual world became more
tenuous. She and her doctors never attributed the symptoms to living life
inside the screen, so she spent more and more time in there. Where once she
felt larger than life, she was then at the age of 50 frail and unable to do
yoga anymore. She died at age 55.

“Who was
she while she was in the screen? I can only speculate, Shorty. I
ain’t
no scientist or researcher. But I’d say that in the
screen, personality wears off as it gets sold out in meager portions to others.
At first it seems riveting, but eventually everyone learns to act the same,
talk the same. Monotony. They speak a new unified language, one I can’t
understand. They do it, ironically, for protection. So they don’t stand out and
get in trouble. You can’t tell the difference between anyone anymore. People
appear to be all put together, but they’re more self-conscious than ever. They
get lost in there and can’t come back here.” Earl pointed to the ground. “I think
the buzz is the result of a split. One part of the person is in the screen, but
the other part is still out here. And I think the part that's left out here
gets mad when it’s neglected.”

Misha’s
eyelid twitched in response. She stuck a fork into her mashed
potatoes and it froze there pointed toward the ceiling. Earl pointed to her and
asked, “Who do you think she is while she’s in the screen?”
Misha
felt like she had prepared this answer in her mind over many years, but the
actual words were escaping her now. She started talking clumsily anyway, “I
just don’t trust what I see in the screen. I don’t believe people’s actions or
what they’re telling me. Something feels hidden from view, and I can’t put my
finger on what that is. It doesn’t feel real, even though they say that it is.
But I’ve been told by people that I simply don’t get
it.”     

“Who
told you that?” Earl asked her.
Misha
rummaged back
through her memories. “Well, my mom for starters. Lydia too…” Earl interrupted
her thought with, “Lydia? What did she tell you?”

Misha
tried to remember how Lydia had put it. “Well, she told me I didn’t get
what they did there at Mind Memo. I hadn’t grasped the importance of the big
screen in daily life. She isn’t the only one who thinks that about me, though.
Others do too, Earl, only they don’t say it out loud. I can still tell they’re
thinking it. What is it that I don’t get?”

“Listen,
Misha
,” Earl explained, “when I first met you, I knew
I could talk to you. I mean really talk to you, like a real human being. That’s
rare in the virtual environment. Your personality stood out to me because it
wasn’t
peggable
. You can’t melt and become one with
the depravity and mush that place has turned into. That’s a good thing. But
today, the thing that can’t be pegged makes people scared. I want you to trust
no one right now. You need to be your own best friend and look out for yourself
and no one else. I think something weird is happening. A few days ago, Lydia
asked me for your files, both active and archived. I thought it was just a
routine check she was planning to run on all employees, but now I know
something’s up with your being fired from the company.”

“Wasn’t
Lydia just disappointed with my performance at Mind Memo? That must be why she
asked for my files,”
Misha
reminded Earl. Earl shook
his head. “No, this is about something else. Trust me. I looked in the master
database yesterday and found that your files had been transferred to an
undisclosed location. Nothing should be undisclosed to someone who has access
to the database in the first place. Those files went somewhere outside of Mind
Memo. And I don’t know where.”

Undisclosed.
Misha
had seen that word on her call log two days
ago. “Earl, I’ve gotten phone calls from an undisclosed number. What should I
do?”

Earl thought
to himself for a moment and then said, “I’m going to look into this more. I’ve
had to be discreet with my searches so far because they can trace what I do at
Mind Memo. That’s why you and I had to talk out here. But I’ll find a way,
don’t worry. In the meantime, don’t talk to anyone else for the next couple
days. Stay off the phone unless you see me calling. Okay?”

Misha
nodded. “There is a close friend I have to take to the doctor’s
office—she has the buzz. But I’ve known her a long time. I won’t talk to anyone
else.”
Misha
and Earl finally felt relaxed enough to
enjoy a delicious dinner at the once famous Morton’s and then got ready to
leave. Outside the entrance,
Misha
turned to Earl
with one more question, “Earl, what’s in those blue pills you gave me a couple
years ago for the buzz? They’ve really helped me feel more myself.” Earl smiled
at her and winked. “Nothing,
Shorty.”                                                 

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

Misha’s
walk home seemed to take forever. It was definitely longer
than her walk to Morton’s, she could have sworn, if her watch hadn’t told her
different. Either the big screen was changing the continuum of time on earth,
or her conversation with Earl had slowed down her senses so she could mull over
her current predicament. She saw some city birds hanging out under the trees
that lined Market Street and wondered if they worried about what each other
thought as much as humans did. She was almost positive they did not.

In fact,
Misha
wondered if she were to administer a survey to
everyone on earth asking them what was most important in life, and they had to
answer honestly, if the top answer would end up being “what others think about
me.” Why was it so important to human beings what others thought of them?
Misha
had felt a slave to this feeling often in her life,
starting with what her very own mom thought of her. Did this steal energy from
her?
Misha
sighed. She supposed it was natural to
care what others thought, but people were taking it too far when the
presentation became more important than the individual.

She
arrived at home close to six in the evening, and was greeted by Poof’s small
yelps accosting her for not refilling his food bowl in time.
Misha
mentally slapped herself on the wrist, because of
course Poof was the king of the household. She refilled Poof’s bowl and
sauntered lazily to the couch, quite possibly her favorite spot in the world.
She flipped on the big screen looking for shows she hated or didn’t understand.
These shows, while not enjoyable to watch on a primal level, offered her a
bird’s-eye-view into the world that existed around her.