The Event

Chapter 4

"Here you go," Aliyah says, eyes still on her device. If anyone happens to look over, she and her classmate are sharing a memory. Nothing more.

She hands over her idea as easily as it's arrived in her mind, the words she could have used to improve her status in the e-cloud. She doesn't need them. She never has.

"Pleasure."

Tomdry bows slightly, his back an elongated mess of colors. Appropriate wardrobe choices like these make the memories more appealing. Visual aesthetic increases views by 60%, according to experts. For those who aim to have their memories watched, anyway. Which is almost everyone, these days.

"Tell your friends," she whispers listlessly, almost ironically enough to be comical. No one is told  things anymore, only shown and impressed upon, usually without their knowledge or permission. Current trends dictate mental states, competition for views and likes explain behavior. Everyone swimming together in one live stream--or barely at all, given the fact that the current moves for them. They don't need to choose. It's a waste of time to choose or think or wonder. 

Even so, it wouldn't be good to betray self-awareness; if she's offering other people the chance to profit from her memories, she must be in it for the money. She needs others to view her as business savvy instead of a force for change, and to secure an income, she must care about adding clients. If it means she has to ask him to spread the word with a vague eagerness she doesn't truly feel, so be it.

Tomdry nods as much as he's able, focusing to keep his chin steady. He doesn't want his head to shake and disrupt the quality of the picture, not when he plans to upload this footage later. Or maybe not, but she knows he'll want to have the option. Instincts have been trained and developed for this, and most people she knows could never imagine deviating. "How to make lives worth remembering 101: how to set a scene" is required to pass from kindergarten to first grade. Now they're taking 709: How to simultaneously upload, view, and participate in memories. Serious, mind-bending stuff. Multi-tasking for the new millennium. Who cares about experiencing when you can perceive the idea of living all at once? She closes her eyes and tries to concentrate, to keep the sarcastic voice in her head at bay. It won't bode well for her if Tomdry senses anything deeper at play than the single exchange she's orchestrated.

"Audrey's looking for a new one," he says, his voice hesitant. Aliyah assumes that means he's unsure but trying to please her, hoping she'll offer her next idea to him first. Audrey may have voiced the desire, but maybe she can't afford it. Or remains stubborn about paying for something everyone has the potential to do.

The creatives, as Aliyah and others with her abilities are known on the black market, use their talents to increase the breadth and interest of memories. They add underused words for variety, ideas for content that will make for engaging and exciting watching at a later date. For an agreed upon fee, they give people memories they want to go back to, invoke occasions where others will want to join for viewing parties--maybe even chosen to be aired at the local theater. What a privilege, an honor, many would say. Aliyah calls it a waste of time, a preoccupation. A safety net for those who don't realize they're afraid of life or addicted to power.  

Aliyah comes from a family of creatives, but she's the first to act on the impulse--and many of her relatives still refuse to speak to her because of it. Her own brother, even. They think she's feeding into the very social schematics that they seek to change--they don't understand she just has her own way of approaching the same issues. With her talents, she can influence the quality of memories being stored and shown without seeking radical intervention, without alerting people to the change; she still needs to make the ideas appealing enough to buy, but she can start interweaving subtle and important messages. She'll get people out of their homes, away from the devices in their hands. It's better than doing nothing, anyway.

She's given Tomdry a beach scene to enact with his girlfriend, one that will position him across from Goose Island. There are rumors that the island has broken free from tech, or at least removed the rules that govern it; the Underground Chain insists islanders can choose to read or write, anything that embodies minimum movement because the goal isn't to make memories for consumption. These are memories for personal enjoyment, for satisfaction--to be forgotten or not, leaving the impression of happiness without precise detail. If she sells ideas to enough people to get them within eyesight of the island, maybe they'll start to wonder what they're looking at. They won't ask questions, but hopefully they'll wonder--and she has her ways to keep fueling the fire.

"Thanks," she mutters into her hand, accepting Tomdry's attempts to placate her.

Their discussion is over, and she turns away. Better to keep her distance if she wants to shape a new reality.

Audrey is nowhere to be found, and Aliyah decides she might as well eat lunch. They only get forty minutes mid-day for food between studies, and she's only got ten left. She returns to her seat, studying sandwiches as they trickle across her device's screen. Some anonymous student rigged the network to scan the lunch menu and deposit the options into their devices so they can skip the walk to the cafeteria if nothing looks appealing.

Technically, she can sit in this chair all day; all of her classes feed from a functional portal that assigns a different modulated voice to each student and each artificial teacher. They used to do this from the comfort of their own homes, up until the most recent president decided that the only thing that had gone wrong in this AI based educational system was that the social aspect of learning was missing. Now she and her classmates come to a school building to sit next to people staring at matching devices, their headphones and goggles government issue. They change rooms between online classes to have quality interactions in the hallways; they're also required to spend at least half of their lunch hour away from a screen, and talk to at least two other students.

Her mother tells her about a time when life was challenging, when terrain needed to be navigated, people persuaded, decisions considered. She uses these themes in the ideas she sells, searching for someone like her. Anyone like her. She prepares for a future she fears but whose road she can only hope to intercept.

Tomdry will be surprised, she thinks. Trusting his memories to a creator. Do they even realize the risks, these people that seek out written realities? Identities shaped by others. What a waste.

For her though, it means she gets to live multiple lives, consider multiple futures. But there's always a chance the real Aliyah will get lost--at least, that's what her brother warns her about. That's why he hates that she employs these talents daily instead of on special occasions, when the ideas pile up so heavily that they need to be let out. There are safer ways to alleviate the products of creativity, he reminds her constantly.

She doesn't know what she believes, and maybe that's an illustration of the problem. But she still feels like herself, on whatever shaky ground that might be.