Changed

Prologue

Some of this my dad told me about and some of it I found out afterwards. The bits he said and they said I got from him. The other bits… Well, can I tell you about them later? This is what he said it was like for him.

I watched as the two settled back onto the couches and got helped into helmets. Despite myself, I felt uneasy seeing my daughter’s face covered by the visor. It made her look like an insect-headed alien, and, in some way I still can’t explain, made the sticking-out wisp of her brown hair look stolen. The techs jacked them both to the central unit and reclined the couches to full horizontal.

The guy beside me spoke.

“Okay,”

A hushed voice, not whispering, but like someone talking at a bedroom door and not wanting to disturb the sleepers inside.

More respect than the bloody suit showed, I thought.

“Here we go.” The tech tapped his touch-screen and both of them took small, sharp in-breaths, followed by soft sighs.

Like her falling asleep. The tension I hadn’t been aware of holding released as both bodies relaxed.

“Well Mr. McLeod, that’s about it for now. The first stage will take about fifteen to twenty minutes for her, perhaps a few more for him, then they’ll have their day. She’ll be back with you in…” He wiggled a hand in a ‘more-or-less’ gesture, “…fifty minutes to an hour. She might have a bit of jet-lag, because of the time difference.”

“It’s that unsure, is it?”

“It’s case by case. We’ve usually found kids are quicker to connect, so we’ll probably have to hold her back a few minutes while he catches up. The compression is set for a half hour, though, that part’s certain. Once we’ve got them both logged in, we’d be able to do this again in about thirty seconds. And the commercial version will compress much more than this, of course.” He grinned, “No one wants to wait for as long as half an hour to live a day nowadays, eh?”

“Was it like this with the others?”

“Well, not the characters, no.” His eyes glanced to the side like he was looking back at some memory, while his mouth twisted like he wanted to suggest a tangled situation. “They all took a minimum of a weekend; some of them two, but those had to be much more detailed readings, being as we don’t have them available real-time, like this. But we’ve all been in there, and for us, yeah, I suppose, pretty much like this. You’ll have to try it yourself some time.”

“Not really my thing; having my mind read and all.”

“Oh, take my word, it’s a blast in there, you’d love the experience. You’ve read the books, I take it?”

“The first two as bed-time stories. After that she read them herself, and I got all the details over the table at meals.”

“Yeah, mine’s nine and we’re at that stage with her too. Well, there’s nothing much more to see here, erm, would you like a coffee or something while you’re waiting?”

“Aye, that’d be grand.”

They left the room. Another tech watched, impatient, until they’d exited, immediately changed the compression factor on both screens, initiated the simulation, and left as well, his mind on something stronger than coffee. Us two on the couches slept on, only the machine to see us.

A watcher might have seen my touch-screen reading flicker, and, like a stagehand nicking an importatn prop, my character assignment figure change from 1001 to 321. But you’re the only watcher now, and it doesn’t matter you seeing - nothing will change the story back.

‘Cos history altered. Right there. Seriously. The world changed. No, please don’t think I’m being melodramatic. I’ve thought about it very, very carefully, and that’s not exaggeration at all.