High Noon on Jefferson(scifi story): Chapter Two
note: no need to wear VR glasses on Jefferson: Immies or immersive realities feed directly to the brain using the brain implants and their external, wirelessly connected boosters (mini, wearable computers). This image just gets the idea across
Chapter Two
I can't say the day I found a repticulate in my bad was an ordinary day. I can't say the day was an exceptional one either. Unlike last time, I didn't start out at Dad's place. I have been staying in town at Mom's far, far more except on the weekends because I want to be around my friends far more. Yes, I always did want to be around my friends, I enjoy and love my Merry Pranksters, but as I have been gotten into being a teenager, at least more so, and my Dad wasn't upset. he missed me, but he also knew I was that age. That age that made me into a horrible monster and he was delighted he could cower out in the wilderness, I meant his farm, from me.
Actually, no.
he and I have a good relationship, by and large. We have our moments. Ones where I rip him apart as a horrible dictator who wants to destroy my life and doesn't understand me whatsoever and he thinks I'm the spawn of satan and then gloats me must be satan and sends me to my room. For eternal torment. Or so it feels.
Most of the time, we're not like that. In fact, Dad tends to try to treat me as a reasoning being. He says I'll make all sorts of crazy decisions that won't be great, but he tries to talk to me rather than yell, I might actually listen. Foolish devlish dad! I'm an American teenager now! MUAHAHAHA.
ahem.
No, really. I love my Dad, but my friends have been becoming more and important to me. Mom's place is actually in town and my friends are all in town, so, y'know, natural fit. Mom's thrilled with the turn of events. However, there are weeks I still need to get away. The teen moodiness, they call it. However, mostly, I'm in town with Mom.
The nice bit is my brother is actually switching back and forth between Dad and Mom. He spends as much time with Dad as he does with Mom, so I get a little more time at Mom's without being bugged by my annoying little brother: do they make them any other way? The weird part, thinking about my brother, is he's 11. He's within a year of the age of when I had my first adventure.
That feeling. It's weird. I feel...old. Make it stop!
Anyway, my brother was out at Dad's and I was at Mom's. I had gotten up, run down the stairs, because I was late, kissed by Boogie bye - a neo parakeet, smarter than the norm, which does have its downsides! Grabbed a light breakfast I had ordered the kitchen to make as I was throwing on my clothes and put on my face and ran out the door.
Wait! My leathers, right?
Well, leathers were still used, but I had moved over to smart cloth. It was thin and nice and would shift to cover anywhere exposed. It's kinda interesting what you can do when you don't show anything to some people, huh? But smart cloth is thinner and crawls to cover. It can be disconcerting for some - Mom says it feels like a thin layer of caterpillars is working its way down your leg when its trying to connect to your boots, but young people don't seem to worry as much about it. Nice thing, too, is that it can change color and pattern based on what you are thinking. Yes, it hooks into a booster. Teens flashed each other with excited neon colors when they saw each other or turned black and cold. The games that could be played when clothes could be any color or pattern was immense in the mind of a teen, let me tell you. Then add in the Augmented Reality Boosters give directly to an implanted brain...and, well, let's just say it gets messy and complicated some times. And awesome. Let's not forget awesome.
I ran out the door and onto the cobble stone street and almost immediately into Jackie. We flashed each other as we both ran. We were both late. We ran and tinked at each other the whole way. What was what and who was what and who was who and why. It was gossip and fun and small talk and even directions for the day's events all in a hyperspeed bypassing the normal speaking. Adults could found it weird and unsettling. We found it natural.
Jackie had grown into a tall almost woman. She had always been the really athletic one amongst the Pranksters - Hey! I wasn't a slouch! I ran the 2k in 7 minutes! - and it continued to show. She was involved with the school sports a lot, but despite having new friends, we still were close: after all, we'd faced down the People's Liberation Army's space marines! No one out grew that sort of bond!
We were going to see each other at lunch and when we got to school, yes, the same school. Shadwell was bigger, it'd grown to be about a quarter again as big, it was still a rather small town. On the frontier. Of the edge of human space. In the American sphere.
Even so, still a small town. That meant everyone from kindergarten through the end of high school was in one school. fah! I ran around a corner and ... past my brother's classroom. They were in instruction and he saw me. He tinked a mocking snarcastic brag about how he was far away from school staying with Dad and yet he made it to class on time. Jerk.
I ran to the office, grabbed the stupid slip. I mean really! paper late slips in the 22nd century?! Then I ran to my classroom and I plopped myself down into my seat. The teacher rolled her eyes and force fed my booster an overloaded fast forward for me to get caught up. When a teacher does that, it was like having a brain freeze from eating too much cold ice cream too fast. Except this was straight information.
I blinked hard and settled into history. It was a hybrid class, Immie and instruction. It had to be. It was history and ethics and politics all rolled into one. It was required. We were reviewing the six times American democracy was challenged and nearly collapsed. And why it did not. Being there - through an Immie - and listening to the instruction and then having debates and discussions...that was what made it so challenging. Seeing and hearing and experiencing the events on top of getting a guided lecture and then a rankorous debate...was stimulating. And trying. And exhausting.
While I settled in to the travails of the middle of the twenty first century and the bot feuds in American politics, I had somehow missed that somewhere along the lines that something had fallen into my bag. It must have fallen from a tree and how I missed it, I still can't figure out. It rustled in my bad and clambered around. I didn't hear it. I didn't see it. I was plugged into my booster. No one else did either: they too were plugged into their boosters. And the teacher? She was focused on curating everyone's participation in the Immie. Some kids wandered off at a drop of a hat in virtual space. This class required more focus. And that meant the teacher had to check in on all of us. Virtually. And that, my friend, must be a really, really tough thing to do: monitoring the feeds of 14 American teens...oy.
But the thing in my bag? It wasn't paying any attention to us. It was hunting Jefflife bugs. In my bag. Eating them.
And...it was not Jefflife.
It was not Earthlife.
It wasn't any form of life.
It was artificial and cybernetic.
It was a repticulate.