Still Point

by Katie Kacvinsky

  I looked out the window, at the soft texture of gray clouds. When he stopped babbling about his nerd-show-whatever-the-hell, I met his eyes.

  “Why don’t you want to join the Dropouts?” I asked him.

  “I’m not a workaholic,” he said simply and smiled because he knew I couldn’t argue with his point. “Don’t get me wrong, I like working. And the DS lifestyle is stupid as shit. But I also enjoy a little downtime. I like living.”

  “So do we,” I said. “That’s what we’re fighting for.”

  He leaned his head to the side. “Yeah, but you guys are always fighting,” he said. “I’ve been to a few meetings. DS Dropouts Need You. For a Better Tomorrow,” he said mockingly, in a militant voice, and it loosened my mouth. “I get it. I just don’t need it shoved down my throat every day.”

  “You don’t want to work with us at all?”

  “I just don’t want to be told what to do. That’s why I never liked DS. It was smothering. But the protesters follow the leaders too. I just want to do my own thing. Sometimes,” he said, and leaned forward, close enough that I could see his eyes light up, “I like to do absolutely nothing.”

  “Sounds inspiring,” I joked.

  “Have you ever tried to do nothing? It’s actually really hard. There are so many distractions. But it’s the best feeling in the world. If I could prescribe a bottle of nothing to people, it would make life so much better.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said.

  I looked out the window at a city that was a ghost town. Buildings were boarded up. I had faint memories of downtown Corvallis when I was little. Shops had filled the main streets when people still shopped in stores, before everything went digital. I remembered mornings my mom would take me and Joe to a toy store downtown, full of kids and parents and toys and instruments we could touch. We’d stop at a bakery and get chocolate milk and shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate and covered in sprinkles. I remembered sitting outside and looking down at the river crawling past. I remembered the gardens blooming, the sounds of shoes and strollers and crosswalks full of people. It was like remembering a dream, but after a while that’s all it is, just a memory, and memories can turn heavy and sit in your heart like rocks. You can either hang on to memories or try to forget them and fling them away like stones over a bridge. But I not only wanted to keep these memories, I wanted to relive them. I wanted to somehow bring them back. But can you relive the past? Maybe that was why people clung so loyally to traditions. They simply wanted to relive their favorite memories over and over.

  I started telling Jax about the photography book my mom gave me. I knew he’d appreciate it.

  “It’s called Now and Then,” I said. “Its photographs of Corvallis one hundred years ago, featured alongside current ones. It shows parks with people actually using them, streets full of cars, storefront windows with displays inside.”

  “And the current pictures?” he asked.

  “ZipShuttles. An empty turf park. Digital billboards. Downtown stores boarded up. There’s not a single person in any shot.” I looked out the window again. Strange that in all of its beauty, this city had lost its life. By looking perfect it had lost its personality. By being so industrial, so functional, it had lost its artistic edge. It had lost its soul.

  Jax leaned his head back and looked out the window. “That would be a cool course to study,” he said. “‘Now and Then.’ Have people compare the last fifty years and how much has changed.”

  He asked me what college classes I wanted to take, and I listed them out loud. Computer law. Computer ethics. And an art class. It was nice to talk about the things I wanted without worrying that my thoughts would be shredded because I shared them.

  “I want to be a lawyer,” I told him.

  Jax nodded. “I can see that,” he said. “You’re great at yelling at people and drowning them in guilt.”

  “You mean persuading them.” I smiled.

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  The shuttle wove along the Willamette River. Usually long, rocky sandbars were visible, but this spring the water came up nearly to the banks, which were overrun with thorny blackberry bushes that lined the river like natural barbed wire fence.

  “Why didn’t you want to take a train?” I asked.

  “Public trains don’t go where we’re headed,” he said, and pointed to high-rises in the distance. “The factory district.”

  I looked out at the metal jungle ahead, crammed tight with smokestacks and office buildings. It was like a geometric pattern, all hard edges, contrasted against the puffy gray clouds. The factory district was in southern Corvallis, a place my parents referred to as the South Slums. I had never been inside; you needed ID tags to get access.

  Jax pulled two ID cards out of the pocket of his yellow jacket and dangled them, reading my thoughts.

  The factory district is where people who couldn’t work from home worked. Some jobs still demanded human hands and minds. We zigzagged closer to the metal and plastic refineries, steam and exhaust billowing out through ten-story-high pipes like giant lungs. We passed farm sky-rises, where some of the food that wasn’t shipped in was made locally. On the outskirts of the factory district was the Willamette Hospital. Most patient visits were done in-home, like doctor and dentist checkups, but emergency or specialized appointments still required a hospital. We passed Langdon Street, which offered the only city grocery store. There was also an indoor soccer park, where a semipro team used to play. My dad took us to a game once, when I was young, but after M28, most sports became virtual. People were afraid to gather in masses, afraid they would look like a target. So sports, just like businesses, migrated into the digital world. Professional teams still existed, but most of them were overseas. Virtual sports had taken over. Virtual fights and car races were all manipulated by the thumbs of skilled video controllers. They had replaced our athletes.

  The ZipShuttle stopped at metal security gates outside of the factory district. Jax scanned our IDs against a digital screen, and the doors buzzed open. The ZipShuttle entered the last working district in town: grocery store centers where food was shipped, sorted, and mailed out to homes; postal warehouses; clothing factories; even factories that pumped out oxygen to make up for the lack of plants in the cities.

  The air inside was thick, a mixture of the marina fog rolling in from the coast and the steam and smog from the factories.

  “It always looks like this in the morning,” Jax told me. “They turn on the oxygen fans in the afternoon and pump all the smog out.”

  Ten different train lines split the district like veins, coming together and diverging. Along the Willamette River, warehouses stretched and faded into the foggy sky. Planks of cargo were laid out in shipping yards, waiting for trains. Men and women in brown and gray uniforms with their hands covered in thick work gloves hauled shipments in and out of metal garage doors. A gritty, tired energy swelled around me. People stood outside concrete buildings, smoking, a few talking, drinking cups of coffee or eating sandwiches out of brown cloth bags.

  The ground constantly shook with cargo trains lumbering by, their engines emitting a low growl. We passed a cluster of brown skyscrapers dotted with tiny black windows, built so close together it looked like they were leaning on one another.

  “That’s where the factory workers live,” Jax said. He told me most of the jobs in the downtown factories didn’t pay well enough for workers to afford residential housing, so they occupied the downtown apartments. In between the high-rises were old parking lots, reconstructed into “parks,” consisting of a few benches and scattered plastic trees in giant pots. A few men and women sat in the parks, eating or drinking alone, most of them staring at a phone or a flipscreen. I didn’t see any kids running around. Even though there were people, I hardly saw any signs of life.

  It made my quiet neighborhood feel like a green paradise. At least we had turf grass, not a concrete washout for a park. People here dragged their feet and hung thei
r heads like they were all living out a prison sentence.

  “No wonder we all escaped into the digital world,” I said. “The real world sucks sometimes.”

  When the ZipShuttle stopped, I stretched my neck up at a beige building, the roof lost in the thick gray air so it seemed infinite. Seamor Medical Labs was written in bold black lettering over the front entrance.

  We stepped out of the shuttle, and the air smelled cool and gritty, a mixture of gas and plastic. I followed Jax to a digital directory screen on the side of the building. I watched a loading truck across the street packing crates of plastic sheets, probably flooring, onto an empty train bed.

  Jax scanned his finger down a list of names until he reached Dr. Luc Viviani, and he pressed it.

  “Begin acquisition at the tone,” a female computer voice directed us.

  “Face-to-face meeting request,” Jax said into the speaker.

  A few seconds went by while the computer was thinking. A red hand popped up on the screen, like a traffic signal telling us to stop. “Due to heightened security at Seamor Medical Laboratory, all face-to-face visits require preauthorized approval.”

  Jax groaned at the computer. “You’re killing me, Bridget,” he said into the speaker.

  “Bridget?” I asked.

  He looked at me. “It’s what I call all female voice commands. It’s also my little sister’s name, and she’s a pain.”

  The computer continued. “You may leave a verbal request. We will respond within forty-eight hours. Thank you.”

  Jax groaned. “Guess we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

  I swallowed. Breaking into a medical laboratory would definitely cross the trust line with my dad.

  Jax looked around the ground and found a flat rock wedged in a crack in the cement. He picked it up and looked up at the building, counting windows. When he found his target, he flung the rock, and it hit the window with a sharp tap before bouncing back to the ground. A second later a man’s face appeared, an older version of Jax. He had the same dark eyes and hair and easy smile. He had a goatee, peppered with gray.

  He opened the window and waved down at us.

  “Bridget’s being a brat as usual!” Jax yelled.

  “Come on up,” his father said. The door buzzed open and Jax and I entered a lobby of black marble floors and white, bare walls. Our tennis shoes squeaked through the open, empty space. We walked into the elevator, and Jax pushed a button for the third floor.

  “Your dad works here.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  Jax nodded. “He’s a scientist,” he said. “I think you’ll be interested in his research.”

  We tapped open his office door, and Dr. Viviani walked around the side of his desk. He extended his hand to me, and I shook it; his grip was firm, his fingers cold around mine. His dark brown eyes greeted me behind wire-rimmed glasses, and his thick black hair was streaked with gray along the sides. He gave Jax a hug, his eyes filled with pride. I recognized the paternal look—it’s the same look my dad gives Joe whenever he visits.

  I was surprised to see real paper books on his office shelves. His desk was crammed full of binders, files, and coffee mugs. His office smelled like coffee, and I noticed an old-fashioned drip machine in the corner. There was a cup full of pens and highlighters on his desk.

  He pulled out two folding chairs that were shoved into the corner, behind a plant perched next to a small window. “I don’t get a lot of visitors,” he explained. “How’s work going?” he asked Jax.

  “It’s picking up,” Jax answered.

  Jax unfolded the chairs and wiped off a layer of dust with the sleeve of his coat before he offered one to me. We sat down and Dr. Viviani spun his office chair around so he could face us. It was oddly comfortable in the small space. I couldn’t help myself—I reached out and touched the green spikes of leaves on the plant and was impressed to discover it was real.

  “I’m old-fashioned,” he explained, noting my surprise with a quick flash of a smile.

  “The oxygen factory doesn’t do it for you?” I asked, and he laughed.

  “I’ve always preferred the real thing,” he said. “I think oxygen from plants and trees is better for you, and some studies prove it.”

  He didn’t have any wall screens in his office, and he had a small, old-fashioned desktop computer that wasn’t even turned on. There were so many books and papers stacked in front of the computer, it probably hadn’t been used in months. I noticed some scribbled notes lying on his desk. He wrote longhand.

  “Aren’t you a scientist?” I asked, looking for test tubes or lab coats or some kind of evidence that he conducted research. All I noticed were framed photographs of sunsets and a painting of a desert landscape; it looked like one of Jax’s pieces.

  “He’s a neuroscientist,” Jax told me, and my mouth fell into a frown as memories of the detention center came flashing back.

  “Is that a problem?” Dr. Viviani asked me, amused with my reaction.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to disrespect. I’ve just had some bad experiences with your kind,” I said.

  He tilted his head to the side as he studied me with a look that bordered on familiar.

  “She served in a DC,” Jax explained for me.

  “I see,” he said. “Well, people fascinate me. That’s why I study them. I like to see what holds them together.”

  “Too bad your research picks them apart,” I noted, my voice a little hostile.

  “Madeline, he’s on our side,” Jax said, and he reached over and nudged my arm. I looked at him and there was that calm expression again, just a trace of a smile.

  “Madeline Freeman,” Dr. Viviani said. “I thought I recognized you. You’ve changed your hair.”

  “You’ve heard of me?” I asked.

  His smile dimmed. “I’m familiar with your father.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “To what do I owe this personal visit?” he asked, his eyes darting between Jax and me.

  “Madeline recruited me to help the protesters.”

  This time his dad frowned. “Jax, you told me you were done. That was our deal. I thought you were going to sign up for college classes this fall?”

  “Not until they’re face-to-face,” Jax stated.

  “We’ve been over this,” his father said. “It’s not going to happen.”

  “Well, I don’t think you can help people through a screen. You need to dig a lot deeper than that. So how am I supposed to learn to do it through a virtual program?”

  His dad breathed out a sigh. “All right,” he said. “As long as you think you can help people, then I’ll support you. You know that’s my only rule.” I gave Jax a jealous stare. If only it was that easy with my dad.

  “Speaking of helping people,” Jax said, “tell Madeline about your patents.”

  I looked at his father, and he nodded toward his desktop computer.

  “I patented the computer screen you look at when you attend digital school.”

  “The screen?” I asked.

  He nodded. “About twenty years ago a lot of people had eye problems. More migraines and headaches and vision loss. It was proven that direct light from computers and wall screens damages your eyes. If you stare at a screen for more than eight hours a day, it fries your photoreceptors.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “I’ve never heard any news about that,” I said.

  He smiled. “No, you haven’t. The research was never made public. You know what would happen if people found out staring at a screen was bad for them?”

  “DS would never have taken off,” I noted.

  “It would have destroyed our entire economy,” he said, and sat back in his seat. “Everything we do is on a screen. Everything we sell comes with a screen. Every service we buy or provide uses a screen. It’s a multibillion-dollar business; it’s what our society is founded on. It would have caused the worst economic downturn this country has ever seen. Technology is what makes this country run.”

>   “That’s why the media never criticizes DS,” I said.

  He pointed back at his computer. “I was hired to help develop a screen that doesn’t produce the same intense lighting as a backlit screen, and apply it to the DS program. I organized the clinical studies to test patients with prototypes.”

  “So it cured the problem?” I assumed.

  He shrugged. “It made it a little bit better. Reflective light is still the best. It’s the way we were designed to see things. Light bounces off an object, and that’s how we receive it. Most computers shoot light directly at you—there’s nothing to bounce off. That’s why it causes headaches, dry eyes, fatigue. It’s physically hard on your eyes.”

  I looked around his desk. “Is that why you use paper books?” I asked him.

  “It’s my preference. I read a lot and I prefer reflective light. It’s easier on my old eyes.”

  “Tell her about the paper you published six years ago,” Jax said. “‘The DS Addiction.’”

  Dr. Viviani cleared his throat. “That paper was banned from psychology journals. A lack of adequate research.” He waved his hand in the air. “I refuted it.”

  He was trying to dismiss the conversation, but I was already fascinated. “Why didn’t you fight the ban?”

  He blew out a sigh. “There wasn’t enough science to support my theory, and the funding was cut off, so I couldn’t afford to do the research I needed to prove anything with credible merit.”

  “Or maybe the journal didn’t want you to prove it?” I guessed.

  “Only a handful of eyes saw it.” His eyes darted to Jax. “Is that why you’re here, to discuss a banished research article?”

  Jax leaned forward in his seat. “I’m recruiting you too, Dad.”

  He coughed out a laugh. “Forget it.”

  “You’ve always been against digital school,” he said, getting to the point of why we were here. Jax looked over at me. “My dad was on the team of doctors fighting DS when it became law ten years ago. He led the committee against it.”