Viral Spark

by Martin McConnell

  BY MARTIN MCCONNELL

  Published by Gecko Print Publishing (2017)

  Copyright © 2017 by Martin McConnell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form – except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews – without the express written permission of its author or publisher.

  Don’t be a pirate.

  ISBN 978-1-946938-05-3 (Paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-946938-06-0 (E-Book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by J. Austin Dellamano

  www.lighthousestudio.studio

  For my friends,

  for my family,

  and for everyone who helped

  me realize my dreams.

  A VIRAL SHORT

  THE IMPLANT

  Robert was thirteen, a year younger than recommended for the program, but after tearing apart half of the electronics in his parent’s house, they were ready to be rid of him. They loved him, but his curiosity was growing beyond their ability to keep up.

  Ever since he was a baby, he loved taking things apart. As Mom held his hand while he was in the prep seat, she remembered his dissection of the kitchen cleaning bot when he was a baby. He had managed to find one of Dad’s screwdrivers, and immediately recognized its use. By the time she found him, the poor robot had degenerated into a flickering mess of wire and circuit boards. The lights continued to blink, and baby Robert stared at them with wonder. His fingers investigated each wheel, as if trying to communicate with the machine through touch.

  The doctors entered the room, a tall man and a shorter woman, both wearing lab coats. She carried a silver tray with the injection needle on top. Robert was brave, and he would never shriek in front of them, but Mom felt his fist tighten around her fingers. His lips thinned, and the slightest dimple told her that his teeth were clenched behind those cheeks.

  Another memory flashed into view, the time he had come home bloodied a couple years ago, after a fight. A fight! What a thing for a young man to do. That same baby face, and the same dimple. As she applied cold dressings to the cuts on his forehead, he never squirmed, but she knew instinctively that he could feel the sting. Today he would receive a new wound. The mark of transformation from a boy to a man.

  The male doctor took the needle from the tray. It curved slightly toward the tip, making for easier navigation from the insertion point behind his ear to the final implant location.

  “Deep breath and hold it,” said the doctor.

  Wrinkles formed at the corners of Robert’s eyes. She felt the pinch of the sharp tip piercing his neck. Even if her baby wouldn’t cry, a sympathetic tear dropped from her eye. An instant later, the doctor pulled the syringe clear. The other one rushed the wound with a piece of cloth, and secured it in place behind his earlobe with tape.

  The doctor scuttled toward the wall, tapping it with his finger to activate the adaptive surface. He made the wall display large enough for her to see the documents, the graphs, and the vital charts. He dragged file folders this way and that, finally activating a video screen. She knew nothing of neuroscience, but all the colorful charts and graphs indicated that the implant was functioning. Robert wouldn’t need a second stick, like some of the other kids. It was rare, but it happened. No, not Robert. The implant was reading brain waves and transmitting them via Wi-Fi.

  “Everything looks good,” said the doctor before turning toward them. “Just try to think your way about when you are near a table or wall, and you should be effective with the implant in no time.”

  Her stare returned to her baby boy. Her little man. The lashes of his right eye destroyed a tear. Her heart sank. A week to heal. Then he would be off to his new home, his new job, and his finishing school. Yesterday he was born, and tomorrow he’d be a man.

  BY MARTIN MCCONNELL

  ONE

  The apartment shakes me awake. Being next door to the service elevator is cheap, but not exactly comfortable. The rattling stops immediately as my eyes open. It’s stocking day.

  I roll around in the blankets, wondering what time it is, and a clock flashes across the wall in front of my face. Ten minutes until seven. I lay there staring at the blank ceiling. The alarm will sound in just over nine minutes. Not enough time to go back to sleep, and too early to wake up. Trying to get in those extra precious minutes of rest isn’t worth the effort, and I’ll only be more tired when the alarm goes off. Wanting to savor every moment of rest, I close my eyes anyway.

  A single thought drifts through my head. Vivaldi. The spring concerto plays in the apartment. Bum, bum, bum, bada bum. The walls brighten with ambient light. Tangled circuitry and complex code scans everything in the apartment at all times, and any second the alarm will sound to coax me out of bed, unless I get up before it goes off.

  Since the day I took an interest in coding, I wondered about programmed devices. How were they coded? What were the programmers thinking? How could they have done things better. I suppose it’s only natural that I ended up servicing market bots.

  My eyes open again, and I climb off the bed. As I stand, the sheets tighten the surface evenly. Every corner tucked, every pillow fluffed, as steam penetrates the fabric from below, cleaning and ironing at the same time.

  I stomp out of the bedroom. The shower is immediately on my right. Nothing wrong with starting the day off early. I recharge in the jets of perfectly temperature controlled water, and dry in the blast from the air vents. I climb out, and print off fresh clothes from the wall dispenser. It’s a good day for green.

  In the kitchen, I pull a tea infuser from the little drawer, and grab my cup out of the washer’s out rack. No spots in the bottom. At least the building superintendent fixed that. He lords over all of us with his silly rules and policies, like the mayor of our small community. I respect his authority, but sometimes his tardiness in fixing things gets to me.

  I hold the cup under the sink, thinking about steaming hot water, and it fills with the same. On the counter is my wonderful brushed steel tube, filled with the perfection of a natural product that isn’t available in the market. I give it a gentle shake, sensing the shifting weight of rustling leaves inside. About half full.

  I pop the top, and scoop the infuser full of crushed herbs. Upon dropping it in the cup, the water takes on a green tint that will continue to darken until I drink it. I love watching the first bit of dissolution, as the forest green wafts into the clear liquid like some kind of smoke. Stirring breaks up the stringy pattern of green threads, and the color fades from the strands, appearing as a slight tint dispersed through the rest of the cup. This is my morning meditation.

  The warm, comforting flavor of chai caresses my tongue and throat, before warming my heart. The time flashes across the wall again, and I sit down at the kitchen island. I tap the surface, and it turns from granite to shiny black, with a rectangular window housing my messages. The new work schedule is the same as last week’s: another text from my mother and some junk mail. It’s Monday. Time for another week of the same thing, with one subtle difference.

  The morning fog clears as the soothing vapors slowly rise from the top of my cup. Her face appears in my mind to distract my otherwise ambitious thoughts. Amanda. Dark skin. Thin, perhaps too thin, but she pulls it off gorgeously. Her deep brown hair showcases a single golden streak of fibers that contrasts the rest.

  My daydream ends abruptly as I look up at the wall. It’s time for my second morning ritual, and I project a thou
ght. News. The wall comes alive. The video feed covers the whole of it as the music fades to a level low enough that I can hear the commercials. That’s all the news really is, commercials and advertising, with a little bit of informational content mixed in. At least it’s entertaining. I fetch water for a second cup of tea while watching.

  Someone lost it in the market yesterday. That’s new. Video from the surveillance cameras shows one customer beating the hell out of another one.

  Trying to figure out if it’s real, or some clever commercial, I stare intently while sipping. One guy on the video throws the other one into a pallet of food tubes, seemingly unprovoked, and the cylinders scatter. I count the seconds, waiting for the feed to showcase my handiwork.

  One, two, three, and there he comes. The hero of the day rolls into view behind the two combatants as the struggle continues. On the wall, it looks like solid black turtle shell zipping across the ground, about the size of a pizza. A steel arm pokes out of the smooth shell, and it stacks the food tubes with perfect precision. The camera, following the fighting citizens, pans away from the little electronic wonder, making no mention of the brave robot performing flawlessly under hostile conditions.

  Suddenly, sitting here, I wonder about the last time I actually heard of a fight. I can’t recall a single case of one in the building. Sure, meatheads like Mike talked a big game, but crossing the line to actually hurting another human being, not a whisper.

  My smock dangles from the chair across the kitchen island. It’s a reminder of how small my place in the world is. Even in the building, few know my name, and the ones who do, ignore me. It doesn’t matter. I’m finishing school today, and I’m going to tweak my code until someone notices my talents. Then I’ll be off to bigger and better things. A first rate job, an apartment on one of the upper floors, and more credits than I can spend. The walls rattle again. And away from that noise.

  My stomach growls. I turn to the hollow black box on the counter. The front is open, and a series of button lights stretches across the top, indicating that the sausage tube is running a bit low, and the cheese is near empty.

  “Two sausage and egg biscuits.”

  The machine responds in the voice of a smooth operator. “Would you like cheese?”

  Such clever programming. It never asked me about cheese before. The programmers must have designed the devices to remember typical orders, or perhaps it was part of some clever protocol to suggest the need to buy more product. Maybe the coder got a kickback from one of the food businesses. Maybe it was some kind of advertising gimmick. The foods it recommended weren’t always first on my favorites list, so perhaps a week of recommending this product or that for a small fee was how it worked.

  “No thanks. Not today. Just eggs and biscuits.”

  The box comes to life with whining servos as the print head zips toward the bottom plate. Steam pours out of the freshly deposited biscuit material as it builds the bottom buns of two sandwiches. Then the sausage, steamy and greasy, then the egg. Watching it in real time gives me a glimpse of the yellow yolks as they are constructed inside the more solid white circles. Just runny enough to be delicious without spilling over the crater of egg white they are dropped into. The crater is covered over with a sheet of bread and white mixed to give the illusion of a partially broken egg soaking upward into a sponge of biscuit.

  The machine beeps, and the print heads retract inside. I press down on the top bun of one of them, and slide it to the side to pry the lower bun free from the bottom plate without splattering the yolk. The cooker always heats them just enough to cause problems, like some crusted biscuit crumbs sticking to the plate for next three days. No self cleaning pieces. The landlord needs to upgrade.

  I turn back to the island while chewing. I’m tired of plain white walls. It’s time for a change. I’m not sure if graduation being so close has me hopeful about the future, or if perhaps this is the result of some subconscious doubt about wooing a girl into a plain apartment, but I can’t stand to look at bare walls for another day.

  Mondays always spur the urge for decorative adjustments. The monotony of repeating the same thing for another week wells up inside. I usually resist it, but not today. Something has changed.

  The news feed flickers for a moment. If fighting isn’t normal, then glitchy displays are impossible. Maybe that’s my sign that coloring the walls is a good idea.

  As I pull up the environmental settings, I think about the two men that were fighting. They weren’t acting rationally. They behaved like a couple of drones in our pseudo-society, filled with printed biscuits and tea on tap. There was something primal happening in their heads. Something real. Perhaps they were behaving the way that human beings should, and the rest of us are the crazy ones. Human beings weren’t built for all this catered coddling.

  I tap the little button that says THEMES, and scroll down the list. Most of the complicated ones carry a heavy price tag, but there is always some kind of special promotion happening. There it is: Shipwreck. The sample photo shows fish swimming about a deep blue backdrop with water-rippled sky lighting and steampunk accessories. But it’s still higher than what I’m willing to pay. Hard to justify on a student budget.

  Freebies it is.

  The menu changes, and the list fills with plain colors and design choices ranging from solids to stripes to pattern fills. The holographics can be accent plants or bits of useless furniture, like bookcases adorned with trinkets. I select Island Green, and my apartment is transformed. It’s a good day for green.

  The kitchen island loses its stainless steel and granite structure, converting itself into grainy bamboo, except for the black display, which remains smooth. The other counter tops and tables in the apartment shift as well, while the wall colors itself a creamy shade of lime. Light shines from behind me, and when I turn, there’s a window above the sink overlooking an ocean scene. There’s even sand dollars lying on the beach. Overhead, a solid white skylight appears.

  I pluck the other biscuit from the box, taking in the new view. All of these crappy free themes are overdone and unbelievable, but I suppose that my underwater fantasy world is as well. They seem to be missing a certain elegance that the premium themes carry. I stare out at the beach, chewing on sausage biscuit, and wondering if sand is really white as snow. The waves wash over it, disrupting the edge slightly before the grains smooth out again, and the cycle repeats.

  Sitting at the bar, chewing a biscuit, I think about the day ahead. Stocking day means my bots will be put through the wringer. I’ll spend most of my time watching lights turn from red to green.

  The walls flash twice, signaling that it’s time to start the migration downstairs. I stuff the rest of the biscuit down my food tube, and grab my smock. The neck piece flips over my head, and I tie the dangling straps while zipping through the door.

  Every so often, I’m lucky enough to spot Amanda in the hallway before work. Her schedule is more erratic than my own. Either she doesn’t have reminders set, or she’s good at ignoring them. Seeing her is always a good omen for the day, though I doubt she feels the same about seeing me. She probably doesn’t care. In either case, she’s standing there, lifting my spirits without saying a word.

  By the lift, she nods from her black tunic and form-fitting leggings that hug her skin, drawing my attention downward. Another primal human instinct, I suppose.

  “How goes it?” I start.

  “Crappy.” She stares at the closed door of the lift for a moment, before turning a blank stare my way. “How is your morning so far?”

  “Could be better, or worse. I saw one of my bots on the feed this morning.”

  “Great,” she says without inflection.

  “Something wrong?”

  “No.” She turns her attention to the lift. “Something is actually very right today. Unexpected. Different. But probably for the best.”

  The door opens, and I follow her into the empty cell. Her expression never changes: serious and focused. Part of
me hopes that she finally dropped that jerk boyfriend of hers. A selfish thought, but I can’t stop myself from wishing it. If she’s single again, then I might just have a chance, as long as I don’t blow it by waiting too long to ask her on a date.

  The lift drops fast, and opens on the ground floor.

  “Well,” I say. “I guess I’ll see you at school later?”

  “Sure.”

  She leaves for the café, and I’m alone, staring out at the busy level. This is where insiders mix it up with outsiders. The community section. Along the back wall are several shops, a gym, and some private offices, like my maintenance shack. To my right are walls of merchandise, filled by the small bubble-bots that I’m in charge of. They’re programed to run back and forth from the loading pallets, which are brought on the floor by larger forklift bots. Scanners rip through any aisles devoid of people, and relay signals back to the hub about any out of place merchandise. The bubble bots fix imperfections in the product displays, and ensure that each label is visible to the customer. Keeping them working together well is rather like conducting a symphony, each instrument contributing to the performance.

  Ground level is twice as tall as the other floors, and there is a second row of shops elevated along one wall, with an old fashioned staircase leading up. Mostly small businesses and boutiques that sell useless junk. Don might make a better living selling his teas there. The customers who shop in those places love doing everything the hard way.

  To my left, all the way across the building, is the huge back-lit wall showcasing a synthetic deception of peaceful serenity outside. I’ve only been out there a handful of times, and it looks more like a car dealership crossed with a loading dock. The temperature outside is never consistent, changing even when you move from shade to sunlight. I might tolerate the variances when I’m relaxing on the roof, but not at ground level.