by Jay Vogel
thought data files in a database as .ctx files, start jobs that would interface with the Kalos neuroGrabbers, and we could see the visualization of the wave and run some kind of algorithm to extract its contents. It was a cool engineering tool, but soon it became the new method of social media, and since this way of navigating the Kalos was too difficult especially as the number of people connecting to it rose, a simpler way was developed and the result was the Human-Kalos Interface.
All I had to do was be alive and I was connected to the servers. The HKI was such a simple way to allow anyone to link up and access an entire repository containing millions of thoughts and memories and ideas and knowledge and personalities that belonged to every person in the entire world, with all the right tools that were easy to use to find exactly what you were looking for in seconds. I remember my first time logging in with my KID and establishing my profile. It felt like my body was stretched out into infinity and then subsequently unraveled like threads, each one containing a piece of my identity – my personality, my appearance, my emotions, my memories, each one all as I perceive it (or want it to be perceived). Each of these fibers woven together with the unique fibers that belonged to the others connected as well, forming what we saw to be a massive stream in space of knowledge and histories tied together in some places and separated in others. Everybody linked up. Everybody knew each other. Everybody knew what everyone else knew about everything. Nobody was alone. We all became so efficient at using the Kalos that we practically lived in that damn network, instantly finding the information we needed only to dispose of it when its purpose of acquisition was served, instantly contacting people, initiating friendships and ending others, referring users to other users referring users to other users. Building a franchise of connections which in effect energized these fibers, energizing these threads as we became more known and acquired more friendships and appreciation.
These strands, these fibers, they became known as our auras, and soon they began to glow when we achieved a higher status. When we gained many friendships and connections. When we received acclaim for our presence and our insight and our comments on the world. When we looked beautiful, when we showed that we had found happiness in doing something or in being with someone. When we had reached success, the auras glowed a beautiful bright pink and red and orange color, and was loved even more by the ones who fueled the auras to become such a color.
I stood in a coffee shop one day behind a girl I found attractive. She turned to look behind her just long enough that I could get a mental snapshot of her face which was uploaded to the Kalos via my HKI, where I then matched it against every strand, finding out who this girl was before she even ordered her meal. Deborah. I saw the world through her eyes when she was five years younger, studying in a college just outside the city of Burlina, working as a bartender on weekends with her friend Sandy. Shaking hands with a professor as she walked across the stage at graduation, and landing a job as a hairstylist in the salon down the street from this very establishment.
Initiate contact via instant K-messaging. Do not hide my profile. KID visible. She turned around and smiled at me at that moment. I K-IMed her, telling her I liked her hair and where she got it done. She said she did it herself and I responded telling her it was unbelievable. After that encounter we stayed in contact over the Kalos for a while and my aura grew a bit pinker thanks to her. There was not even a need to speak in the physical world. Everything we thought was transmitted. Conversations were over in less than a minute, yet thousands of bits of information were transferred.
At night in my apartment I would be by myself, but in the Kalos, I would delve deep into the social jungle, exploring its deepest caves, finding its most interesting inhabitants, and avoiding the dangerous shapeshifters who learned how to cheat the system and upload false representations of themselves. Feeling loved and appreciated even though I was doing nothing more than making a few electrons move around quickly on a circuit board in a giant server room somewhere out on the ocean. But the way we made those electrons move affected the colors of our auras, and that was what mattered most. The pinkest aura was what everyone sought, and the grayest aura, the color of loneliness and isolation and repulsion, was the most feared.
The last thing I remember is that my aura had turned a bright gold before I feel asleep that night one year ago. The next morning, I had a burning headache, and then, I was no longer connected to the Kalos. No longer linked to anyone else on the planet at all. Completely alone.
And yet...
I tried for months to reconnect. When the Kalos service failed me, I would sit in my apartment trying on my computer, attempting to ping the device in my head, but repeatedly the process timed out before anything happened. Hopeless. Meditations came next. Out of desperation, I concentrated, hoping to reach that login screen, or rather the login astral plane as it had felt to me. Nothing.
No longer any way to speak to anyone. No longer any way for them to know me or appreciate me or make me feel worth at all.
No longer linked to anyone.
Completely alone.
And yet, I wasn't. It felt like a dream I was constantly trying to remember but kept disappearing with every passing second. Almost nine months after my severance from the Kalos, I somehow managed to reconnect, albeit only for an instant, and only with one person. A girl about age three. Her name was Saura. She was playing with these really old dolls that were popular when I was a kid. I remember my younger sister always playing with them. So I had a breakthrough, and it felt fantastic to be linked up once again, even if it was just a single person who meant very little to me, this had meant progress.
That login plane never showed up. The password verification was bypassed somehow. The feeling was different than the unmistakable sensation of my body dissolving into its auras. The only thing I felt was warmth in my chest. My heart would beat faster and my hands would begin to shake. And every time I seemingly connected, it would always be this same girl, each time, however, she was a little bit older.
Now, she was about seven, getting on a bus to go to school. There were no more school buses these days. There were no more primary schools except the instructional sessions to learn about the Kalos and Auranatomy. Schools discontinued shortly after the HKI took off. So, then, how could I have seen this girl, Saura, at three years old? There is no possible way she could have had the HKI at that point for me to access. Perhaps it was just a memory leak, or an error in the filtering. Still, it was weird that I was never required to log in.
She was twelve now. Saura. Singing karaoke with a bunch of friends at a birthday party. I could feel the handle of the microphone. My vocal chords vibrated with hers as she belted out lyrics to “It's My Life” by some old rock band. This was a much deeper level of entwinement that I did not know the HKI was capable of. Perhaps things had changed since my time away from it. The operators had no answers for my issues when I called to tell them to say that I could only link with one person and that my security was in question as I was not required to offer my password. I received no answer.
Sixteen. I see the moon through a large window, and sitting on the bed, Saura has her head in between her legs, tears dripping down from her cheek onto a picture of an older man that I somehow just know is her father as if I had met the man numerous times before. Something happened to him, and he was not going to be in her life any longer. This man in the picture and I had never crossed paths and yet I felt my own eyes begin to fill with water, my heart forcefully tugged and strangled. An emptiness forming in my own life just like the void now formed in this girl's.
In all my years connected to the Kalos, I never once felt the emotions of the ones I connected with. I never once felt as if the trauma of another was my own. I never once set foot onto the same plane as one who was suffering via the Kalos.
Saura was eighteen. Fear and panic suddenly petrified my muscles as I looked through her eyes only to see a large, semi-trailer truck driving straight toward me, blinding headli
ghts and horn blaring as Saura spun the wheel of the small sedan she was learning how to drive to avoid death. I could barely catch my breath after that. My hands clenching the invisible steering wheel in front of me. I was actually there. The Kalos had seriously upped the realism of these memory mp4s. They somehow managed to embed emotions and physical reactions within their database.
Twenty-two. Her hair is pink, now. She has a tattoo on her arm. Some kind of floral pattern. I can feel the needle as if it was pressed against my own arm. I even feel the pain. The anxiety. The fear of my parents finding out. Her parents. Her mother. Not mine. Hers.
Things were getting confusing. Time for a sanity check. I knew that everyone with an HKI had the HelloWorld .ctx file associated with their name. The file automatically generated when the user first installs the HKI software, containing the memory of its activation. It was the simplest file to find. Everyone had one. Everyone except Saura, whose file would have been dated with whatever year she was three years old as
