Absence of Mind

by H. C. H. Ritz

  “Well, honey, you got me right before my bath time. These nurses are awful pushy around here about keeping to schedules.”

  “But they’re treating you okay? Mom?”

  “Oh, yes, honey, they’re perfectly nice. The food here is good, too. We had turkey casserole for dinner. With real turkey, not that soy nonsense. But I’ve got to go now. Call me tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sure, Mom.”

  The line is quiet again. Then the man returns. “Do you remember now why you want to do what we say and not interfere?”

  She clenches her jaw. “I understand.”

  After she hangs up, she goes directly back to Jamie’s room and begins hacking into the Navis of Richard Sarran and Julian Overbridge.

  I wake up to silence. I’m aching, exhausted, cotton-mouthed. The room is dark and quiet, but I hear breathing. I sit up slowly, groaning, and discern one sleeping body in a hospital bed and another on the floor under a blanket. Everything seems blurry, and I blink a couple of times, but it doesn’t help. I look for the clock in my display, and then I realize that it isn’t there, and neither is the icon on the right that’s supposed to show me my notifications when I activate it.

  < Wake up, Navi. >

  Nothing happens.

  I wait a breath.

  Nothing.

  I have that awful feeling of stepping forward only to fall down a step. Never in my life, not since I installed it, has my Navi failed to instantly respond.

  < Wake up, Navi. >

  I see nothing in my display except what my eyeballs show me. And it’s blurry. Why is everything blurry?

  My heart amps up its rhythm and rate, pounding in my ears. I want my Navi to answer me. I want my messages. I want to know what’s happening in the world. I want to know what time it is, what day it is. I’m cut off, alone, helpless.

  < Navi? >

  < Navi? >

  < Navi? >

  I’m hyperventilating now. I try to get up, and I nearly fall as my right arm collapses under me. I scramble and manage to stand and then nearly fall as my right leg gives way. I lean on the sofa bed. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

  No reprimand from my Navi.

  The body on the floor stirs and then rolls toward me. Mila’s face appears. “How are you doing?” Her voice is sleep-raspy.

  “My Navi’s off. It’s not working. You have to fix it. Can you fix it?” My voice sounds stupidly hysterical.

  Mila sits up and rubs her face. “Do you remember what happened yesterday?”

  “No—what? I feel like shit.”

  “You had a seizure brought on by your Navi. I disabled it.”

  My thoughts are a whirlwind. “Well, can you turn it back on?”

  Mila rubs her eyes. “Why?”

  “Why? Why? Because. Because my arm and leg aren’t working and I can’t see anything and I don’t even know what day it is.”

  Mila looks at my body and notices how I’m leaning precariously on the sofa bed. She stands up and comes to me. “It’s Thursday, early in the morning.” She helps me sit down again and crouches next to me. “What’s wrong with your vision?”

  “Nearsightedness. I’m nearsighted. I think. Or farsighted. Something like that. I don’t remember.” I’m babbling. “My Navi fixes it for me. Please, can you turn it back on?”

  Mila looks at me with concern on her face. “Listen to me, Phoebe. You had a grand mal seizure. Whoever is behind this thing, they hacked into your Navi, and they tried to kill you. It isn’t safe for you to have it on. I wouldn’t even have been able to turn it off if I hadn’t started looking at your Navi a couple of days ago because of those migraines.”

  “But I need it, Mila. I need my Navi.” I’m dimly aware that I’m in a full-blown panic attack, which is ridiculous, but this is my Navi we’re talking about. It’s my whole world. What am I supposed to do without it?

  “No, you don’t need it.” Her voice is firm.

  I try and fail to take deeper breaths.

  “What’s wrong with your legs?” Mila asks. “Why can’t you stand up properly?”

  She moves out of the way as I test out various muscles and relay what I discover. The evaluation process calms me down as I shift into nurse mode. “My right arm is weak, and so is my right leg. They don’t hurt. I can move them, they’re just weak. So, right-side focal weakness.” I take a deep breath. “Common side effect of grand mal seizures. It should pass in a few days. How long did it last? Did I stop breathing?”

  “Almost five minutes. No, your breathing was fine.”

  I can’t get used to the fact that there’s nothing to look at it besides what’s right in front of me. And there are no messages coming through.

  < Navi, message my Collective: Is anybody there? >

  Nothing happens.

  I’m alone in my head.

  I hate it.

  “Mila, please bring it back. Please. I need it. Can’t you turn off the dangerous part?”

  Mila looks away and sighs.

  I wait with bated breath in the uncanny silence and stillness, staring miserably at a world that won’t come into focus for me.

  She sits down next to me. “I can try to disable the nanobots themselves and nothing else. And add some extra security.” Her voice is distant. “It will take me a couple of hours at least.”

  “Please,” I beg. “If nothing else, I need to be able to see. I can’t see anything.” I hold up a hand in front of my face. I can’t even see to arm’s length. “I can hardly see you,” I start to say as I turn toward her, and then all that I’m aware of is that I can see her perfectly, every millimeter of her beautiful face, because she’s so near to me. As my gaze drops to her lips, I realize I could kiss her.

  For these precious instants, there’s nothing to distract me from taking in her loveliness. The curved lips, the long, delicate line of her nose. The perfectly pale skin, the faint beauty mark to the outside of her left eyebrow that I’d never noticed before. The long blonde lashes, the ice-blue eyes—so imperious as they regard me.

  My breath stops as I make full eye contact with Mila. It’s like an electrical shock passing through me down into the bottom of my stomach.

  Mila is leaning toward me ever so slightly, almost as if that kiss were imminent. She glances down to my lips. I can feel the warmth of her body heat. My stomach flutters again.

  Then she pulls away and stands up. “I’ll try,” she declares as she goes to her customary chair and picks up her laptop. The beautiful details fade into the blur, and I blink to bring them back, but they don’t come.

  I decide that I’m suffering from temporary insanity. What’s happened to my brother, the seizure, waking up without a Navi—these things could drive anyone around the bend. I don’t have the energy to think any further about it.

  I sit and look around the blur for a few minutes, but too quickly, I can’t bear it anymore. The quiet is broken only by occasional small sounds—the air conditioning turning off, footsteps in the hall outside, Jamie shifting in his bed, Mila typing. Nothing moves in my visual field.

  “How can you stand to live like this?” I ask Mila.

  She gives me a withering look over the top of her laptop screen.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t think about that before I said it. But this is so boring.”

  My hands wring themselves in my lap. I have messages that I can’t get to, I know. They could be important. I’m missing everything.

  “Can you at least tell me the news? I haven’t read anything since… I guess since yesterday sometime.”

  “Okay.” Mila clicks around on her laptop. “England’s sanctions against China have been declared a failure. The bombing in Gaza continues, with ten thousand Palestinians and two thousand Israelis estimated dead. The US has confirmed Monday’s rumors of another twenty thousand American troops going to reinforce Israel. The likelihood of another ice age descending within the next fifty years has doubled, and—”

  “Whoa, whoa. What kind of news are yo
u reading? I haven’t heard anything about any of that.”

  Mila looks at me blankly. “This is the BBC World News.”

  I stare, my mind trying to make sense of things. “Why wouldn’t I have heard about twenty thousand troops going to the Gaza Strip?”

  Mila sighs. “Bubble dweller.” It sounds patronizing.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Mila lowers her laptop lid. “I don’t have time to go into this, because I’m bit busy trying to make sure you don’t get killed the next time we turn on your Navi. But the short answer is that anyone who uses a Navi lives in an information bubble where your past choices dictate what you are informed about. Haven’t you ever told your Navi to stop telling you certain things?”

  Of course I have. I’ve told it lots of things. A couple of weeks ago, I told my Navi to stop telling me sad animal stories.

  I look at the floor.

  “It remembers everything you’ve ever told it, and it’s always watching, noticing what kinds of messages you stop reading after a few words versus what kinds of messages you respond to. And other factors. Now, you should go back to sleep. Then you won’t be distressed about missing your Navi.” She opens her laptop again.

  There’s an entire war going on that I didn’t even know about. I wonder what else I don’t know.

  For the first time in my life, it occurs to me that it was foolish to decide that there were things I didn’t want to know.

  But I’m too tired. Too tired to deal with any of this. I lay back on the sofa bed with a muffled groan.

  “You don’t need me to be awake to keep working on my Navi?”

  She shakes her head while still looking at her code.

  I heave a sigh and try to go to sleep. At least when I’m trying to sleep, my Navi is supposed to leave me alone. For the moment, I can pretend it isn’t gone.

  When I open my eyes again to the sunlight coming in through the drapes, my world is clear, and my clock rests peacefully in the top right corner of my vision. I close my eyes and breathe a sigh of relief. I’d never dreamed how much I would miss my Navi.

  I stretch and find that my right side is still weak. I try not to worry about it. It’ll get better.

  < Read me my messages, Navi. >

  Obediently, it starts going through my backlog one at a time. I don’t even care that there are a hundred and eight of them. I’ll happily listen and respond all morning long.

  As I go through my messages, I get up and step over Mila’s sleeping body on the floor with a pang of guilt. She probably stayed up all night fixing my Navi. And I should have given her a turn on the foldout bed. I daydream about offering her a back rub as I go downstairs to the cafeteria and get us all breakfast burritos. I’ve learned that Mila likes hers plain with egg and potato.

  On my way up, about half my messages handled, I turn the corner to our hallway and run right into two men in black suits. They catch me and hold me upright.

  “Sorry,” I stammer.

  << Agent Paulen: Phoebe Bernhart, this is the FBI. You are under arrest for cybercrimes. You need to come with us, please. >>

  Nine

  They haven’t let go of me, though I try to pull away.

  A message flashes in my emergency notification panel.

  !!! You are being held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. !!!

  !!! Your cooperation is required. !!!

  “What the hell? We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Handcuffs are going over my wrists, snapping closed. I can’t stop it.

  Between the two of them, I catch movement. Two more men have Mila by the arms and are walking her down the hallway. There’s a sea of dark suits back there.

  “Mila!”

  She doesn’t say anything.

  I message my Collective.

  < You guys, holy crap, FBI! We’re getting taken away by the FBI! >

  !!! You have the right to remain silent. !!!

  !!! Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. !!!

  One of the men frowns at me.

  << Paulen: What’s wrong with your Navi? >>

  < Screw you! Let go of me! >

  I try to wrestle free, but I can’t.

  << Shannon: Whoa, what? FBI? What???? >>

  << Erik: Like, what did you do?? >>

  << Katie: Who’s ‘we’? >>

  They walk Mila up near me, but she doesn’t even meet my gaze.

  << Chris: Do you need help? Not that I could do anything… >>

  “What’s wrong with her Navi?” one of them demands of Mila.

  << Alyssa: It’s happening right now? Like, right now, right now? >>

  Mila raises one side of her mouth in a half-smile. “Oh, that. Sorry. I have some custom programming in place. Would you like me to help you with that?”

  << Robert: Ask for an attorney. Say out loud that you’re exercising your right to remain silent. >>

  Paulen snorts. “Not if we can help it. Try again, Phillips.”

  Frightened nurses’ faces peek around the corner down the hall.

  < ‘We’ is me and Mila. Mila Bremer, since none of you know her. >

  “Help us!” I shout to them. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  The faces disappear.

  I finally process what Robert said.

  “I want an attorney,” I say breathlessly. “And I’m exercising my right to remain silent.”

  The agent replies nastily, “Then remain silent. Or we’ll consider you to have waived that right.”

  I close my mouth.

  !!! You have the right to an attorney and to have your attorney present during questioning. !!!

  Frustration is palpable in the room. Apparently, things aren’t working out for the agents.

  “Okay, shut down her Navi,” the other agent growls at Mila. “Now!”

  !!! If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you. !!!

  < You guys, they’re saying we can have an attorney. I don’t have an attorney. I don’t know if Mila has one. Someone please call one for us? >

  “I can’t do that without my laptop,” Mila says. “And my hands.”

  “Yeah, right,” Paulen says. “Like we’re going to give the hacker her computer back.”

  The men look at each other.

  Aziz to other agents:

  << Then what are we going to do? Look, Bernhart has had at least two minutes of unhampered communication and net access already. It’ll take a couple of hours to get her to the station and get someone else to hack in and solve it. Can we afford to let Bernhart do whatever she wants in the meantime? >>

  Phillips to other agents:

  << Is it better or worse to let the actual hacker have full access to her own machine for several minutes? >>

  Robert to Phoebe:

  << What are you under arrest for? >>

  Phoebe to Collective:

  << Cybercrimes. I have no idea what they’re talking about. And now I can’t even ask because I said I was staying silent. >>

  Paulen to the other agents:

  << Let’s get Bernhart shut down. But we’re watching her like a hawk. Phillips, bring Bremer’s laptop. >>

  Two of the men push the women into an unoccupied room, put Mila in a chair, bring over her laptop, and uncuff her. Mila stretches, rubs her eyes, and then begins to type in a flurry.

  Phoebe to Mrs. Jones:

  << I know I’m supposed to take Tobi tonight, but something has come up. I’m not sure when I’ll be home again. Can you keep him for a few days?? >>

  "So, what settings do you want?" Mila asks, her voice exhausted.

  "Shut down all communications," Paulen says. "Keep it simple. And keep in mind that we are authorized to prevent your Navi communications from the moment of arrest. So neither of you is to communicate anything to anyone from this point forward."

  Phoebe to Collective:

  << Um, guys… they‘re telling us we’re not allowed to talk via Navi… >><
br />
  Phillips to Paulen:

  << We can‘t make Bernhart comply with that, you know. We can‘t even tell if she‘s doing it. I’ve never seen a Navi locked down like hers is. >>

  Paulen to Phillips:

  << I know that. But they don’t know that. >>

  Mila types furiously, getting access to Phoebe‘s Navi. In lieu of her normal software, she‘s working by command line, keeping text flying by.

  Paulen to Phillips:

  << Watch Bremer and make sure she isn‘t doing anything she shouldn‘t. >>

  Chris to Phoebe:

  << Then you probably better not talk. They can review your Navi records later, you know. Go dark, and we‘ll get you guys a lawyer. >>

  Phoebe to Collective:

  << Okay, I will. Thank you so much, Chris. God, I hope I‘m not going to jail. >>

  Mila looks at the agents out of the corner of her eye and says, "This is going to take a while. You might as well get comfortable. Get some coffee."

  Reuben to other agents:

  << Great. Love it when things go smoothly. >>