The Super

Friday, October 17, 2008

Fiction

    A nondescript man appears at Jim's door. He is a negative image against the grey gloom of early evening, dark mottled clothing, blurred profile, blue-shadowed expression on his face. He hands Jim a unmarked plastic box archaically wrapped in wrinkled brown duct tape. Arching his eyebrow, he pronounces asthmatically, “I've got a little piece of humanity here addressed to the Superintendent.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Jim says. “C'mon in. Don't have to drop hints about the Human Underground around here. We're all real live people.”
    “All right,” the man clears his throat. “I take it for granted, then, that you're not casting.”
    “Nope. My life is way too boring to share with the world. What would the cyborgs think of me, living without Virtual Vision or a head feed, fixing things with my hands for Bog's sake! They'd puke!” He leads the way to the cabinetry at the far wall. “Want a drink, um...?”
    “Türkü,” says the guest, slowly dragging his floppy grey hat from his head. “Got Akvakit? If not, bourbon will do.”
    “Huh, I meant, like, a soda or something,” Jim mumbles. “Hold on, I think I've got some vodka.” He picks up a glass, tries to subtly wipe out the dust with his forefinger, then pours in a couple of fingers.
    Trying not to look extremely disappointed, Türkü half-smiles and takes the glass, glancing sideways at its contents. He grunts and sits on the arm of a battle scarred pleather lounger, not bringing the glass anywhere near his face.
    “Even among hard-core HUs, most of them got a VV set, just so they can mock the latest mind-control bulletins,” Türkü ventures. “You're the only one I know who don't watch at all.”
    Jim nods. “I'm a real freak. I gotta medical problem. Every time I watch, I get seizures. Bad ones. Gotta be in bed for a coupla days afterwards, getting my legs back.”
    “Any kind of vid?”
    “Pretty much. Back when I was a kid, little handheld screens didn't bother me, but now even those make me kinda shaky.”
    “Well, it's a lucky thing. You could be the only guy left with an unwarped mind. No chips in your head, no wires?”
    “Nope. That's why I work with my hands. Unless you're wired to the Web, that's all you can do anymore. Most folks can't even talk to me, without v-mail. I gotta phone,” he snorts, jerking his thumb at a dusty antique in the corner, “but there's nobody to call. The cyborgs only use telepresence to talk, even if they're in the same room.”
    “Yup,” Türkü says, “I use VV. Hours every day. Can't work otherwise. Can't reach anyone. I know it's screwing up my mind.” He takes a tenative sniff of the glass, then a swallow. “But that's why I'm with HU. Those who don't want to spend their lives wired to machines can carve off a piece of the world. Live using our own eyes and muscles, not as brains in useless bodies. We can change things, or at least make it possible to live the way we were meant to.”
    “Oh, it's possible all right,” Jim drawls. “I already live that way.”
    “I envy you,” Türkü smirks, taking another drink and setting down the glass.
    Jim runs his eyes around the disarray of his living room and low-tech laboratory, the walls and furniture covered with dirty tools, faded books and magazines, dog hair, little notes to himself. Scratched hydrocarbon windows are arrayed along the exterior walls, where every one of his tenants has wraparound floor-to-ceiling displays. His view is of tangles of optical cables spread across dingy brick walls like black leafless vines, the neighboring building's green plastic rooftop hydro tank, beyond that a yellow-hazed hint of the urban horizon, a fractal edge of blocks, towers, antennae, dishes, cables. “Don't. I live like a monk. I'm not part of the modern world. I'm a pre-web caveman. The only reason I get by is that my dad left me this apartment building. I collect the rent, fix things, stay busy. You know most places have automated maintenance now? If I didn't have this place, I'd be useless. Who'd hire a super who needs to sleep at night, who could talk back, get sick, make mistakes? I'm not just unplugged from the world, I'm on a whole different planet. My tenants, some of them, they've been living here for years, plugged into VV all day, all night. I live in the same building and I only know they're alive because the rent gets paid, food goes in and sewage comes out.”