a story by Warren Szewczyk

A scream illuminates the dark. It blooms, a harsh echo reverberating through my being. A sharp stiletto stabbing. Aching. Playing painful notes along the fibrous synaptix crisscrossing my conscious soul.

String theory. Being theory. Bring mama to sleep theory.

Darkness wells up. The scream becomes a shriek, notes now piercing.

Noooo, it sings.

No, I know.

* * *

Laemmle rested on the precipice of sleep, his first in weeks, as the beat fluttered into his mind. Quiet and distant at first, the notes grew louder as they bounced through him. To say he was “hearing” them wouldn’t be right. No sound waves vibrated the fluids of his inner ear to stimulate neural activity eventually perceived as sound. Rather, the song – the neural activity – was manufactured by a vast array of carbon and silicon nanofibers networked through his brain. His nanonet.

A tune he hadn’t heard in years, one his wife sang, long ago. Why had the music system’s algorithm chosen it?

Awakening, he sensed his body lying in the dark. The singer’s melodic voice echoed through his skull.

The music was a pingtone, alerting him that a nanonet stream wished to connect. It was an address he didn’t recognize. Downtown. A telemarketer? They had been outlawed not long after the emergence of nanonets. But you couldn’t write off trolls wreaking havoc from beneath their bridges.

He muted the vocals to let the beat rock his consciousness back toward sleep’s abyss—

HE WAS AWAKE.

He’d been pinged again, this time with an emergency-label, immediately activating the dopaminergic neural circuits responsible for keeping him awake. Fucking trolls.

He connected to the nanonet stream.

Who the hell is—

Mr Crawford. The voice resonated in his brain, deep and full. I’m sorry if I woke you. This is Joaquin Gutierrez. I’m a nurse at USC Medicine.

Laemmle sat up, the soft darkness of his apartment enveloping him. In the ensuing silence, he tried to process whether the entity speaking into his brain was real or not.

This is Laemmle Crawford, correct? His tone was serious, held heavy by a full-throated gravitas. If this were a troll or callbot, it had impressive vocal composition software built in.

This is him.

Mr Crawford, I require your physical presence at the USC Medical Center in Downtown Los Angeles. We believe we have your son, Braxton.

A spike of energy jarred Laemmle – shooting anxiety, buttressed by an undercurrent of quiet terror, mixed with a floating comet of exhilaration. His spirit soared toward the moon, past it, his heart a caroming satellite miner headed for the outer reaches of the Sun’s gravity.

My… My son? You found Braxton? I— I had lost hope. Where did you find him? How did you find him?

I know you have a lot of questions, Mr Crawford. What’s most important is that you see your son. Come to our DOC ward – the psychiatrist will meet you there. Just set your auto to the main parking structure. The valet bots will get you to the right place.

I’m in Apple Valley – it’s 90 miles so… give me at least 40 minutes.

Of course. Please do come as soon as possible. We can’t guarantee how much longer Braxton will be with us.

Laemmle’s satellite heart plummeted.

The telemetry software gave a sharp beep to alert him the stream had been terminated.

* * *

Hands sandwiched over his eyes, Laemmle reclined as far as possible in the cramped interior of his auto. It still roiled his stomach to hit 120 on the downslope of an on-ramp, no matter how seamlessly the machine threaded its way into a sea of a hundred thousand other autonomous vehicles hurtling in top speed synchrony.

So much trust involved – of uninterrupted data transfer between vehicles, of the individual autos’ algorithms to avoid collision, of the security systems preventing viral attacks. Despite auto software being “rigorously” tested by bots at the California Department of Transportation, Laemmle always harbored concerns. Bureaucracies so big were bound to have cracks.

Speed leveling off, Laemmle’s stomach settled, at least from the physical sensation of such acceleration. His body still churned from the thought of his son…

They had found Braxton. After months of pinging his nanonet, receiving error messages in return. Months of watching the government’s simulated sunrise on the heels of another sleepless night, no sleep protocol in the world powerful enough to lull his agitated brain to rest. That same brain reeled now, picturing his son lying in the hospital in desperate need of the care only a father could provide.

Laemmle wondered if they had caught the wicked bastard who had made away with Braxton like a piece of property.

But the nurse had mentioned the “DOC” ward – what did that mean? What had the abductors done to his poor son?

With a directed thought, Laemmle Googled DOC ward USC Med. The browser interface filled his narrow windshield, obscuring the view of the city rising around him – a lonely corridor of the Southern California megapolis that originated in downtown LA and spanned two hundred miles in every direction. A monolith of human existence, withstanding war, drought, flood, earthquake – and never faltering.

Laemmle turned his attention to the search results.

Disorders of Consciousness | USC Medicine was the top result, followed by:

Disorders of Consciousness | Wiki

Dream Deferred in USC’s New “Disorders of Consciousness” Unit | LA Buzz

disorders of consciousness: what to know | med/hed

Selecting the med/hed link, Laemmle’s windshield transitioned to a new page, bright and flashing:

VEB’S INSTANTLY – VIRTUAL ESCORT BOTS – FULL NANONET INTEGRATION

NO IDENTIFICATION PROTOCOL REQUIRED – JOIN FREE NOW

Goddamn pop-ups. At least they weren’t allowed to hijack auditory inputs like before. Damn, was it scary to have a second-rate vocal bot disrupt a peaceful drive, imploring you to buy a virtual blow job. Med/hed knew better than to sell their ad space to these companies, but the VEB market was astronomical. Someone dropped a pretty penny to interrupt Laemmle’s anxiety with a solicitation.

Laemmle commanded the pop-up to close. It continued to flash, lighting up the interior of his auto with blue-white computer glow. The system rejected him, refusing to close the ad.

Close you little shit. He was too tired for this. Close close CLOSE! he demanded, anger ringing through his head.

There was a silent explosion of light within the vehicle, temporarily blinding him, burning his eyes. Vision recuperating, he saw he was no longer alone. A curvy black woman – clothed in a high arcing G-string, barely-there bra covering her nipples – kneeled in his passenger seat. She was strangely familiar to him. The way those loose curls draped over her defined collarbone. And her eyes…

She leaned in and laid a hand on his crotch, beginning to probe, uncanny eyes piercing his, rubbing warmly, a little play, a little fun, he hadn’t been touched like that since—

PURCHASE YOUR VEB TODAY – YOU HAVE 33.8 MINUTES LEFT ON THIS TRIP – PERFECT TIME FOR A VIRTUAL ESCORT BOT, ONLY $29.53 FOR THIS TRIP

God damn it. Some illegal little shit ad – his firewall must need an update. Wasn’t it supposed to take care of that itself?

Now frozen, the intoxicating VEB sustained eye contact, hand still “on” his groin. But the feeling of her hand had gone away since the program was no longer inputting sensory information to his nanonet.

Physical distraction absent, it hit him. They were Capella’s eyes.

A swell of agony and anger rose inside him – he shuttered it, refusing to let his mind settle on her memory.

Instead, he force-closed the internet browser connexion. The seductress vanished, and the heavy white noise of a hundred thousand humming electric motors surrounded Laemmle.

Rest. He needed it before seeing Braxton and the psychiatrist, so he initiated a quiet, unstimulating nap. 33 minutes exactly.

Original image found on brainblogger.com

Thanks for reading -- Part 2 coming soon!