“There is nothing oppressive about the Circuit,” argued Kyle. “They keep us safe by tracking all those people who desire to do us harm. The technological advancements under the cloud have been nothing less than transformative, and I’ll remind you that without them our race might not have survived at all.”
“That’s what they want you to believe, isn’t it?” said Paddy. “They feed you lies and fear, even when you’re asleep. Not me, I sleep naturally, no cloud, no Circuit and no clothes.”
Tyra stuck her fingers in her ears and rushed out of the room.
“When was the last time you heard a report of a crime being perpetrated, Paddy?”
Paddy folded his arms and stared over a shoulder.
“Or a war. There hasn’t been one of those for a while, has there? It’s all thanks to the Circuit. You’re just living in the past and can’t find anything worth moaning about anymore.”
Jake listened intently but found it hard to completely agree with either of them. His dad was right about illegality, there was almost none these days, but some niggling doubt in Jake’s brain had always felt it was too perfect to be genuine, and his flashbacks proved that it wasn’t. Now the horrors in his letter added to his doubts.
“What else does it say, Jake?” asked Deborah who always camped somewhere between her husband and father in her world views.
“I’ve been enrolled in a variety of clubs and societies for activities I’ve never previously shown any interest in. BASE jumping, quilting classes and chess club, whatever that is. Oh, and I’ve been signed up for Alcoholics Anonymous.”
“You’re not old enough to drink,” said Deborah sternly.
“It’s dated twenty fifty-nine so the Circuit are obviously predicting I soon will be, and quite heavily. After today I’m considering starting early to be honest.”
All in all, the letter was a worst-case scenario. There was nothing in it to offer hope. It was as if his letter had been mixed up with someone else’s. Maybe there was another Jake Montana in the West equally confused right now. The Circuit didn’t make mistakes of this magnitude, everyone believed that to be true, but this had to be one. None of his desires and wishes had been factored in, and to top it all off there was one final gargantuan kick in the teeth at the end of the letter. He knew before he’d opened it that he would lose Christie, but he never imagined he’d lose himself at the same time.
“And I’m superfluous,” announced Jake, a tear rolling down his face.
The room fell silent.
No one checked their clouds for confirmation of what it meant, they all knew. The Montana family gazed nervously at each other, struggling to make eye contact with him. Not even the returning Tyra thought it was funny. What did you say to someone who was superfluous? It was like reacting to a patient with a terminal illness. Kyle finally broke the silence after his wife jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.
“It’s not the end of the world.”
“Yes, it is. How many of your friends are superfluous?”
“Well, none.”
“There you go, then,” whined Jake.
“They’re not to be trusted,” said Paddy, expertly mimicking Kyle’s voice.
“I never said that!”
“You always say that, Dad,” replied Jake. “You’ve been saying it since I was a little kid. Well, now you do know one. Me!”
“I really don’t understand this,” said Deborah. “How can you be superfluous if your new bride is necessary? The Circuit usually put people with the same importance factor together. You just can’t achieve a harmonious relationship if you’re occupying different levels. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
“I think the Circuit’s rules are the least of my worries right now, Mum. In the space of thirty minutes I’ve lost my girlfriend, my home, my life and my hope. All because of someone called Alison.”
“Alison?” said Tyra.
“Yes. That’s who signed my letter. Principal Conductor of the Circuit, Alison.”
- Chapter 5 -
Calm Before the Storm
Jake ran up the escalator before reversing its direction, making his escape to solitude somewhat slower than anticipated. His bedroom door swung open unaided, as it always did, and closed gently before he had the opportunity to slam it and dissipate his anger. He slumped down on his bed and closed his eyes. The virtual world washed across the insides of his eyelids, released from its competition with the physical world.
A torrent of birthday messages flashed through his feed. Most were from people he liked; some were from people he barely remembered. He swiped them away like an invisible hand threatening an irritating fly. As soon as the virtual space was cleansed of family and friends, a barrage of Ascension Eve-related corporate leeches invaded his privacy. Everyone from major chess manufacturers to Swedish quilting groups to travel insurers knew the contents of his letter and wasted no time in trying to profiteer from his misery. It was easy enough to switch them off if you were proficient with the cloud, but they’d never disappear completely.
They always found new and innovative ways of infiltrating your thoughts. Sometimes they’d wait for you to access an old memory before surreptitiously placing a sneaky product placement amongst the scenery. It might be on an advertising hoarding in the background, or a passer-by might be holding or wearing the product. On some occasions they’d even hack a historic conversation you remembered and sneakily place a reference to their business within the dialogue. The answer to why they went to such lengths was simple. It generally worked. But not today.
What Jake needed right now was clarity.
Something had gone horribly wrong and he wanted answers.
He’d always feared losing Christie, even though he knew it was inevitable. His plan had been to fight for that love. To find a way to continue seeing her even after the revelations in the letter. Those thoughts had betrayed him, even though he did his best to keep them out of his mind. Writing them down wouldn’t help either, even if paper was still widely available. When you wrote you thought, and when you thought they were aware of it. Their letter was punishment for attempting to cheat the system. The Circuit had him in a headlock but at least now he had an individual rather than a system to aim his anger at.
Alison.
Why had he never seen or heard that name before? He scanned back through his strongest memories associated with the Circuit to find any reference to her, however insignificant. There were none. Not a sniff. Until today the Circuit had been a supreme faceless power that acted as one collective entity. There was no reference to person or persons that might be responsible for the decisions they made. The Memory Cloud itself made the decisions, even for the Circuit.
A proximity alert sounded, and he opened his eyes. It was still there. A salmon pink virtual frame, containing a name and a distance, floated in the middle of his bedroom. Proximity alerts indicated the physical position of the people you chose to track. His parents had them for him and his sister, but he only had one. Christie. The locator showed her approaching his front door.
How was he meant to deal with this? Today hadn’t just decimated his future, it destroyed hers, too.