Jake did his best to hide his flashbacks from the army of Memory Hunters that monitored the cloud for abnormalities and bugs. Maybe they already knew? After all, when everything was recorded, almost nothing could be hidden. Maybe that was the real reason he’d been prescribed so many upgrades over the last seventeen years? Maybe they were trying to stop the flashbacks rather than the headaches? But for whose benefit? His or theirs? Today, mercifully, he was pain-free and channelled both the visual and virtual worlds to help him focus on what would happen next.
Outside the window the drone had reacted to an internal sense of annoyance at being left to wait, and its metal shell had turned a light shade of pink. Nothing for it, thought Jake, time to face the music.
He lumbered out of his bedroom to the first-floor landing, having hurriedly thrown on the first T-shirt he could lay his hands on and a pair of ripped shorts. The sound of the escalator, clicking perpetually as each step fell monotonously away from the top before being replaced by the next, was just part of a familiar soundtrack. Jake sucked in a breath of anticipation and looked nostalgically around at his surroundings. This was the only home he’d ever known. The only house he’d ever lived in. Today was the penultimate day he’d wake up here. Down both sides of the landing a series of videographs played out a comforting procession of Montana family outings or notable personal achievements. They changed daily to reflect the mood of the viewer, an instruction direct from their cloud. Today they were sombre and one in particular caught his eye.
A six-year-old Jake was experimenting in the backyard with his brand-new physics bike. They were all the rage back in the early twenty-thirties. It was designed to help teach children to cycle without the fear of falling. Four canisters, either side of each wheel, instinctively adjusted the stability of the bike by discharging jets of high pressurised air that eliminated the chance the child fell off. Looking back now, it seemed a pointless contraption given how bikes were no longer in use outside of history lessons. As he remembered it, and as the videograph confirmed moments later, Jake had disappointed the marketeers of the product by careering head first over the top of the handlebars. Face struck concrete at force, dislodging a front tooth in the process, before his mother dashed to his aid, shrieking with worry. Jake instinctively stuck his finger in his mouth and ran it over that day’s enamel victim. Today it looked and felt much like its white siblings, perfectly replaced on his gums by the wonders of modern dental reconstruction. It wasn’t the only time he’d had work done on his appearance, but it had been the first.
Many of Jake’s physical features had been improved down the years. His wavy, blond hair was only partially original having been enhanced to avoid the genetic weakness of the Montana family’s receding hairlines. His lips, nose and chin had all been sculpted to remove minor inconsistencies or injury. Only the sparkling blue of his irises was authentic but that was only because eye surgery was outlawed in case it disrupted the signal of the chip in the nerve behind it.
Everyone invested in enhancements, at least here in the West. Money was no barrier to improving how you appeared in the visual world. In any one of the dozen walk-in clinics within a mile of his house, most work could be completed within the hour. All you needed to operate such establishments was a Circuit licence and a state-of-the-art cellular mogrification pen. Body surgery was as easy as getting a tattoo. As with everything in life, standards varied. It was immediately obvious when you met someone with the really expensive work. Jake’s wasn’t, but Christie liked it and that was all that bothered him.
Jake stepped on the escalator and both of his worlds slid gently by as he descended. Subscribers to the Memory Cloud saw two distinct worlds at once. On one dimension the physical world passed by as real as it had been for as long as man had noticed it. The fake plastic flower arrangements that poked rigidly over the rubber of the moving bannister; the subtle green ceiling lights that dimmed and brightened in response to the external conditions; the windowless windows that projected a realistic representation of the outside world onto what was basically a section of wall: all of these existed in Jake’s visual world.
On the other dimension you experienced the virtual world of the Memory Cloud. It projected a visual representation of what you saw, thought or felt. These neural interactions were then grafted inconspicuously within or next to what you saw in the physical world. Visual memories from the past could be accessed at leisure and replayed in front of you, no less real than the videographs on the Montana family’s walls. Occasionally an unexpected figure might pass through the scene on the off chance you wanted to buy toothpaste or upgrade your life insurance. The world of the Memory Cloud was your television, computer, museum, library, school, cinema, shopping centre and photo album all in one. It was the internet inside your head, and it took most people a while to adjust to it.
Each generation had had their own unique experience of it. Jake’s dad, Kyle, had been one of the early adopters of the internal implants back in the thirties. Unlike today’s infants his microchips were fitted while he was a young boy, although he never talked about the experience openly. Even though Kyle had been tethered to the cloud for decades he still had occasional bouts of ‘cloud over’ where the real and virtual worlds got confused. On one memorable occasion Jake found him hiding up a tree after he believed he was being chased by a pack of vicious dogs. In fact, he’d unwittingly allowed a dog food advert into his memory feed. It was easily done. The Memory Cloud was so lifelike everyone experienced ‘cloud over’ once in a while.
Jake’s grandfather, Paddy von Straff, had even more trouble adapting to his, but it wasn’t just down to user error. Paddy was born in the last millennium when the Memory Cloud was nothing more than a futuristic wisp of an idea. He was the only one in the family who truly knew the remarkable difference between now and then. Paddy’s access to the cloud was via equipment best described as base-level. It wasn’t even an official implant; the vital components being housed inside a small metal box that was attached to a belt around his waist. It interfaced with his consciousness via two sticky sensors that had to be attached to the sides of his head. From there wires ran down his back to the receiver on his hip. It worked about as well as a faulty hearing aid. Any signal he did receive rapidly disappeared and was immediately followed by a bout of swearing and his demands for life to return to the old days.
Paddy objected to the whole concept of the Memory Cloud. In his view it was a waste of time and a suppression of his human rights. Should any of the Montana family ever express dissatisfaction with their membership, blame always sat squarely with him. He’d signed up for the Circuit in the early days and as a consequence so had every other member of the family. In the Montana household only Paddy had chosen his own future the old-fashioned way. Everyone thereafter had, or would be instructed, to follow the rules laid out in their letters. Kyle and Deborah had been coupled together on their own Ascension Eve in the same way Jake would be today.
At the bottom of the escalator his family had gathered to wish Jake a happy birthday and to dish out the moral support for what might come next. At least most of them had.
“On a scale of one to ten,” goaded Tyra before Jake had taken the final step off the escalator and onto the photo-fluorescent carpet. “How nervous are you? I’d say eleven!”