His habit on the permitted daily walk was to scan the evening arc of the bay. Today was no different. From the three islands off the rocky headland, the gorse swathed cliffs, the conurbation of Mumbles seafront, alongside the dotted houses at West Cross and the lone pub outlined stark in its whiteness, Gareth panned the curve of the prom, so intent on the visual feast, that the preceding click in his cerebral cortex only vaguely registered. With a whirring like interconnecting cogs, the malfunction embedded. Then came the shock of a shadowy presence occupying his own footsteps recently vacated. Gareth spun around…..and round and round again…. like a tail-chasing dog yet the shadowy outline remained out-of-focus fringing his peripheral vision. The tide was on the turn; the imprints were momentary,-quickly filled and obliterated. Like the “ghost,” no trace.
Gareth sighed. This episodic separation of biological and digital self was a relief he had come to cherish, a holiday from the tyranny of the brain implants he and the others had been forced to embrace, -either accept or be nullified. The old persona rose and surfaced as with the release of restraints his body relaxed.
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow’s a mystery. Today is a gift – that’s why it’s called the present”
The words rose and erupted; at first rasping and hesitant then more forceful as with growing confidence his tongue, teeth, cheeks and brain, remembered, savoured and gloried in a frenzy of repossessed linguistic and cognitive freedom. Laughing, dancing and pitching the mantra against the roar of the waves, Gareth abandoned his outer clothes. Careless of his own fate and theirs, he plunged into the sea and started swimming. Two full laps, 10 miles in total. To the Maritime Quarter, turn and along the full length of the Bay to Knab’s Rock, turn and back.
The searchlight tangoed across the darkening bay, lighting the spume of silver sprays then hovered over an orange object bobbing in the shallows. Not a buoy but Gareth’s orange T-shirt encasing an exhilarated… and exhausted … Gareth. The articulated metallic arm swung over, plucked at the garment’s neck, lifted him star-wards, then unceremoniously dropped its catch on the shoreline below.
“Human or Hybrid?” The metallic intonation amused him.
Biological reasoning, unsullied by digital moderation kicked in.
Must be hypoxic after all that swimming? “I’m really not sure which H I am now. H for Halfway/” he giggled, giddy at his own boldness.
The weeks of re-education and rehabilitation at Normalcy Detention School were unexpectedly instructive. Secret lessons from the Long-Stayers demonstrated how to bypass next-generation brain cortex implants and create new neural pathways. Gareth quickly rose to the ranks of senior tutor of Halfway Arrivals. He began to believe that life could again be purposeful.
“How plead you to the crime of wilful digital disassociation?”
“Guilty.” Correlation we are told is not causation. The mass breakout from Normalcy Detention School coincided with Gareth’s return. World Order Reversion Revolution followed. You decide.
