Anaesthete

The slow oscillation of the frame of the structure was mesmerizing. As he stared, it resolved into the side of a face. He saw the gentle curve of a smile.

Peter rolled over. An insistent cloud of ephemeral wisps floated around him. They sang tinkling, crystalline notes. The sound was unsettling, discordant. He was afraid. He dismissed them with a twitch of his head. His pod was cramped and profoundly isolating, but he felt nothing but a distant, dull innervation to further the social good.

He keyed his con and felt the filter envelop him. It was almost pitch-black. With careful, concerted effort, he swung his weight so that he sat on the side of his bed, feeling for the ground. Then he stood on weak, shaking legs. His implant finished cycling and took over. His back straightened and his facial muscles assumed perfect tone and expression.

The perceptual filter didn’t come with settings any more. In dark, abstract disconnection, he was vaguely aware of his body vigorously and efficiently washing, clothing and feeding itself. He was not he. Prisoner or passenger, he was all but irrelevant.

He was aware of movement. Murmurs of razor-honed rhetorata wafted in as his filter permitted conditioning here and there. He piped the same memory he always did. Too much time had passed for the visuals to be coherent, and he was numb enough that all he experienced was the idea of a sensation, but there it was. Together. With her.

The filter dropped a small square in the centre of his vision. He could see the dark, distant shapes of the lattice around him. Perfectly efficient. He felt his mind dull as grey matter was repurposed. He heard something. A glitch; psychic stomata made manifest. Long-term mind-feed catching up to him. It was a laugh - gentle, kind, quiet.

Peter rolled over. The neon of his alarm’s LCD was dim, muted, designed to promote restfulness. It tinkled placidly but insistently. That was pretty restful, too. He had long stopped resenting the alarm. He pitied and envied it, bound as it was by its singular vision of design intent. He had no such luxury. His eyes fell on the picture stuck to the wall. He recoiled within himself.

With shambling, machine purpose, he heaved back the haze in his mind. He couldn’t move it as far as he used to, but it was enough. Enough to plan the next few minutes. Escape the tiny bed. Dress. Eat. Pills. More pills. Out the door. He had to be at work soon.

The light making it down to the street was watery and pale. It still made him squint. People moved around him, inchoate, seething. He struggled to make out faces or colours. He knew the route well enough that he didn’t have to think about it, and yet he could not find enough emptiness in his mind to allow it to wander. It was stifled, damped. It was all he could do to make his way steadily through the city. 

His mental absence precluded asking himself bigger questions. He clung in quiet desperation to the knowledge that he had been able to, once. He clung to the memory of broad, confident thought. It would return, eventually.

He arrived at his office. Above the reception desk, the company’s logo was set deep in a broad orb of jade. It held a dark, black, central ring with delicate filaments meandering to the edges. It stared at him familiarly.

Peter rolled over. His clock’s second hand marched unerringly across its face. He clamped a hand on it before it could shriek at him. His eyes wandered to the empty side of the bed. The sheets were still crumpled. He felt emotion well up and set about quashing it.

He turned on the news, and watched it as he ate and washed and dressed. Eight hundred dead in the country since last night. Forty in his province. Seven in his city. Two in his suburb. Global lithium reserves at a hundredth of a percent from fifty years ago. All armaments now actively deployed on both fronts. His fear was large and lithe and strong, and it barely needed to bother with him. 

He felt emotion crumble under its strong, steady pressure. He had dreamed a little - of walking outside in the sun - but that was all but forgotten, now. He gathered fear around him like a cloak and headed outside. Every person he made accidental, fleeting eye-contact with reacted as he did: with suspicion and apprehension. 

He knew the dangerous areas, knew the crime stats. He paced a wide loop to avoid the corner where a woman had been mugged just that morning. He walked indoors whenever possible, avoiding the light which wavered and glimmered and burst in at windows and seams.

He hurried past reception and sat down at his desk. Today would be hectic. He pulled three stories in and set about unpicking them. Deeming itself unable to compensate, his mind made him aware of piercing glare reflecting off the table’s surface. He walked to the window and let the curtain down. It cascaded, gently falling over and around itself in bunched locks.

Peter rolled over. His tranquility was pleasantly punctuated by the twittering of birds from outside. He stretched with some relish and wriggled over to the window. Drawing the curtain, he basked in the light that streamed in. Unbidden, perhaps spurred by the splendour of the vista outside, his thoughts wandered to her. He set his jaw.

Stoking a fire under the rainwater tank, he shaved carefully and washed his face. He chopped fruit and made himself a modest breakfast. He ate slowly and deliberately on the verandah, taking in the calm vista before him. He watched a bird make its nest one twig at a time for a few minutes. After eating, he washed, cleared the fire, dressed and looked toward the rest of the day.

There was a lot to get done, and he dove in with relish. He mucked out the chicken coop and the stables. He collected eggs and replaced feed and water. He renewed his attack on the invasive weeds growing about the periphery of the stone footpaths he’d built. He turned and moistened the soil in two large rows at the edge of his vegetable garden, and planted sprouts and basil. He watered the rest of the vegetables and the garden. He swept the three rooms in his modest cottage, and scrubbed the handful of dirty cups in the basin.

He was exhausted, and he liked it that way. He washed again and set off for a walk through the forest. His legs pumped and his arms swung with purpose. The smells and sounds of the wilderness laced his senses and filled his mind. It was a substantial assault, and he drank it in hungrily. 

Dense greenery forced him to slow his vigorous conquest. He stomped stolidly through heavy reeds and plants, forging a new path among them. The air was thick and heavy, rich with the smells and tastes of undisturbed undergrowth. A frond brushed his arm languorously. He gasped.

Peter rolled over and looked at her. The world around him fell away. She looked back and smiled. He found himself, whole and unafraid.