spheres, which glow in the air like juggling balls, unaffected by the wind. She tosses me a golden sphere, a green sphere, and one that looks like Jupiter, pulsing with many dark swirling colors. I catch themâthey feel like nothing but a slight tingleâand press them to my chest, where they melt into the interface on my skin. I smile and nestle into a smooth curve of volcanic rock as wind and sun wash my bare skin. I close my eyes and grok.
A VIOLENT WRENCH. IT is dark. I seem to be looking at the pages of a book, but the letters dance and mock me, writhing like animated dream-creatures, and I feel bound up, like a prisoner.
When grokking, you can maintain awareness that you are separate from the grok. I know that I can end it whenever I choose, that I cannot be trapped in a bad nightmare. That is what I know, but I need to test it. I need to know I can get out.
I open my eyes and see luminous blue sky, a few white wisps of cumulus, the old clock tower across the bay, and a kind of sideways view of Melody, her eyelids at half-mast, gesturing in graceful Zebra to one of her students. She has implants that record and transmit that three-dimensional language, and, again, I feel a powerful urge to think of ways to describe it mathematically.
She stops gesturing and glances at me. âPretty hard to believe, right?â
âI was looking right at the screenâthrough your eyesâand I could only kind of . . . catch the tail end of things, or . . . I donât know. It was kind of weird.â
âIt was called dyslexia. I had dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. Couldnât read, write, or do any kind of math, even though I knocked myself out trying. Butâkeep going. Call me if you need me, but I think you can handle it. Iâve waited a long time to show you. Okay?â
âSure.â
She smiles at someone who I canât see and returns to gesturing.
I am confused. Back then she couldnât even read or write, but she learned how to do all this?
Itâs weird to be back over a hundred years agoâimmersed in it, although I can leave at any moment. I would definitely like to avoid feeling Melodyâs emotionsâthey seem too personalâbut thatâs what Iâm in for. I guess itâs like reading words, where you feel what the characters feel, but a lot more powerful. She thinks Iâm strong enough, though. Maybe it will get me my gills, but I suspect the issue has been reframed, and that she even thinks it will change my mind.
If I can drop down the face of a four-ton wave, I can stand this. And thatâs about what it takes. I close my eyes again.
I grok.
I am Melody Smith. It is 2121, and I am thirteen years old.
I WAS BORN IN the days when terror was a byword, a fear to which everyone in the world relinquished rights, and, in the case of many, blood and life.
I think it surprised everyone when infinitely plastic OPEN ROAD was introduced to the world in one bright flash (so it seems now, despite the years of violence, marches, demonstrations) by a globe-spanning group of people.
No one person pushed a button. It emerged, evolved, changed as connectivity increased, with bottom-up feedback. All kinds of peopleâneurologists, biologists, cognitive scientists, artists, computer scientists, musicians, and visionariesâhad been working on aspects of it, first separately, and then connectedly, for years.
It was an offshoot of research on how the brain works, what consciousness is, what makes a brain healthy, how human children link to and explore the environment, explorations that lay down specific neuronal pathways. Research on what makes people mentally ill, criminal, violent, and otherwise challenged, and how to change that.
It was a time of chaos and glorious growth, a watershed as important as the printing press. How much more dangerous than the atomic bomb the release of universal literacy seemed to the settled, privileged way
A VIOLENT WRENCH. IT is dark. I seem to be looking at the pages of a book, but the letters dance and mock me, writhing like animated dream-creatures, and I feel bound up, like a prisoner.
When grokking, you can maintain awareness that you are separate from the grok. I know that I can end it whenever I choose, that I cannot be trapped in a bad nightmare. That is what I know, but I need to test it. I need to know I can get out.
I open my eyes and see luminous blue sky, a few white wisps of cumulus, the old clock tower across the bay, and a kind of sideways view of Melody, her eyelids at half-mast, gesturing in graceful Zebra to one of her students. She has implants that record and transmit that three-dimensional language, and, again, I feel a powerful urge to think of ways to describe it mathematically.
She stops gesturing and glances at me. âPretty hard to believe, right?â
âI was looking right at the screenâthrough your eyesâand I could only kind of . . . catch the tail end of things, or . . . I donât know. It was kind of weird.â
âIt was called dyslexia. I had dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia. Couldnât read, write, or do any kind of math, even though I knocked myself out trying. Butâkeep going. Call me if you need me, but I think you can handle it. Iâve waited a long time to show you. Okay?â
âSure.â
She smiles at someone who I canât see and returns to gesturing.
I am confused. Back then she couldnât even read or write, but she learned how to do all this?
Itâs weird to be back over a hundred years agoâimmersed in it, although I can leave at any moment. I would definitely like to avoid feeling Melodyâs emotionsâthey seem too personalâbut thatâs what Iâm in for. I guess itâs like reading words, where you feel what the characters feel, but a lot more powerful. She thinks Iâm strong enough, though. Maybe it will get me my gills, but I suspect the issue has been reframed, and that she even thinks it will change my mind.
If I can drop down the face of a four-ton wave, I can stand this. And thatâs about what it takes. I close my eyes again.
I grok.
I am Melody Smith. It is 2121, and I am thirteen years old.
I WAS BORN IN the days when terror was a byword, a fear to which everyone in the world relinquished rights, and, in the case of many, blood and life.
I think it surprised everyone when infinitely plastic OPEN ROAD was introduced to the world in one bright flash (so it seems now, despite the years of violence, marches, demonstrations) by a globe-spanning group of people.
No one person pushed a button. It emerged, evolved, changed as connectivity increased, with bottom-up feedback. All kinds of peopleâneurologists, biologists, cognitive scientists, artists, computer scientists, musicians, and visionariesâhad been working on aspects of it, first separately, and then connectedly, for years.
It was an offshoot of research on how the brain works, what consciousness is, what makes a brain healthy, how human children link to and explore the environment, explorations that lay down specific neuronal pathways. Research on what makes people mentally ill, criminal, violent, and otherwise challenged, and how to change that.
It was a time of chaos and glorious growth, a watershed as important as the printing press. How much more dangerous than the atomic bomb the release of universal literacy seemed to the settled, privileged way
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