Tech Obession

“My username is Togakoso,” it said through translucent lips. “My password is IpeakDown.” The middle of his user page was bleach white at first, then after a few seconds the white would warp, darken, and morph into new shades and hues. The colors would also change when the cursor would hover over the multicolored area. The sides were as maroon drapes, alive and moving, influenced by an unseen digital wind. The icon for the hyperlinks were closed eyelids, opening to show a lucid blue iris when you moved over one and closing when you retreated.

It seemed old to her, a relic of an abandoned style of web design lost with the last generation of computers. It reminded of when she only used an external rig, the pages withdrawn and stable. Today’s designs were made to bring the user in the artificial world of the net, make you feel like the page was a part of your reality.

He had twenty-two videos uploaded, the earliest being from November 6, five months ago. The title was Optimizing Neural Interface Settings. She activated the link to the video. The video presented a starter interface; the wallpaper was a picture of Earth from space, likely a photo taken from one of the satellite hotels that orbited the planet. “While many people prefer using the default settings of their neural interface, and just customize a few of the visual aspects of it,” a male voice said, “there are many unused features that your interface provides that are extremely useful.”

Her father’s disembodied voice described the setting options as computer windows opened and closed. He showed the use of the search feature on personal files, creating shortcuts, modifying interface options, and organizing apps. A portion of the content of the video was well known to Shelly and, most likely, other gearheads, but a few of the topics he discussed were profitable, particularly about apps.

She didn’t view the other videos, only peering at them in preview mode. The remaining videos were about varying subjects: more about neural interfaces, a number on repairing external rigs, and some going over a number of useful apps.

Over the span of three years, her father had produced these videos. The A.P.I. had also mentioned various memberships to a range of websites and forums, many of them electronic and computer news and discussion. Electronics were her father’s obsession and passion. It was his trade as well, making a living as a computer engineer and technician. Unlike the latest generation, he wasn’t enhanced, but neural implants and brain casings were just as fascinating as any other kind of tech to him. That fascination was the only thing that saved him from joining the growing pool of retired and unenhanced old school technological workers.

The A.P.I. had also provided her with answers to the events that happened during his overnight stays at his office. She had expected his involvement in an affair, but it was something more simple than that. Work. It was just work. It seemed probable to her that her father would enjoy his labor more than a mistress or a night at the local strip bar.

She took the A.P.I.’s answer as the truth, but her desire to know more pressed her foward. She asked about his history, his life story, and the A.P.I. told her it, even though it was more limited than she had expected.

After learning what she wanted, she left the module of the A.P.I. in their old vacation house, the location where her brother and she had agreed to let it reside. However, the tinge of curiosity stayed with her, demanding more answers and knowledge. “Uncle Cade,” she said quietly at her secretary desk at Vira Dwin T.V. Studio. That was her only choice.




“Want some water?” he asked.

“Sure.” The cup that he handed her was a blue plastic; ridges on the walls of the cup swirled from the bottom to the top. She took a sip and laid it on the brown hardwood table that sat between the two gray gel-cushion armchairs in Uncle Cade’s living room. A flex screen T.V. was plastered against the faded blue wall in front of her, as was it's command center. A plastic elephant ear plant rested in the corner of the room to the left, the window behind it casted light onto it, producing an oblong shadow.

“So, when did your father tell about him and me?” He sat himself down in the right chair, it heaved as he did so. Her uncle was an older man compared to her father; the signs of aging more defined on his face. He had brown eyes, thin lips, high cheeks, and a head shaven bald. He stated that after he began losing his hair, he decided to rid himself of the rest instead of preserving and converting it into a comb over.

“Just before he passed. He said you two were roommates. I didn‘t know that.” Shelly’s right hand was still on her cup, her fingertips resting on its cooled surface.

“Yeah, we were, while back. Very good times. Not that these aren’t good times, but those were good times because we were young and had fun. While we could.”

“What was he like during those times?”

“He was a good person and friend, and I’m not saying that because I don’t want to speak ill of the dead.” He lifted his cup to his lips and drank, ice clicking inside of it. “He was a clean freak at times, but very normal. We went to college together and we gamed a lot, too. We also messed around with a lot of hardware and software back then. Techno geeks we were. We modded and fixed things. It was fun. I’ve heard that he was still making some videos for customizing your neural interface and stuff like that. Did you see any those on the internet?”

“Yeah, I watched one.”

“How was it?”

“It was interesting.”

“Hmm…”

“What was he like, around people I mean?”

“He was good guy. He was at first a bit shy and serious, but he came around and started becoming a little friendlier and looser around people. Oh, and he was also very wild when he played games online, like Reacher. Very competitive at gaming. He was a trash talker too, and I don’t think I want to say the things he said online here, very naughty.” He smiled, stretching his thin lips.

“What did he think about my Mom when he first met her in college?”

“Oh, he loved her. Thought she was amazing. He would keep getting away from us, the group, to spend time with her. Say he was going out for a drink or something else. It was annoying at times, but soon Carla became part of our group as well. He was committed to her. He even said at one time he could see himself marrying her. We all know what happened next, don’t we?”

“So, he loved her very much.”

“Yes, very much so, there’s no question to it.”

“He also loved working too, didn’t he? Loved working on electronics?”

“Oh yeah, he loved that too. He was also committed to his work. He even took his old Viro console one time and modded it. He loved doing things like that, loved working.”

“Umm…Uncle Cade?” She changed her tone. Better ask now or never, she thought.

“Yeah?”

“Uh,” she didn’t know how to put it. “Did you ever think my Dad loved working more than sending time with us and my Mom?” Her uncle’s face grew with what appeared to be disbelief, his smile now gone.

“Shelly,” he said in repulse, “Why would you ask that?”

“I don’t know,” she said pathetically, shrugging.

“Who…who told you that?”

“No one, I just thought at times that he would rather work than be with us.” She began to regret asking the question, regret coming here. She looked down at her cup of water; the surface was now slick with condensation.

“Shelly, just because he worked a lot it doesn’t mean he'd rather do that than spend time with you and his wife. He was a techno geek for God’s shake, and that is in no way an offence. He loved your mother and you and your brother. He was just dedicated to his work. Is that why you wanted to talk about your father?”

“Kinda.”

“Shelly, don’t you think for a second that your father would rather work than spend time with his family. He loved you guys. Don’t you think that for a second that he didn’t, alright?”

“Okay,” she nodded. “I won’t.” She gave a small smile, holding back her sadness.

“Okay, then.” He returned a smirk as well, his tone more relaxed. “Now, do you still want to discuss anything about your father?”

“Yeah,” she nodded slightly again, the tense air seemed to have lifted from the conversion at that time. She sipped from her cup, shards of ice caressing her upper lip.

That was her theory, formed and hypothesized by her during childhood. She assumed that her father would rather reprogram a neural microchip than talk with his own children. She took this to be the truth, but now that theory was nothing but a conjured lie, an excuse for her anger and angst towards her father. “Hmm…” A hard question to answer after her father’s posthumous avatar had told most of everything he knew. “What were some of the best times you had with him?” A vague question at best.

“Well, besides the whole repair and create phase we had back in college with electronics and gadgets, we had some really good times when we gamed. We would just mess around in some of the sandbox we had. You do know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Yeah, ‘do whatever you want to do’ kind of games. I know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, we just fooled around with what they gave us: making machines, screwing around with the physics, finding glitches, whatever got our interest going.”

The module had told her about this, an interest in his early adulthood. It would be rude to ask him to stop, she thought. She didn’t care. She would just sit and listen to what he had to say.




“Hey, Michael,” Harold said from the sand colored couch.

“Yeah?” He was in a game on Dialok: deathmatch, three minutes remaining. The volume of his audio implant had been set to low. He found it better to hear Harold now than get slapped against the back when he couldn’t.

“You remember that guy that posted that video about resetting your app log and all those other things of that sort?”

“Yeah.”

“Looks like he posted his last video, said he was going on to do different things.”

“That’s too bad,” but Michael couldn’t really care. People of the net come and go, shift and migrate from site to site, switching and modifying their identities as they sped through.

He shot a player hiding in the shadows of a boulder, his fifteenth kill. He was in the desert: makeshift bunkers and shacks made of sheet metal and degraded wood scattered the battleground. A few bushes and small trees could be found here and there as well.

The sun cooked his bare forearms; the rest of him was protected by EGH’s top combat armor. Their brand named rifle, the EGH Exladio, was a welcomed weight in his hands.

“Hey, you wanna go to Saint Orland’s for dinner?” Michael turned that over in his head, but the first image that came to his mind was that of the deathly white skinned cyborg that was the security leader there. The guy had his head shaped like a birds, almost like an owl and black patches circled his dark eyes. It weirded him out. The man, from what he could tell, was a full body cyborg. You either have to be financially savvy or mentally insane to have that done, he thought. The answer was likely the latter choice, but free food and drink was a rightful reward for braving that cyborg’s tracking eyes.

“Sure, just let me get through with one more game, okay?” A hot beam of energy from an ALC universal laser weapon screamed past him and trailed into the distance. He turned to find the source of the attack, towards a cluster of huts. “Alright asshole, I’m right here. Let’s go.”