Absence of Mind Read online

  Absence of Mind

  H. C. H. Ritz

  To Lisa

  My beloved mother-in-law,

  who was “Granny Day Care” for my son so that I could write.

  One

  My Navi reads the news to me inside my head. It has a smooth, masculine voice, which I chose, but also a robotic intonation that they’ve never been able to fix.

  << Tensions continue to escalate as Chinese officials refuse to respond to allegations that China is continuing to re-develop its nuclear weapons program twelve years after its defeat and disarma—>>

  < Next. >

  Sunlight sweeps across my vision as my automatic car makes a right turn, and the game of GlowDisc I’m playing in my heads-up display almost winks out in the bright light, then returns.

  << Entertainment conglomerates Peake International, Big Wave, and Kimberley Corp posted record profits for the fourth straight quarter. >>

  < Next. >

  << It’s official: Elephants have gone the way of the dodo, joining the list of nineteen major mammals to—>>

  < Oh God. Next. You know what, Navi? Don’t show me sad news about animals anymore. >

  << Preferences updated. >>

  It’s early afternoon on a Monday, and Tobi—my blond German Shepherd—and I are heading to the dog park. I scritch Tobi’s head as I watch my six opponents make their moves in rapid sequence. Then I mentally direct a yellow disc on top of a blue disc, and the neighboring red discs obediently turn green.

  << Call from work. >>

  < Ignore. >

  It’s my weekend, which sometimes corresponds to the actual weekend, depending on what they do with my schedule at the hospital.

  After the others take their turns, I shift a blue disc onto a red one. I grin as purple cascades across the playing board and my opponents shower me with rude comments and praise.

  << Smart drug Allivan proven effective in treating schizophrenia. The last of the most common neurological disorders has fallen victim to the newest smart drug produced by global drug manufacturer NewPhase, which expects the new drug to become commercially available within six months. >>

  Well, that’s cool. I can look forward to better treatment for the schizos in my ward.

  Hmm… Nope. If I split the orange discs, I’ll lose too many green discs…

  << Call from Family. >>

  < Ugh. Ignore. >

  “Family” means it’s someone from back home in my family’s weird community. Since it’s a shared landline phone, my Navi can’t tell me exactly who it is.

  < Gimme more news. >

  I feel Tobi’s cold, wet nose on my hand and pet him some more as I consider splitting the brown discs into red and green.

  Then I hear Jamie’s voice. When messages are personal, they come through in that individual’s voice, accompanied by a video image of their face in the corner of my display. Jamie is my youngest brother, out of the five of us, and my only family member here in Atlanta.

  << Okay, Phoebe, so are you too cool to come by my birthday party tonight? >>

  < No, dorkamous. Of course I’ll stop by. Glad you reminded me, though, because I forgot. Why don’t you have your party on a Friday or Saturday night like a normal human being? >

  Nearly everything on the GlowDisc game board shifts to blue, and I glare. I lost. I start a new game with new opponents.

  << Because today is my actual birthday. Duh. And only old people like you have to wake up in the morning anyway. >>

  I snort.

  < Only old people like me make actual money, you know. >

  << I make money. I earn scholarships. Unlike some, ahem, people I know. >>

  < Bookworm. Nerd. >

  I’m only teasing him. I’m proud of how well he’s been doing in schoo—

  Suddenly, the brakes squeal, and something big flashes past by my left window. A massive crunching sound batters my eardrums. Everything goes up into the air and comes back down again.

  When things settle, my head is still swimming. I blink a few times. My eyes refocus from my heads-up display to the world around me—the cars, the buildings, the bright blue sky and green trees.

  Obediently following my attention, my Navi goes to text mode. The display disappears in the center, leaving only the notification and news feed panels on the right periphery of my vision.

  Tobi collided with the front panel of the passenger compartment with the impact, but he looks okay. I give him a couple of pats with shaking hands while I twist to look out of the front window. There’s a car to the right front corner of my own car. A tall, blonde woman gets out of it. I unbuckle my seatbelt and open my door, my mind still reeling.

  Emergency messages in bold red appear at the bottom of my display and flash.

  !!! There’s been an accident. !!!

  !!! Stay where you are. !!!

  !!! Emergency responders have been contacted. !!!

  I walk around the car unsteadily, looking.

  Messages from Jamie and Sara appear in my notifications panel, in text.

  | Jamie: You do realize those were all compliments, right? News flash: smart is in. |

  | Sara: We need you to come in. Dr. Foret said he called you. |

  The corners of each of our cars are crumpled. It doesn’t look too bad. Other vehicles are driving carefully around us. We’re right in the middle of the intersection.

  I approach the woman and extend the digital handshake. Nothing. I glance at her in surprise.

  | Target is not equipped with a Navi. |

  I blink again. For a moment, I don’t quite know what to do.

  | Sara: We’re super busy over here. |

  The woman is studying her car and mine, frowning.

  “Um, I’m Phoebe Bernhart,” I say. “Are you hurt?” My voice rasps and I cough. I’m unaccustomed to speaking aloud.

  “Uncertain,” the woman says. “But unlikely, given the rates of speed, angle of impact, and safety systems of my vehicle.”

  Another message flashes red at the bottom of my vision, demanding my attention.

  !!! Distance Insurance: You have been in an accident. Please enable video permissions to Distance Insurance for visual review of the accident. !!!

  Christ on a—

  I sit down somewhat abruptly. I feel dizzy, and I dimly recognize that I’m more unbalanced by this little wreck than I probably ought to be.

  I glance over at my messages in the panel on the right, to remind myself of what they were, and I reply to Sara.

  < I had a small car accident. I’ll get back to you in a minute. >

  “Oh, no!” I realize I left my car door open. Tobi. Tobi, Tobi—

  I’m in my car, checking the passenger compartment. No dog. I jump back out and scan the horizon. No dog. My heart’s pounding.

  If he gets run over—

  “No, no, no…”

  | Sara: Oh, wow, really? Are you okay?|

  I remember that I had Tobi ID-chipped.

  < Navi, find Tobi. Please, please, please… >

  The woman is looking at me from across the car. “What’s wrong?”

  “My dog!” I shout, my voice hitting a higher octave than I thought it could.

  | Tobi is northeast, fifty yards. |

  A bull’s-eye appears in my vision to the left.

  “Help me get him!” I shout.

  The woman’s eyebrows go up at the prospect. I don’t care. This is my dog, the sweetest, most adorable dog ever whom I rescued from the city pound and who deserves nothing like getting hit by a car because I was stupid enough to leave the door open. “Help me get my dog!” I’m shrieking while I run, and my tone leaves no room for argument.

  The woman is wearing pants and flats, at least, and she starts running, too.
r />   Actually, she’s faster than I am. She overtakes me quickly and then looks back for me to point to where my Navi tells me Tobi ought to be. Which is right in the middle of about six lanes of moderately busy traffic.

  I hear car horns and screeching brakes in the distance, and I’m hyperventilating as I run. And praying for all I’m freaking worth. Dear God, I’ll stop drinking, and I won’t have any more premarital sex, I swear to God, please, please, save Tobi, please please please—

  Car horns, sirens now, cars everywhere, my feet hitting the pavement hard, sending jolts up my legs, it’s hot, the sun is blinding me, I’m between lanes with cars flying by me, which is dangerous and stupid, people are swerving—

  I see the blonde woman bending over up ahead. I see yellow fur on the ground in front of her. My heart stops. Then she wheels around. She’s got Tobi’s collar in her hand, and she’s dragging the dog along—Tobi’s panicked and confused and throwing himself around, paws scrabbling at the air, trying to get away from the car horns. I don’t see any blood.

  A moment later, I’m there, too—

  !!! Atlanta Police Department: Ma’am, this is the police. Please return to your vehicle. !!!

  —wrestling Tobi, panting, looking for a break in the traffic, and then pulling him along, the blonde woman still with one hand on his collar, too, the nearness of the stranger awkward, and then we have him off the side of the road, in a parking lot. Safe.

  !!! Please enable video permissions to Distance Insurance for visual review of the accident. !!!

  I hug Tobi for all I’m worth. He’s shaking. So am I. Tears fill my eyes.

  | Sara: So are you okay or what? |

  I look up, and everything seems to grind to a halt as I finally look at this woman whose car I hit and who rescued my dog anyway. The sunlight frames her curly blonde hair. Her pale skin glows. Her eyes are ice blue. I realize that I’m staring.

  | This might be an excellent time for a CoffeeBreak caffé mocha. There’s a CoffeeBreak twenty feet ahead on your left. |

  “Thank you. So much,” I stammer. “I don’t even know how to repay you for this.”

  I feel chunky and plain right now. She’s slender and lovely. I’m envious. I look away, feeling awkward.

  “We should go back,” she says.

  !!! APD: Ma’am, return to your car immediately, please. !!!

  < I’m on my way. I’m sorry, my dog got loose and I had to get her. >

  I get up and make sure I have an iron grip on Tobi’s collar.

  !!! Your vehicle is blocking traffic, ma’am. !!!

  < As I said, I’m on my way. >

  We head back to the scene of the accident.

  “I’m sorry I hit you. Wait, did my car hit yours, or did your car hit mine?” I realize I don’t know what happened.

  “Your car was supposed to yield. You had a left-turn-yield.”

  “That’s so weird. I don’t know why that happened. I’ve never had my car do anything like that before. It usually does everything just fine.”

  “I’m sure.”

  I glance over at her. Her tone is aggravated, but her expression is placid.

  It’s so strange to be talking out loud.

  !!! Distance Insurance: If you do not enable video review, you will be required to wait for an insurance adjuster to be dispatched to the scene. !!!

  “I don’t know your name,” I say.

  “No, you don’t.”

  That was kind of cold. “Well, thank you again,” I mumble. “Thank you for rescuing Tobi. He’s important to me. And to Mrs. Jones.”

  “Mrs. Jones?”

  “My neighbor. He’s Mrs. Jones’s, too. We time-share him.”

  Silence. Then, “You time-share a dog?”

  “I’m never home. I work twelve-hour shifts at the hospital. Mrs. Jones is this old retired lady who’s always home. It works out.” I sound defensive, I realize.

  We walk the rest of the way to the cars in silence while I reply to the messages that have been stacking up in my notification panel, including questions from the cops waiting at my car. I eye the messages from Sara with annoyance, because all I want to do right now is go get a drink, but eventually my sense of duty wins out and I tell her I’ll come in as soon as I can.

  Once we’re back at the scene of the accident, I get Tobi settled in the back of my car again, and then it takes about half an hour to get all the details sorted out. I enable video review from Distance Insurance, and they direct me to walk around the car to give them a complete picture of the damage and to submit the video from the few minutes before, during, and after the accident. The claim gets processed, and I go ahead and request a tow truck to come take my car. I’ll take the light rail system for a couple of days.

  At the same time, I get a chance to observe the woman, whose name turns out to be Mila Bremer (she pronounces it “mee-luh breh-mer”), and how she interacts with the cops. Normally, conversations are private, because they’re Navi-to-Navi, but they’re having to speak out loud, so I know everything that the cops know. I know her address, her phone number, her date of birth, and even the name of her insurance agent, who eventually has to show up in person. And it’s all being recorded by my Navi, of course, since I have the Memory app running.

  I notice that one of the cops speaks slowly and loudly, as if Mila were intellectually disabled or partially deaf. It makes me mad. She seems odd, but it’s clear that she’s intelligent, and it’s not her fault that she can’t take a Navi.

  At least, I’m assuming she’s non-Navable—a “Nonnie“—one of the 0.5 percent whose bodies still reject the implant, despite all the efforts of modern medicine. She doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would voluntarily go without one. Those people are on the fringe of the fringe, like neo-Luddites… and like my family back home.

  Next, the cop asks her, loudly and slowly, “Do you suppose you missed the light turning red?”

  I’m confused until I realize that she was driving: hers is a manual-drive car. I wonder if maybe Nonnies can’t use smartcars. Then I wonder, too, if it was even true that my car hit hers and not the other way around. It seems much more likely that a Nonnie would react too slowly or not see something than that a smartcar would malfunction.

  “The light was green,” Mila answers.

  “You’re only human,” the cop says. “You may be confused. You may have thought you saw something besides what you saw.” His condescending tone makes me regret my own thoughts along those lines.

  Mila doesn’t even blink. “Check the video from the smartcar.”

  “Okay. You know what? We’ll do that.” His chin goes up in the air as he turns to my vehicle.

  We all wait, most of us reviewing messages on our Navis in the meantime.

  After a moment, the cop says, “Both of your vehicles are drivable. I recommend you get them out of the path of traffic. Ma’am”—looking at me—“your vehicle’s CPU has been reset and its drive path realigned. You should be good to go.” Then he turns away.

  What a jerk. Obviously, the video proved Mila was right, and he won’t admit it.

  Both cops leave right as the tow truck shows up. A moment later, without another word, Mila is getting into her car.

  I find myself calling out to her, not wanting her to disappear.

  “Wait… Mila! Can I buy you a meal? As a thank-you for helping me rescue Tobi?”

  I don’t know why I do it. I feel like I owe her one, and also, something about her seems interesting to me. Maybe that she’s a Nonnie. That’s pretty weird, after all. Or maybe I feel sorry for her because of how that cop treated her.

  Those pale blue eyes consider me for a moment. “Fine. Did you record my number?”

  “Yeah… well, my Navi did, yeah.”

  “Then you can try calling me. But I only have a land line, I’m not home much, and I don’t have voice mail.” Her tone is final. It seems to say, Don’t bother.

  She closes her door and starts the car, but then she p
auses and looks at me through the glass. She rolls down her window. Her tone sounds as if she’s conceding an argument. “Usually, I’m home by eight, though.” She rolls the window back up and drives off.

  I sigh heavily and study my hands. They’re still trembling, but not as badly. I need a drink. But I promised Sara I’d come in, and I will, even though I’m not happy about it.

  First, I have to get Tobi back home. I start to look around for a rail station before I remember that I can’t take Tobi on the rail. I have my Navi request an automatic cab, warning the dispatch that I have a big dog with me, and I sit at a bus stop to wait.

  I pet Tobi feverishly. I’m still weirded out that my car crashed like that, but I’m more freaked out that I almost lost my dog because of a moment of inattention. At least Tobi seems to have forgotten the whole thing already. He’s just happy to be petted.

  My Navi knows that whenever I’m not doing anything else that’s auditory in nature, it can go back to audible mode¬, so it starts reading to me in that smooth, masculine voice again.

  << Breaking news: Great Britain has declared sanctions against China for the third time since the China War. >>

  I groan.

  < No. Skip it. >

  I review my notifications to make sure I haven’t missed any messages. Whenever I’ve gotten behind, the messages are always there waiting for me. I also review my news feed panel, below the notifications panel that is reserved for personal messages, to see what global updates I’ve missed while my Navi was in text mode.