Read Online Touchstone 1 - Stray by Andrea K. Höst - Free Book Online Page B

interface less. Then I wouldn’t get so worked up over stupidities.
    Tuesday, December 25
    From here to you
    Merry Christmas Mum. Merry Christmas Dad. Merry Christmas Jules. If there was some way I could make you feel better right now, I would.
    Wednesday, December 26
    Moving on
    I’ve been released from the Institute! I’m on ‘parole’ with Sa Lents, after a final medical exam where they decided they don’t need to keep me under close observation any longer.
    One thing the doctor told me just before she sent me off really brought home what kind of society I’ve found myself in. I currently have the barest access rights to the systems around me, but the government here has access rights to me. My interface isn’t just one way, and I’m not in control of it. It’s a school, entertainment, a health monitor and an alarm. It will send a distress signal if I’m sick or hurt, and it can stimulate my brain in a way which regulates hormones. I’ve automatically been ‘regulated’ for birth control. Rules about having babies are really strict here, and you have to be given permission to conceive, for each and every baby you want. You have to pass some kind of parental worthiness test and everything.
    Having someone else put me on birth control without my permission is just…I feel really strange about it, especially considering the uncomfortable conversation I had with Mum about babies at the beginning of the year, when I went out with Sean J. Sean and I have been friends a few years, and we were trying to see if we could be more, but it was totally a bad idea. We were careful enough, the couple of times we did it before the sheer awkwardness brought us to our senses, but if I’d wanted a baby, I could have walked down that path. I don’t get that choice here. I’d have to fill out a form first, and hope someone stamped it APPROVED.
    Sa Lents is taking me to his family’s home on a place called Unara, which involves a long journey by plane (or tanz, as these spaceshippy flying machines are called – they don’t look at all like our planes). It’ll take a few hours, but my interface practice comes with me everywhere. I’ve a whole world of work installed in my head, and it’s powered by my own body, so won’t run low on batteries – unless I do.
    I’m growing increasingly confident using the interface, now that I properly know a few basic words. The concepts aren’t very different from email or web browsers, just without a mouse or keyboard. I haven’t qualified for some of it yet, but have just stopped to write after sitting through the introductory lessons for how to record everything I see and hear, and keep a personal library. Every person on this planet is a CCTV system. I’m definitely going to have to remember that when I talk to anyone, or am in sight or earshot of anyone. I keep telling myself it’s not that different to everyone having a mobile phone and access to You Tube, but it’s hard not to be a little creeped out.
    Talking to people remains a huge challenge. I’m more or less okay listening, at least to get the general gist, but it’s going to be a mid-sized forever before I can talk anything like normally. I don’t know any of the words. It’s not like a proper dictionary. I can’t look up cat and find ‘nyar’. Instead, I think cat and my head produces an oozy possibility of words and, increasingly, a lot of handy labelled pictures. But it can be hard to tell if it’s meant to be a picture of an animal or a predator or hunter or kitten – and abstract concepts are far more difficult. My head fills with pictures and feelings when people talk and an odd kind of certainty of knowing what they said without understanding how I know. The idea comes without necessarily an exact translation. I’m trying to figure out how to annotate my head with words I’m certain of.
    Anyway, I’m pretty excited just to get out of that military facility.
    Thursday, December 27
    Overload
    Until