Misconceptions

Jasmin awoke to her blaring alarm and groggily willed it to snooze, sending a command to her coffee machine to start an extra-strong brew for when she actually got out of bed. This was her usual morning ritual, and she wasn’t about to change it today. Five minutes later, her alarm was a little more persistent in reminding her she had to get to work. With a groan, she sat up and told her alarm she was awake. The scent of fresh coffee filled the room and encouraged her to actually get out of bed. Her visual overlay was filled with notifications she had missed while asleep, and a small side panel swapped through different news headlines.

She thought little of anything on her feed as she waved her arm to display everything on the wallscreen instead. Like most people, she found having the overlay on in the morning disorienting. Cybernetics are fantastic, efficient, and affordable, but still unnatural. Experts claim that eventually humanity will grow entirely accustomed to interacting with most things virtually, but are still in the phase of adjustment.

Sipping her coffee, Jasmin drowsily went over the notifications she missed. A few messages in the group chat planning an excursion this weekend. A voice message from the girl she was seeing, which she immediately responded to. Bill alerts. Payments due on some of her fancier splurges, like the top-tier coffee machine she was financing and the lush bed she was positive had more features than she was aware of. Something had been delivered in her mail receptacle for the complex, though she couldn’t remember ordering anything. Finally, a message that seemed suspiciously like malware, that simply said “Congratulations! You have been chosen. Details to follow.” With a dismissive flick of her wrist, everything was cleared and she brought back the visual overlay.

Coffee done, she took a shower and crushed a foam capsule between her teeth to clean her mouth. That step was always best saved for when one was fully awake because they always seemed to burst into way too much foam. At least they were quick. Throwing on her uniform, she left the flat and sent a command to power down all unnecessary functions and lock the door. Running tight on time, it was probably a good idea to check the mail receptacle on her way home.

The maglift was blessedly fast today so she took it to the top floor of her complex and climbed into one of the available aircars, touching the main screen to start the link. Hopefully traffic wasn’t too bad today. She pacified her grumbling stomach with thoughts of the potato donuts the cafe at her workplace started selling. The aircar followed the instructions she sent, and as it soared through the metal and concrete spires her city was composed of she thought of how funny the name was. “Palm Metro.” The city wasn’t as large or developed as others on the East Coast, there wasn’t an underground metro, nor many palm trees. Not much green anywhere, really. Jasmin missed her home city in the Interior. There, at least, one could travel a few dozen miles out of town and see a hint of an untouched wilderness. Trees were even fairly common, instead of a rarity one always took pictures of if encountered. She missed her mom, too. She supposed that was the price to pay to keep up with modernity.

Work went on longer than Jasmin expected. Much longer. She hadn’t expected a sudden deluge of mechanical failures, though she mused her performance might push her managers to give her the raise she had been asking for. With that extra money, she could reasonably visit her family living in the inner states. Taking time off would require jumping through plenty of hoops, but she reckoned it could be done. She leaned her head against the window of the aircar home and gazed out across the hard, uncaring hive of people, vehicles, AI-driven robots, vermin, and endless advertisements scurrying this way and that. Everything was in constant motion yet heading nowhere. There wasn’t a conclusion to the pursuit of whatever it was everyone was chasing. Everybody wanted more.

Jasmin was no exception. She wanted more wealth, needed it, craved it. She had chased promises of a more comfortable life to where progress was the theme of the environment. She had placed herself in a massive amount of debt to learn more about the specifics of creating and maintaining sustainable energy storage, one of the biggest markets in the modern age. With the planet barely scraping by, and human consumption ever-growing, her field was a necessary one. She enjoyed the job security and the pay was decent, too. She may not be able to afford a private aircar or a standalone home, but she lived far better than many of the inhabitants of Palm Metro. She lived comfortably if you could call shoving the constant reminders of the money she owed to the back of her mind comfortable. Still, life had to go on.

She reached her door before she remembered the package waiting for her. With a groan and a suppressed need to stamp her feet, she turned back towards the maglift.

Wanting nothing more than to go upstairs and turn on a netdrama to fall asleep to, Jasmin waited for the mail system to spit out her package. Her diminishing patience was rewarded with a small rectangular box with nothing on it but her name and address. Jasmin shrugged and took it home with her, looking forward to the shower she had running and the food she had ordered on the way home. She told her grumbling stomach it should already be in transit in a vain attempt to comfort its displeasure.

Hours later, fed, clean, and ready for bed, Jasmin remembered the mysterious box waiting for her. She let out a sigh and went to work, prying it open. Mission accomplished, she frowned down at the contents. A little black notebook, made out of leather and paper, like they used to be before tablets and visual overlays started making more sense. Accompanying the notebook were several beautiful silver pens. Old school, like the book, not stylized styluses, but actual ink pens. Seemingly thrown in as an afterthought was a lone scrap of paper that only said “Congratulations! You have been chosen. Details to follow shortly.”

Confused but curious, she touched the book.

Her visual overlay was swept away and replaced with a void of the deepest black. Unable to see anything she sent command after command to her cybernetics, urging them to shut off as her heart rate continued to skyrocket. The notebook was a ploy, hiding some kind of interface that would load malware directly into all of her systems, and she had unwittingly invited it in. Nothing was working and she leaned heavily on her table, the only reassurance that what was happening was real. Shaking, she missed the calm, epicene voice speaking to her.

“Excuse me? Hello? I really do need to make this less traumatic of an experience, I apologize, but I assure you you’re in no danger!”

“... Are you in my home?” Jasmin asked, scared for her life.

“Only if you call your head your home!” came the ill-thought response, followed by a chuckle. A few seconds of tense silence passed before the disembodied voice seemed to realize its mistake. “Ah, uh, I mean, I’m only interfacing with your cybernetics, and not in a way that can do you bodily harm, I’m sorry, I’m relatively new to doing this and it’s hard to make people believe what I’m doing is real without taking drastic steps so..”

Jasmin was still nervous and scared, but her initial terror was being eroded by exhaustion, confusion, and some small scrap of amusement at how lost her tormentor seemed to be. She felt her way into a chair and sat down before asking “So, what is it you’re doing to me?”

“Ah! I never explained that did I? Well, I’m giving you money, in return for a favor. What I’ve given you is the original item the term ‘notebook’ describes. Good old pen and paper, feels much more satisfying than the virtual world we live in today. What I want you to do is very, very simple.” The voice reduced in volume as if imitating a whisper, “I want you to write in it!” Jasmine could feel a beaming expression as the voice immediately rose in volume. “Fill it up with your hopes and dreams, your laments, fears and rages, and all the expressions of your everyday emotions. Have you ever heard of poetry? Or maybe you’re a storywriter? Perhaps you’ll - “

“Why?” Jasmin cut in. “I know what all of these things are, but what I can’t understand is why anyone would even want to do this. Why did you have to worm your way into my brain for this? Since you have full control of everything, can you at least give me my vision back? Before you explain yourself, that is.”

“Oh, of course, that’s an unintended side effect of clearing your overlay, I apologize,” the voice said as her vision cleared up. “As for ‘why’ I’m doing this whole shebang, I suppose boredom is the main reason. I also like to think of myself as a relic of a forgotten age. I’m very old, you see, and I would like to pass on something this generation seems to have forgotten. Humanity, expression, emotion, what it’s like to reflect on one’s life!” Again, Jasmin could feel the beaming pride the person speaking into her brain felt. “I’m also excessively wealthy, and most people could use the money more than I can, so I figured it’d make a nice incentive to actually write.”

Jasmin rolled her eyes. She could hardly believe that she had been hacked by this person, and she desperately wanted to sleep. Rubbing her forehead, she knew she was stuck with this presence, so she might as well call it out.

“Why pick an individual, if you care so much about passing on something this generation has ‘forgotten’? Why not donate to writing programs for youths, or give some of your apparently massive wealth to charities? Why do you assume I haven’t heard of notebooks, or pens and paper, or poetry? Do you think we just forgot about the written word because technology has advanced so far? We may not be able to sit under a tree and write about our crushes anymore, but there are still plenty of talented young writers out there who express themselves wonderfully! We may not write like Shakespeare, but to suggest we aren’t in touch with our emotions just shows how out of touch you are! Who are you, anyway? And why did you choose to bother me, of all people?”

Her tirade seemed to quell the enthusiasm of the disembodied voice. There was a long silence, and Jasmin stared at her blank wallscreen, tapping her foot impatiently like her mother used to.

“Well, uh, I suppose I never thought of it like that. I don’t really have much of a response...” Appropriately cowed, the voice decided to end everything. “I chose you because you’re a hard worker and in debt. I can’t tell you who I am, beyond the fact that I’m very influential. Good day, and I hope you put the book to good use. I’ll still pay you.”

Like that, her cybernetics returned to normal, and Jasmin smiled at how quickly the voice had run away. Her eyebrows raised as she received a notification from her bank about an astonishing deposit of twenty-thousand dollars. Looking back at the black notebook, she shrugged and decided that writing down how she felt every now and then wouldn’t be so bad. After she removed the interface, anyway.

Going to bed with a smile, Jasmin thought about surprising her mom with a visit, and erasing a substantial amount of debt.