Technoid: Prophecy

Was Owen acting differently lately?

It was a month after the school year had kicked off, the initial rush and feeling of unspoiled freshness – now combined with Ada’s excitement to start P-FOST – given enough time to begin dying down. In its place the at-times contemptible familiar was settling in (already she despaired of English and History essays), the passage of time transitioning from days divided by empty afternoons and slothful weekends into a blur of school, homework, sleep and whatever Ada could accomplish in her off hours.

And as time lost definition it, paradoxically, moved slower, everything falling into routine. But in the wake of that Ada started to notice something about Owen was off. It was subtle, and she hadn’t realized it was there until recently, but once she noticed it she began looking for it, waiting for it turn up to confirm it wasn’t just her imagination.

Like right now, at the pizza parlor. They’d come there too many afternoons to count, the school day being forgotten by grease on paper plates, the cycled noises of arcade consoles waiting for quarters, and conversations about, you know, whatever. And all those times he’d been himself, cheerful and in turns animated or quietly polite as he and she took turns dominating the discussion.

But today he was just quiet, and not in the ‘Go on, this is fascinating even if I don’t understand it’ way she knew so well. There shouldn’t be a reason for that. Sure, today they were joined by a trio of technoids, fellow P-Fosters of Ada’s, but why should that matter?

The problem was she couldn’t even be sure it was there. Maybe he was just being quiet because her new friends all knew each other and he was the odd man out.

Ada regretted sitting next to Owen in the booth. Sure, she liked being next to him (don’t think about that, Ada), but it made it hard to catch his expression or read for clues in his body language without looking like she was distracted by a piece of food stuck to his cheek. Even harder when she was trying to simultaneously carry on a conversation with Mack, discussing (more like listening to him talk about) the Cult of Polybius, a religious order based around an arcade game that only existed in urban legend and which Ada wasn’t certain actually existed or was only part of a text adventure game his cousin was working on.

Trying to keep her attention on her old friend and her new friends-slash-Game Programming class work-group was the worst kind of multitasking, the kind where you didn’t accomplish either task adequately. But it was a good representation of the problem of splitting her time and focus between Owen and her fellow P-Fosters.

Both were immersed in their own worlds with Ada trying to bridge them because she couldn’t choose one and let go of the other. P-FOST was a dream come true for her, the world of computing and digital technology opening up wider, deeper than she could discover on her own browsing through Wikipedia or checking out decade out-of-date books from the library. The knowledge and resources being provided for her was not only on a level that challenged her, new developments and breakthroughs being discussed sometimes just days after becoming known, but each new step made her that much more eager to keep going, absorbing everything she could.

And her classmates, the new friends she was making, weren’t just sharing this discovery with her. They were introducing her to technoid culture proper, the artistic and social environment that was fostered and flourishing among technophiles; an expression of one’s almost spiritual connection to the Net and the hardware jungle that supported it.

The lifestyle had always intrigued her, though Ada had never been one to care much about ‘wearing a costume,’ announcing to the world that she identified with a subculture or group of like-minded people. But her new friends were pointing her to gateways to exploring technoid art and literature and music, the different ways people used their love of technology to shape their pop culture diet and way of life, and it was drawing her in. Their slang and references were starting to make sense to her, she could follow lines of conversation from a piece of cyberpunk literature to a cult classic arcade game to a reference to Tron, not feeling like an outsider but a member of the collective. In on the secret.

But then there was Owen; her oldest friend, her rock. They had known each other so long, were so comfortable together yet able to push each other to try new things or find some way to lift one another up. When Owen was feeling blah Ada found a way to brighten his spirits, and even as Ada fretted about essays looming on the horizon she knew Owen would be able to explain everything to her better than their teachers could.

More importantly, he had always been the one person to endure her ardor for all things tech and her freak outs (over things good and bad) with something more than reflexive ‘Uh huh’s. Everyone else indulged her passion passively – even her parents still didn’t get her joke that naming her Ada was prophetic, and the time she Frankensteined their home office computer she had to spend almost an hour pleading with them to listen and understand that she had improved its performance, that she knew what she was doing. But Owen… He didn’t always understand what Ada was talking about or trying to show him, but he understood how it made her feel.

And just the fact that someone got her made her feel so good; never mind that Owen encouraged her to follow her interests, he made her feel that her passion was rational, that she wasn’t existing in her own crazy world. She could spend hours quilting circuitry together or writing code until she saw a phantom screen on every sheet of paper or blank wall, but when she made contact with Owen she felt grounded, sane.

And that was the reason (a reason) why she started obsessing over his tone, his visual cues. She needed someone who didn’t just wait for her ramblings to fade away, but encouraged her and reinforced the fact that it was OK her obsession mattered, if only to her and her alone. Even if other P-Fosters had the same interest as her, it wasn’t the same. She didn’t know them as friends, they were just classmates. Owen was different.

But lately he had started to seem like everyone else, indifferent to talk of computers beyond video games or some new app. It had started the first day of class, though Ada didn’t realize it until she was looking back on the incident. They had gotten seats next to each other for World Lit, the last class of the day, and Ada had shown him her Perl textbook, excited about how big it was and how intense the class promised to be. Owen had smiled, happy she was happy, but he had gotten quiet then.

One time could be her imagination, but as the weeks passed Ada became aware of how his mood shifted whenever their conversations came to anything involving tech-talk or Ada’s P-FOST classes. Like he frosted up, not just bored but actually repelled by the thought of another long-winded sermon from her. The rest of the time he’d be his old self, and Ada was reminded why she loved being with him.

Was he really that tired of her tech-talk? She could understand why; she had tested his patience a lot over the years, dominating conversations or taking up his time with stuff he couldn’t fathom. She’d been kind of selfish like that.

And it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. P-FOST was going to loom over her next two years, and then when she went off to college it would be more of the same. But the idea of letting Owen drift away didn’t occur to her. She wanted to share her excitement with him, she wanted to show him all this awesome stuff she was learning and which meant everything to her…

…no, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t anything related to circuitry or tapestries of code. Sitting in her room one night, having just solved a really hard problem for her electronics class and wanting to IM Owen and share this with someone, Ada realized she just wanted to keep him in her life, close to her. And weren’t the implications of that terrifying to consider? Nothing ruined a good (great) friendship like romance.

Could she see herself with him romantically? Do all that dating stuff like going to fancy restaurants and dancing under moonlight? She didn’t really want that, the song-and-dance of love. But she enjoyed being with Owen, thought about him when he wasn’t around, and the idea of being in his arms, feeling his heartbeat…

She blushed. Damn, she did feel something.

But first things first: how to keep Owen a part of her increasingly tech-centric life when he was having trouble faking an interest in her one great passion.

Her solution was to invite/drag him to this afterschool brainstorming session with her workgroup, hoping her new friends could do for him what they had done for her and draw him into technoid art and fiction. Owen had introduced Ada to plenty of books and movies she had never checked out because they were unknown quantities but which she invariably ended up loving (she sometimes thought he understood her tastes better than she did); maybe she could return the favor, get him interested in chiptunes or remixes of classic text adventure games. And then they could spend time together sharing an interest in that, and it would give her a chance to exercise her technoid side without driving Owen away!

So far the experiment had been a mild failure. She thought Owen’s interest had been piqued by talk of urban legends, but the deeper Mack went into esoterica that more he had tuned out. The feeling Mack was talking only to Ada did not help matters.

“Have you ever heard of Windwaker?”

Josie, sitting across from Owen, was the closest the technoid group had to a musical expert. Pixie-ish with short brown hair kept in spikes by solidified gel, she was naturally peppy and outgoing to a fault, and Ada was relieved there was one member of the group trying to make Owen feel welcome and drawing him into the conversation.

“Can’t say that I have.” Owen’s sounded disinterested.

“They’re this duo out of Reykjavik that makes these sort of orchestral symphonic pieces using nature sounds. Rain, thunder, bird calls.”

Owen chuckled.

“They use sounds from the real world? Isn’t that odd for a technology-based subculture?”

“Maybe. No.” This gave Josie pause. “Technology is all about impacting the real world, working with it to change it. There has to be some connection between the digital and the physical.”

“But aren’t there some technoids that want to divorce themselves from the real world entirely? Shed the meat and exist only in the cyber?”

Josie made a face, as did Ada. The auburn-haired girl had seen manifestos and blog-rants about how complete immersion in a digital world was a deliberate act of evolution mankind needed to make, but before she could cut off Owen’s possible technophobia Josie spoke up.

“Those guys... You can’t leave the real world. And even if you could, where would you go? A virtual reality simulation? That’s the worst kind of escapism, running away from something instead of to something.”

Raymond, the fourth and quietest member of the group, spoke up.

“There are several books on the theory and philosophy of technoid culture and how it relates to mainstream society, but they’re pretty dense.”

“Most of us,” Josie considered her words, “Most of us realize changing technology means changing society. Radically changing it, top-down. But there are things we can’t change, you know? For all the effort we put into creating new forms of music or animation using digital means we’re still just creating music and animation. We didn’t create new art forms.”

“What about video games? Isn’t that an entirely technology-based medium?”

“Kind of,” Josie conceded, “Although penny arcades and pinball games predate computers. And the basic storytelling devices of any genre used in video games are lifted from literature or film, which was itself an outgrowth of theater.”

As the conversation sidled into talk about RPGs – a topic dear to Owen’s heart, Ada knew – the novice technoid relaxed, reaching for a slice of pizza. The last one.

“Oh, empty pan,” Mack said. “Do we want a third one?”

Josie and Raymond voted ‘aye,’ while Ada chewed, swallowed and agreed. Owen, who had gotten his fill from the first deep dish Hawaiian, waved a hand to say ‘I’m good.’

As Mack went up to order another pizza Ada tried to read Owen’s face again, his expression a mix of curious and perturbed. Like he didn’t understand something and it bothered him.

He caught her looking at him. She smiled. He smiled back. She fought the urge to straighten out his dirty blonde hair, a regular feeling for her. It was only an inch long, how could it be so messy?!

“Still hungry?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she replied indifferently.

“You’re going to be a true technoid. Big and fat, sitting in one of those reclining seats with half a dozen monitors hanging over you.”

“Maybe. It is common for technoids to put on weight. Lot of sitting around, lots of pizza.” Owen’s prophecy was in jest, but it didn’t even register to Ada. For a brief flash she realized she should feel self-conscious about eating so much, and the image Owen painted of her all but immobile seemed vivid, but she shrugged it off as soon as it came. She had never been one to fret about keeping a size 0 body or making excuses for her appetite.

True, it was odd that she had eaten close to half a pizza but still felt hungry. Odder still that this was not an aberration, but her new thing. For a couple weeks now she’d noticed herself getting hungrier earlier or needing snacks between meals.

Oddest was how a lot of her fellow P-Fosters shared her appetite. When Mack returned with their third pizza all four of them grabbed a slice; when it came time for them to all go their separate ways the thing was long demolished. And all that eating was having an effect, if the way Josie’s pants or Raymond’s shirt hugged their bodies was any indication. Even Ada’s own skirt was getting kind of snug.

Before the school year Ada had thought the correlation between technoids and adipose was a stereotype, something dating back to guys in their Cupertino garages building home PCs. The apparent reality of it was a puzzle, and Ada’s personality was the exact type to fixate on puzzles, but before she knew it she and Owen were walking back to their neighborhood together and she wasn’t thinking about that anymore. She wanted to probe Owen, test the waters and see what he thought of her other friends and their interests.

“I have some of Windwaker’s songs. I could email them to you tonight if you’re interested.”

“Sure,” Owen said casually, and Ada cheered internally. It had worked! Then he said, more thoughtfully, “I’m curious about the whole… that thing what’s-her-name said about technology changing nature and society.”

“Oh?” Her cheering died down a little.

“It sounds like the thing you see in a thousand bad sci-fi stories: technology run amuck, people needing to return to nature, we’re becoming slaves to computers. There’s some truth to that, you know. The idea of how to… find the limit seems interesting.”

“Yeah…” Ada wasn’t sure what he was talking about. He wasn’t going Luddite, was he?

“Do technoids ever talk about that? Keeping technology under control or taking steps to prevent some Terminator-style apocalypse?”

“Uh…” Ada’s instinct was to say ‘Yes, of course. All technoids are aware of the potential for technology to run rampant and we’re all deeply concerned about it and taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen.’ But she couldn’t. In the books and videos she had seen things were like in Star Trek, a utopia delivered by advanced technology but with no mention of how things got to be that way or how to make sure things work out for the best. “Well, Raymond mentioned there being books about technoid philosophy, but I haven’t read them.”

“Hmm…” Owen nodded. “I’m just thinking… People seem really big on this idea that technology will make everything just because it’s so awesome, but nobody seems to have any idea how it will actually do that. Except those people that want to live in the matrix.”

Ada got a cold, sinking feeling in her stomach. Had she made things worse?