A baby boy was born. While kept asleep, implants were surgically attached to his nerves. The bleeding baby was then put inside a time pod, a button was pressed, and in 3 seconds the boy became 30 years older. The echo of an infant scream lingered in the air for a moment, like the ghost of a childhood.
The basic-movement implants demonstrated that they were functioning when the man opened the door and stepped out of the pod, amd stood face to face with the Grower. The language implants were also set up correctly- the man presented his first question to the Grower, who stood firmly upright with his hands behind his back.
“What is my name?”
“Your assigned name is Doystin,” replied the Grower in a level, professional voice, “And you are a human man.”
“Yes, I know,” said Doystin, taking the opportunity to look at his surroundings now that his first question had been answered. The Growers eyes showed slight surprise at this rapid change of attention in a newborn.
The movement implants enabled Doystin to absent-mindedly turn and walk across the room, as if he had been doing this for years instead of seconds. He lifted his hand and cupped a slightly faded flower head that hung on it's stem out of a basket. He found interest in the fragility of this organic thing, but he was not sure why. His eyes and fingers quickly explored it, but he never suspected that what he held was a fake immitation. Concern suddenly crossed his face, and he turned back towards the Grower, who had not moved.
“Why have I been brought here?” Doystin did not hide the slight suspicion in his voice.
The Grower did not answer immediately. “...That question should be directed to your organic mother,” he eventually said, “Her location information is stored in your personal-information implants.”
The suspicion left Doystin as quickly as it arrived. “How can I travel to her location?”
For the first time the Grower moved from where he had been standing and guided Doystin to the next room, where Doystin was introducted to the Exporter. She, like the Grower, stood upright with her hands behind her back, but a faint smile on her dark face suggested that she found something amusing in her work. Doystin, at the Growers gentle nudge, repeated his earlier question to the Exporter.
“You can get to her location using your Sartak transport,” she informed him.
The sound of clockwork mechanisms and circuits hummed and ticked from Doystins back as his base-knowledge implants tried to make sense of this information. They did not return anything helpful, so he resorted to conversation. “What is a Sartak transport?” he asked.
“A Sartak is a human’s personal implant extension and transport, and is to be presented to each newborn as soon as an appropriate request is made,” the Exporter read off an invisible script with her head held up, but then she turned to look Doystin more directly in the eye, and added, “Just plug yourself in and you’re ready to soar anywhere you like, as fast as you can imagine!”
The Grower quietly left the room, while Doystin let himself absorb the new information for a moment. His memory held an image of the flower from the previous room, and he looked down at his own bare feet. He next looked across at a wall with a reflective surface to see his own bare body. He looked at his two arms, his electrical implants pointing out jaggedly from his shoulders and back, and his two feet. His mind thought hard as he recalled more base-knowledge about the world he was born into.
He turned to the Exporter. “I am unable to fly.” He was not sure if he was stating a fact or asking a question.
“By your own power, that is correct,” said the Exporter kindly, and then with a smile again, “you are, of course, only human!”
“Yes, I know,” said Doystin impatiently, as if she had started a conversation he was already aquainted and bored with.
After teaching a bit more about the history of human travel, and how it had lead to the modern day transport system, the Exporter took Doystin to the small hangar that contained his Sartak. Its glass and bone shell was the shape of an egg balanced on its side, but no smooth surfaces were easily found. Numerous magnet cords and discs, shiny black eyes, and glowing patches dotted the exterior. A line along the transport showed that it would open its hatch in a way that would resemble a canine animal opening its mouth to eat. Doystin examined it with his eyes, but stayed at a safe distance.
Still looking at it, he continued with the queries he had been giving the Exporter. “But even though the transports have been designed to overcome human limits, the old roads still exist?”
“Yes,” she continued, “but no-one uses them now. Everyone uses Sartak transports to go everywhere, and do everything."
“But on the roads, if people are not inside a transport, they could talk to other people again? Like I am talking to you, and talked to the Grower?”
“That would be very rude,” the Exporter scolded, “Growers and Exporters are specially trained for this unusual method of interaction. You will learn to appreciate how much privacy a normal citizen has inside their own transport. There are built-in controls for a personal library of media-“
“But what if I want to talk to other people again? What if I want the words my mouth says to be heard by ears on the head of another person?” Doystin looked at her, feeling less certain now that she understood what he wanted.
“As I said,” she began, “your Sartak includes a personal communicator with full immersive sound and visual options-“
“I know,” he interrupted again, “but what if I really want to be in the same place as a person when I talk to them?”
The Exporter stopped for a moment, taken aback. She was not familiar with this kind of enquiry. She excused herself from Doystin, instructing him to stay where he was, and left the hangar to send a message to her supervisor.
Doystin was left alone in the hangar. He found himself looking from the Sartak, a shell that would both protect and trap him, to a door that might open towards the old roads. His legs could walk towards either one of these, right now...
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Image source: http://listverse.com/2007/10/19/15-astoundingly-beautiful-sci-fi-images/
