eyai yuletide!
It looks like I am kicking off Eyai Yuletide here! I'm a bit nervous about this, because I adore the whole eyaiverse but previous to this I have enjoyed it from the sidelines. Here is my prayer that no continuity is lying dead in the streets. And without further ado:
inertia, ~1300 words, for littledust. I hope you enjoy. <3
John guards the Filter.
He starts in '73, sixteen years old and answering to a young eighteen, tall and broad-shouldered enough to pull it off. He practices it in the mirror until he can say it right, not firmly but proudly, a little unsure, eighteen: old enough for full-time legal work, the only thing that can drag him up to a happy medium between worlds. His father looks at John in his best threadbare clothes and says he's proud. John is soft-spoken, carefully calculated into a polite boy too dull to know he must be unassuming. He's hired on the spot.
It's before the days when gold dust-motes float down from the Pipe in the summer sun, before the eyai are sophisticated enough to work security: the hundreds of people John records and processes each day are filed away in human memory banks a hundred times more complex. John sees the cravats and the skirts that threaten to sweep the floor any inch now. He watches the rising necklines as though he regrets change.
In a year, two, when John is eighteen and answers to twenty, the eyai become real. They are no longer blank slates following the animations of real people; they have perfect faces and walk without jerking. John can read large-lettered words and sign his own name, but their algorithms are beyond him. He only knows what everyone who guards the Filter knows: the clear perfect eyes of an eyai can track a face now.
"Scares me," Tom Ellison says, teeth clenched around a cigar the Filter signs expressly forbid. A new guard once tried to reprimand him for it, but Tom lives in the institutional dust of this place, and the guard was gone the next week. In any case, John's the sort of man who knows better. He takes the hand he's dealt and examines his cards while Tom says, to murmured agreements, "Gives me the bloody creeps, it does, the way they stare."
"What do you think, Stowe?" Andrea asks. She has the best poker face and knows John's only eighteen now, though neither of them have ever said a thing of it to each other.
"They do stare," John says. "All in."
Andrea's mouth twists, imperfect and skeptical, but she leaves it. In the days afterwards, John watches her eyes tracking the tracking eyes of the eyai, until she catches him at it. He merely ducks his head and looks away, collecting fares.
John isn't much given to liking people, but he likes Andrea, because he knows he'll never have to explain himself to her.
There are other people he likes too, safe people, separated from him by every conceivable layer of society. The woman who wears fashion like self-conscious armor and always short-changes her fare. A man with a preoccupied air, never really seeing John, making him feel safe. Another man, who never ages, who pays his fares in exact change and meets John's eyes, making both of them the opposite of invisible.
Tom leaves in the spring of '75, when the first eyai are imported as guards. "It will all come crashing down, you mark me," he says, with the dark anger of prophecy in the midst of his packing. John doesn't doubt it.
Andrea's laid off in the autumn, once all the eyai-haters have long since run and the Filter corp has recalculated its losses and come up with free labor. John lingers in the disused break room and watches Andrea collect her vest and her bag and her gun. Andrea gives him the same twisted half-smile she always has.
"What next?" John asks.
"There's always something," Andrea replies, with the clarity of a lie. She examines her vest. "Do you hate them, Stowe?"
"No," John says.
"Hmm," Andrea says, tucking her hair behind an ear, examining him like an ineligible ticket. "Because they're machines or because they're people?"
"Why can't it be both?" John asks, and Andrea laughs, a soft bitter curve of sound John's never heard before and never will again.
"It can never be both, John," she says, and goes.
John stays. It is undeliberate except in the ways that it is: he is a fixture of this Filter station, the way that Tom was before he listened to his own fear or self-preservation. John doesn't have those things. He has an infinite well of patience and a mind that runs slower than that of his new automated compatriot guards, but no one ever makes him leave. At home in his solitary dingy flat, in his only refuge from the great mass of life that is the station, he stands before his spotty mirror, twisting around to see his bare skin from all angles, wondering if his father is a miracle of technology in his head, wondering at his vanity for supposing someone would take the time to tell him lies. He's human. That he feels calm around the eyai, that he's one of the few humans the Filter corp kept on paltry wages to oversee, mean nothing.
The woman he likes isn't allowed to pay less than the full amount now. She does it without complaint. J-34389 thanks her in easy monotone and turns to see John watching. J-34389 does not know how to anticipate questions, so John says, in a way he imagines must be like a command code, "You know her."
"Marie Collins," J-34389 says, an easy ID. John dislikes the feeling of juxtaposition. Anyone who can say Marie Collins should be allowed to run self-identifying consonants and vowels. Three-four-three-eight-nine.
The man with the perfect face and the perfect fare has a serial number every time he comes through: L-48491. It's '86 in the early spring and John keeps the man's ticket for longer than he should, waiting for a glitch that doesn't come. Four-eight-four-nine-one. "What's your name?" he asks.
"Nacio," the man says, an easy ID, and for the first time John feels real fear.
Scattered advertisements for companies and causes litter the Filter on off days, swirling in the updrafts. John reads them carefully and dreams of sheep being led docile to the gallows, dreams of orchestras and of losing his key, and takes long minutes in the morning to remember that it's not the '70s anymore, that the transient world is changing and John has no mechanism to wind.
On a whim he goes to J-34389 in the gray morning and asks, "What's your name?"
A collection of binary and clockwork gazes back at him, seeing him, registering, assessing, causing John to exist in each moment of attention. "Lewis," the eyai says, and it's not an easy ID at all.
"I'm glad," John says.
"So am I," Lewis returns, voice .app on low. "There is something --"
"I know," John says.
The following day he is human; he can't function at maximum efficiency all the time, can't guard the Filter when he has a sudden attack of unspecified illness that means he must stay home, stay out of the way. When he was sixteen this might have been his world, but he doubts it was even then.
On the radio a panicked newscaster is interrupted mid-syllable by someone John's never heard before, who speaks of freedom and independence and a hundred words for which John's never had any use. Rhetoric is unimportant. What is important is the cut-off news: Pipe down. Actions are words and words are actions: three-four-three-eight-nine is called Lewis, and that is an act which rests upon the act of someone whose serial number John can't remember calling himself Nacio; a section of Pipe is down, brought crumbling to earth by physics and a collapsed Filter, and yesterday John said I know.
Neither side will put him to trial for an action not taken. He doesn't have a sign, nor rhetoric, nor a lock and key. John can hear the chaos out in the streets, can observe the seething confusion of life by standing still.
This day he goes out and joins them.
inertia, ~1300 words, for littledust. I hope you enjoy. <3
John guards the Filter.
He starts in '73, sixteen years old and answering to a young eighteen, tall and broad-shouldered enough to pull it off. He practices it in the mirror until he can say it right, not firmly but proudly, a little unsure, eighteen: old enough for full-time legal work, the only thing that can drag him up to a happy medium between worlds. His father looks at John in his best threadbare clothes and says he's proud. John is soft-spoken, carefully calculated into a polite boy too dull to know he must be unassuming. He's hired on the spot.
It's before the days when gold dust-motes float down from the Pipe in the summer sun, before the eyai are sophisticated enough to work security: the hundreds of people John records and processes each day are filed away in human memory banks a hundred times more complex. John sees the cravats and the skirts that threaten to sweep the floor any inch now. He watches the rising necklines as though he regrets change.
In a year, two, when John is eighteen and answers to twenty, the eyai become real. They are no longer blank slates following the animations of real people; they have perfect faces and walk without jerking. John can read large-lettered words and sign his own name, but their algorithms are beyond him. He only knows what everyone who guards the Filter knows: the clear perfect eyes of an eyai can track a face now.
"Scares me," Tom Ellison says, teeth clenched around a cigar the Filter signs expressly forbid. A new guard once tried to reprimand him for it, but Tom lives in the institutional dust of this place, and the guard was gone the next week. In any case, John's the sort of man who knows better. He takes the hand he's dealt and examines his cards while Tom says, to murmured agreements, "Gives me the bloody creeps, it does, the way they stare."
"What do you think, Stowe?" Andrea asks. She has the best poker face and knows John's only eighteen now, though neither of them have ever said a thing of it to each other.
"They do stare," John says. "All in."
Andrea's mouth twists, imperfect and skeptical, but she leaves it. In the days afterwards, John watches her eyes tracking the tracking eyes of the eyai, until she catches him at it. He merely ducks his head and looks away, collecting fares.
John isn't much given to liking people, but he likes Andrea, because he knows he'll never have to explain himself to her.
There are other people he likes too, safe people, separated from him by every conceivable layer of society. The woman who wears fashion like self-conscious armor and always short-changes her fare. A man with a preoccupied air, never really seeing John, making him feel safe. Another man, who never ages, who pays his fares in exact change and meets John's eyes, making both of them the opposite of invisible.
Tom leaves in the spring of '75, when the first eyai are imported as guards. "It will all come crashing down, you mark me," he says, with the dark anger of prophecy in the midst of his packing. John doesn't doubt it.
Andrea's laid off in the autumn, once all the eyai-haters have long since run and the Filter corp has recalculated its losses and come up with free labor. John lingers in the disused break room and watches Andrea collect her vest and her bag and her gun. Andrea gives him the same twisted half-smile she always has.
"What next?" John asks.
"There's always something," Andrea replies, with the clarity of a lie. She examines her vest. "Do you hate them, Stowe?"
"No," John says.
"Hmm," Andrea says, tucking her hair behind an ear, examining him like an ineligible ticket. "Because they're machines or because they're people?"
"Why can't it be both?" John asks, and Andrea laughs, a soft bitter curve of sound John's never heard before and never will again.
"It can never be both, John," she says, and goes.
John stays. It is undeliberate except in the ways that it is: he is a fixture of this Filter station, the way that Tom was before he listened to his own fear or self-preservation. John doesn't have those things. He has an infinite well of patience and a mind that runs slower than that of his new automated compatriot guards, but no one ever makes him leave. At home in his solitary dingy flat, in his only refuge from the great mass of life that is the station, he stands before his spotty mirror, twisting around to see his bare skin from all angles, wondering if his father is a miracle of technology in his head, wondering at his vanity for supposing someone would take the time to tell him lies. He's human. That he feels calm around the eyai, that he's one of the few humans the Filter corp kept on paltry wages to oversee, mean nothing.
The woman he likes isn't allowed to pay less than the full amount now. She does it without complaint. J-34389 thanks her in easy monotone and turns to see John watching. J-34389 does not know how to anticipate questions, so John says, in a way he imagines must be like a command code, "You know her."
"Marie Collins," J-34389 says, an easy ID. John dislikes the feeling of juxtaposition. Anyone who can say Marie Collins should be allowed to run self-identifying consonants and vowels. Three-four-three-eight-nine.
The man with the perfect face and the perfect fare has a serial number every time he comes through: L-48491. It's '86 in the early spring and John keeps the man's ticket for longer than he should, waiting for a glitch that doesn't come. Four-eight-four-nine-one. "What's your name?" he asks.
"Nacio," the man says, an easy ID, and for the first time John feels real fear.
Scattered advertisements for companies and causes litter the Filter on off days, swirling in the updrafts. John reads them carefully and dreams of sheep being led docile to the gallows, dreams of orchestras and of losing his key, and takes long minutes in the morning to remember that it's not the '70s anymore, that the transient world is changing and John has no mechanism to wind.
On a whim he goes to J-34389 in the gray morning and asks, "What's your name?"
A collection of binary and clockwork gazes back at him, seeing him, registering, assessing, causing John to exist in each moment of attention. "Lewis," the eyai says, and it's not an easy ID at all.
"I'm glad," John says.
"So am I," Lewis returns, voice .app on low. "There is something --"
"I know," John says.
The following day he is human; he can't function at maximum efficiency all the time, can't guard the Filter when he has a sudden attack of unspecified illness that means he must stay home, stay out of the way. When he was sixteen this might have been his world, but he doubts it was even then.
On the radio a panicked newscaster is interrupted mid-syllable by someone John's never heard before, who speaks of freedom and independence and a hundred words for which John's never had any use. Rhetoric is unimportant. What is important is the cut-off news: Pipe down. Actions are words and words are actions: three-four-three-eight-nine is called Lewis, and that is an act which rests upon the act of someone whose serial number John can't remember calling himself Nacio; a section of Pipe is down, brought crumbling to earth by physics and a collapsed Filter, and yesterday John said I know.
Neither side will put him to trial for an action not taken. He doesn't have a sign, nor rhetoric, nor a lock and key. John can hear the chaos out in the streets, can observe the seething confusion of life by standing still.
This day he goes out and joins them.