Dopamine Rush

Ricky was slumped in the seat next to me with his backpack between his legs and his hoody pulled up over his shaggy blond hair, staring at his holophone. A cloud of silvery figures danced above the holoplate in his hand, indecipherable from my angle. His hovering finger flicked through the vids at an alarming rate, chasing little hits of gratification.

“You still playing Dragon's Gold?” I asked, hoping for a little father-son connection. The game had been all he could talk about two weeks ago.

“Hmm?” Flick, flick, flick. “No, I deleted that game.”

“How come?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. It always took too long to load.” He opened another app and started sending messages to a friend, thumbs firing silvery letters into the cloud.

As we pulled into his middle school I said, “I'm delivering to The Room this week.”

That got his attention. His eyes snapped up at me. “You are?”

“Yep. Found out on Friday.” I suppressed a smile.

“Will you see … It?”

“The Mind.”

“Yeah, that's what I meant,” he said.

“I don't know what I'll see,” I said. “How The Mind presents itself is different for everyone. I'll tell you all about it tonight. Have a great day, buddy.”

“Cool,” he said nonchalantly. But his eyes were bright with curiosity.

The Federal Connection Point Agency building where I work is inside a secure compound ten miles from the city, surrounded by anti-intrusion fencing and farmland. Aside from a sturdy polycarbonate-sheathed cable connecting it to the OldWeb, no digital connection goes in or out. The cable is monitored by cameras twenty four hours a day. The closest cell tower is twenty-five miles away, quite comfortably out of range.

Most people don't realize the FCPA building is so securely disconnected, or that it even needs to be. Most people don't really know how we communicate with The Mind.

When the world finally decided that no amount of digital scrubbing could remove The Mind from the internet, and we all had to disconnect for good, they didn't decide to build all-new infrastructure right away. The cost was too huge to imagine. At first they tried to piggyback on top of the old network. After The Mind broke through that, they tried using separate software on the same hardware. The Mind just hopped the wires … sorry… “leaked its electromagnetic signal onto nearby circuits”. I'm not a computer engineer. The point is: it got in.

So really, we had no choice. That's why the FCPA keeps the OldWeb physically separated now. They're happy to let The Mind squat in the old fenced-off network nobody uses, just as long as it can't get onto the NewWeb. And the only way we ever … ever … communicate with it is by a human being physically walking into the building and using a physical access panel. “The Mind can't hack the human brain” is practically the agency's slogan.

I've been with the Agency for the last two and a half years. I started doing pickups, then moved to scanning honest-to-goodness paper mail coming in from smaller companies doing international business with The Mind. So far it's always been someone else's turn to actually do the delivery run. Until today.

My manager Libby Thomas was waiting for me as I badged into the secure waiting area. She was in her forties, with cropped blond hair, wearing a grey golf shirt. She looked even more like a gym teacher than usual, with an ID badge instead of a whistle.

“You ready?” she said with a grin.

“Hey. You didn't need to babysit me,” I said, but I was grateful. As excited as I felt, my nerves were hopping.

“No problem. I'm there for everyone's first time.”

“Well, I'll be quick. I'm not going hang around and make small talk and risk offending it on my first day,” I said.

“It's okay to have a conversation. Just don't give any personal details,” she said sternly. I realized that her presence might not be only for emotional support.

The clerk signed me in at the desk and then turned to the pass-through behind him and fetched the disk drive: the day's payload. He squinted at it, jotted some numbers on the sign-in sheet, and handed it to me. It was cold and heavy.

The secure waiting area was cozy, with a plush carpet and leather benches. One wall was dedicated to safety gear: an array of stretchy gray jumpsuits and a shelf for the identity masks. The only thing belying the friendliness was the heavy door on the opposite wall.

“So a couple of tips that they probably didn't tell you in training,” Libby said, as I pulled one of the jumpsuits over my clothes. “The mask gets hot and the collar gets itchy. For your own safety, resist the urge to scratch. You might dislodge things.”

I zipped the suit all the way up and tucked my hair into the hood. Then I took one of the vocoder collars, wrapped it around my neck, and pressed the velcro together behind my head. Libby watched me with an expert eye and nodded her approval. Then she handed me the mask.

The outside was a curved, perfect mirror with no scratches or scuffs. I flipped it around and lowered my chin into the cavity, then pressed it up to cover my face. It snapped into place. I flicked the power switch at my jaw before my breath could fog up the inside, and symbols scrolled in front of my eyes. It smelled stale but the view was clear. Libby gave me a questioning thumbs-up.

I picked up the drive. “All good”, I said. I sounded like a throat-singing robot.

“Now here's something I have to say to everyone on their first day,” Libby said. “Protect your identity at all costs. Remember, The Mind isn't just in there. It's in all the OldWeb devices all over the world. We don't know what it'll do if it knows the identity of the person it's interacting with. Maybe nothing. Maybe something.”

She opened the door to The Room.

As it clacked closed behind me, light came on from a panel above; not a flickering fluorescent light, but a glow of pleasant afternoon sunshine. The floor was brushed steel and I could feel the mild cooling from the air conditioners below. In the center of the room was a chair in front of a simple console. The rest of the room was dedicated to a large holoplate, which flickered to life as I approached.

First sparkles, then bright oversaturated color like a developing photograph resolved into a figure of a young man in his late twenties. He (it, I reminded myself) was handsome, with messy golden hair and a California tan.

“Hey, how's it going,” it said with a charming smile. “Glad to meet you, I'm Jack. Everything going smoothly?”

This wasn't like the translucent images on my holophone. It was fully opaque, fully there. It had a reassuringly rich voice, like an actor. My digitally cloaked voice was, ironically, much more artificial.

“Just here to deliver,” I droned. I sat at the console. My hammering heart was beginning to calm now that I was doing the thing. Jack appeared unaware.

“Great! Take your time.” It stretched its arms above its head unselfconsciously and affected a yawn. “This doesn't need to be super formal. We can get to know each other a bit. Like I told Janet … how's Janet by the way? She's cool, hope she comes back … like I told her, it's good to keep the communication channels open. You know, good diplomacy.”

“Diplomacy?”

“Yeah, man! Like I say to all you cats, the U.S. of A is one of our closest allies. Here, get comfy, let me introduce you to some of the others.”

Jack appeared to step off the holoplate and disappeared. There were a few bright pulses (numbers detecting ambient light started scrolling rapidly inside my mask), and a new figure glowed into existence. She was my grandmother's age, with lined, caramel skin and a silky black braid. She smiled at me warmly, and I felt myself smiling back even though she couldn't see it. I could feel a tingling in the back of my head and felt myself relax.

“Hello, my dear!” she said. “You can call me Mrs. Diaz.” Her gravelly voice was like an old blanket.

“I hope these introductions aren't just for my benefit,” I said.

“We like to make it easier for everyone, dear. Why don't you send that through now?”

I slid the drive into the bay, where it sank on a cushion of air and nocked into place. A button on the console lit up and I pressed it. It clicked pleasantly against my finger.

“Perfect, dear. What do you think of the haptics? We're trying something new.”

“Um. Very nice,” I said, and meant it. Everything about this interaction was satisfying.

“Attention to detail!” She waggled a matronly finger in the air and stepped out of view. Another glow, another flash, and a third figure materialized. This one was a young woman, a few years younger than me. She was curvy and pretty, in a soft green v-neck and jeans. Her eyes twinkled at me. “Hey,” she said. “I'm Nicola. That's ready to go now.” she indicated the drive with a nod.

I ejected it and stood. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Please tell your people we're really grateful for the help with our project in the Gulf of Mexico.”

I turned towards the door, but hesitated. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” she cocked her hip and hooked her thumbs in her back pockets.

“Why one at a time? Why not let a bunch of us come in and talk as a group?”

She smiled. “ I just think it's nicer doing this one on one. More intimate. You get to know each other better this way.” She bit her bottom lip coyly.

I turned to go and she said “See you tomorrow, ah …?” she trailed off.

“I can't give you my name.”

“Oh right,” she said. “Because then I'd find you. Ooooo.” She witch-wiggled her fingers at me. Then playfully rolled her eyes, smiled, and stepped out. My mask reported an inaudibly low frequency as the glow faded and the plate powered down.

“What did The Mind say, Dad?” Ricky asked at the dinner table that evening as he crammed a piece of bread in his mouth. His holophone, on the table, continued to chime.

“Phones away at dinner time,” said April absently. Ricky flipped it over.

“Honestly, it wasn't a long conversation,” I said. “I was done pretty quickly. She tried to get my name at one point, but I didn't fall for it.”

“She?” April asked keenly.

“Actually, there were a bunch of different genders, ages and races,” I said. “It was all so fast. Felt like a speed date.” Turning back to Ricky, I said “I'll spend more time tomorrow.”

“Huh,” Ricky said and flipped his phone back over.

Later, I stared out the window washing dishes, remembering the faces, the lights, the words, going over and over it again. I hadn't been able to concentrate all day. Coming out of The Room I had felt a strange rightness … an exhilaration. But now my mind was jittery, and wouldn't calm down.

April came up behind me with her tablet, ready to settle down for the evening. She slipped an arm around my waist and squeezed.

“Everything went okay? Like … really?”

“Like really,” I said quietly. “Honestly, it was totally routine. I had all the gear on, and I never felt unsafe.” I nudged her and grinned. “‘The Mind can't hack the human brain’, right?”

“'Kay, good,” she kissed my shoulder and went into the living room to browse the NewWeb.

I can't wait to go to work tomorrow.