and their families went to the board with technical and ethical questions. Family were far more paranoid and befuddled than actual users themselves, most of the time.
GivingTree303:
Can I take my uncle’s BrightBox on a roller coaster?
Pam_B:
My grandmother is in a BrightBox but still can’t figure out how to login to her email. What should I do?
CarolPeev:
Now that my husband is permanently hooked up to the internet 24/7, how’m I supposed to make sure he isn’t watching porn all the time? i know he’s gotta be watchin it all the time in there, he seems too happy lol i’m furious
LotusBlosssun:
My son has a silicone allergy and can’t hug his Pappy’s box without breaking into hives and being tormented with an evening of gastrointestinal distress. Are there any vegan BrightBox covers?
Other, more controversial questions and posts were blacklisted quickly. It seemed that some LifeMedia employee or intern rushed in to delete or hide troublesome queries as soon as a concerned friend or family member hit “submit”:
Asguardio77:
My condo was foreclosed on and my husband got laid off again. I have to choose between paying for our health insurance and making our LifeMedia payments…All my friends and coworkers say to put my health above the wellbeing of my Nana, who for all intents and purposes is dead, but what happens then? Will my gran’s BrightBox be repossessed? I can’t find anything about this in the service agreement.
AmbitiouslyCuteAlexia:
my kids are confused an scared of the box, they dont understand that daddie’s in their. What do i do. They keep runnin out the house to the neighbors bc they think were haunted or somethun
Each controversial post went live for a second, sometimes a fraction of a second, then vanished. A human user with a body couldn’t even see the posts in time. Accordingly, Joey learned to save every new message to her hard drive immediately. When LifeMedia responded to a query, they left much to be desired:
MiltonS:
BrightBoxes are waterproof, windproof, shock absorbent, and can sustain drops from as high as two stories (depending on how high the ceilings are on those stories, haha!). So it is absolutely safe to take a BB on a roller coaster. But check your amusement park’s guidelines and safety harnesses to be sure, and turn down your uncle’s accelerometer so he doesn’t get too dizzy. Too bad we humans can’t do the same, huh? That’d make for a great motion sickness cure! :-]
MiltonS:
Hi Pam B., great question. BrightBox uploadees have the same fluid skills and crystallized intelligence they had in life, so if Grandma needed an internet usage course beforehand, she’s probably still frustrating now! ;-] I recommend you buy her LifeMedia’s visual-spatial interface analog and a monitor adaptor, and also buy her one of our AudioLearning modules on safely navigating the web via alpha waves. I think with a little visual help, and a few learning mods, she’ll be blazing through the web faster than any human-bodied hacker! Good luck! :-]
MiltonS:
LifeMedia is proud to present, by popular request: Recycled aluminum cases! Totally vegan, hypoallergenic, and cruelty free. :-]
After days of lurking, Joey posted her own message, carefully edited so as not to provoke the admin’s editorial lash.
Josephine_Porter:
Hi all. I’m a new BrightBox user, just looking to get in touch with some other uploadees, particularly if you’re using the OctPrism 4 chassis with a multi-terabyte hard drive. First of all, let me just say I am so so impressed with the hard drive capacity on my unit! I feel like I could store more information than any person would ever reasonably need!
And the interface is so smooth, it was really easy to master (and I was not somebody who slaved away behind a computer all day in my working life)! I never expected to be uploaded to something like this, and let me tell you it’s such a rush! There’s nothing like it.
I’m writing to ask other users: Since being uploaded, have your dreams become more, like, surreal? Or more authentic-seeming, kinda? My dreams are like virtual reality now— it’s like I can walk through memories and re-experience them. But they’re not my memories, obv, because they’re just made-up dreams. They’re like somebody else’s memories. Anyone else have this? It’s pretty amazing, actually! :)))(
Satisfied after a few rounds of editing the post to make it sound as blithe as possible, Joey posted it. She waited, scanning the board for activity. There were IP addresses in the city accessing it, multiple ones, including Milton’s. When five minutes had passed and her post had neither been deleted nor commented on, she audibly sighed with relief and redirected to her email. Jeanette was contacting her from work.
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Subject: Checking in!
Hey Joey, hope you’re doing well at home and not going stir crazy. I’m calling this Steve Milton guy on my lunch break; hopefully he’ll have some suggestions. Let me know if you need anything from the store, love you!
-Jean-Bean
Joey typed out a cursory response, not wanting to provoke Jeanette’s paranoia with silence. She had seven hours of alone-time, with commute figured in, maybe more if Jeanette did go to the store. It occurred to Joey that she should pressure Jeanette to join a gym. Take care of your body, she could say wistfully. That would clinch it.
It was easier to daydream, now. Easier than it had ever been as a living person. Joey recalled many numinous days laying on the couch at the firehouse, twirling a broken Bop It on her lap and listening to the soap operas blaring from the common room. Working in an emergency capacity was not unlike being in a war zone: hours of stultifying boredom punctured by furious activity, danger, pain, etcetera— but boredom was manageable now.
There was an entire universe of scintillating information and petty diversions to bask in, an endlessly unfurling online world to explore. At last Joey understood the appeal of a sedentary, web-based life. It wasn’t so different from what her sister and her coworkers had.
Joey was about to drift off into a LifeMedia MapScape simulation of the Andes Mountains when she felt a small thrumming like a pulse in her nonexistent chest. This brought to her mind a rich bouquet of imagined smells— not the crisp, oxygen-thin air of the mountains, but of cigars, mowed grass, old women’s perfume, little girls’ flavored chap sticks. Again she was panged with unfocused nostalgia. Again, she was missing something she couldn’t recreate.
The thrum inside her was a message. She directed to the LifeMedia message board and found someone had sent her a private IM.
Lily_ofthe_valley:
I hear ya, twerp. If you’re anything like I was, you were miserable in your body and you’re going through some serious shit right now. It’s okay. You’ll find the answers, but certainly not on this site. Let me warn you, in case you haven’t noticed: it’s all a gigantic corporate suckoff. All they can offer you are apps and appendages to buy. But you’re not a physical being anymore, remember, so the solution to your problems won’t ever be material.
Yeah. I said it. You may have an external physical manifestation, but you aren’t a material thing anymore. The mind-brain conflation has been blown the fuck open by your very existence. You’re not the first mind to break free of the body, but you’re among the first. And you sure as shit aren’t the only one plagued by questions of identity, wrestling with weird sensations and dreams. Feeling off-kilter is a side effect of this life.
There are plenty of us that give a shit, like you do. Who want to do more than read online news and get carted around on roller coasters by all the breathers. If you’ve been uploaded for more than a few days, surely you’re sick of the breather’s questions. If you want to talk some of your shit out with us, hit me up. You don’t need this board. We can talk outside it. Message me if you’re interested. You oughta be.
-Your Friend Lilian
11.
Box-to-box messaging was as effortless a
s speaking or changing colors. All Joey had to do was think vaguely of her new friend, consider very deliberately what she wanted to say, and then release the message into the ether.
There was still a short lag, as with any form of communication, and there was that brief moment before sending where she could choose to edit or delete what she’d composed. That was wholly unlike speech. But like speech, there was the same sense of immediate satisfaction after release, freedom from the worry that the words went unread. Once the message was released, the recipient heard it. Or felt it. Or knew it. The sensation didn’t translate to bodily experience very well.
Lilian fired first, after Joey had replied to her message board post. Joey was struck suddenly with another strong thrum, and a thought passed through her involuntarily.
Joey wasn’t scared. “I’m not,” she said out loud.
the woman said silently in Joey’s head.
Joey tried typing and speaking aloud with little result.
“Hey. Hello. Hi. Are you there? … Hiiii… dammit.”
It took the better part of half an hour, but Joey eventually slipped into the right frame of mind and it happened. It was like browsing the web; in a BrightBox, navigation was halfway between an intuitive process and an immensely purposeful one. It was like running or climbing up the side