Let's face it. This isn't about games anymore.

This is a short story written by Bruce Cooner. I helped him with editing, and a couple ideas on it. Anyway, tell me what you think:



Something was missing. He couldn't tell what it was, exactly, but he felt a distinct fuzziness in one of the corners of his consciousness.

He sat up and groggily brought his glasses to his face, exactly the same way he had every morning for the past fifteen years. He closed his eyes and scanned his mindlog for the past 24 hours.

Something had been erased, but the log data's descriptor was garbled, preventing him from knowing what was missing. He pinched the bridge of his nose, where the glasses rested, and said, “Stimulants. Can’t debug this early without some stims.”

In his mind’s eye, he pictured a white cup of black coffee. A simple white ceramic cup, filled almost to the brim. Although it wasn't necessary for the object request system, he found himself thinking about the smell, the warmth of the steam on his face as he took the first sip, the bitter sensation rolling over his tongue. Despite the sharpness of his memories, nothing happened.

Mornings were always like this. His wireless bridge was never reliable before eight or nine. He liked to think the problem was because everybody else was waking up, and choking the bandwidth, or maybe the iconic recognition system in his autochef was on the fritz again (he missed the old models with plain old menus). Deep down, though, he knew it was just his own sluggish synapses.

He had to tightly close his eyes and concentrate on the image of a white mug of coffee, which was hard to do without falling asleep again. A small readout on his HUD blinked into view. In the upper right edge of his peripheral vision, he saw,
“1 cup coffee.
Caffeine +.
Sugar +
Cost : $10.73.
Thank you."

The floor tiles under his chair began to warm themselves as he sat down at the table holding the white mug of steaming coffee. It wasn't until he’d finished half the cup that he felt confident he could close his eyes without falling asleep again.

Something had erased itself, which wasn't uncommon. But everything prior to the erasure looked perfectly normal. The area that appeared to be erased just looked like two gigs of 0xBEBE, repeated over and over. He frowned slightly, trying to remember what that code meant. Was that uninitialized data?

A quiet chiming rang softly beneath his train of thought, and in his HUD, he saw the Midconscious Caller ID “Sarah Lanson” flashing on the screen. A thumbnail pic of a woman’s face smiled next to it.

His stomach tightened involuntarily, but he smiled anyway. Their contacts had been furtive, as if neither one was really sure they wanted to commit to seriously dating the other.

He concentrated on the blinking text, and underneath it flashed a new message:
“Call connected.
$3.42
Thank you. "

The voice that flooded into his mind was warm, friendly, and worried, "Hey, are you okay?"

He frowned, "I'm fine. I was going to call you later today." He couldn't help but see her face whenever he heard her voice. This time it was full of doubt.

"Oh. Well, you never called after last Wednesday. You said you'd get back in touch with me after the party.” There was a short pause, then she said, “I just wanted to make sure I didn't upset you or anything."

He was unable to connect the voice with the memory of a party. His brow furrowed again. "Party?"

The voice grew suddenly cold, "Last Wednesday! At Brad's place. We danced to all those songs, and you said -"

He slapped his forehead, "Oh, crap." He suddenly realized, "Sarah, I'm sorry. I think I know why I can't remember that party. Can I call you back?"

There was a decidedly angry quality to the silence that answered his question. He suddenly realized that he’d been holding the cup of coffee halfway between the table and his lips for the most of the duration of the call. Putting down the cup, he said, "Look, I'm sorry, but I need to sort this out quickly or else there may be no way to..."

Her words came quickly, "No way to make up a good excuse? Don't bother." The disconnect notification snapped like a reel of cable being pulled back into his head.

He pounded the table, causing the cup of coffee to clatter on it saucer and spill some coffee from the half-empty mug.

His finger mindlessly played back and forth across his bottom lip. The autodelete log hadn't yielded any useful information. But maybe... His eyes rolled upward until a row of dark green words faded slowly into sight. He looked across the list, each word lighting in turn until the word “comm.” lit up. He blinked, and a submenu fell. He focused on the word outgoing, and a page of text appeared, blanketing his visual area. He grunted in confirmation to himself.

There was an outgoing network connection made a few milliseconds after the deletion log’s entry indicated it had begun execution. His eyes swiveled to stare at the space in front of him where a line of text floated and blinked. The words "Cornerstone Entertainment, Inc.", appeared below the line, along with a 64-digit IPX address. He squinted at the number, and it separated from the virtual page. Mentally, he swept the number across his field of vision and onto an arrow at its periphery. The arrow lit up and the word "Toll Free. Connecting...” appeared next to it. A soft pulsing noise ticked away the ringtone, then stopped abruptly as the word “Connected” appeared.

A large letter C floated into the room in front of him. Banners swept into his vision above and below the logo. On one, a dancer gyrated next to the title of a popular album. On the other a man dramatically pulled a gun and fired at something out of view. "Welcome to Cornerstone Entertainment, where your entertainment is our existence. Here at Cornerstone, you can choose from over five million..." He mentally muted the subsound feed and scanned around the large letter C.

The word "Support" was small and placed far to the lower right of the logo. He squinted at it and the large C shrunk down and to the left as a new screen of information grew from his selection. He didn't feel like having to look at a menu system any further than he had to, and just said the word aloud, "Licensing."

Words began to scroll across the bottom of his sight. "Our licensing department is proud to serve..." He rolled his eyes and spoke again, "Unmute." The voice flooded back into his mind, "...ustomer. Due to the current volume of calls, please wait for the next available assistant. While you are waiting, feel free to acquire the latest hit single from hit recording star Jessica Blessed, yours to remember and enjoy free for six weeks." A female singer's voice came out of the ether and into his mind. Before she had had time to sing a full line of song, a different female voice, less melodic than any he had heard today, swept into his mind. "Licensing department, how can we help you?"

"Yeah, I think one of your songs must have autodeleted itself last night, and now I'm having trouble remembering..." He tried to remember his earlier conversation, "...some things." The tired voice began rattling off a prepared response, "Yes sir. According to the copyright extension and overhaul act of 2073, all copyright holders have the right to remove their content from all memory structures including.."

He clenched his teeth, "I haven't just forgotten your song, I've forgotten everything I did on the night I heard it." There was a short but palpable silence on the line.

"Well sir, I can connect you with technical support."

He sighed, "Yes. Fine."

The woman’s singing voice flooded back into his mind for a few seconds before a male voice with a slight accent replaced it, "Technical support, how can we help you?"

"Where the hell do you get off erasing my memories?" His right index finger stabbed the table, punctuating his words, adding emphasis that no one would ever be aware of.

"No, sir, we don't erase our customer's memories. Upon license expiration, our contents' internal autodelete scripts look for its sigmark throughout our customers' memory structures and only remove the content. All memories surrounding the content is left intact, you see. So that you can remember going to the movies on a date, or dancing to a song. But you have to pay the reasonable recurring license fee to remember scenes from the movie, or what the song sounds like. Most content will let you remember the first twenty seconds as a sample, in hopes that you'll choose to renew your license. This ensures that..."

He wished the thought channel allowed him to scream. "No, you don't understand, I was dancing and we were listening to. . . To some song, and last night your song deleted itself, and it took my memories out of my head with it.” He mentally uploaded the autodelete entry from his mindlog, so the technician could see the garbled data for himself.

The technician cleared his throat, but no sound crossed the line with this action. "I see, sir. Yes, some people have reported anomalous behavior when executing the scripts in some songs. Did you have a recently made backup of your memory structures?"

Another sigh that did not go down the line. "No."

Far away, the technician rubbed his forehead with his right hand. "Well, sir. The scripts currently in beta are being rewritten to upload any deletions they perform to Cornerstone's Data Repository Service to be held free of charge, in case this happens. Until any, ah, issues can be resolved. Uh, of course, those scripts probably won't be released for another week or two. For you, well, I am authorized to offer fifty free lifetime, no expire licenses for either new content or something already in your memory structures. This offer is extended only for people, ah, affected by this minor software issue."

The coffee and the cup were both now cool against his lips as he sat and listened to the technician's voice flow into his audio cortex. He shook his head, wondering just how many holes had been punched in his past. With a thought he opened an empty script file, and started working on it. By noon the small chip resting against his audio cortex had been reprogrammed to deny the entry of sounds with any code riding just below the audible portion. Copywritten music wouldn’t even be allowed to make it into his memories anymore. His world would be a little quieter, but his past would be a lot safer.