Tyler Hillis

Garrett Falk swayed with the train car as it bounced along on its way through the city. The other passengers swayed too. 

A semi-translucent window hovered in front of him in the middle of the train car. He flicked his pointer finger and the window scrolled to the next auto-generated aggregated news story; something about poverty reaching record numbers. He flicked his finger again to scroll to the next story. Another, smaller, translucent window informed him that due the minimal amount of time he’d spent on the previous story, his feed would no longer provide stories with “poverty” in the title. Garrett nodded slightly, acknowledging the message, and the smaller window faded away. 

The other passengers all made similar small gestures as they looked blankly ahead. Everyone stared through their digital contact lenses, each consumed by the floating windows the miniscule screens provided. Other than the ambient mechanical sounds made by the moving train, the passenger car was silent.

The silence broke as a passenger entered from a station. She cried and talked to herself, looking around frantically. 

“You all need to stop!” she yelled. 

At first, Garrett tried to ignore her. But when she continued, he grew agitated. 

Great, another Momntr, trying to stir up something dramatic for the esteem, he thought. 

“There is more than this, I promise,” she said through her sobs to no one in particular. 

I wonder if I can find her InstaMomnt, he thought. 

A few quick flicks of his fingers and his translucent window now showed the point of view of the woman. It lacked the full immersion—both visually and emotionally—that a curated Momnt provided, but InstaMomnts were a fun diversion when you couldn’t fully commit. And he had never seen one that contained him in it before. 

He studied himself through his floating window. Like looking through some strange dimensional rift at another version of himself, it was eerie. His stare, and the stare of those around him, were so…dead. 

He became so absorbed in this view that he felt the urge to look himself in the eyes. Without giving much thought, he turned his head toward the woman, which moved his floating window to the space between them, and then, he was looking at himself in a bizarre mirror—he staring at his window, which behind it sat the woman; she broadcasting her point of view looking at him, showing on the window he stared into. 

But it didn’t last long. The woman saw the one dead-staring passenger that moved their head in her direction and she pounced. She ran up to Garrett excitedly and yelled at him. 

“You did it! Even for a second you broke free! Keep going, please!”

Garrett turned away, realizing the mistake he made of engaging even slightly. He returned to his natural window-staring position and tried to ignore her. With a few quick flicks of his finger, the InstaMomnt closed and a different feed of a wintery mountainside took its place. He turned up the sound of the blizzard—linked to the microspeaker implants in his ear canal—and drowned out the woman. 

After a while the woman, defeated, moved on.

“It’s no use arguing with a dead man,” she said before getting off the train. 

At the next station, another window replaced Garrett’s winterland showing a city map. A calm voice said, “your stop is up next.” He stood and approached the door, and the map highlighted the walking route home. 

When the doors opened the map told him to walk, so he walked. When it told him to turn, he turned. When it told him to wait for traffic, he waited. He pulled up a second translucent window and resumed his scrolling of news headlines as he obeyed the map’s calm instructions.

Before long he arrived to his apartment building—a 125-story mega bloc built during the second housing implosion of ‘72. He entered the lobby, neared the elevator, and a new window appeared in front of him.

“Welcome home, Citizen 1707,” a near-human generated voice said. “You’re currently enrolled in our platinum residency tier, which allows for two elevator rides per day. Elevator rides remaining for the day: one. If you’d like to upgrade to our ultra-platinum special residency tier, you would be allowed four additional elevator rides per day. Would you like to upgrade?”

Garrett shook his head and boarded the elevator. It rose rapidly to level 89, and as he got off, the voice said, “Elevator rides remaining for the day: zero.”

He made his way down the long gray hall and found his apartment’s door with the help of his map’s directives. Once inside, he closed the map window and grabbed a glass from a cabinet. He went to the faucet and a new window and voice appeared.

“Platinum residency tier residents are provided unlimited tap water. Would you like to upgrade to the beverage choice residency tier to receive access to options such as beer, wine, or intravenous saline solution?”

Garrett shook his head and filled his glass with simple water. He took a drink and then looked at a small metal appliance on the counter. Another window and voice appeared. 

“Getting hungry? You have used all of your allowed platinum residency tier meals this month. You may purchase additional meals at an increased price, or upgrade to our pantry pass for a wider selection of meals and seven additional meals per month.”

Garrett’s stomach rumbled. He nodded.

“Thank you for subscribing to our pantry pass. Your monthly billing will be updated with the additional charge. Meals remaining this month: seven. Please choose a meal.”

The window populated with a list of dishes. Garrett scrolled, trying to find something he liked. He knew it was all made from the same printed and dyed nutrient-mush made to look like something else. But today he felt like having teriyaki chicken-themed nutrient mush. 

Within seconds of making his selection, the small metal appliance let out a soft ding! and opened a hatch. Inside, brown savory teriyaki chicken lay over a bed of steaming rice. He grabbed it and made his way over to his living room. 

“Meals remaining this month: six,” the voice said, before Garrett flicked his finger to the side to close the window. 

He ate the food quickly and then sunk into his couch. He opened up a new window and directed it to Momntm. His favorite—and the favorite of billions of others just like him—source of late-night entertainment. 

As soon as he opened it a curated list of Momnts greeted him. A selection of porn options filled the top row to begin his night—the service knew his nightly ritual usually started there. As a Momnt Highroller subscriber, Garrett received porn specifically tailored to his taste, even down to the eye color and dick size he preferred. Tonight, he selected the newest Momnt from his favorite porn Momntr, Topper Bear Tim. 

When selected, the Momnt window expanded into Garrett’s full field of vision. His apartment vanished, replaced by a spacious house overlooking the ocean. 

He smelled the salty ocean air, felt the sun on his naked skin, and heard the crash of the waves. More impressively, his chemical implants synthesized the same emotions that Topper Bear Tim felt as he recorded this Momnt—a lust and desire for his partner, but also a lingering worry of his brother’s financial situation. Garrett could feel Tim trying to push the worry out of his mind, to focus on the amazing sex he was having. But it kept creeping back in. 

And that’s why Garrett enjoyed Tim’s Momnts; they contained real emotions. Most other porn Momntrs pumped themselves so full of dissociatives that the only emotion recorded was a dull gray hum. But not Topper Bear Tim. 

After climaxing in tandem, Garrett returned to Momntm’s home page. Having finished his porn, his list now populated with life-milestone Momnts. It knew that after the dopamine rush provided by Tim, Garrett would fall into a melancholy as he reflected on the moments in his life he hadn’t yet—and most likely never would—experience. So, Momntm provided them. 

He scrolled past some of the popular choices like looking at earth from the moon’s surface, and scoring the final point in the Discball Grand Finals. Instead, he settled on a Momnt he had selected many times before: a father holding his son for the first time. 

As the Momnt enveloped him and he found himself in a hospital room, Garrett allowed himself to fully give in to the illusion. He let the Momntr’s emotions overtake his own, so that as he sat with his head down close to his wife’s, and they looked into each others eyes to avoid thinking about the major surgery taking place on the other side of the curtain, the fear and excitement that bubbled into a near panic attack was his reality. 

When they both heard the first scream of their son, their tears of relief and joy poured out of them. When the nurses asked if he wanted to cut the umbilical cord, he shook his head because he wanted to sit there with his wife until they could both meet him together. And when they did, when the nurses handed him his son, and he brought him to his mother’s cheek, he unlocked a feeling beyond description. 

And then the Momnt faded away and Garrett was back in his apartment with a floating window in front of him. He closed it and sat for a while, drying his eyes and reflecting on the birth of his—no, the birth of that Momntr’s—child. Soon, his reality reestablished itself and Garrett longed for a son he never had. 

After a few moments of silence, he reopened Momntm. His list—now populated with Momnts of rebellion and defiance—did not entice him this time. The lingering feeling of holding a newborn child was still fresh and nothing else on offer looked appealing. 

He navigated to the filter option and chose to filter his list by the Top Momnts of the last 24 hours. Once it populated, the top option looked peculiar to him. He didn’t recognize the name of the Momntr, and it was published within the last hour, yet it had more than 2.5 billion esteem. He didn’t see that sort of thing happen often, and decided it must be something worth experiencing. So, he didn’t even read the description of the Momnt before loading it up and letting it whisk him away. 

Only, he was immediately confused. As it took shape, he was staring at himself, looking straight on with a dead stare. The Momnt continued and Garrett found his bearings, realizing he was back in the train car from earlier and that the Momntr was the woman he had seen. But this was the real deal Momnt, not the facsimile of the InstaMomnt from before. He felt the overwhelming sadness from which her earlier shouts had drawn their source. He understood the dark depression that was enclosing on her, and her final attempt at drawing some sort of real connection from the other passengers on the train she found herself on. 

And for a moment…she found one. In a brief second, a man in the train turned his head and looked at her. A flicker of hope sprung inside her. She rushed toward him and wished deeply for the small bit of connection to continue. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind; something about how he had broken free. But almost as quickly, the man turned back to his dead stare and ignored her.

The dark cloud in her returned and smothered out that small bit of hope that had sprouted. With it, a calming of her discontent occurred. It was the realization that it was too late. Human connection had disappeared, and if she couldn’t accept that, the world would not accept her. 

She left the train at the next stop and stood on the platform silently. She had gone numb, almost like the dissociated gray hum of the porn Momntrs, and she waited for the next train to come. 

When the tracks buzzed and an announcement informed of the arriving train, she jumped out onto the tracks in front of it.

The Momnt ended and Garrett was back on his couch, stunned. His mind raced, and stood still. Mostly what swirled there formed into disgust of himself—of the way he dismissed the woman’s attempt at connection—and with it, he felt a growing guilt for her eventual suicide. 

He got up and made his way to the bathroom. He puked into the toilet and two windows popped up. One asked if he’d like to upgrade to the First Class First Aid package to receive immediate antacid medication. The other window asked if he’d like tips on effective bulimia techniques with the Skinny Skin package. 

He closed them both and went to the sink. For the first time in fifteen years, he removed his contact lenses from his eyes. 

Disorientation hit him like a wall. It was as if someone came and stripped all the color of a painting, leaving only the shapes. He had zero information in his peripheral vision. No clock in the top left corner, or notification badge in the lower middle. Not even a context pointer that tracked his eyes and provided useful information about what he looked at. When he looked out, all he saw was the world, and it was boring.

He marveled at the lack of…anything. He left the lenses on the bathroom counter and went back to the couch. When he sat down, he habitually flicked his fingers to open a window, but nothing happened. Instead, he looked around. 

It was the first time he really studied the apartment he lived in. He was surprised to find that it was near-decrepit. The paint on the walls peeled away, the carpet warped and bent down the hallway, and the smell. His lenses—working together with his aerosol nasal implants—masked the natural scents of the world. Now disconnected, the smell of rotting nutrient mush hit his senses and he felt a sudden reflex to puke again. But he fought it.

The longer he sat with the unfiltered world around him, the more he reflected on the last fifteen years of his life. Since putting in the lenses, his routine—his addiction—was all that mattered to him. A constant feed of content was life. Why go out and make your own moments, when you had every conceivable moment ready to be consumed and then cast aside. 

His sudden detox and growing realization made his mind race. It frantically looked for something to fixate on—some new distraction to placate these new and terrifying thoughts. But without the lenses, there was nothing new on offer. After his first look around the apartment, that was it. It didn’t update. There were no new apartments to see or ranked lists of best apartments to pick from. It was just his shitty apartment and it stayed the same. 

He decided he could use some water to wash the taste of puke out of his mouth. When he got to the sink a solitary faucet welcomed him. It lacked the accompanying tap handles to get it running. The only way to get it running was with a wireless command from a tenant’s contact lenses.

Garrett set the glass down and looked over to the metal appliance. He tried to open it with his hands by forcing two panels apart until a sharp alarm blared from it.

Frustrated, he decided a walk could help him deal with this new self-imposed reality. But before he even made it to the door, he realized he didn’t know where anything was. Before, he’d let the map windows direct him everywhere. Even if he did just wander, he wouldn’t be able to find his way home. 

It was no use anyway. While trying to figure out where he could walk to, he approached the door to his apartment, and realized there was no door knob. A completely flat door, that,  just like everything else in his life, assumed he’d be using his contact lenses in order to open and close it. 

He sighed and tried to think of what to do. He couldn’t do anything without his lenses, but he still felt the visceral aversion to the lifestyle he’d become so accustomed to. Determined, he decided to put them back in, but only to use them for his most basic needs and nothing more. 

As soon as the lenses were back in, he settled into familiar ease. The clock reclaimed its cozy spot in his peripheral. His notifications were ready for him to review. And a floating window welcomed him back. 

But he insisted he was a changed man, he told himself. Nothing but the basics. So he went back to the sink and filled his cup with tap water. As it filled, he felt relief knowing that he could once again access what he needed. Feeling accomplished, he sunk back into his couch. 

Habitually, he flicked his fingers and pulled up Momntm. A handful of new recommended Momnts assaulted his senses right away, and before he could stop himself, he loaded one up and fell into the moment.