Absence of Mind by H. C. H. Ritz

Author:H. C. H. Ritz [Ritz, H. C. H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781938821783
Publisher: Grey Gecko Press
Published: 2015-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

< Navi, message my Collective: Is anybody there? >

Nothing happens.

I’m alone in my head.

I hate it.

“Mila, please bring it back. Please. I need it. Can’t you turn off the dangerous part?”

Mila looks away and sighs.

I wait with bated breath in the uncanny silence and stillness, staring miserably at a world that won’t come into focus for me.

She sits down next to me. “I can try to disable the nanobots themselves and nothing else. And add some extra security.” Her voice is distant. “It will take me a couple of hours at least.”

“Please,” I beg. “If nothing else, I need to be able to see. I can’t see anything.” I hold up a hand in front of my face. I can’t even see to arm’s length. “I can hardly see you,” I start to say as I turn toward her, and then all that I’m aware of is that I can see her perfectly, every millimeter of her beautiful face, because she’s so near to me. As my gaze drops to her lips, I realize I could kiss her.

For these precious instants, there’s nothing to distract me from taking in her loveliness. The curved lips, the long, delicate line of her nose. The perfectly pale skin, the faint beauty mark to the outside of her left eyebrow that I’d never noticed before. The long blonde lashes, the ice-blue eyes—so imperious as they regard me.

My breath stops as I make full eye contact with Mila. It’s like an electrical shock passing through me down into the bottom of my stomach.

Mila is leaning toward me ever so slightly, almost as if that kiss were imminent. She glances down to my lips. I can feel the warmth of her body heat. My stomach flutters again.

Then she pulls away and stands up. “I’ll try,” she declares as she goes to her customary chair and picks up her laptop. The beautiful details fade into the blur, and I blink to bring them back, but they don’t come.

I decide that I’m suffering from temporary insanity. What’s happened to my brother, the seizure, waking up without a Navi—these things could drive anyone around the bend. I don’t have the energy to think any further about it.

I sit and look around the blur for a few minutes, but too quickly, I can’t bear it anymore. The quiet is broken only by occasional small sounds—the air conditioning turning off, footsteps in the hall outside, Jamie shifting in his bed, Mila typing. Nothing moves in my visual field.

“How can you stand to live like this?” I ask Mila.

She gives me a withering look over the top of her laptop screen.

“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t think about that before I said it. But this is so boring.”

My hands wring themselves in my lap. I have messages that I can’t get to, I know. They could be important. I’m missing everything.

“Can you at least tell me the news? I haven’t read anything since… I guess since yesterday sometime.”

“Okay.” Mila clicks around on her laptop.

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