Jack by Tony Bertauski

Author:Tony Bertauski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DeadPixel Publications

13

December 15

Monday

* * *

Mr. Frost slides down the toy factory aisles, hands on his belly, idly watching the helpers hard at work. They hardly notice him. He passes through the main crosswalk—a wide thoroughfare that crisscrosses the toy factory where, previously, they had Sura on a table—and quickens his pace, sliding to the very back where the new release is being manufactured.

EyeTablets.

EyeTablets will be the toy of the decade, destined to ship all over the world. An estimated two billion will be activated by the New Year.

“May I?” Mr. Frost asks.

The helpers back up. He touches one of the contact lenses with the tip of his finger and places it against his eye. He blinks several times, lubricating the infinitesimal circuitry. Green lines stream over his vision. A grid takes shape.

Mr. Frost looks around.

Holographic images are displayed for his vision only. He focuses on an icon, blinks twice to activate a newslink, and video begins to stream. He’d need earbud implants to hear it, but that will be next year’s big ticket.

He reaches out and rearranges the images. The eyeTablet senses the location of his hand and the tension in his imaginary grip, and responds. He spreads his fingers and expands one of the displays. He looks down to see his toes on a wooden raft rocking in the middle of the ocean. The helpers are faint figures in the illusion’s scenery.

“Email,” he says.

A keyboard hovers in front of him. He pecks at the air, typing out a reply, the words hovering over the blue waves.

“Voice activation,” he says.

The keyboard disappears. The words appear as he says, “And thank you, once again, for your participation in this year’s beta testing. Merry Christmas, Frost Enterprises. Send.”

The words are sucked into the sky, on their way to cyberspace.

Christmas is so much easier in this day and age. Toys are tiny and shipping faster and more efficiently. It used to be that kids received plastic cars and stuffed animals; now it’s laptops and smartphones.

And now this.

Mr. Frost anonymously leaked the eyeTablet technology to a start-up company in exchange for exclusive rights to produce and ship as long as he remained a silent partner. He could’ve gone with Google or Apple, but he’d leaked enough trade secrets to them.

The eyeTablets will be the greatest form of technology the general public will ever have experienced—the first step in phasing out phones and computers. However, it’s still rudimentary compared to what Mr. Frost has planned for future generations. He would eventually release eyeTablets with neural capacity, tapping into the brain and nervous system, sensing thoughts and expanding intelligence. Humans will be able to send each other thoughts instead of texts. Schools will become obsolete when students can download lessons and have them integrated into their muscle memory within seconds.

Want to learn Italian? Done.

EyeTablets will eventually circumvent privacy at a level never thought possible. Governments will try to limit the technology to protect the general public, but people will want it, no matter the cost.

Mr. Frost could

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