“We need to find out what happened to us,” I say.
“What?” Zoe asks. “But we’re not supposed to look into our futures.”
“Do we have any other choice?”
“Yeah,” Chris says. “We figure out how this stuff works and go home. That’s what we came to do.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know about you guys, but I signed up for this ‘research project’ to make sure I have a future. Something obviously went wrong in the last thirty years. I’m going to find out what happened and fix it.”
“How do we do that?” Trent asks.
I’m not sure. But Adam answers for me. “We can use the stuff we bought to search for ourselves. We’ll try to link up with our profiles. Our future selves must have Facebook or whatever the equivalent is now, right? Or a website, something we can use.”
“What if we can’t find anything?” asks Zoe.
“We look for other people we know. Friends, family. Or for Aether Corporation. Try to find out what happened to them.”
While Chris stares off into space with a grim look on his face, Trent flicks his lighter on and off. “What about paradoxes and all that crap?” Trent asks.
“We won’t actually interact with our future selves,” Adam says. “We’ll just look them up. That’s it. We should be okay.”
Zoe chews on the edge of her black nails. “I don’t know…”
“Screw it. I’m in,” Trent says. “We can look ourselves up and figure out how the technology works at the same time.”
“But won’t we go into shock or whatever?” Zoe asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “But that’s a risk I’m willing to take. I have a gut feeling something is very wrong in this future.”
“This is a bad idea,” Chris says, shaking his head. “If we do this, we can’t let Aether know that we looked ourselves up.”
“None of us will tell them.” I glance at the others, and they all nod.
Adam opens the bag and passes out the flexis we bought, while briefly explaining to Trent and Chris how they work. We spread out between the two trucks. I sit against a huge tire and hold the flexi in my fingers, feeling the thin plastic membrane. The others all start to apply them, but I still hesitate. I don’t want this thing poking around in my brain, but if it’s the only way…
I fit it on my face, around my eye and up onto my forehead. There’s a bit of tightness as it sticks to my skin, like it has tiny invisible suckers on it, and then I don’t feel it at all. I remove my hand and it stays there, attached to my face.
Immediately, an image pops up in front of me, making me flinch. The message lies on top of my normal vision, but I have no trouble seeing the truck in front of me either. It has two options: Sync or Create Profile.
I might as well try syncing to see if it can find a profile for me. “How do I select something?”
“Just picture yourself touching it,” Adam says. “It’s all very intuitive.”
I lift my hand to touch the button and it lights up. For a moment it just says Syncing…but then I get the message No profile found. Create one?
“I’m not in this system either.” I click on the Yes button. This time I do it mentally, without my hand.
“Nope, me neither,” Trent says.
“This shit is messed up,” Chris says, but I hear awe in his voice too.
When it asks for my name, I create a fake one, and the letters appear as soon as I visualize them in the box. A minute later I have a fake profile connected to my brain waves and DNA, and all sorts of icons crowd my vision. I don’t know what I’m doing and I somehow select one of them with a penguin on it.
Colors and images rush toward me and I try to shrink back. A second later they resolve into a game, where tiny cartoon penguins with boxing gloves slide around on ice and try to hit each other. I hear music and strange little chirping sounds coming from the penguins, and I’m hit with the smell of frost and the feel of cold wind on my face. Behind the game, I can still see the faint image of the truck, but my body is telling me I’m in the snow with the penguins.