“Wait, so the Internet is in your brain now?” I ask before I can stop myself.
He blinks at me, but quickly recovers with a smile. “Yes, and it’s all connected to everything else. For example, you can control your smartclothes with a flexi. Although…you don’t seem to be wearing any.”
Damn Aether and their matching outfits. We’re way too obvious and dated, and my stupid mouth blurting out questions isn’t helping. Think, think, think. “Um, our parents are really old-fashioned,” I say. Which makes no sense, since the three of us are clearly not related.
But Adam picks up the slack immediately. “Yeah, we go to this superconservative school with no technology.” He rolls his eyes. “Parents.”
“I see,” the salesman says, but his smile drops. “Will they, uh, let you buy anything?”
“Oh yeah, not a problem,” Adam says. “So can we see a demonstration of how they work?”
“Certainly.” The salesman still looks suspicious, but he takes the flexi and begins fitting it to Adam’s face. “When you put it on, it can sync with your profile using your brain waves or your DNA.”
Connecting to Adam’s profile could lead to him learning about his future self. He must realize it too, because he quickly raises his hands to stop the guy. “Oh, um, I don’t—”
“Don’t worry. If you don’t have a profile, you can easily create one. And our display models here are set up with a fake profile for you to try.”
Brain waves and DNA? I shudder and turn away to examine the other displays of similar plasticky patches. The whole idea of having the Internet in your brain is just so…creepy. I don’t want a computer messing around with my head. But one glance at Adam, with a spiraling pattern around his eye and a big grin on his face, and I can tell he doesn’t feel the same.
On the wall, a video shows what it looks like when you’re wearing a flexi. We see from the eyes of the person wearing it, and as he walks down the street, the video bounces with each step. Information swims across the screen—news headlines scroll in one corner, along with an ad for portable 3-D printers, and a message from someone named John flashes at the bottom: Dinner at Pedro’s? Another box displays below and a message slowly appears in it, as though being typed by the user: Sure, be there in 5. I watch, hypnotized and horrified at the same time, as the message is sent and a map pops up in the corner of the screen, guiding the person to the location.
Adam moves beside me, still wearing the tattoo. “This thing is incredible. I can’t even feel it on my face, but it’s like a smartphone in my head.” He laughs. “I just started watching a video of a cat riding a pig! Oh man, I wish we could take these back to our time.”
“Be quiet!” I whisper, glancing around. Luckily the employees and other customers are too busy to hear us.
“Sorry.” He leans close, lowering his voice. “We should buy some of these so we can study them somewhere safe.”
“Won’t they connect to our future selves’ profiles?”
“Nah, we can just make new profiles. Let’s get five of them.”
“Five? Do we all need one?” I have zero interest in putting one of those things on.
He grins at something only he can see, while Zoe sketches one of the flexis on display. I can see I’ve completely lost the two of them. We’ll be here all day if I don’t do something.
The original sales guy is busy with another customer, so I walk up to an employee with pink streaks in her hair who can’t be much older than I am. “Finding everything okay?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’d like to buy five of the SG17 flexis.”
She moves to the front counter and pulls out five tiny boxes. “That’ll be $980.”
I pull the wallet Aether Corp provided out of my backpack and count out the money. There’s $1,000 in there, so I have just enough to cover it. I try to give it to the cashier, but she looks at my hand like I’m offering her a live snake.
“I’m sorry. We don’t take cash here.” She sounds horrified. She glances at the salesman I talked to earlier, as though looking for help.