Sonia had found a book. She didn’t understand a lot of it, but she liked to look at it just the same. It was so different – so big, for one thing. It was hard to believe someone had taken up so much space for just one story. And the pages – they didn’t adjust to the lighting around her, so she kept getting caught in the dark. In fact, they didn’t adjust at all. She couldn’t touch the words to see pictures of what they meant, she couldn’t put on audio playback, couldn’t change the size of the text – nothing at all, except just read it.
Sonia knew she wasn’t a very good reader. Like all mombas, hers had taught her the basics and they practiced with moving picture books. But Sonia was always more interested in the pictures than the words – it had never seemed necessary to learn what different words were since anytime she could tap to see definitions. Recently, they were coming out with such developed text readers that you could highlight a whole sentence or paragraph, and with a touch see an animation of the scene.
So this book was not easy for her. She hadn’t known there were any books like it left, though of course she had seen them on the stream. She was unused even to the feel of paper – paper having been banned some time ago for its effects on the environment. But she treasured it just the same.
This morning, as every morning, Sonia had free play time from 10 AM to noon. During this time, her momba did not give her any tasks or interact with her unless asked. Today, she did not ask. Instead, she grabbed the book, slipped on her suit, and left the unit. Of course, the momba would know where she was – all minors were tracked – but she liked the feeling of independence nevertheless.
There were very few wild spaces left in the city, but it didn’t matter much because the suit could moderate the surroundings. Sonia preferred woodlands, so her screen showed her all fixed objects as plants and rocks and all moving things as creatures. The first time she had applied those settings, up from the default “Empty City”, the number of creatures had terrified her. Quickly, she had fine-tuned it – 90% shadows, 10% creatures. Now, she saw the faint blur of shadows that she was used to, but every once in a while a rabbit or a deer would pass her on the sidewalk, going the other direction.
As she walked, she wondered about the book. The Cavalier and His Squire it was called. She could, she knew, call up in an instant the definitions of those things, but something in her resisted. She didn’t want to type it in. She didn’t want to put something from paper into the stream…it seemed it would desecrate it somehow. So she kept the words to herself and rolled them around on her tongue.
She shortly arrived at the park. It looked like there were a couple rabbits chasing each other around and one tree that wavered between a tree and a moose. She guessed it was a mostly stationery momba keeping watch and told the suit to leave it as a tree.
On her last visit, she had modified the old jungle gym to look like a tree fort, so she headed for it and sat snug into a bottom level corner. The shadows of other things moved around, but she knew no one would touch her. The suits prevented accidental contact.
Satisfied with her surroundings, she opened the book to the first page again. “Chapter 1: The Broad Road.”
“Sophia's
Great
Adventure"
Installment I