Work Text:
It goes like this--
"Okay--number off 1 and 2. Group 1 gets to plug in this time. And don't give me that eye-rolling bullshit." He's teaching a class. He brings his hands together with a crack he's practiced to eardrum-piercing perfection and the kids, on cue, flinch. "Because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, this is crap, what next, you're gonna tell us to hold hands when we cross the street? That this is just like that? Well, you're not wrong. If I tell you to hold hands too you're going to goddamn well hold hands, because if you don't I will drop you from this class like a boatanchor and you're going to have to retake it next year if you want a shot at the frame here. You understand me?"
The kids nod, sullenly. He can tell they're impressed. On some level, kids think a teacher that barks like a drill sergeant and says stuff like bullshit and goddamn well is cool, honest, down to earth. Harsh but fair. That his respect is worth something.
This is because kids are stupid. He doesn't like them, and he doesn't like teaching, either, but he's learned that deploying a certain genteel breed of weaponized contempt can bring them to heel, so that's what he does. He watches Group 1 match up to their learner stations, arms crossed over his chest and eye firmly on the digital clock on his monocle screen, waiting for the minutes to uptick to the hour.
--and then it happens. A tinny monophonic noise from his earpiece. The sound of slow, hollow clapping.
Johannes shuts his eyes.
Group 1 is adjusting its collective headsets, fiddling with its breathing masks. There are sixteen minutes left in class today. He clicks off the audio on his earpiece with one fingertip. But the monoscreen is his watch, timer, phone, and tablet all in one, so he leaves it on, and--
HAVING FUN?
"I've got all your vitals on my screen too," he taps the frame of the teaching screen with his fingernail, with his left hand balled up white under his desk, "so if you try anything funny with your friends, Group 2--remember that you are certainly old enough to be tried as adults, and I for one favor the enforcement of those statutes."
SO TOUCHING, HANNES
The worst thing is not the text. The worst thing is the handwriting.
I GUESS AN OLD DOG REALLY CAN LEARN NEW TRICKS
Johannes clears his throat. "Are we set?"
SHOULD I ANSWER THAT?
Johannes yanks the monoscreen off his face with two fingers, earning a couple odd looks from the class. Then to justify it he rubs the back of his right eye with his knuckles like he has a furious itch; he puts the monoscreen and the earpiece away in their case and pockets that. His vision is dissonant with the shift in light: then it adjusts. "All right, come on," he says to his students wearily. "Haven't got forever."
On the train he leaves the screen and earpiece on, because he has to. He has to wear something for work. As far as this is concerned, it doesn't matter what. He could throw away the set and get another and it wouldn't change anything. He already has, at least four sets from different companies, one he assembled himself. It didn't.
Maybe I'm actually crazy, he thinks.
That wouldn't change anything either.
Static crackles. Then--breath, warm against his ear, and he flinches outright. But that's not true. It's just his earpiece. What he feels is the faint vibration of the speaker. What he hears:
I'm impressed, little brother. I never thought anything could make a public speaker out of you.
Neither had Johannes. He ignores it. He ignores it and tightens the strap of his satchel across his chest and wraps his arms around himself like he's cold, hearing the faint hum and chatter of three-dimensional match-three games and chat programs as the other passengers make use of the train wifi. But he leaves it in.
Still. I know you hate it.
Public speaking, wonders Johannes, or teaching? Or you?
But he doesn't rise to the bait. He closes his eyes against the screen and settles back in his seat and says nothing. As always.
Well, you know where to find me.
Three more stops.
I'll be here.
Johannes flinches harder this time and reaches out and turns off wifi, clumsily; while he's fumbling with the switch he can hear a low, exasperated chuckle cut off mid-breath. He stuffs the headset in his pocket unceremoniously and opens up his e-reader on his tablet. But when he finds his page there is something written on it, in messy handwriting: YOU READ COOKBOOKS ON THE TRAIN? WTF?
If he could slam his tablet shut he would. As it is he flushes and powers it off and hopes none of the other commuters have noticed--and they haven't, of course, all too absorbed in their own little worlds. He goes home.
They were good, the two of them, when they were kids. No. No, they were amazing.
Johannes sits and stares at the dismembered pieces of his ramshackle, home-built VR station: seat, headset, anaesthetic mask, vitals monitor, arm straps, CPU, all dismantled and unplugged and littering his living room, taking up the space that would be allocated to guests if he ever had any.
It hasn't been online in eight years. Nothing in his apartment has. He took the most offline job he possibly could to pay his bills after it happened--the most offline job with his particular skillset, anyway, fucking teaching afterschool VR classes to get wealthy kids their learners' licenses. It's true. He does hate it. He reads about coding all the time--but reading about code and writing it aren't the same, and writing and building aren't either, never mind hacking, God--but the only computers he risks any more are the secure, private offline VR system that the school uses and the headset he needs to take calls and e-mails. It's all he dares.
He goes to the fridge for a Corona and settles in for another long, depressing night of DVDs he's already watched (he cancelled his cable that day too) and staring at the bones of his life. He pops in an action flick--something really fucking stupid, something that will annoy him too much to think.
He sits and watches. Eventually it gets dark.
Eventually he puts his head in his hands--maybe it's the Corona, or the next Corona, or the hour, but he digs out his headset, puts it on, and turns wifi back on.
"What do you want?" he says.
Too late he realizes, though, that he doesn't want to hear HIS voice in return: he only shuts off audio when he hears the indrawn breath crackle, and then his screen is assailed with the angry letters--
--only what I have EVER WANTED LITTLE BROTHER, what did I ALWAYS WANT, TWO tHOUSAND NINE HUNDRED aND eIGHTY-TWO daYS I WANTED--
"You're not my brother," says Johannes. He's surprised how even he sounds.
Quiet. Aren't I?
That's not really less chilling. Johannes shivers and wonders if he--it, IT--can feel him shiver, it surely can't. He takes a deep breath. "You can't upload a consciousness into the mainframe like that. My brother's mind--my brother's--life--lived in the electrical wiring of his brain, that computer. It died when that died. There was nowhere for it to go. You're--an impression of him in the computer. A watermark he left behind. But you. Are not. My brother."
Silence--or rather, white space. It goes on for a while. It goes on for a bit too long. Johannes starts to wonder if he should disconnect, when:
Liar
"Stop it," says Johannes without thinking.
LIAR
"Stop it. I'm not--"
L I A R
Johannes switches it off in panic, rips it off his head, and then takes it apart and pulls the batteries out with shaking fingers. He drops them on the floor inches apart, like the rest of the computers in his apartment. It's then and only then he manages to take a breath.
Every night he takes pills to sleep, to make sure he doesn't dream. This time he takes three and wakes up with a hangover and has to call in sick.
The reason Group 1 and Group 2 exist in his class is the most basic tenet of VR safety: it's not something you do alone. One partner goes in. One partner stays behind to pull them out. You never leave anyone behind and you never follow them in.
Johannes sits up all the next night on his floor working in his undershirt with his contacts in for ease: squinting and matching cable to port and reattaching everything, clumsily from memory. He's a staunch believer in RTFM, but there's no manual for do-it-yourself VR stations that you've cobbled together yourself from scratch. This machine was the pride of his teen years. He remembers the first time he showed it off to his brother, aflutter with excitement he thought he was doing a good job of hiding (and, in retrospect, really wasn't)--Horst wasn't as impressed as he should have been. Horst was never impressed by the right things. But it was an impressive machine, Johannes thinks fiercely. It still is.
He remembers how it goes together. It just takes time. By 3:43 or so he has everything connected and arranged and, yes, dusted off--because a machine like this you have to show respect.
He sits back on his hands, on the floor, and stares at it, before he picks up his headset one more time and he calls his brother.
"I can't do this anymore," he says. He swallows. He sounds hoarse, and a little crazy, talking to an empty apartment. On a dead line.
Silence. Then, drily: I see we're acknowledging one another's existence now.
"I can't. I need you to--"
You need me to? Horst sounds incredulous. You get to need me to now?
"I'm sorry. I can't do this any more. I need you to--" His voice cracks: what the hell is wrong with him? "Promise not to hurt me. If I connect."
Silence.
"Promise not to hurt me. Please."
No.
"Horst--"
I'll show restraint.
"For God's sake, Horst--"
You'll survive.
"I"m sorry," Johannes blurts out before he can stop himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't--I'm sorry. I didn't think you were yourself. I made a mistake," he says and slips, dangerously, into self-defense: "When they pulled you out, I couldn't identify you. For fuck's sake, Horst, I made a mistake. I don't deserve--"
Little brother, says the voice of Johannes's brother from the other side of a dead channel, there's not a thing in the world I could do to you that you wouldn't deserve.
"Horst, I can help you. I can get you out--"
A chassis? Are you joking? You're offering to make me into some kind of robot?
"No." Johannes grits his teeth. "I said I was going to get you out."
More quiet, and Johannes prompts him again, a little more desperately: "Tell me you won't hurt me."
Do you know what it feels like when your mind splinters into a million pieces, Hannes? And something else smashes it back together? Do you know what it feels like to be forced into something that was never meant to be able to hold you?
A laugh, a full-throated and familiar one, touched with speaker static. Little brother. You know where to find me.
And Johannes buckles himself in, alone, because--he does. He always has.