Incoming Message from [MELLIE ARMSTRONG]:
Are we still doing dinner after work?
The caret blinked at the top left corner of Ty’s vision. It was a barely-translucent white. It prompted Ty to offer something to fill the space.
I might just head home, actually. they thought.
A moment passed. The caret was pushed to the right as letters filtered in, arranging themselves. First, nonsense. Then, letters. Then the phrase, just as Ty had thought it.
Mellie’s reply came almost instantly.
We don’t have to meet in person.
Ty thought about shrugging their shoulders.
Ty could disable the manual sending feature, but they found comfort in knowing precisely what they would be sending beforehand rather than seeing it as it was transmitted. Mellie, who had helped Ty with customizing their BCI, had opted for a much more immersive and continuous experience, enabling more automatic features for herself.
“Earth to Ty,” A voice called. It had a physical presence, unlike the messages between themselves and Mellie.
Ty sighed, tuning their focus back into their physical surroundings. They were still at work — The Bear and the Bow, a small restaurant and bar with a cozy feel. They’d been drying silverware for some time, but the bin with wet spoons had been empty for a while. They must have been messaging Mellie for longer than they’d realized.
It was easy to get lost in the data soup that their brain-computer interface offered them. Ty’s was simple in comparison to others. It offered some healthcare benefits: monitoring their pulse and nutritional balance, as well as statistics for restfulness and sleep.
Mellie had set the last two up — she thought the gamification would make them put some effort into self care. She said it was in the spirit of the first brain-computer interfaces. Even at the beginning of the BCI technology it had been about more than monitoring health— they would create music using the readings they got from their brain, or turn brainwaves into art with elaborate programs. They'd unlocked a new potential for the mind's creativity, and artists and technologists flocked to explore those depths. Turning sleeping habits into a game was in the same spirit.
Ty hated to admit it, but it worked.
Ty set the last dried spoon down, turning towards the source of the voice. “Yeah?”
Drew, their manager, looked like he was trying to hide a laugh. “Could you help out behind the bar for a bit? Abraham is running late.”
Ty shrugged. “I can give it a shot.”
Ty barely knew what they were doing. They didn’t know what went in specialty drinks. They barely remembered what went in normal drinks. The exceptions were the drinks with the ingredients in the name. Those worked themselves out, for the most part.
They walked to the back of the restaurant to the manager’s office. The space was relatively clear, with a stack of papers next to a locked computer.
Ty pressed their thumb against a small divot next to the number keys on the keyboard, and the computer unlocked.
A chime sounded, but with none of the reverberations that came with a physical bell.
As they did, an overwhelming sensation enveloped Ty, washing over them like a wave before subsiding as their BCI adapted to the change.
The brain-computer interface worked to the fullest of its potential when it was connected to other devices. It could access remote information rather than just locally stored information or information accessed from the brain. It felt like bees buzzing just out of sight. Adrenaline causing. Jarring.
Drink recipe list from Bear and Bow local files. Ty prompted in the terminal.
The computer opened the file manager, moving through its local storage to find the file that Ty had specified.
If Ty had known the computer file management better, they could have offered a file path. That wasn’t the case, so it seemed to be going through a number of different folders to find what they were looking for.
Eventually, it showed the results: a list of text documents with ingredients, ratios, and presentation. There were around 20 files that matched the description and format.
Ty sat down at the computer, taking a few minutes to combine the files.
The terminal asked as Ty worked, resending the message every couple of minutes as Ty paused their work. They knew that they should update their BCI’s naming convention to something that made more sense, but they’d grown attached to the default name.
Maybe they’d change it one day. They liked the name Henrietta.
Eventually, Ty copied the files.
Adding data to BCI storage was a strange sensation because it didn’t feel like anything.
One moment, they could barely recall the seasonal drink menu from what they’d read on the board. The next, they knew this season’s, the last’s, and the ones before that. If they thought a bit longer, they could access the ingredients and the presentation.
The BCI could only tell Ty what to do, though. They’d still have to pour everything themselves.
Ty disconnected themselves from the computer. Another chime rang in their mind, lower toned than the last. The undercurrent of information faded from Ty’s head.
Here goes nothing. Ty thought.
Ty laughed to themselves as they got to work.
It had only been a semi-disaster of a half hour.
Only a few people sat at the bar while Ty waited for Abraham to arrive, so there weren’t too many chances for things to go horribly wrong.
Still, as Ty quickly learned, muscle memory was entirely different from mental memory. They both worked better the more you practiced with them, but only one could be improved with a BCI.
After a few mishaps, Abraham walked through the door.
Ty sighed in relief.
They walked back to their apartment. They kept the directions in the BCI cache, just in case their active memory decided to fail them. Every couple of minutes, the BCI would update Ty’s location on a shared map between them and their friends.
If they were to pull up the map, it would tell them that Mellie was at a grocery store in her city. Tiffany, another friend, was leaving a cafe a few blocks down from Ty. They wondered if they’d cross paths today. Probably not.
Ty closed the door to their apartment behind them, locking it behind them.
Their apartment was a hodgepodge of different aesthetics and patterns. A white cube sat on the kitchen counter. As Ty approached it, it began to glow a soft blue.
Ty heard the chime in their head as their BCI connected to the cube automatically.
Updates about current events in local and state news flashed through their head, along with headlines from pop culture articles that some algorithms deduced they would find interesting.
They made a mental note to read the last one later. A sticky-note-resembling square faded into the background of Ty's mind.
Send a Holo invite to Mellie. Ty thought.
The cube turned purple, fading in and out with a gentle pulse, an electric hum growing in volume.
The cube flashed bright white and Mellie appeared in front of Ty, grinning.
"Is it calibrated yet?" She asked. The sound reached Ty's head before the visual in front of them moved her lips, but by the end of the sentence, the audio and visual had synched up.
"I think so." Ty shrugged.
Ty pulled a frozen dinner from the freezer. Mellie started talking about her day. There was drama at her job. There was always drama at her job.
As Mellie walked around, the holographic projection moved and scaled with her, cutting through random furniture. She pulled out her dinner and sat down across from Ty.
They ate together in the same room, miles apart.