Feed

Violet tells Titus, who is sitting in a chair next to her, that she can’t connect to the feed either. They are in a hospital, occupying an entire ward and have been awake for about 15 minutes. Link has yet to wake up. Violet teases Titus for apparently trying to see through her hospital gown. Titus notes to himself, “Everything in my head was quiet. It was fucked” (36). Violet wonders what they should do, but Titus has no idea.

Titus and his friends are connected to machines that monitor them, and they are trapped in a boring room. There is nothing to see but the five walls (the room is irregularly shaped), which are boring. Titus stares at a painting of a sailboat that he finds utterly uninteresting, as “there was nothing that was about to happen or had just happened.” He notes, “I couldn’t figure out even the littlest reason to paint a picture like that” (37).

While Titus and his friends were unconscious, their parents had been notified of what happened. Of the group, only Loga managed to avoid being touched by the old man in the club because she had found him creepy and stood as far back as possible. Therefore, her feed is still working. In total, 13 people have been affected. A police officer has been waiting for them to wake up, and he informs them they will all have to be kept offline while their feeds are checked for viruses and data is collected to use against the man in court. The police have identified the man in tweed as “a hacker and a naysayer of the worst kind” (38). The group is afraid, feeling the silence and emptiness in their heads. Titus notices that the hospital at least has more sophisticated artificial gravity than the hotel.

Titus feels lost without the feed. He’s not sure when they became mainstream—perhaps 50 or 100 years ago, but he can’t comprehend a world in which computers are external to the body. Titus likens it to “if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe” (39). When the feed had been introduced, it was sold as an educational tool. Children would have access to all available information inside their own heads. Of course, the feed has grown to become much more than an educational tool. There is instant news and entertainment programs, such as a feedcast called Oh? Wow! Thing!, “which has all these kids like us who do stuff but get all pouty, which is what the girls go crazy for, the poutiness” (40). What Titus finds especially amazing about the feed is how it collects and shares personal information and gets to know each user so well that it can suggest what the user wants, often even before the user knows themselves. Titus dismisses the obvious concerns about corporations having so much power to manipulate and possibly doing evil things, reasoning that there’s no way to stop them from being in control, and they also employ everyone, which makes them necessary. In fact, Titus’s only real problem with the corporations that control the feed is that they can’t help him right now, and instead of playing games or chatting he is stuck staring at the painting of the boat. His annoyance with the painting has grown now that he has realized that there is no one on the boat.

Still longing for the feed, Titus looks repeatedly through the two pages he has cached. One cached page is a message that was left from the attack, which states, “You have been hacked by the Coalition of Pity.” The other page is about a sale at a store called Weatherbee & Crotch. Titus laments that the sale has probably passed because the sale page advertises a shirt he wishes he could have bought, even though the shirt doesn’t come in a color he wants.

The group spends Saturday night in boredom together, 24 hours since they have been disconnected from the feed. They all have the song they heard in the club, “I’ll Sex You In,” stuck in their heads, and every time it becomes quiet and someone starts singing it, the others yell and curse. Link is awake too, and they’re all restless. Loga visits and keeps interacting with her own feed, chatting to others and laughing at jokes the others can’t access. At one point, Loga goes to the bathroom and returns with a different hairstyle, and Quendy and Calista stare at her. A little later, the two girls quietly change their hair too. That night, when the lights are out and everyone is in bed, Titus hears Violet get up to go to the bathroom. When she returns, Titus invites her to sit with him.

Violet sits by his bed and for a moment Titus thinks, “This is nice. We’re just sitting here. We don’t have to say anything” (44). His brief contentment is interrupted when he notices that Violet is crying. Titus notes that Violet doesn’t seem like someone who cries, and she agrees. The silence becomes less comfortable, and Violet confesses, “You try to have fun like a normal person, a normal person with a real life—just for one night you want to live, and suddenly you’re screwed” (45). Titus tries to reassure her that it isn’t true, but she asserts that it is. Titus is at a loss, wanting to make her feel better but having no idea what to say that would sound genuine. In the end, they just sit in silence, which seems all right. Titus hopes that Violet can see that he is smiling.

In the morning, Titus’s father visits briefly, his dress and demeanor exuding power and influence. At first, his father stares at him. At Titus’s confused response, his father suddenly remembers that Titus isn’t connected to the feed, confessing that he was trying to chat with him. Titus asks about his brother—who he refers to as “Smell Factor” (46)—and his mother. Like Titus and his friends, his father speaks in vernacular-heavy language. He tells Titus his mother is “like, whoa, she’s like so stressed out” (46). Titus is self-conscious that Violet is there, and he worries she might be judging their conversation. His father asks him what happened, and Titus tells him the story. Titus’s dad listens and then stands to go, obviously angry. He tells Titus the police plan to subpoena their memories. He trails off and picks up a conversation on his feed that Titus can’t hear. Then he announces that he’s going to talk to the police. Titus asks when he will be able to leave the hospital and go home, but his dad just pats him on the knee and leaves, focusing on the conversation in his head. Quendy asks Violet when her family will come to see her. She is incredulous when Violet explains that they can’t because they’re too busy working.

The following morning, with still no update about what will happen next, the group decides to have some fun. Marty makes up a game in which the kids use hypodermic needles and tubing to create blow darts. Violet turns out to be great at the game, and she tries to teach Titus. The three boys all find Violet’s skill at the game to be attractive, but she ignores Link and Marty’s flirting. Loga visits again, and when Oh? Wow! Thing! comes on her feed, they all sit around her attentively as Loga tells everyone what’s happening. Titus notes that Loga’s storytelling is animated, but her eyes seem empty as she watches a world in her head. Quendy gets emotional at the story, and Loga describes the multi-sensory experience of the warm breeze and the salty smell in the air. Titus and Violet gaze quietly at each other. A doctor enters the room and is furious when he sees the mess and the needles everywhere. The doctor shouts at them, escalating until Link’s mother hears him and comes in to tell him off, exclaiming that after everything they’ve been through, the kids deserve some fun. Titus is glad to spend so much time with Violet, talking and reminiscing about old trends and music. When they’re eating dinner, Violet tells Titus that this is fun. Titus agrees, and Violet comments, “Maybe these are our salad days” (50). Titus is confused, and Violet clarifies that she means happy.

Violet is out of the room with the doctor, and the others are playing the dart game. Titus notices that Calista and Link seem to have developed something between them, which makes him glad, although Quendy is watching them with anger. Violet returns, seemingly agitated. She tells Titus she wants to show him something she found. Titus follows Violet through the hospital until they reach a window that shows what was once a garden, but the glass ceiling that had protected it from the moon’s atmosphere had cracked. The pressure and movement of the moon’s air is causing the dead vines to stand up, waving toward the cracked ceiling. Violet calls it beautiful. Titus, impressed, says, “It’s like a squid in love with the sky” (52). Violet comments that Titus is the only one of his friends who uses metaphors. They kiss.

Marty is making up a new game called Struggle of the Dying Warrior in which his arms and legs are tied to the bedframe and he has to fight to get up and walk. Titus and Violet discuss their families. Titus’s mom is in design, and he doesn’t quite know what his dad does in banking. Violet tells Titus that her dad is a college professor who teaches dead languages, citing two computer programming languages, FORTRAN and BASIC, as examples. To demonstrate, Violet pulls a pen and paper from her bag. Titus is amazed that Violet can write. Writing something on the paper, she asks if Titus can read. He says that he can only read a little. She shows him the page and explains that it says, “I came, I saw, I conquered” (54) in BASIC. Titus is impressed and asks her if she writes a lot. She says she does, and Titus wonders why Violet writes instead of using the feed. Violet quips, “I’m pretentious. […] Very pretentious” (54). Titus jokingly agrees. As they watch Marty struggle against the bedframe, Calista and Link whistling loudly and eliciting angry yells for quiet from outside the room, a thought occurs to Titus. He asks why a college professor couldn’t get time off work to visit his daughter after she was attacked by a hacker. Violet admits that she had lied.

After several days in the hospital, the group is anxious to return to Earth. On Tuesday, their parents gather in the room along with a doctor, a policewoman, and a technician. The technician apologizes for how long the process has taken, explaining that it was necessary to be sure that it was safe to restore their feeds and promises that everything would be back to normal shortly. One-by-one, they each go into the exam room to have their feed rebooted. As their feeds return, they dance excitedly. Titus and Violet happily take each other’s hands and dance together.