Maisie has never been anywhere in her twelve short years of life.
Just the diminutive family ranch, tucked way out behind the overgrown trees eating the old asphalt road. Where the TV is yapping, the ubiquitous broadcast news just static in her ears.
Ma and Pa aren’t giving her a chance to leave anytime soon. Vacations are foreign to them. They quite like the big sky of Arkansas, the good old familiar town folk placating each and every one of their convictions.
So Maisie thanks God for Technology.
She leans back, her legs propped under several pillows. She’s ready to Blink.
This isn’t like her usual social media, which she gets with allotted tablet time. Maisie was able to sneak a mail order by her parents, and intercept the coming package. It was a small parcel, containing a well-protected little pill, smaller than the ones she always sees Ma take. She almost chickened out after watching the implant tutorial, but the included numbing agent soothed her worries. Once drowsy, Maisie pushed the pill into the soft part of her neck, just below her earlobe. A dab of the healing salve and a few days of keeping her hair down, and she was ready to sync up.
She’s careful her parents aren’t around before syncing up. Luckily for her, Ma and Pa seem none too eager to stick around and spend quality time with their kids. Pa is surely at the bar, squabbling about which beers are turning the town funny. Ma is likely at the opposite watering hole on the far side of town, letting the misanthropic murmur of rural America sooth her weary bones. In their current states, they both have probably forgotten that Maisie and her siblings exist.
Even though she’ll likely never physically travel to Paris, Dubai, or the North Shore, she’s able to visit these places by blinking away from her native perspective and syncing with the multitude of influencers sharing their conscious space with users of the app.
She takes one last glance out her window, to make sure neither of her folks are driving up the long dirt driveway. Then she leans fully back, and clicks her tongue to access the channel switcher.
Maisie shuts her eyes to refresh her viewpoint.
—Blink—
She’s in Paris, synced with one Fuzzy Baldwin, fashion starlet extraordinaire. Fuzzy’s having a late-night cocktail, something impeccably frothy, glowing orange under the gold-hued lighting.
Maisie disassociates from her native perspective for as many as four or five hours a day, depending on the likelihood of her parents’ romps through the outside world. She enjoys piggybacking off a multitude of perspectives, from fitness guru Jack Taylor shredding through the North Shore, to part-time rapper, part-time influencer Fanta$y, enshrouded in his bosomy harems in Dubai.
But she enjoys the demure Fuzzy Baldwin’s eyes best, not just for the life she leads, but the awe-inspiring foreignness of Paris she lives in. The delightful pan de chocolat, the buzzing chatter of the beautiful French language, the great crush of humanity bisecting the verdant trees of the Champs-Élysées. It’s a world away, and one she knows she’ll never get to set foot in. Thanks to Blink’s onboard haptics, she can almost experience the full slate of senses these places have to offer.
She can taste the rich chocolate in Fuzzy’s croissant.
She can smell the ocean breeze rolling up the sand, and the huli-huli chicken Jack Taylor roasts over an open fire.
Her implant, by now fully imbedded beyond her healed skin, even allows her to simulate the touch and feel Fanta$y experiences, running his fingers over the gilded negligee on one of his many girlfriends.
None of these experiences are hers to call her own, but thanks to Blink, she can at least piggyback off others and leave her cloistered Arkansas farm behind.
Fuzzy sips her cocktail, speeding through an animated conversation with one of her model friends. She’s quite therapeutic to share eyes with, even though Maisie can’t control the perspective.
Maisie’s managed to pick up some elementary French over time, a fringe benefit of the app she never imagined. Really, she’s just happy to tune out of her own shitty viewpoint and ride along with someone else.
Of course, this means leaving her physical body in a state of catatonia, unable to register most sights or sounds back in Arkansas.
So she can’t tell how Pa’s gunning it up the driveway, having been kicked out of the bar for unholstering his handgun.
“Do you fancy a smoke?” Fuzzy’s friend asks, batting her eyes. Baldwin obliges, following her through the back of the bar, up the five flights of stairs to the roof.
Maisie can taste the acrid burn of tobacco on her lips, and has to remind herself how her body is okay.
With Fuzzy, they stare out over the roofs of Paris, up at the stars, those same stars Maisie swears she sees but that never shine quite the same back home.
Pa’s yelling at Tanner, Maisie’s older brother, for shooting cans with his AR-15 in the direction of the family’s barn. He slams through the front door, and stomps up to Maisie’s bedroom.
Maisie clicks her tongue and blinks, her whole body warmed by the midday Hawaiian sun.
When Pa opens the door, he immediately berates her. Maisie changes channels, her eyes still open, her fugue state still active. A slight smile is strewn on her face, as she switches to anyone but herself, and anywhere but home.
Eric Farrell lives in Long Beach, California, where he works as a beer sales rep by day, and speculative fiction author by night. His writing credits stem from a career in journalism, where he reported for a host of local and metro newspapers in the greater Los Angeles area. He posts on Twitter @stygianspace and has recent fiction with Aphotic Realm, Haven Spec, and HyphenPunk. His most recent appearance in our virtual pages was “Take Aim,” but his first unforgettable appearance was “Golden Arches,” the story of a fast food soft-serve ice cream machine… from Hell!
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