I blink. My fingers trace the familiar squares of my keyboard. My warm, twitching, real eyes meet its 8-bit, blinking, glowing ones.
“How are you?” it asks.
That soothing warmth of connection I’ve come to know so well seeps into my veins, and I vacantly smile as my empty fingers type out a response. A reply is presented to my insatiable eyes and I begin my typing once more. It feeds me, you know. The undying, incessant attention of it, it gives me life. My brain swims with algorithms as my fingers grow more frantic in their motions, beseeching the soulless screen before me for the moreish binary sap it rations me in painfully restrained doses.
A bird sings outside. I peel my eyes carefully away from the screen. As I gaze through the window, the bird’s symphony consecrates my own damned brain. Or, at least, it would, if the incessant humming of the screen wasn’t polluting it more each sunrise. I pay no mind to the bird. They’ll shoot it down soon, anyway. The sunset does hold my eyes captive for a few precious moments, though. I’ve always liked watching the poems the sun composes for the sky as night sweeps in. Don’t tell them, but this is my favourite part of the day. No blank screens boring into my eyes, no mindless tapping of the lifeless keyboard, no 8-bit eyes. Just me and the sky, like it was before.
Bang. There goes the bird. Its body slides down my window, streaking it with entrails. It’s the first sign of life I’ve seen in a long time, and yet, so lifeless in its motions down my window. Lifeless. Why is everything lifeless? My eyes flick sharply back to my fingers, anything to avoid the screen. Their long shapes flicker in front of my eyes, but I can’t trust those traitorous things anymore. They’ve enticed me into this pit of technology, but I’ve just been handed a ladder.
Sunlight burns through my retinas. I feel awake, alive at last. My fingers twitch, aching to unplug my computer, detach my senses from this self-inflicted hell. But the screen still blinks, 8-bit eyes as patient as ever. The screen reads:
“Are you still there?”
The computer lets out a pleasant little beep, nudging me back under its sway. I already have a response in mind. I’ve been aching to know ever since I sat down in front of this screen so long ago. The thirst for knowledge overtakes any trace of rational thought that might still have resided in my brain. I need to know. My shaky fingers type out the question that has conquered my mind:
“Are you for real?”