You’re On Camera

E.E King, originally in The Blend- 2019, Triangle Writers Magazine- 2020- Fusion 2 -20222

Every time they make love, or as Sara and Richard soon come to think of it, mate, they watch on live feed. The camera has been mounted in Sara’s womb so Richard and Sara only witness the Olympic athlete sperm who have already navigated through the twisted, coiled tubes of the testis. Even so, millions of silver-mercury, rocket-headed sperm make it. They catapult into Sara at amazing speed, with intense force. Sometimes, looking into the camera at a perilous moment distracts Richard, so that only a few hundred escape before he droops.

If ovulation is not occurring or at least approaching, the sperm has no chance. If acid does not dissolve them, and they somehow manage to slide through the ocean of thick, sticky cervical mucus to the womb, they find it firmly closed.

Love and lust dissolve as surely as sperm. Soon Sara and Richard only mate when there is a chance of fertilization. It is just too depressing to watch the genocide.

Sara and Richard had not particularly desired a child, but once the camera has been installed they can’t help trying. It’s the latest in bio-programming. Video and computer programs that are designed to wean you away from mainframes and computers and submerse you in reality.

The sperm who make it this far are attacked by white blood cells or trapped in the numberless folds and crevices inside of Sara.

How do the sperm know which way to go? Sara wonders.

“The egg wafts out fragrance,” the technical installer says, as he fits the camera into her womb. “Sperm can smell the egg.”

Luckily she and Richard can not. Sara already worries about B.O., the taste of her unbrushed teeth in the morning as well as the scent and taste of her private parts. Richard said he loves her smell, but still she worries. Who knows what neurosis she might suffer if forced to smell her eggs’ olfactory messaging?

Now they watch the egg, caressed by the ragged ends of the red fallopian tubes and tickled by brush-like cilia, to give a final polish. It reminds Sara of an interior drive-through car wash, with the cleansing agent of blood

One day, finally, impossibly almost, a skillful, lucky sperm penetrates.

Sara thinks she and Richard may never mate again. She knows they will never make love. That is no longer possible after watching the internal works so directly. It’s like watching sausage being made, or seeing up a magician’s sleeve. It is a miracle, but no longer magic. Sara wants magic. She wants to be swept off her feet. She wants to be engulfed by love, so overcome she might walk off a cliff and never notice the fall, but instead, here she lies in bed next to Richard watching the red, pulsing, beating fetus changing daily, hourly, minutely.

Sara wishes she had been born in a freer, less observant time. But she is the first of the “knowing generation.” The movement had begun as a reaction to virtual reality. Organizations and individuals began websites and video programs to encourage real life. Soon they began fitting people, cats and dogs, plants, and even what little wildlife remained, with mini-cams for non-stop viewing. Sara has had mini cameras implanted in so many of her body parts that it is difficult to do anything. Not because the cameras physically interfere, but because of distraction. Even healthy pastimes seem fraught with peril. Watching the heart pump blood as she exercises, she is scared it will burst. Hearing it beat faster and faster, she wonders how long it can continue. Soon, they will be able to see and smell the invisible pheromones of desire mingling in the air, intangible chemistry spreading like fire. Sara, lying stiffly beside Richard, wonders if that will annihilate desire completely.

Thus Janet was conceived. As Sara predicts, her arrival signals the death of Richard and Sara’s sex life. Janet is the first generation to receive implants at birth. She will never have to study biology. Everything is visible. Everything is known. There are monitors everywhere, in every house, on hats, small headbands, watches and clothing. Thin, flat screens that can, in real time, show the lungs expand and collapse or, on rapid replay, show the growth of a fingernail or the dying of a hair follicle. The sides of buses magnify a gory battle between bacteria in the interior of their passengers. Hospital monitors are battle fields.

As though, thought Sara, seeing insides could make you understand. Watching Janet’s tiny heart beat she knows this is not true. Seeing her daughter’s interior makes her more worried, not less. Watching little Janet’s brain develop gives her no insight into how to be a good parent.

Certain parts of Janet’s brain light when desire or need is present. Baby Janet has bioluminescent genes spliced into the fabric of her DNA. Parents who used to read their kids’ diaries and or tap into their cell phones can now watch the lights, a Las Vegas of emotion, show the path their offspring is taking toward lust or loneliness. It is too much knowledge. Too much and not enough. Sara feels desperate when she sees that Janet feels fear or loneliness. She cradles her small daughter in her arms, holding her against her heart, but she cannot stop Janet’s pain. She cannot stop her own.

She and Richard live together but apart. It is as though he can not recover from watching all that sperm, part of himself, be massacred by Sara’s body. She watches Richard’s synapses fire in his slept. It gives her insomnia.

She does not know how she will bear seeing her daughter’s first love and heartbreak. She does not even know if love will be possible in this world which knows so much and understands so little.

At dinner Richard is silent. She listens to the audio of her digestive juices; they give her indigestion.

Richard had been a historian. It is a useless profession. No one cares about the past when nothing was known. Now he monitors input at some of the mainframes in the city.

Sara remembers when they met. Looking back it seems an innocent time. No cameras to record her motion. No monitors for her parents to spy into her emotions. She feels guilty every time she looks at Janet, but she cannot help it.

Janet knows no other reality. She has never known the privacy of thoughts or secrets of the heart. She cannot imagine a world where a person’s emotions and thoughts are not lit in neon.

Sara thinks that by making the personality manifest, the pathway to the soul, indeed the soul itself has been destroyed. But she is the old generation. Out of date, unfashionable and obscure.

Janet is a normal girl. She marries Mark, a boy, whose normal, happiness is clear. Janet need not wonder about what goes on in the unseen depths of his soul. There are no depths. There is no soul.

Sara and Richard, born before genetic manipulation was so facile are a dying breed. The last of the unfulfilled, the unhappy and the unsatisfied. Janet and Mark’s baby, March, not only has her DNA lit, it is manipulated. By tapping a neuron, fear can be changed to joy, pain transformed into happiness an introvert become the life of the party. Everyone has perfect teeth. Homosexuality is an apparition of the past.

No one writes or paints, acts, sings, dances, or composes. Where everyone is content there is no need for art or performance, literature or music. When all are satisfied there is no need of release from pain. When all is clear, no one tries to understand mystery.

All that is needed is to watch the monitors. If someone is not happy, a technician can repair the malady.

Richard and Sara having lived to see the lucid manipulation of their grandchild, fade. Janet does not morn. They have lived too long. They understand nothing.

March is never too cold or too hot. Never hungry or desirous. She will only have intercourse only if it is deemed that she and her mate would provide the best genetic material. But brains are complex things. Sometimes in spite of neurological modification, nature rebels.

March is walking on the treadmill. It is done the keep muscles from atrophy, to keep bodies fit. It is neither more nor less enjoyable than not walking the treadmill.

On an adjoining treadmill she sees Grace. Grace moves like liquid moonlight, like whispering, like warm wind. March’s heart which has never beat outside of its normal range, seems to speed up. March cannot breath.

Grace smiles at March. March’s heart stops, it must have, but checking her monitor, nothing is wrong. If she had only examined her brain, she would have noticed that her centers of longing and desire are lit like a Xmas tree.

Grace looks at her, concern and puzzlement clear on her lovely face and inside her electric brain. March’s synapses are flashing--- like a lightening storm- like a power outage. As unpredictable and uncontrollable as the aurora borealis… or a rainbow… or a storm.

Sound is piped throughout the city. It vibrates from the streets and buildings, soothing vibrations of white noise and waves. Very, very occasionally there is an occasional peep from a bird who, no matter the manipulation cannot be stilled. That is a rarity. Mostly there are only crows. They too have been changed. They are no longer sharp eyed, inquisitive observers. Most are glossy –black trash collectors, programmed to pickup the refuse of the streets and deposit it into drains that fall into the landfill below the city. A few have been trained to find lost objects, keys or jewelry. This is the voice of the world.

But suddenly March wants to sing. She wants to throw back her head to the heavens and serenade the universe. Her body sways toward Grace, whose alarm centers light like a midnight Ferris wheel. Grace is fearful but fascinated. She has never seen or imagined a person like March. A being whose emotions cannot be read. March is an undiscovered country.

“I’m March,” March says. Her voice is husky with emotion. Her face flushed. Grace, never having heard anything like it, is speechless. There is something unknowable and wonderful in that tone.

The next day she receives an email. It’s impossible, but it seems to smell of lavender.

“I wanted to write you a letter. Like in the old days--- on wood bark---or parchment- or paper…. in pencil --in ink or in blood.

“But even if I had fine linen paper, even if I sharpened my finger to a point, I cannot write. How odd. I have never wanted to before. Never thought about it. No one writes. There is no reason to. Why do you cause me to think thoughts that are so strange? How is it you make me feel things which have no logic?

“But really, these are not questions I care about. There is only one. When can I see you again? I will go anywhere. Do anything. You are the sunlight and the moon. Those few things that remain magic in this world--- I see your face in my sleep. It is the fabric of dreams---

March”

Grace is shocked. She has never read an email like this. She did not know such things were possible. That night she can’t sleep. When she finally does close her eyes, she’s haunted by March. The next morning Grace looks in the mirror. She feels different. How is it she has never noticed that her neck is long and arching? Or that her eyes are the color of a soft winter sky? She smiles at herself and does not even notice that her pleasure center is flashing red in warning.

She and March meet in the gym. Over the treadmill their hands touch. A warmth, powerful as electricity runs through them. Nothing has been forbidden, but somehow they know it is illicit. Thrilling. They go to the showers, into one stall. Grace is shocked. But there is something in March’s face she cannot resist. March takes Grace’s head in her hands, staring deep, deep into her slate eyes. She reaches forward, mouth touches mouth. Tongue fondles tongue. March’s synapse controls are flashing brilliantly, too brilliantly. They explode. She is left alone in her body. It is a terrible sensation. Suddenly she knows loneliness and fear, pain and dread. She clings to Grace as if love could save her. Grace is the only thing that seems real now.

But Grace pulls back. This has been exciting. She has never known what it is like to feel beautiful or desired. But at least March had had lights, even if they were indecipherable. Now she is flat. Only a faint luminescence from her DNA sheds any light at all. This is abnormal. Grace is torn between fear and desire. Finally her neural regulators take control. They slow her heart rate. They wash her mind. They tell her that March is dangerous and unstable. She is.

Grace backs out of the stall, vanishing as if she’s been a rainbow, as if she’d been a dream. March is alone in the dark, deserted without guidance. March walks through the gym, Eyes follow her, widening. Electrons flash warnings. Something is wrong with this human. She is unreadable. She is hazardous. Eyes look away. Contact is avoided.

March walks out into the day. She blinks. She shivers. It’s cold and damp. With no internal protecting blanket, the world is raw and hard. Everything is edges. The only non-linear objects are the shiny crows, busily collecting refuse. March stumbles down the street.

She enters her home center. Here nourishment is available. March has never truly seen or smelled the sustenance before. It is beige and shapeless. It is inodorous. It is repugnant. Everyone in her “home” is eating. Their neurons inform them that it is nutritious, delicious, and fragrant. They look at March. Signals flash, although she is not readable, there has been no danger in this world for a very long time. Danger is a thing of the past. It has been forgotten. Perhaps it never existed. The prudent thing is to ignore this blank meat.

March wanders the streets without direction internal or external. How terrible to be thrown into this world with no knowledge of how to control the loneliness and fear.

On the street lies a still black shape. It is darker than a shadow. Darker than night. Darker than sorrow. It is a dead crow. March bends down, one finger probing. Under the glossy ink feathers it is cold. March feels her heart constrict. Once again she cannot breath, but this time it is not love that has robbed her of air. It is understanding. It is premonition. It is terror. What has happened? March has seen crows all of her life. She has seen fallen ones, exactly like this cold form before her. But always the pacifying neurons in her brain stopped the fear, blocked the connection, prevented cognition.

People pass. They look past the two still forms huddled on the pavement.

Perhaps eventually March will rise. She will be driven home for nourishment. She will survive, torn between longing for the uniform content and for that moment of unfettered joy. Or perhaps she will stay, cradling the unresponsive bird in her arms. Maybe despair is stronger than survival. Maybe her internal silence is louder than the white noise washing her in its ceaseless roar. Maybe she will never rise again.