Free Unnaturals by Lynna Merrill Page B

separately, she wondered if this computer language of words was even needed. You could touch the computer directly inside, behind the lids. That must be a computer language itself, more precise than words. Why bother with words?
    "What will happen, you ask."
    The doctor sighed again. People rarely sighed. They didn't need to. They had medstats to take care of them before they got to the sighing point. This time, however, his face didn't look relaxed.
    "I don't know what exactly will happen. Same as what happened two years ago, perhaps. A shopping mall with no interweb—and, as a direct result of that, a train taking the wrong course and crashing into another so hard that no medstats or repairstats could do anything to fix the damage."
    "The medstats could not...but what does that mean?"
    "Oh, damn it!" the doctor exclaimed with an uncharacteristic zeal. "I should not be the one to tell you this! Eryn, Jerome, and the rest have not even talked to you about life yet! How did we get to this at all? It means people leaving us long, long before their time has come, Adelaide! It means shards of metal and glass on the tracks and the next two trains derailing, too—even though, for those, the medstats could at least do something, even if it wasn't enough. It means we should never, ever make mistakes. "
    "Or touch computers without understanding them first," Mel whispered. Damn you, Nicolas .
    Adelaide was crying, a natural thing for a Lucastan. Ivan wasn't crying. He was staring at the doctor's screen. The medstat in the room wheeled closer and dispensed relaxation pills for Adi, which she promptly took. Years ago the medstats had rarely done this for crying.
    Crying was natural. People cried or laughed very easily. Slowly, however, the medstats had started treating them. Mel didn't even know when she'd noticed this.
    Medstats treated you for anything, whether you wanted or not—computers took your words from you even though you didn't know your words yourself—every new year, a little more of this.
    To what end?
    ***
    She walked back to Doctor Theodore's computer room later in brightlights period after all her lessons were done. He looked away from his screen and smiled at her as if glad to see her, but she could not bring herself to smile back.
    "Tell me, doctor, did trains crash when I started the computers in my old doctor's office? Tell me, did my father leave Lucasta before his time because of someone's mistake, or because of someone's maliciousness, and did a boy named Nicolas 0x12A14762 with interweb address Nicolas351 leave Annabella before his time, too? Tell me why I never knew about those trains, and those dead people two years ago."
    The doctor's smile faded. He looked at her, then back at his screen, then back at her. He was young, Mel knew. Yet, right now his eyes looked old.
    "You might have heard of the people who have left...of the dead people," he said in the end, softly. "One hears about people leaving all the time on the feeds. It is a normal thing, so who would pay attention? Who would pay attention for more than two moments, I mean? The people out there in the city don't know that there is a natural age range for leaving, Mel. Yes, it is not typical for some to leave, children for example, but people don't know that. If it happens, they accept it and move on. It is easy to move on, isn't it, with so many interesting things to occupy you, such as the latest cactus computer!—back off, medstat!—and no, Meliora, I am not shouting at you. "
    He wiped the sweat on his forehead with a sleeve. "We never kept those who left secret. But something like this just does not make long-standing news. As for the trains themselves: why would we tell people about the trains? So that they forget the moment someone writes to them about the new pants in the mall or the new hair color? Why waste ourselves telling them at all? Or, imagine they didn't forget quickly enough. Do we tell them and watch them become afraid of