Wifi Me

            The implant itches. I rub at my eye but that doesn’t get to where it bothers me. My handler notices as I pull my hand away.

            “What’s wrong?”

            I can’t tell her that it’s bothering me, she’ll freak out. So I lie.

            “Nothing just got something in my eye.”

            “Should I take a look at it?”

            “No, it’s fine now,” I lie again.

            She looks concerned for a moment, but then she goes back to her work. I lean back and try to focus on something else. I look to my homework, my music, anything to stop this incessant itching.

            I carefully run my fingers through my hair. I apply very light pressure to all the seams on my scalp. They aren’t very big and the hair completely covers them. You might think that nothing ever happened, and as far as the rest of the world is concerned nothing did happen. I’m an average college student and I study just as hard with far better results.

            I study just as hard as any other student I just do it at the speed of thought since I'm in possession of the most sophisticated super computer in the world and it inside my head. I don’t have to do anything more than think and I am surfing the web, crunching numbers, or doing on sight structural analysis. I’m not saying my brain is anything special, quite the contrary in fact, before my implant I was dumb as a rock. Now, though, my mind has such an incredible capacity to learn and hold information that I could be considered a super genius.

            I close the book in front of me because I already read the digital copy anyway. I lean back and hope that all my suffering is really worth it.

            Yeah making the grades is great, and the euphoria that accompanies infinite knowledge is pretty awesome too, but the damn headaches and nonstop irritation is almost more than I can stand. The device is simply a means to an end really. The brain is the processor and the implant sends the necessary information. I know all about it and it’s terribly boring, dry stuff, and boils down to it transforms digital data directly into brain waves so they can be processed immediately rather than having to be processed through any of the senses first.

            Doesn’t sound so complicated until you actually have to deal with it, then it hurts like hell. It takes time to acclimate to the system and once you do, it still hurts like hell, but at least it actually does something. I leaned back my chair and my handler shot me a warning glare. Can’t risk the equipment, it told me. I set the chair back down and stood up because it was better than just sitting. My handler turned her full attention to me for a moment until I made eyes for the rest room. It’s easy to get the babysitter to back off if you know the right moves.

            I washed my face with cold water in the sink. It didn’t help, but it was something. A sensation outside of the everyday irritation. I rubbed at my eye again, I just couldn’t reach it. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and could see all the pictures of me from the internet, a birthday party, a school dance, my high school graduation. There were some stats and articles associated with those pictures. There was the human interest story after my “aneurism” that put me in the hospital three months ago. There was my appearance on the Dean’s list since then. I even checked my email since I was thinking about it.

            That was how it worked, my implant. My knowledge was infinite because it was pulled directly from the internet as I thought about it. I had an extra sensory organ, and that was the wi-fi router stuck on my brain. I could see into my “top secret” files online too, though they took considerably more effort. I could break through firewalls with my mind because I could react faster and with greater variability then any normal computer. Security systems couldn’t modulate fast enough to keep up with a human’s fractured logic. I could turn on a dime in a digital sense. I’m cocky and I know it, and someday it will get me into trouble I’m sure, but until then I’ll continue to be cocky and reckless.

            I gave my face one final rub before heading back out to my damn babysitter. She is my government liaison, considering I’m technically government property now. Her soul job was to make sure that nothing happen to the nation’s massive monetary investment. I sat back down next to her as she worked on her homework like puny mortals must. She looked content to focus on her work though I knew it was no harder for her then it had been for me, and that’s saying something. I pulled some sunglasses out of the pocket of my coat and slid low into my chair. Maybe if I rest my eyes my head will feel less like it’s in a vice.