Sometimes I long for those days when you had to at least go to a physical machine, a computer, and then a neutrino, in order to log on. At least it was closer to writing, that act of putting pen to paper and tracing out thoughts, translating, recording. Nostalgia is stupid, I know. And it's not that I can't use the trace of my fingers to draw out and color these invisibly recorded cave paintings I've been revving up here. Though not today.
Here, right now, even in this place, I can do almost anything I want, despite being bear-like and clumsy, stiff, in a cave. Except eating. I can't eat what I want. Maybe that's the only thing -- a glass of wine, a cracker smeared with Roquefort and jam.
The problem, the loneliness, comes in that it's everywhere, ubiquitous -- everything is everywhere. Free will and choice, it's so much heavier now. Sometimes I fear I'm breathing in so much virtual dust I might die and then I realize I might be so accustomed to it that if it all got taken away, it's only then that I would actually die. The disappearance of the virtual noose creating the true noose. Listen to me, I sound like Plato, that ancient fool. I know this has all been said in op-ed piece after op-ed piece, especially since the opening of The New World's Fair, but, I don't know.
My purpose for being in here. The reason I got myself locked up to begin with, why I came down here. It's taking too long. All of these phases -- solitary confinement, then one visitor allowed, and then now what? I don't know what. I think they've changed the rules just for me. It's not like how it was for Joe.
I also didn't realize that they might block me off to the rest of the Midway and outside, on the GGW I mean. Virtually; censor me. I still don't know if they've blocked me off though. Sue getting through doesn't mean anything. She's a hacker extraordinaire, all that time in the military was good for more than just a limp. And Joe, well, let's not even get into Joe. How stupid I was, to have thought I might be able to speak freely. That people could hear me, write back, that I'd be able to...
So, what does this become then, these daily entries? A personal diary? Or a note to The Controllers? Or maybe they should watch out. You hear me C-team? You should watch out because...Well, let's not give it away.
If the Genie came to me this morning and said: Motzie, dear Motzie, you have yourself three wishes. What would I wish?
I would wish the National Archive was still a building and that it'd never merged with the World Archive. And that would count as one wish not two, because it happened at the same time, the merger and the tearing down of the buidling. I would argue this with the Genie, and in the end we would agree. One wish down, two to go. Then I'd wish we still had boundaries and oceans that actually served to slow us down instead of sift through and over.
How cool it was, when it first appeared, the GGW, how obsolete it rendered the WWW. Connecting everyone with that slight imperceptible pull at the air, holograms of stored information; so much stored information. It just makes me sad.
"You have one more wish, " the Genie would say. And I would think long and hard, and I would say. "Genie, do my first wishes have to count? I wish they didn't." And if he were a wicked Genie, he would count that as my third wish, and I would end up with nothing. When what I really meant was that I wanted to start over. That I wished to start over.
And because he wouldn't be a wicked Genie, he'd be the kind that played with choice, he'd say: "I'll come back tomorrow, you think long and hard and we'll start over. " And what would I wish for after thinking long and hard? I would wish for Key West, long after Lagos, when I practically lived in doddie's garden, planting one thing after another. He had such a green thumb. And mom, regaining her strength. But that time would have to battle out Managua with Sophia. Or, maybe Managua with Sophia could be my second wish.
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