My Life: Without Interruptions

Cedrick gazed at the stars above him. He sighed as the advertisement began.

“Before you enjoy your -gazing at the stars- please take a moment to enjoy this short advertisement.” A too-short pause before the advertisement directed at Cedrick began again. “Do you feel overwhelmed? Depressed? Antagonized? Try EVER GLO. Be the forever radiant woman you’ve always wished you could be. EVER GLO be happy, always!”

Cedrick hated the constant bombardment of the commercials that came to him from every universal direction. These days, everyone had the genetic modifications surgically implanted above their ears that allowed them to hear the commercials, among other things. Though he had heard of a time before the nanobots were installed directly into your HeadSpace™ at birth, Cedrick couldn’t quite imagine it. After all, this had been the corporate standard for the past fifty years. So as far as Cedrick was concerned, every human child was to have a nanobot installed into their HeadSpace™ promptly upon birth. Cedrick personally hates the ads with every fiber of his being, but knew a lot of people didn’t honestly care whether or not an ad played in the background as they star gazed. But Cedrick didn’t care for it at all. In fact, he may go as far as to say that he despised it. Yes, he would do just about anything to get rid of the constant harassment of “EVER GO” and “Awk Eyes” and the various other commercials that played in a constant loop that was the white noise of his mind. He wished he could make it all go away.

“You know,” Sydney, the girl sitting up next to him in the grass said, “I heard a rumor there was someone you could pay to remove the nanobots from your HeadSpace™.”

Cedrick jolted upright immediately at the thought.

“Isn’t that crazy talk?” Sydney said, without reacting to Cedrick’s impulsive gestation to what she had just said. She didn’t even look up from her tablet. She was used to Cedrick’s spontaneity and jumpiness, so she just ignored him.

“Y-yeah...” Cedrick sighed as he slipped back down into his laying position. “That’s crazy, I mean, what would a clean HeadSpace™ even be like? How would it work? Why would anyone want that?”

“You ask too many questions, Cedrick.” Sydney replied.

He knew that this was true. Sometimes he wished he could ask less questions. He found it hard to ignore all the ignorance that seemed so obvious to him.. How could no one else see that complete control over everything you see and hear was bothersome. How could no one else besides himself see that the implanted nanobots were an obvious problem? It didn’t matter now. Cedrick knew. And now he had a new quest: to get his nanobots removed from his HeadSpace™. He didn’t know how he would do it, all he knew is that he had a goal that he would accomplish. He was like that. Doing whatever he put his mind to. Yes, this would be no problem for him at all, he thought to himself. For a moment he considered if he should even think such thoughts, or if someone on the other side of the HeadSpace™ could hear every word of his thoughts. He knew he was being paranoid, but what if there was someone on the other side, listening to his thoughts and waiting to report him to the authorities, for lack of civilized cooperation. He brushed this thought off with a shudder; he didn’t even want to think about it.

The next morning, Cedrick began his research. At first, he wasn’t sure where to begin. The internet was obviously a no-go, after all it was technically illegal and if he looked up ways to get his HeadSpace™ cleared, it would be sure to go downhill from there. Instead, he ventured outdoors. He walked outside of the huge apartment complex that he lived in. He had never before realized how high the buildings of his home town had towered above him endlessly. He wouldn’t let this feeling overwhelm him though, he had work to do. He started walking down the streets, turning when he felt he should. He didn’t have a plan and he wasn’t headed in particular direction. He was going wherever his feet decided to take him. He would see adverts as he walked for the various restaurants and businesses he passed pop up in his field of vision. He imagined what his life without all of the ads and distractions would be like.

He found himself at the entrance of a three story brick building. Some kind of business, but he didn’t know specifically what it was. He realized he was lost. That would be okay, he had his preinstalled GPS to navigate him home.

A message from Sydney appeared before his eyesight “Hey where are you? Do you have plans today?” He glanced to the left to signify that he would ignore the message. He had plans, and his plans didn’t involve talking to Sydney about his plans. She had the tendency to be overbearing, which was fine sometimes, but today he just wanted to focus on the road ahead of him.

Cedrick opened the large wooden door to the building he was standing in front of. A glance to the left. His HeadSpace was getting full. He quickly made a note to free up some space later and pushed the notification just out of eyesight. Things could get pretty glitchy if your HeadSpace didn’t have enough memory.

Behind the entrance’s door was a large office. No one looked in his direction. He looked up at the television. It transmitted four different ads to his HeadSpace at once. At least the voluntary ones you could get rid of. Four glances to the right and he had successfully gotten rid of the unbelievably irrelevant ads. It was a disease, he thought to himself. A filthy disease he would rid himself of soon enough. But how?

Cedrick slowly walked towards the receptionist who had still failed to notice his entrance. He didn’t think anything of it. She held up a finger and glanced to the left several times to ignore messages, and up a time or two to set reminders to respond to others. It was all one fluid motion, too quick for Cedrick to see exactly how many messages she had discarded compared to the ones that she had set reminders for. While she did this, Cedrick found himself trying to figure out what the business was, what its purpose was. He could find no signs or clues to where he was.

“Do you have an appointment?” The receptionist asked.

“No,” Cedrick responded. A pause. “I’m lost. What is this place?”

“It’s ‘The Center for HeadSpace™ Clearance for Overwhelmed Individuals’. Wait, how are you lost? Is your GPS malfunctioning?”

“Uh...” Cedrick didn’t know exactly what to say. He was embarrassed with his response, but that didn’t stop him from being curious about the building. He found himself being astonished at the next words that came out of his mouth.

“Y-yeah my GPS is shot, I was wondering if there was someone here who could look at it for me?”

So Cedrick walked to the back room to see about having his “broken” GPS fixed by the doctor who supposedly worked in this out of the way unmarked building. The more Cedrick thought about the details about what he had gotten himself into, the more he found himself becoming a nervous wreck. So instead, he decided to not think about it at all. He sat and waited for about fifteen minutes for the doctor to finally enter the minimally decorated office that he found himself sitting in. While he waited, he twiddled his thumbs anxiously. When the doctor finally did enter the room, Cedrick looked up at him expectantly.

“I hear that we’re having problems with our GPS working?” the doctor said, more as a statement than a question.

“Y-yeah... it’s uh, shot.” Cedrick responded, more as a question than an answer.

“Shot, huh?” The doctor sat down in his chair and scooted it forward to examine the GPS portion of Cedrick’s nanobot system.

“Hey, I was actually wondering...” Cedrick said.

“Yeah?”

“So has anyone evver...had their HeadsSpace™ cleared?”

“Of course. We do it all the time here.” a pause. “Do you know where you are, sonny?” The doctor stopped working on Cedrick’s HeadSpace™ momentarily to give him a look of concern.

“Well, yeah.” Cedrick stuttered out the response nervously. “I just meant like, completely getting rid of their HeadSpace™. Like uninstalling, I guess.”

The doctor sighed and looked at him with a type of intensity Cedrick had never known before now. It scared him that he may have said something that he would never be able to take back.

“Get out of my office.” The doctor said with a stern look on his face.

“A-are you serious?!” Cedrick felt himself beginning to panic.

“Yes, I’m serious! You come into my office lying about a broken GPS system and wasting my time just to ask about something as cowardly and insane as having your HeadSpace™ removed! He slammed his tools onto the table next to him. Do you even know what that would do to your head? Of course you don’t! Because kids like you just don’t think!” The doctor was yelling at him now. He hit Cedrick firmly in the center of the chest, pushing him out of the examination table. Cedrick landed on his feet.

“Who do you think I am?” The doctor continued shouting, “some kind of doctor that would just go around willy-nilly, uninstalling kids’ HeadSpaces and breaking the law?!” He pushed him out of the room.

“N-no, that’s not what...” Cedrick was cut off by the door slamming in his face.

“That’s not what I meant.” Cedrick muttered to himself as he walked out of the office building.

Later that night when he was getting undressed for his shower, he noticed a card in his shirt pocket. It was for the doctor’s office. He didn’t remember putting it into his pocket, but he figured anything was possible. After all, he had an extremely eventful day. He turned the small laminated card over in his hands. On the back of the card, in tiny and rushed handwriting, were the words, “Meet me in central park. Tonight. 10 p.m.” Cedrick read the card over several more times to make sure that he read it correctly. Then, he activated his HeadSpace to check the time. It was 9:30, just a mere thirty minutes until the mentioned time that was on the card. It occurred to him that it could be a trap. That the police could be involved, or worse.

He grabbed his jacket and ran out the door. He didn’t care anymore. He looked to the left to swipe away an ad that had appeared.

When he got to the park, the doctor was already standing there, waiting for him.

The doctor pulled up his sleeve and looked down at his watch.

“You’re four minutes late.” He grumbled.

“Yeah I’m real sorry about that, you see-” Cedrick began to explain himself.

“Sit in the chair”

Cedrick just realized the chair sitting next to the doctor, much like the one that was in the office earlier that day.

“Why?” he asked. Cedrick was confused and startled. What was the doctor going to do to him?

“You said you wanted to have your HeadSpace™ cleared, right? So, sit.”

“Yeah, but when I said that, I didn’t mean-”

“Sit!” The doctor cut him off yet again, so Cedrick sat. It didn’t seem like he had much of a choice.

While the doctor explained what he was going to do and how the operation was going to work, Cedrick remembered the message that Sydney had sent him earlier.

“Hey, want to hang out?” It said. He took this as an opportunity. He quickly typed the words, “Yeah, meet me in an hour. Same place as yesterday.”

The doctor notices, but didn’t say anything. He just continued explaining the procedure, how he wouldn’t completely remove the HeadSpace™, because that would trigger an investigation because if he was listed as not having a HeadSpace™, he was listed as not having a life. Instead, the doctor said, he would simply erase the history from the HeadSpace™ and then simply turn off the system’s functions, resulting in no false paperwork for the police to investigate. He didn’t give Cedrick any anesthesia, as this was illegal and stealing from the doctor’s office he worked at would raise eyebrows, and possibly start an investigation of its own.

So the operation began, and soon Cedrick would be without his HeadSpace™. It would be painful. but he would get through it. He would enjoy the stars for once. Cedrick expected the procedure to be a long and painful one. And it was painful, for the first twenty seconds he was conscious for it. Fourty-five minutes later, the doctor was waking him up by waving an unknown substance underneath his nostrils. He woke up.

“Did it work?” Cedrick asked.

“You really have no respect for me as a doctor, do you sonny?” the doctor said, “Now, cough it up. $100 bucks. That’s what we agreed on.”

Cedrick didn’t know how to respond. He noticed the time. He took out a money ticket from his pocket and handed it to the doctor.

“Okay thanks, I have to go now.”

The doctor didn’t have time to respond, and Cedrick didn’t have time to see if the operation had worked. He was gone, off to see Sydney. Off to see the stars.

When he arrived to the grassy rooftop that him and Sydney frequented, Sydney was lying on her back. She sat up as he reached the top of the stairway, entering the grassed area.

“Where were you? Why didn’t you answer me? You know it’s rude to abruptly schedule something like this AND THEN keep the girl waiting.”

Cedrick shot a bright grin her way.

“You’re rude.” Sydney laid back down in the artificial grass, and Cedrick joined her.

He looked up at the sky, pinpointing different constellations he knew, and then different stars specifically. No ads popped up. He was finally free from the stars’ advertisements. He realized for the first time that his clock and GPS and notification bar was all missing from his eyesight. At first, he didn’t know how to feel. It was like something was missing. And then he smiled.

He looked at Sydney.

“Aren’t the stars beautiful tonight?” He asked.