The Intruder by Greg Krehbiel Read Free Book Online

the link with that terminal over there?" It still displayed an exact replica of what he saw on his implant, and he found it disconcerting to be monitored like that. People in the Community were instinctively resistant to the idea of submitting to someone else's supervision and care. 
    "What are you planning on watching tonight, Mr. Mitchell, that you don't want your doctor to see?"
    "That's really not the point, is it?" he asked, becoming slightly suspicious. "Am I supposed to leave that connection on?"
    "Why don't you leave it on for a little while. It's my job to monitor how well you adapt to the implant, especially for these first few days. I'll check in on you from time to time today, but you can cut it off before you go to sleep. You can shut off everything with 'clear all,' but the right way to do it is to place the connection in your active window and send 'discard.' You'll still be in diagnostic mode with me, but I won't be able to see everything you're doing."
    He didn't like being in diagnostic mode either, but he didn't want to push things too far. He nodded his assent, smiled at Dr. Berry and went to say good-bye to talk to Dr. Jenkins. He'd neglected to see him last time, as he'd asked, and wanted to make it up. Besides, in the Community you never left until you said goodbye to everyone you knew. 
    *               *               *
    "Occasional dizziness is an understatement," Jeremy said aloud to no one in particular as he walked down the five brick stairs from the landing of Dr. Berry 's office to the concrete sidewalk. His mental focus on the implant training lessons had taken his attention away from his discomfort, but now that he was back on the street, it was returning.
    He gripped the black, wrought-iron handrail and steadied himself, taking a few breaths to clear his head. He tried looking around, up and down the street, afraid that even casual head movements might bring the nausea back.
    Satisfied that he was okay for the moment, he started walking carefully south, towards the Armory and Alehouse, which was ten blocks away. The dull throb in his left temple made him wonder if he should get a taxi, as Dr. Jenkins had almost insisted.
    I'll just go slow.
    But his short interview with Dr. Jenkins had left him a few things to think about. He seemed unnaturally curious about Jeremy's case, and asked him to report anything unusual.
    Either implant psychosis is more common than Dr. Berry has led on, or there's something else strange about me.
    He suddenly remembered Dr. Berry 's comment that he had a slightly enlarged occipital region. Might that be a cause for concern?
    A sudden jab of pain took his attention back to his implant. Dr. Jenkins told him that the best medicine for the pain was going through the training exercises. He had a theory, he told Jeremy, that using the very portions of the brain that were affected by the implant ameliorated the side effects.
    Jeremy was relieved to discover that all the commands he had learned for the audio implants were subsumed into the functions of the visual implant, but they were magnified. When he put the command accent on 'send,' a blank screen, like a sheet of note paper, appeared directly ahead at about chest level. As he thought a message, the words typed across the page. But the entire image was translucent, as if the page were a lightly frosted glass and the letters were light streaks of charcoal. If he concentrated on the paper, it would become more substantial, almost blocking his vision of the things beyond, but never quite, since the images from the implant were only in one eye. The paper seemed opaque when he closed his right eye and concentrated on it, but he couldn't be certain, for as soon as he tried to see the things behind the paper the image would fade. The implant knew what he was looking at and automatically adjusted its imaging system to compensate.
    "Hey mister, would you mind standing someplace else," a voice