{"id":100043138,"date":"2024-12-28T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043138"},"modified":"2024-12-28T02:43:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T02:43:24","slug":"flitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/?p=100043138","title":{"rendered":"Flitter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWe have a funeral to attend in eight minutes,\u201d<\/em> I thought at Alvarez. \u201cIn Egypt. And we\u2019re still in California. On a beach.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alvarez ignored my simmering anger: he was currently in charge of our shared body, using its capable hands to carve a penny whistle from a piece of bone-white driftwood we\u2019d found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I gave a mental shove, wresting sole control for a moment so I could pause the incessant whittling and make Alvarez listen to me. He protested, the little knife slipped, and we gouged our thumb. A drop of crimson splashed the pale wood, causing a dozen fellow flitters to flee the body, appalled by the prick of pain and the sight of blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWait,\u201d I protested out loud. \u201cIt was an accident\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flittermind arrived like a swarm of hornets inside our head. When it spoke, its full shrill attention was on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHarming a shared body is not permitted under any circumstances, unless there are specific legal agreements in place,\u201d<\/em> it said. \u201cNo such agreements were offered or signed. You are in violation of\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was only trying to make myself heard,\u201d <\/em>I interrupted, keen to derail a lecture I was in no mood for. \u201cMinor cuts are an occupational hazard of a beachcomber body: look at the old scars on his hands!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVacate this body immediately. You are banned from sharing with any of the current occupants for 24 hours, and this particular vessel for one year.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I flounced off with a scornful mental glance over my shoulder at Alvarez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFunerals aren\u2019t my thing,\u201d<\/em> Alvarez thought with a non-physical shrug. \u201cI\u2019m all about life, not death. And anyway, we have the full moon party in Nairobi tonight, and I want to be in the proper mood. The gang will all meet there. It\u2019ll cheer you up.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLife is sometimes not cheerful!\u201d<\/em> I snapped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alvarez tutted, \u201cYou\u2019re in danger of becoming no fun.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I flitted away with a sneer, concentrating on my destination. Flitting is like using stepping stones to cross a river \u2013 if you go for the nearer ones, you always have a foot anchored. If you take a blind leap, you\u2019re not attached to anything at all and might fall in. And falling into the space between bodies can last forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked inward for my stepping stones. The flitterverse filled my head, an ever-changing constellation of stars clustered around physical bodies, coded according to personal tastes, proximity and availability. There were no friends close apart from Alvarez, and I couldn\u2019t go back there even if I\u2019d wanted to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So with a thought, I selected a hundred promising flitterpoints between California and Cairo, and headed eastwards in a zigzag line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sped from body to body like the memory of a hummingbird, pausing for a moment in the more interesting ones to sample the experience and leave a bright flash of myself behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An artist in Texas was constructing a monumental sculpture from fragments of cockpit glass taken from airliners left to bleach to aluminum bones in the desert, after the invention of flitting. There were hundreds of other people in the body, most of them possessing the telltale wispiness of the partial flitter. The majority of their<\/em> essence would still be engaged with their mundane daily routine: they were using the artist\u2019s creativity as a thrill to brighten up their otherwise turgid existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I accidentally let some of my disdain for those limited, shackled flitters seep out. My presence was a shrill note of discord in the shared headspace. The last thing I needed was another caution for disruptive behavior, so I whispered an apology that became a criticism mid-sentence: \u201cI\u2019m sorry you haven\u2019t the courage to give all of yourself over to flitting. Perhaps in time you will all know the freedom I do.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They rustled their fearfulness and discomfort, so I murmured my appreciation to the artist, enjoyed the heat of reflected sunlight on our shared face for a moment, and took off again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To my surprise, doubt came in a panicky rush that almost made me mis-flit. That uncertainty must have come from mingling with those pathetic partial flitters. For all their blindness, they weren\u2019t totally wrong. I had<\/em> abandoned old friends and family whose only sin was being unadventurous and timid. And neglected those who once meant so much to me, accepting it as the price of my own giddy freedom. Which is why I was flitting halfway around the world today, propelled by guilt and resentment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou were always a selfish child,\u201d my mother\u2019s words bubbled up. She\u2019d accused me of that more than once, but the final time had been when I\u2019d declared my intent to become one of the first true, committed flitters, calling no single body home. I\u2019d laughed in her face, at her fear and at her desperate love. Her last words to me had been threatening and pleading: \u201cIf you go, don\u2019t ever come back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe always come back, even if we don\u2019t want to,\u201d<\/em> I whispered without a voice, as I landed in then bounced away from a woodsman in Connecticut who was stalking a robot militiaman left over from a separatist war nobody remembered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A beachcomber in Manhattan had pried the lid from a crate of oranges washed up on the Midtown shingle, and was about to bite into one. I savored their anticipation and the tang of citrus and salt but leapt away before they actually tasted it: anticipation is invariably better than reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I flitted to a chipped albatross high over the Atlantic plankton farms. Its capacity was primitive compared to humans\u2019 organic flitter implants \u2013 no more than ten occupants at once, and observer-status only \u2013 so I enjoyed the freedom and the dizzy height without all of the mental pollution of human hosts, then jumped away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bodies blurred into one as I sped through \u2013 the lone crewmember on super-freighter sailing grain from Greenland to Canada Inc. \u2013 a political rabble rouser haranguing a crowd in the breakaway London Commune \u2013 a laughing naked hybrid amidst a seething pile of debauchees in Prague, and many more. I alit only momentarily in each, ricocheting fast and giddy. Finally, I was in Cairo, landing in a rented body signaling its exclusivity for attendees at this event. My good cheer left me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlvarez was right,\u201d<\/em> I whispered mentally, to the bemusement of the others sharing this body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHush,\u201d<\/em> one replied. \u201cRead the room.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were at most a dozen people physically present in the tiny stone church, all but one of them hired mourner bodies like the one I had touched down in. That other was an elderly deist minister with a distracted expression who stood up front beside a rough-printed bio-coffin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot expecting a crowd, then,\u201d I whispered out loud, keen to hear a human voice after flitting so far and fast. The body\u2019s voice was piercing and louder than I expected, and the comment echoed from the whitewashed walls, robbing it of humor and magnifying the unkindness of my words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody spoke, thankfully, but another flitter thought back at me from inside our shared mind, \u201cPeople today have no respect for the dead.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did they mean me, or the lack of attendees? \u201cThat\u2019s because with flitting you don\u2019t have to die,\u201d <\/em>I replied testily. \u201cYou just find other bodies to share.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They snorted, in real life, causing our shared body to jerk. A few flitters left in disapproval, but some others jumped in from the other mourner bodies, intrigued by our ongoing inappropriate behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe can run, but we can\u2019t outpace death forever,\u201d <\/em>my co-flitter sent gloomily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To change the subject I asked, \u201cHow did you know the deceased?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMe? I didn\u2019t. But I like funerals: they\u2019re the only place people let genuine emotion show these days.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre we all assembled?\u201d the minister asked a little too brusquely for my liking. Why was he in such a rush?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intrigued, I flitted into his body. There was a knot of morbidity-seekers in there already, but only a sliver of the minister himself. The rest of him I chased after, found in a free-climbing body in the Himalayas. A mental tsk<\/em> from me sent him skittering back guiltily, to devote a little more on himself to the ritual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The service was short and generic: it was clear the minister has only a slight knowledge of the person he was here to see off, and even less interest. Phrases such as, \u201cA life well lived,\u201d and, \u201cA generous spirit,\u201d were sprinkled throughout, with little conviction in either spoken or internal voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People flitted in and out as it progressed, most of them random voyeurs. I stayed in the minister\u2019s body to keep an eye on him, but also to see the expressions of the mourner bodies as they filed past. It was open casket but I spared it not even a glance, in favor of observing the people who had made the effort to turn up. In as much as flitting takes any effort, I mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the most part, the mourners\u2019 faces showed a flickering range of emotions from of mild grief through to abstract pity, with some unsavory flashes of excitement and amusement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the last, I decided that a more traditional vantage point was required, so I hopped over to the final mourner body as it stepped up. A lithe, fit woman, she contained me, a handful of shadowed others who projected great age, and a surly child who resented being made to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoes anyone want to say something specific, since we\u2019re the last?\u201d a wispy flitter breathed from our body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI suppose I should,\u201d<\/em> I replied silently, and took the reins to speak. I looked down at the cadaver\u2019s caved-in cheeks, the wisps of white hair fringing parchment skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I whispered. \u201cI should have come back to look after you. But you were getting old, and I was busy \u2026\u201d I trailed off, feel unexpected tears come to the mourner body\u2019s eyes. My fellow flitters thrilled at the raw sensation of grief, and more arrived to savor it. It had been decades, or perhaps centuries, since I had shed tears. I wiped my body\u2019s nose with the back of a hand, and stamped hard on the grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGoodbye,\u201d I announced curtly, and scores of flitters left, livid that I cut them off from such raw emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that, the casket trundled toward the wall. A hatch slid open and a gust of heat billowed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYour mother must have lived a full life,\u201d a mourner body said out loud, seeking to rekindle and savor my sadness for entertainment: full-sense recordings of my tears would already be circulating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my mother,\u201d I whispered back. \u201cIt\u2019s me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other flitters chittered with delight and a little disgust, and my borrowed body flushed with shame. The shared mind whirled with new arrivals, lured by such a morbidly delicious experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt a mental tug and the terrible realization that my corpse was pulling me in to join it in the pyre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPerhaps,\u201d<\/em> I thought, \u201cit\u2019s only fair that I perish with my body I abandoned when it started to fail.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some of the other flitters filled our head with mental screams of disagreement, and for someone to come and stop whatever I was planning. Most, though, screamed their encouragement, ecstatic at being in-body for this rare drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The flames beckoned, and I mentally reached out to the \u2013 my \u2013 body, wondering if the implant would even be active now? Could one flit to a corpse? Or would I just gust after it like a resentful shadow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re late! The party body is waiting! Come on!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t my husk at all, but Alvarez who\u2019d been tugging at me. And he wasn\u2019t mad any more: his essence was infused with excitement and the promise of fun times ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I giggled and sobbed in relief, and was yanked away to join him and my other friends in a youthful body under a full moon. To run and dance for a little while longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Gray is a Scots-born writer and photographer, exiled in NYC. What others might see as a dystopian element in his writing, he considers realistically utopian. It\u2019s his ambition to be well enough known to be considered reclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe have a funeral to attend in eight minutes,\u201d I thought at Alvarez. \u201cIn Egypt….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":100043142,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,3292],"tags":[6,3359,227,3296],"class_list":["post-100043138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-fiction","tag-cyberpunk","tag-david-a-gray","tag-fiction","tag-prose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100043138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100043138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100043138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100043141,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100043138\/revisions\/100043141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/100043142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100043138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100043138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.neondystopia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100043138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}