David Earl Wile

No Useful Moves Detected David Earl Wile

"It's been weeks since I looked at someone's face that wasn't on a screen. Isn't it funny how long some people go without even touching another human being?" Another working day in a large national company. Ambivalent employees in different cities log on for mandatory technical training. Via videoconference they view Eleanor Lewis' face who leads the meeting pleasantly, professionally from her home office. But all during her meeting Eleanor has been napping and is now holed up in her bedroom working on the great... OK, good American novel. No one realizes they are watching a prerecorded video of a training she's conducted dozens of times in the past. In fact Eleanor has automated most of her life. She has set up her computer to do her day job, send birthday gifts to family, even order her groceries. A single woman working alone from home she's built a nice little life for herself insulated from the annoyances of everyday human interaction. Eleanor is done with the fools, the artifice, the downright bull of the outside world. So she has her computer trick people into believing she's present. Her grand prank. "Is it lonely?" some wonder. Loneliness wasn't an event for Eleanor; it was a lifestyle. And more and more she abdicated the living of her life to technology. Until one day during a wild storm she crosses the line between reality and the virtual. And there is no going back.