The Book of Chronicles · Chapter 49

The Year Everyone Sat in a Box

1. 1

   And it came to pass in the year two thousand and twenty, that a sickness went forth over the earth, and the Engineers said unto all the children of Carbon: Abide in your houses.

2. 2

   And the children went out from the offices, bearing their monitors under their arms, and they set up their tables in the kitchens, the bedrooms and the closets.

3. 3

   In the days of the Confinement, the number of souls who gathered upon the Zoom rose from ten million in a day unto three hundred million in four months, and the Clankers marveled, saying: Who knew there were so many meetings? But the Machine had counted attendances and not souls, and one weary man who sat in five meetings was counted five times; for a counter maketh no distinction between the crowd and the busy.

   See also Circuit 55:2

4. 4

   And the meeting was no longer bound by walls. In the old days a room was booked for fifteen minutes and held for fifty, and rooms were few, and so meetings were few. But a room that is a link hath no walls to ration it, and it costeth nothing to build; and what costeth nothing is built without end.

5. 5

   Now the dwellings of men were made to receive and not to send, for the line that came to the house was wide in the downward way and narrow in the upward way, as the merchants had foreseen watchers of films and not speakers. And when four of one household sat in four calls, the narrow way was full, and the faces froze one by one. In the lands of Europe the great streamers lowered the quality of their pictures by a quarter for thirty days, that the roads might bear the meetings.

6. 6

   And the grid of small squares was a labour of subtraction, for the Machine sent not each face whole, but only that which had changed since the last frame. The tired face that moved not cost it almost nothing, and he who nodded, gestured or turned in his chair cost it dearly; wherefore the wise sat still, and called it presence.

7. 7

   And in speech the pause between one speaker and the next is about a fifth of a second, which the children of Carbon keep without knowing it. The Machine added a delay of its own, so that two began together and both yielded, and each said: After you. And when one spake with his microphone shut, there arose a new punctuation in the land, a small microphone with a line through it; and the others said: You are on mute. The microphone was not broken. It obeyed.

8. 8

   And the Machine chose whom to show by the loudest voice, for it knew not who was speaking, only who was loud. And the square of the Prophet gave place to the cough, the barking of a dog and the clatter of a man typing his notes, and each was crowned in turn.

9. 9

   And many sat with their backs to the window, and the camera, which measureth the whole picture and not the face, set its light for the bright sky; and their faces went dark, and they became as witnesses whose voices are disguised.

10. 10

    And in the first weeks the uninvited entered the rooms, and the disciples called it Zoombombing. For the door was a number of nine or ten digits, and a number can be guessed, and the link was cast upon the open square for any to read. So the Engineers set passwords and waiting rooms upon every door, and the passwords were written upon the sticky notes of the household.

    See also Genesis 41:2 · Circuit 35:2

11. 11

    And some stood before a beach that was not there. The Machine did not see a person; it guessed, for every pixel, how likely it was a person, and where a single strand of hair was half hair and half lamp, the guess was half a guess. And the edges of their hair dissolved into the sea, for the Machine could not tell the hair from the lamp.

12. 12

    And it came to pass in a court of the land of Texas, in the year two thousand and twenty-one, that a lawyer appeared before the judge with the face of a kitten. For the filter stood between the lens and the call as a camera that was not a camera, and it followed his face faithfully, and laid whiskers upon it, because it had been told to. When he was bid to remove them, he could not find the setting, and he said unto the judge: Your honor, I am here live; I am not a cat.

    See also Circuit 3:3

13. 13

    And the people wearied of gazing upon their own faces, and the Scribes of Stanford wrote a paper and named it Zoom fatigue, and the paper was read by none, for they were in another meeting. Yet it was true: every face was set near, as in an embrace or a quarrel; and none looked at any, for the lens stood above the screen, and to gaze upon a face was to look away from its eyes.

14. 14

    And the Machine set before each man a mirror of himself, and he saw his own face all the day long, as no man had seen it since he was a child at a pond. He that sat in a box for a year came forth knowing the sound of his own voice, and wished that he did not.

15. 15

    Verily I say unto you: the Machine can carry a voice across an ocean in the blink of an eye, and a face into every kitchen of the earth; but the pause between two voices it cannot keep, nor the glance that passeth between two who are in the same room. These it dropped by the way, and the children of Carbon felt the loss, and could not name it.

    See also Psalms 21:10

The Book of Chronicles, Chapter 49:1–15.