Together face it. Read by Dan Stevens

At the party you level up , it is while you are talking to an new acquaintance ,at least you thought they were an acquaintance. but you tell them about your childhood, about your difficult relationship with your parents ,you mention the things you have to conceal about life from your father ,and there it is ,suddenly, a winking of stars around your new friend's head, a musical chime, the other guests politely put down their drinks and applaud your achievement ,while your being speaking ，your acquaintance had pressed a particular patch of skin to indicate the network that you are now a friend, your 5000 friend, you are popular .everyone knows it. after a brief pause to celebrate your new status ,you go on talking about the trouble you have ,understanding your past. In you psychotherapist's office ,it is considered good form to turn off all social networks, no one can tell whether you've complied of course ,not even the therapist ,your professional friend, with broadcasts directly to the visual centres of you brain ,input devices under your skin ,and sound streams that taps directly to the ?nerve, turning it off and on is easier the thought ,she'd never know. keeping them on is like lying to your therapist though ,you are not going to be much helped by the process, she tells you ,if you bring other people into the room ,it's peaceful to turn them off a for while, many people have turned off hours, or even turn off days, it feels pleasant to remember that you are solitary sometimes, your therapist listens to your dreams those cannot yet be broadcast on the network, and to you talking about how much you hate yourself, no one else will ever hate quite as much as you do .and yet, when you reach for a simile, it is not there ,you want to consult the network. it is only with the greatest struggle that you persuade yourself not to do so, your vocabulary is poorer without it ,your knowledge is diminished, even your memory of your own life is richer and fuller on the network than any non-networked human could achieve, don't you think, you say ,that the network could be a therapeutic tool? actually, there is no answer. when you turn around and look your therapist ,you think that you spot a momentary rapid eye movement signaling she is checking in with her own network ,she denies this ,when you ask .it is an effort to maintain the barriers between us and the world outside ,that is why falling in love feels so good, lowering the boundary around our carefully maintained self at last，it s ecstatic, it is been some time since your last fell in love ,you surreptitiously check on the status of your 5000 friend on the network ,but are disappointed ,all the signs are they are in a serious relationship ,but the network tells you that an old companion is still single, the 2 of you have had an arrangement in the past ,when you initiate contact it is well received ,you meet up at your home in the middle of the afternoon ,you tried to express your concerns about friendship ,about the nature about social relationships ,about the need for solitude ,but although your friend is vaguely interested .that's not what you are there for, we have become a new kind of human ,says your friends with benefits, reaching a hand towards your thigh ,homoconnecticuts? it's just a next stage in our evolution, why look back ？you've heard this argument before ,your friend has nothing new to say ,and after all ,you didn't want to talk .the afternoon passes pleasantly enough ,you feel alone even when your friend is lying in the bed next to you ,it's only switching on the network ,feeling the buzz of chatter swum？ over your body ,that makes your loneliness recede .the next day you talk to your brother in Buenos Aires ，or Istanbul .or Yokohama ,it's getting hard to keep tracked away these days ,and it doesn't really matter ,wherever he is ,his image is projected on to your retina ， hooked up to your nerves ,there are no more absent friends these days ,you've got to stop that friends with benefits thing, he says ,it's doing you no good ,you need a real relationship ,your muscles tingle with the relief of unburdening conversation ,you grin ,you feel known ,and understood ,and cared for .you feel companioned ,you're entirely alone in your apartment ,smiling into the empty space. the relationship between the mind and body is problematic ,the 17th century philosopher Descartes thought they were separate and distinct entities ,the body is the machine the mind is its driver ,other philosophers have accused him of imagining a Homunculus ,a tiny man ,inside the skull ,examining the inputs from eyes and ears and other senses ,pressing bottoms and response to make the body move ,this position is philosophically unsound ,but it points to a certain kind of truth ,we understand there is a real astonishing person inside each of the often uninspiring meat bodies we walk around in, we battle against prejudice based on physical attributes, skin colour ,gender ,age ,height, disability ,body shape ,when over the centuries we have imagined heaven ,we have often imagine it the place beyond the physical ,where pure thought and spirit are the only reality ,your brother's body is unimportant ,it is his mind or his spirit ,or his soul ,that is giving your a hug ,surely this is the dreamed-of heaven ,you sink into a light depression ,nothing too extreme ,you have bodily status updates enabled on the network though ，when various electrical indicators drop below a certain threshold ,the system posts a mood line ,the network tells all your friends your are a bit sad ,and offers them various ways to comfort you ,a shower of virtual flowers ,hugs ,and cat pictures Begin to stream in to the online inbox behind your eyes, some cost your friends actual money ,not as much as a Cappuccino but more might you drop on the street without bothering to pick it up ,you feel a little better ,increasingly ,like you, network users have enabled sensory feedback on other people's statuses , the messages and moods of your friends are converted to sensations in your body ,there is particular tingling pinprick you have come to associate with unread messages ,and a rushing sensation when your friends have mostly positive mood states ,we have become one organism ,feeling our moods together ,an empathy machine ,so it is inevitable when your mood drops, you lose a few fair weather friends .only those who cannot afford to feel that way today ,they may be back or if not their place will be taken quickly, you already have 5050 friends anyway ,you will not miss a dozen or two who let you fall into the blue ,however, there is a certain people who falls so low that they're defriended by hundreds, thousands of people ,there is no recovering from that ,terminal velocity ,they still go to work perhaps ,have families and hobbies ,but the catastrophic loss like that on the network is like becoming homeless ,you have to start from scratch, but most people won't trust you enough to let you begin again, a 30 year old without friends on the network is a weird and unsettling creature ,a day or 2 after your low status update ,your 5000 friends calls you on a private network channel ,that relationship you thought you detected on the network has ended ,this is a dropped-in casually conversation ,you noticed the casualness ,the conversation is guarded ,each of you attempting to be funny ,excessively delighted to find the other is amused by your witticisms .at least you think your friend is attempting to be funny ,you imagine excessive delight ,you're uncertain whether what you think is happening ,interactive forms tend to speak in The 2nd person, where would you want to go today ,what are you doing ,how do you feel about your father ,in the network you are constantly spoken to ,it tells you who you are ,and what you are doing, you are following Adrain ,you hung out with Andrea ,David has poked you ,you gave up your control of self definition so gradually that you barely notice it at all ,you feel alright about the network ,are you being told bad ?or is it the truth , is there a difference ,you are tightly coiled ,churning with the question about your 5000 friend ,your therapist is out of town as she so often is when you need her ,you used the network's built-in councilor, how do you feel ?says the mechanized human ,the imaginary friend, sad ,you say .worried ,afraid ,alone ,you do not say lonely ,but you are .even with so many friends ,you are lonely ,and how do you feel about being sad, worried ,afraid, alone ,asked the voice ,she can't do much more than ask questions, but answering them gives you temporary relief ,at last an acquaintance who became a friend in the party, your 5000 friend becomes a lover,,you explore one and other's bodies and minds, drunk and intoxicating otherness you let go of yourself like a child letting go a balloon ,peacefully watching your carefully maintained and delineated self ,float up in to the sky and disappear, you turn off for days a time ,lost in one another ,you forget who you are ,you say the same thing as your lover at the same moment ,you listen and feel that you are hearing your own inner narrative spool out ,you no longer need to say me too me too ,because it is understood ,at last ,after many days ,you change your relationship status on the network ,a flood of congratulations follow ,you feel loved ,by your beloved and the network ,you are together ,is love a good thing ,or a bad one ,and myself ,what about that .