“Oh for the love of god,” Alyss yelled as she bolted out the door. The bus disappearing around the corner at the end of the block didn’t seem to notice her annoyance. It was seven thirty in the morning, the fifth of April, and Alysson Little was off to a bad start.
Twenty five dollars and a half hour later, she pulled her backpack out of the taxi, slung it over her shoulder and contemplated another day of high school. It was not something that she contemplated with delight or pleasure. For her, high school was what tore her away from the rest of the world, isolated her in a small room with people who neither liked nor understood her, and more importantly, forced her to turn off her birthday present.
The implanted weblink that normally allowed her to immerse herself in the flow of information and gossip that permeated cyberspace was blocked and had to be turned off on school grounds. The consequence of not turning it off was unquestionably unpleasant, a wall of audio feedback that was physically painful and nauseating. So just before Alysson stepped across onto school ground she gave the mental command to close her link, primed her audio recording programs, and stepped into another nine hours of purgatory.