It was a brightly colored hallway, cool blue tones on the walls, a matte red floor and a deep purple ceiling. Flashes of pale white light—little sparks—popped into the periphery of anyone walking through it, oracular massages. Most hallways Delphi walked down were like this, different colors but with some interesting flourish added in, something to entertain while you practiced your Hud-aided walk to wherever you were going.
Speed up a bit, Delphi thought. She had a meeting, and she didn’t want to be late. In response to that mental missive, she felt her stride quicken, just a tad, and the heels of her shoes strike the red flooring with a little more urgency.
She was heading to office number 4224, and even though she’d never been down this hallway before, she walked ahead with her gaze straight forward, head confidently erect. She moved effortlessly around obstacles—other people, mostly, but a few of the professors had set up puffy, leather, high-backed chairs outside their doors for waiting students (Delphi could feel her eyes start to roll; really, real old-school, middle-class wannabe shit, those overstuffed chairs that professors always kept around). Her legs, guided by what could most-easily be explained as Hud’s personal radar-driven, navigation system, sent her where she needed to go without her even needing to look. Unlike most natural creatures that the kids grew up watching on digitized films in Elem class, humans now walked as if guided by their feet. Their heads snapped in one direction or the other in order to follow a change in direction that their body had already made.
It was in this way that she made a left and then a right a few feet further down the hall. The colors changed slightly here, probably to denote that she had entered a different wing of the building with a different faculty or something: the blue walls had become a tad greener, the ceiling a bit lighter, the flashes perked up with a touch of red.
What time is it? Delphi thought, worried that she would be late. A voice, gentle and polite like the ringing of a distant church bell, answered her in her head.
The time is one hour and twenty seven past Peak. You have an appointment with Professor Looyd in AcaBuild Office 4224 in two minutes and fourteen seconds.
At this moment, Delphi began to scan the hallway around her, trying to make out the office numbers that were flowing through her view. 4212, 4214…and then another right turn and another left. After this turn, she felt her legs begin to slow, and she felt her worry ease.
But she kept scanning the hallway—her eyes would have done it anyway, but she was actually looking. It was empty except for, again, a smattering of these chairs set up outside the office doors. Only, in one of them was a person, and he was—Delphi discovered when her legs came to a stop right nearby—in one of those chairs set up outside the office door of Professor Looyd.
The man looked conventional. His skin was a dark lilac purple, the color often chosen by young professionals whose careers depended upon blending in. His hair was a dark, dusty orange color, which suggested that he had enough money to change it when he needed—dial it back to blue in the days before a big meeting, then bring back the fun, sexy orange for regular office days that were followed by nights spent in the party district. Skin tones were significantly more expensive and time-consuming to change, and thus tended to be more conservative—and, semi-relatedly, much more stringently policed by social pressures. But it was his eyes that Delphi could not help but notice.
Their color was unsurprising—a dark red that neared purple (again suggesting a similar backstory as the orange hair). But it was the way that they moved—or rather, didn’t.
As the human body became governed more regularly and strictly by the external agency of the Hud, its motor functions became more deliberate—more cautious, in a way. Gone were the casual turns of the head to check if you had misheard someone calling your name. Gone were the absent-minded kicks or shakes of the leg to stretch or stay active, as were strayings of the hand—for example—across the table, in search of a misplaced writing implement or something to fiddle with mindlessly. Hud managed that itself. It was able to filter and process auditory sensation approximately one thousand two hundred and fifty seven percent more efficiently than the human mind anyway; things were rarely—essentially never—misheard. It could stimulate and ease muscle aches or urges to fidget by sending rippling massages through the suit, and it—again with that radar system—never misplaced anything.
In response to this, at least this is what was theorized, the eyes became more active, whirring around their eye sockets like the needle of a broken compass, flicking from spot to spot, doing a lot of looking but never actually seeing anything around it. People’s eyes, whether they were in conversation or walking down the street or just sitting in a chair, were usually in constant motion and only slowed and saw in rare moments when the person was actually, deliberately, trying to see what was around them—moments that became more and more rare and less and less necessary as the Hud’s personal navigation abilities were improved.
But the man in the chair was simply gazing straight ahead, across the hall, staring at the nothing that was on the wall in front of him, and he had been for the entire time that Delphi had been walking towards him.
His eyes had not moved until they flitted to the side and saw Delphi in their periphery. He—after his eyes had seen her—then turned his head towards her. It cannot be communicated how eerie this motion was to Delphi, who was not able to understand exactly why it was so unnerving to be looked at by someone who seemed to be, I don’t know, actually looking at her.
He smiled, his gaze steady on Delphi’s face (Delphi’s view of all of this, it should be noted, was continually interrupted by her own eyes flitting from spot to spot, out of habit but also exacerbated by the uncanniness of the present circumstances), and he said, “Hello.”
“Hello,” Delphi said, then gestured to Professor Looyd’s half-open office door. “Are you waiting?”
“Not at all,” the man said. He stood up. “I just happened to be, you know, sitting here.”
Delphi nodded but felt uncertain. The man walked down the hall, back in the direction from which Delphi came.
If it hadn’t been for Hud, she’d have stood there, frozen, for a few more minutes at least. But that voice came through her head It is one-thirty. You have an appointment with Professor Looyd now and her legs began to move her towards the door.
She knocked, waited for a response and then stepped inside.