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It was a bright and sunny day. There were a few clouds over to the east, but they were white and fluffy, sheep-shaped clouds, the sort that emphasised a blue sky rather than threatened to remove it.

"There’s something you need to know," said Carrie. "Something important."

I sighed. It was clear that she wanted to have one of her Serious Conversations, and I simply wasn’t in the mood. I watched her face moving. Her mouth seemed to be smiling downwards, as if her head was upside-down and the cropped blonde hair was really a kind of beard. I looked at the clouds again: I was sure that the weather was about to change for the worse.

"You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?" she said suddenly.

"Of course. You said there was something you needed to tell me," I said.

"What about the rest? Your implant tuned it all out, didn’t it? You genuinely didn’t hear what I said."

And that was when my life collapsed. Because if she was right, if my neural filter had simply failed to pass on what she’d said, there were few reasons why: and that meant that I had just discovered the very thing that I’d been trying to avoid.

My settings were fairly normal. Politics was the second most common topic for tuning out and the first setting I’d chosen. As far as I’m concerned, politicians are all the same: self-seeking, corrupt, and money-grabbing. I’ve never bothered to vote, and I’m just not interested. So I set the neural filter to tune it out. If there was a politician on the television, the inputs from my senses simply didn’t reach my consciousness. Instead, I’d find myself concentrating on other aspects of my environment. I hadn’t realised quite how successful it would be: last week it occurred to me that there must have been another election, and I simply hadn’t heard of it. I don’t even know who’s in charge now. Good.

My second setting was a little more unusual. I don’t notice violence. If someone gets attacked on the street while I’m walking past, I simply won’t see it. There’s a reason for this. It’s happened before. I saw a fight, but no one else was paying any attention, I was worried for my own safety, and by the time I accepted that I needed to intervene, it was too late. I was so disgusted by my own behaviour that I became physically ill. So if I’m not going to intervene either way, why should I have the guilt trip?

On a related note, I screened out the homeless and panhandlers. I’ve got nothing against them, it’s just not a problem I can solve. Someone once told me that they were so used to being ignored that they hadn’t noticed the difference.

My fourth setting is advertising. This used to be a popular one, but no one bothers any more, for the simple reason that it doesn’t work. At first it seemed useful to ignore advertising so completely that you don’t even know it’s there. But we were in an arms race, and the advertisers simply developed more subtle forms of persuasion that the filter doesn’t identify as such. There are always upgrades, and the advertisers hack them in no time. But I’ve kept my original setting. After all, it must be filtering out something.

And then, my fifth setting. The single most popular filter in the world. The one thing I desperately don’t want to hear. The thing that Carrie just told me, that was perceived by my senses but blocked by my filter before it could reach my conscious mind.

Spousal infidelity.

Carrie would not talk to me for the rest of the evening, angry that I would not discuss the matter with her. I protested that I was incapable of doing so, but she responded accurately that this was my own choice. I slept on the sofa.

I walked to the University in the morning. I usually drove, but I wanted time to think and didn’t trust my driving. I had no teaching until ten, so it didn’t matter if I arrived a little late. I walked slowly through the Square, noticing how the paving slabs were uneven, the way the sunlight reflected off the railings, the dampness of the air, and the haze in the sky, avoiding the obvious.

Sometimes, you know when you’re doing it. If the thing you’re ignoring doesn’t take up much of your environment, there isn’t much to ignore. But sometimes you can tell that you’re concentrating on details while ignoring the big picture. The weather’s my thing: if I’m taking an unusual interest in temperature, humidity, and cloud formations then I’m usually ignoring something else. There was clearly something going on in the square, and unless it was a large old-fashioned advertising hoarding, expensive and pointless, it must have been a political rally. I hurried past, trying not to wonder what I was missing.

I arrived at my office, wondering if I should try tuning out the time since I paid so little attention to it anyway. I thought about my problem with Carrie, then did something I usually avoided, something that I thought I’d never do. I sent a message asking to see Bryce Greenfeld.

Bryce was one of my brighter students, too much so. Supposedly studying Information Technology Systems and Programming, he was actually using the course as a cover for his own projects. He sat in front of me, cocky and relaxed.

"It’s about that project you submitted," I said carefully. "The one about the neural filters. I’m wondering if we could develop it in some way."

He snorted. "You refused to allow it," he said. "Your comments, in their entirety, were: "this is illegal". Nearly cost me a semester’s grades."

I decided to be honest with him. "Now, Bryce, I need to keep this confidential. I didn’t tell anyone about what you did on that trip to Vegas, did I?" He looked a little less smug at that. "Good." I told him what had passed between Carrie and myself.

"I’m sorry about this, Mr James, but I don’t see what I can do."

"Is there any way I can increase the strength of the filter? So it stops me realising things, even if I don’t hear them?"

Bryce looked at me with what seemed to be real sympathy. "Don’t you think you should be addressing these problems rather than ignoring them?"

I sighed. Like many tools of the information age, neural filters were nearly ubiquitous. But whereas in the past our tools--radio, television, telephones, internet--had been designed to increase information, the filters were the first tools that had been created to decrease it. This was a response to a very urgent need, a need shared by the whole of the developed world. Only Bryce didn’t seem to understand. "Look at me," I said. "I didn’t sleep last night. Carrie said it was important. It’s not just someone she picked up for a night six months ago. If I could address problems like that, I wouldn’t have the filter in the first place."

Bryce looked at me thoughtfully. "Let me tell you something, Dr James," he said. He was a little overweight, but not excessively so. And he seemed to have a higher standard of personal hygiene than some of my other students. I was frequently cross with them for giving nerds a bad name. Bryce was quite a presentable nerd.

"You didn’t hear that, did you?" I realised that I’d drifted off, and shook my head guiltily. "What are your filters?"

Reluctantly, I told him. I had, after all, asked for his help.

"It was none of those," he said.

"Are you saying I’m filtering out something else? What is it?"

He smiled apologetically. "It’s in the nature of the filters," he said, "that I can’t directly discuss them. You’ll have to work it out for yourself. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’m late for your lecture."

I glanced at the clock. "Hell," I said and dashed from the room. Bryce was already in the front row when I arrived.

The lecture went badly. I was never aware of the words I was saying, only of Bryce’s smug face as he watched understanding dawn on mine.

What Bryce had told me was that I was tuning out subjects that I simply hadn’t set myself. He was claiming that the neural filters came with pre-sets.

What on earth could such a pre-set be?

The first answer was obvious: the fact of the pre-sets themselves would be screened out. What Bryce had told me in the office was simply that there were pre-sets, and I hadn’t heard.

What else?

I was entirely comfortable with the amount of reality that I wasn’t allowing to reach my perception, because I was in control of it. But now it seemed there was a world out there whose existence I didn’t even suspect.

If he was telling the truth. I decided to try and experiment. "By the way," I said to the class. "Did you know that neural filters come with pre-sets?"

It’s not easy to tell if an audience of students is screening you out, particularly if they weren’t paying attention in the first place. But I could see now that a line had been crossed. They were paying attention--to their notes, the clock, the furniture, the person in front of them, anything except me. For all their individual settings, they simply didn’t hear my comment. Only Bryce held my gaze.

I attempted to talk to him after the lecture, but he’d already gone.

Back at the office I tried to phone Carrie, but there was only silence. I didn’t know if the silence was genuine, or if she was trying to tell me about the affair. All I knew was that it was getting colder, and that there wasn’t much blue in the sky right now.

"I’ll make it right," I said. "I promise."

It was only after I hung up that I saw something on my desk: the plans to Bryce’s project. My own note, "this is illegal", was appended.

It certainly was illegal--it was hacking. Bryce had decompiled the code in the neural filter, then reverse engineered it to produce a plan of how it worked--serious breaches of copyright and patent law. Worse, he had then designed a means of counteracting the filter. He planned to use the University’s own radio station to broadcast a carrier wave that would interfere with the filter’s own functioning, temporarily disabling it.

I’d seen this as a malicious prank, an attempt to disrupt the proper functioning of personal equipment. After all, if you wanted to stop screening a particular subject, you could do so: Bryce’s plan served no useful purpose.

But that was before I’d known about the pre-sets. Once Bryce switched off the filters, we’d see what we were screening: and when we found that we’d been ignoring something that we hadn’t chosen to, we’d know what was in the pre-set.

Of course, there was a price to this. It wouldn’t be possible to screen out anything. Carrie could have been making love on the breakfast table, and I’d be none the wiser: but once Bryce switched off the filters, I’d have no choice. I’d have to face up to what she’d been doing. We’d been married for five years: the affair could have been much longer.

And so it was with extreme reluctance that I removed my former note from the plans, and added a new one, an authorisation form. I signed it, placed the document in the internal mail, and began to consider how to cover myself when it all kicked off.

Bryce made it easy for me, by failing to turn up to our tutorial meetings. At least, I think he did: if he’d turned up talking about the real purpose of the project, I may just not have noticed him. In the meantime, I found something strange happening in my internal world. I began to be curious about what I was missing. Every time I walked through the Square, I became more and more aware that I was ignoring something, and although I knew it wouldn’t be interesting, I couldn’t help wondering what it was. I began to consider losing the Politics setting: or I could just wait for Bryce to do it for me.

My guess was that Bryce wouldn’t take long. I was quite certain that he’d been working on this without my authorisation, and as the proposal itself was three quarters of the work, he’d be close to completion. Which meant that I couldn’t put off the conversation I had to have with Carrie.

"Darling," I began. I’d waited for the weekend, when we were both relatively relaxed and unstressed. "We need to talk."

"You won’t hear," she said, although she wasn’t unfriendly.

"That’s what I want to talk about."

"You see? I was still talking. You interrupted me. You didn’t even know."

I sighed. "I’m sorry. I’m still filtering. I didn’t think I’d ever use this particular filter, but--well, let me get to the point before I interrupt you again. I’m going to turn it off."

She looked surprised. "Really? When?"

"I’m not sure, but it will be soon. And then I’ll see and hear everything. If you still want to, you’ll be able to tell me about this--affair, or whatever you want to call it. But there’s still time to change your mind. I’m just giving you fair warning. If you want to cover it up, I won’t ask."

She looked at me. She didn’t say anything, but I was fairly sure I wasn’t screening anything out.

"I just need a bit of time first. Be patient."

Finally she nodded, and I relaxed.

"This might be easier with children," I blurted out, but I could see she hadn’t heard.

The next time I heard from Bryce, it was to invite me to the switch-off. I didn’t really want to go, but I knew that I was in it up to my neck, and I had to know the result.

Bryce had been using one of the nearby labs. A laptop sat on a desk, cables erupting from it in all directions. There were a few grey boxes arranged around the room which seemed to have become entangled, before the cables escaped into the walls.

"When do we start?" I said gloomily.

"I’m just waiting for one other person," he said.

And then she entered the room, and it all became clear.

"I’m sorry, Dr James," said Bryce. "We’ve been trying to tell you, but you just won’t hear."

"You said you’d listen," said Carrie. "As soon as the filters are switched off, you’d face up to it."

"No, no, no!" I shouted. "Not with Bryce! Not with one of my students!"

"Just listen," said Carrie, but I couldn’t.

"How old was he when this started? What kind of a sicko are you?"

I thought that both of them were trying to tell me something, but it didn’t get through. "No," I said. "No, I won’t hear about this. I don’t want to know." I looked wildly about me, at the equipment on the desk and the rest of the room, and I saw the fire extinguisher fixed to the wall. I yanked it off.

"Dr James!" called Bryce. "You have to help us!"

I smashed the extinguisher down on the grey boxes, shouting a syllable with every smash. "I--don’t--want--to--know!"

I looked at the wrecked equipment, breathing heavily. Then I came to my senses. I looked around: Bryce and Carrie were gone.

Gone? Or was I just filtering them out? Were they kissing in front of me?

I ran from the room as quickly as I could.

For a while, I had no idea where I was going. I know I left the University, and for a while I wandered aimlessly, trying not to show tears in public. Finally I found myself in the Square and sat down miserably on a wall. And it was only then that something found its way into my consciousness.

The filters are mostly effective, but every now and again, if it’s really important, something can find its way through. You don’t notice at the time: you slowly realise that you saw something a minute or two earlier.

I’d seen Carrie in the Square.

I couldn’t picture any of the details, I only knew that she was here somewhere, and that I was filtering it out. And I could see the expression on her face. It was an expression I wasn’t used to seeing. She looked brave.

I remembered that I was filtering a lot more than sexual infidelity. I was filtering politics. Were Bryce and Carrie trying to tell me they were in some kind of political group?

And there were pre-sets to the filters, something that everyone screened out without knowing about it. Someone had put them there, and wouldn’t want Bryce blowing the lid off it.

And then, with a sickening lurch, I remembered that I was screening out violence, and I began to get an idea of what had happened in the laboratory, right in front of me, while Bryce had been begging me to help him.

I leapt up, and grabbed the nearest passer-by by the arm. "What’s happening here?" I asked desperately. He ignored me completely. I tried to stop someone else. "What’s in the Square?" No reaction. Maybe they thought I was homeless.

Finally, in despair, I left, and went to an empty home.

All I know is how far I let down Carrie and Bryce. Images run through my mind, nightmares of what was happening in front of me, but which I refused to see. I have no idea who came for them, or what they did to them once they got them in the Square.

But I’ll know soon enough. It won’t be long before they come for me.

And now, it looks as if it’s starting to rain.

END

Copyright 2010 Neil James Hudson

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