Digital Girl: Part 1

Explosions outside of the village, that was all she could remember of the world outside. Samatha lay on her back, staring up at the dim lamp that hung from a cold, metallic cieling. She tried hard to remember something, anything from her life outside the walls. This chill, metal room was all she had seen in... her mind strained but could not tell just how many months had passed. Her mother's face, her older brother's voice, the flower garden she tended in her humble village, all the memories had slipped away. She was three years old when her home was attacked. Flames crept through her memory, so long faded she was unable to even cry for it anymore. Her right arm reached over her, touching her left shoulder, remembering at least that she used to have another arm. The fires in the village damaged her body, and when she woke up in the room afterward she found herself wrapped in bandages, her left arm completely gone. It's not all bad, I suppose, she thought to herself. He taught me to read and I get to eat every day. Her head turned toward her desk. The only splash of color in her otherwise bleak room. The stacks of books covered all kinds of subjects, from science and math, to computing technology and programming. She did not understand most of the things in the programming books, but Samantha thought nothing of it. Her isolation left her without even the slightest understanding of what a normal child would read.

Just above the desk, on the wall, a screen flickered. The screen gave her the only human interaction she had seen during her whole time in the room, and it was always the same person, Harold Black. He helped her in her lessons, and talked to her when she was lonely. As far as she knew, he was the only person in the world, and that was enough. He was kind and actually listened to her. She wearily lifted herself from her bed, her long, red hair falling into her face. Brushing her bangs aside she looked to the screen and saw her friend. "Breakfast is on its way, Sam. How are you feeling today?"

She walked to the other side of her small room, waiting calmly for her meal. There was not much variety in the food she recieved in her room, but it was enough to satisfy her. "I am just a little tired," her voice squeeked as she stretched. Her white clothes ruffled in the air blowing from the vent. Harold acknowledged and told her that she would recieve something special with her meal that day. "Why today? Is something special happening?"

"Well, Sam," he began. "You've been here two years today, and you are actually further ahead in your learning than I had expected. Since you've been doing so well, I decided that now is the time to give you your test."

She did not quite understand what he meant by "test." She had taken tests before, about specific subjects that her books had, and she really had no way to understand either. She was unaware of the vast facility that housed her, among fifty other children and over sixty adults. Harold was the only person she had ever seen since the confinement to her room, and everything he said was always worded so carfully to avoid inadvertently exposing that there was more to the world than just the two of them. "What is my test about this time?" she asked as a tray passed through a small hole at the bottom of the wall, taking it to her desk.There was an extra cup on her tray with a sweet smelling liquid in it. She smiled at the plesant aroma and took a hesitant sip from it before beginning to eat.

"This will be your computer performance test. You've had the books for quite some time, and while it has been the most difficult subject matter for you to understand..." He hesitated a moment, making sure his words were carefully chosen. Samantha had not noticed the pause, busy with her meal. "But you were always so eager to ask when you don't get something that I decided it was time to give you the real thing." She nodded quietly as she ate. Among reading and the sciences, Harold also managed to teach her simple table manners from behind the screen. "Your desk is actually a computer, but I have kept its functions turned off until now."

Harold's face disappeared from the screen, replaced by a desktop interface that Samantha recognized from pictures in her books. Finishing the last bites of her breakfast she moved the tray to the ground and drank the last of her juice. The middle of her desk lit up, and the space between her books illuminated into a keyboard with dimmer pads on either side of it. Harold explained the control to her, that the pointer would move as her hands glided over the pad, and adjusted the keyboard display so that her home keys shone in a different color. "So if this is the computer, then what is my test?" Samantha, satisfied with her meal, was eager to get to the point of this, since it was the first new thing she had gotten to do in the two years she had lived in this room.

A small window popped up in the corner of her interface, with Harold inside of it. "That is for you to decide. After all, today is like a birthday for you. You can do whatever you like with the computer. That is your test." She did not see the point of this test, but after Harold's face faded from her screen she smiled and thanked him for the gift, reached for a book on computer interfaces and began studying the computer once again, now that she had the real thing in front of her.

A birthday, she thought to herself. That means I am... five years old now. She thought to herself as she read and tried the different things in the book, quickly teaching herself how to type effectively. After a few hours of learning her new computer, her deep brown eyes began to ache a little bit. She blinked a few times and decided to take a break. Returning to the white sheets of her bed, she lay atop the fabrics and closed her eyes. Thinking more about the different kinds of things she had learned while living in this room. "Two years..." she said softly to herself. "At least it was two years with a friend."