He turned towards the screen and it switched on. He looked away, rubbing his eyes. Like most people, he’d been born slightly short-sighted. The near-continuous exposure to computer screens of successive generations had resulted in the condition becoming hereditary. Unlike most people, however, Albert had not received the Bionic Eye from the Department of Health; the carebot at the youth home where he had grown up refused to take him on the grounds that his myopia was an evolutionary development. The machine had been duly replaced the following week by an upgraded, less anthropologically oriented version but, somehow, the omission had never been corrected. Albert himself was glad for it. He liked his eyes as they were; they were a reminder of where he came from—who he came from. They were his inheritance, the gift his parents had left him—the only thing they’d left him. He scowled, shaking his head. They’d explained it often enough at the Academy. How, back in the days when reproduction was still dependent on physical contact, the primitive family unit served as a system whereby humans could collectively overcome their individual frailties. It was a system that was at first a necessity for survival, then became a tradition and, towards the end, a mere convention, until it had finally died out—just another quirky custom of the past, practised today only by degenerates like the Outliers. There was no place for it in a perfect, progressive world where every person was truly emancipated. Yet some part of him had never quite stopped wondering whether anyone on the long march to progress had ever realized how dreary being truly emancipated was.

Still scowling, he looked back at the screen, blinking slightly.

GOOD MORNING, ALBERT, the screen said.

Albert checked his communicator. Nothing. He turned back to the screen, which was now displaying a list. He didn’t bother to look at it. ‘Conversation,’ he said.

The screen blinked and cut to a view of different faces. Pursing his lips, Albert squinted at them for a moment, trying to decide.

Then he swivelled round again. He knew he should forget the whole thing—thrust the matter from his thoughts and move on—but somehow he just couldn’t manage. Not after what had just happened.

‘Never mind,’ he said.