The surgery was as painless as promised. A small handheld injector no larger than a pocket flashlight was pressed to our children’s temples. “Count to three,” the technician instructed. “One … two…” Our children winced, a couple tears appeared in the corners of their eyes, and then it was done. They opened their eyes, looking slightly dazed, and we took them out for ice cream, told them they’d been brave. At home we let them rest in bed, watched for symptoms, feared the worst. But they just lay in their dark rooms, their eyes shining, and finally they yawned, stretched their arms, and blinked on their inner connections.

They talked so much in those first weeks. We couldn’t stop them. They talked upon waking, they talked in the shower, at breakfast, on the way to school, their small voices ringing out as if they were using their words for the last time. They narrated nonstop from backseats as they navigated the ether between their brains and our world, interacting with the animated animals that floated invisibly in the air. We grew tired of their ongoing laughter, their joy which excluded us. “Please,” we said, “we just want a moment with you.” “Ha!” they laughed, and told us they’d placed filters over our faces. We suddenly had giraffe ossicones, cat ears, and dog noses. “Hahaha!” Now we had horse teeth! Now fish lips! Speech bubbles emerged from our mouths when we told our kids to please turn off their browsers, it was time for dinner. “Hahaha!” They couldn’t even hear what we were saying; they’d turned our voices into bird chirps! “Please,” we asked them again, aware of the helplessness in our voices. “We need you to turn off your connections.” And finally, they blinked and told us they had. But when they giggled during dinner, how could we be sure they’d closed anything down?

Then, all of a sudden, our children fell silent. We watched as they crouched in the middle of the carpet for hours—entertained by nothing, it seemed. They sat alone in their rooms, their hands building invisible castles. When we asked them once, twice, three times what they were doing, they told us with frustration to please be quiet: they were trying to concentrate. Our houses became silent again, and our children stopped asking for things. Only for our credit cards, which they needed to purchase upgrades. “No,” we said. “Please,” they asked. “No,” we repeated; we weren’t about to put our credit card numbers into the ether. But they cried and they yelled at us, and when they wouldn’t relent, we finally read the numbers and expiration dates off our cards.