Feed by Nicole Grotepas

appearances—become more beautiful but increasingly less real. So far as Marci knew, Ramone was one of the exceptions.
    She kept her slate running on the cab ride to the airport, and using the feed service provided by the airline, she continued her connection to Ramone. He was real. Maybe that was the source of his quick rise to popularity. So far as Marci could tell, he’d kept his own hair, his own nose, his own teeth; the wrinkles accenting his eyes were proof that he’d never had injections to smooth them over, and while he was broad-shouldered and lean, his body was nothing spectacular.
    Sipping a white wine in first class, Marci rested her chin on her hand and let her heart continue to swell around Ramone. She reflected on the exorbitant amount of the last minute ticket and wondered how long she had before her parents noticed the charge. Ramone was worth it. And besides, forgiveness had always been easier to secure than permission. 
    “There’s something more,” she whispered to herself as the jet engines roared outside the tiny window near her face and through the seat to her bones. There was something else that made Ramone special. Why had the Editors found him? It was like they had intentionally zeroed in on him and turned him into a sensation—as though . . . as though they wanted to interfere with him.
    You sound like a conspiracy theorist, she told herself, stifling a guffaw. You’re family has money and political power, there’s no reason to buy into half-baked ideas about corporate powers conspiring to oppress the masses. She’d learned enough even with her spotty seminar attendance of late to know that it was only the poor and what was left of the middle class who concocted impossible visions of a ruling, wealthy elite.
    Another drink and the serious reflections vanished. She glanced at the feed staring at her from the back of the seat in front of her. Ramone was locked in his office, the lights low, watching a feed. Marci leaned forward, almost spilling her drink. What was happening?
    Marci immediately recognized Sue on Ramone’s slate as he watched her. Oh Ramone, she thought, sensing where things were headed, drawing on her deep knowledge of human behavior—gleaned from no where other than the Epic Romances and Steamy Affairs feeds. She watched him watching Sue, steeling herself for the eventual revelation.
    Ramone was special. He wanted to be good. He loved Blythe, it was true, and Blythe wasn’t his wife. But the heart was mysterious. The feeds tried to mask things with music and effects. Tried to distract a person with stories of infidelity, near-suicidal activities, and general jack-assery. It wasn’t until Marci found Ramone that she began to understand the hunger in the eyes of the people on the feeds. It was brighter in some, but it was there in all their eyes as they moved through space, seeking some kind of equilibrium and happiness, responding to stimuli.
     
    *****
     
    Finding a feed on Epic Romances and Steamy Affairs with his wife in it was surprisingly easy.
    Though Ramone tried to grasp the magnitude of the damage the nanocameras had done, the beast had swelled to proportions beyond his understanding. It was like trying to think about what he’d be thinking if he never existed. He wouldn’t be thinking about what he was thinking. He just wouldn’t exist. It wouldn’t hurt. There was no end to the thought, no solution that could satisfy him. The idea was alarming. Equally disturbing was the overwhelming nature of the system—the video feeds, the Editors, the nanocameras. It was too unwieldy to comprehend.
    He watched Sue on his slate. Something began to spin in his gut. It began as a tiny marble and grew each passing second into a cold, jagged stone cutting through him.
    “I’m spying on my wife ,” he hissed, his head between his hands, pushing his face closer to the screen. “ My wife .”
    Ignoring the feeds, he’d also ignored the urges to check on Sue. It was part