The use of dimensions in “Datafeeds”
Each
part of the story takes place on a single day within only a few hours and –
because the same story is told only in different dimensions – the setting also
does not change.
The
day routine starts in the morning with Jane buying orange juice in a
supermarket. In fact, the reader only gets to know this through a flashback
described by the first-person narrator Jane in the past tense. Jane decides
herself what she wants to tell us about the supermarket and she focuses on
typical problems of shopping in the certain dimensions. The blind world is her
home dimension where she simply cannot decide on the type of juice she wants to
pick. In the seeing world she has problems with reading the labels: It had taken me longer than I thought it
would to get the orange juice, because I was reading the labels again to find
it. I have to take time scanning shelves still, as it is hard to pick out words
from the backgrounds of colored packages. A totally different problem
appears in the feeling world – Jane was not able to identify the heartbeats of
the people around her and so she took the slowest clerk. In each dimension,
something happens in the supermarket which makes her being in a hurry to get to
the meeting in time.
The
next important scene is the elevator, which is the first scene the reader gets
to know in a whole. In the elevator it is only Jane and Tim where they talk
about the agreement Tim has to work on. Again, only the first dimension gives
the impression of being the right one: only in this one Jane and Tim
communicate peacefully and agree on a deadline. In the seeing dimension Jane
closes her eyes from the outside world and tries to rely on her listening
instincts which obviously does not work out because she ignores Tim. The
feeling dimension is even worse: Jane hurts Tim’s feeling and than even lies to
him, which he recognizes. I lie. I
hope my heartbeat doesn't betray my lie, but I can see from his face that it
does.
The conference room is the third setting in the story.
Here, the main part takes place. Jane spends the time before the meeting starts
with first looking for Brian to talk about the errors and second with preparing
the food and organizing the material needed for the presentation. In all three
dimensions Jane is interrupted after ten minutes with a question by Ken, but
only in the blind world she recognizes the need of clarification. As I go slowly over the range of spatial and
temporal boundaries of the associated indirect impacts, Ken rings his speaking bell
(CoffeeBright 1764) to politely interrupt me. In the seeing world she did
not see a hand sign by Ken and in the feeling world she could not single out
the heartbeat of Ken.
The three different
dimensions could also happen at the same time simply in different universes.
Jane only feels confident in her own world – the blind dimension. However, she
wants something more than being dependant on what people are saying, not
knowing if what is said is right or wrong. At the end of the first part, she
wonders what Brian is thinking because they sit together in silence. I
know Brian is sitting next to me, but we say nothing, and I cannot tell what he
is thinking. Is he as tired as I am, as willing to subside into his own
thoughts? How many currents of motives, agendas, cabals are running under this
unruffled surface?
For the thousandth time, I wish I could find out
what people are feeling before they say it.
In the second part Jane
gets exactly what she wishes for at the end of the first part – she is able to
see which means that she should be able to read people’s face and gestures to
figure out what they are feeling. Nevertheless, she simply cannot cope with
seeing especially not with a lot of colours or too many faces around her so
sometimes she simply closes her eyes because that is the dimension she knows. I
keep promising to practice, to live within this sense, but I still lapse
sometimes into performing routine chores blind as it is so much easier. For her it is very hard to identify single
faces or even to remember some physical characteristics of people, also because
she cannot relate them to words, e.g. Does
Brian have brown hair or reddish brown? It's dark, I think. Not light. Is he
tall or short? Tall, I think. Yes, I look up at him, so tall. But which one is
tall? Is one of them in front of the other, or is one short? What does his face
look like? I try to remember,
but all I can think about is the bright red plaid shirt he wore last week. This is also the reason why Jane messes up the
presentation in the end: she could not find Brian before the meeting and so
there was no chance for correcting the errors which are still in the packets.
Furthermore, Jane is not able to identify Brian during the presentation to
leave him to answer Ken’s questions. In the very end, Jane is again not happy
with now hearing and seeing people – because she cannot tell what they feel. And yet, even here I never have enough data.
I cannot find out how people really are behind their painted, moving masks.
The third part of the
story is set in the feeling world – and that is simply too much for Jane to
handle. She is overwhelmed by the huge amount of data she receives: voices,
sounds, lights, images and also the heartbeat. She thinks herself that she
should be much better in understanding heartbeats but she is still very bad at
doing so: But separating the heartbeats, determining a probable
meaning, and matching them up to the person takes time for me. It is not the
automatic nanosecond interpretation everyone else in this dimension relies on.
I keep forgetting to pay attention and filter the beats. I have to try harder
to make it automatic, as unthought about as breathing. It hasn't happened yet,
even though it has been 2 years since I moved into this thrum-filled dimension.
This can be followed
throughout the whole third part. Jane seems to feels very uneasy and
uncomfortable in this dimension and acts rather clumsy. I hold the paper up and Brian glances at the paper and then at me.
Again I stop and filter. Too late. This is something I should have done before
I spoke to him. My face flushes and my heart goes kAthumPKKTThumP in writhing
embarrassment. His heart is going kattatttattkkattatta: which I think now means
in a hurry and upset at something. I apologize for the second time that morning
and say I hadn't realized that he had been upset or I would have modified my
approach to the problem. I would in the future approach him with more
sensitivity. In the end, the outcome of the meeting is the worst of all
three dimensions: Ken does not want to co-operate because the feeling is not
right. Jane realizes that it is not necessarily good to know the feelings of
the people around her. She understands that this can cause a lot of problems
and is even harder than not knowing each other’s face. Finally, she wishes to
be back in her home dimension – the blind dimension – where she feels most
comfortable and where life is so much less complicated: Even so, I long for a simpler existence, one where we could sometimes
shield our bodies. A minimalist datastream
where what was said was all that mattered.
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Katrin Blatt
kablatt@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia Press