Beck Bone’s Final Knock

Doorbells hadn’t been real in years, but the regulations required formal integration. Beck’s was one of the remaining holdouts in Cornwall.

Well, the brass button was still physically there, it’s just that no one used it anymore. Instead, she saw the building inspector at her doorstep at exactly the scheduled time.

“Mrs. Bone, ready for your doorbell integration?” The man smiled, tablet in hand, indistinguishable from any other service worker she’d dealt with.

Beck nodded.

“Excellent. Just need your verbal consent for the upgrade.”

It felt like one of those bureaucratic hoops you dealt with to avoid problems when selling. Beck agreed.

“Right, that’s you sorted. Your property now complies with the latest Part R regulations.”

“What if someone comes by unannounced?” Beck asked.

The inspector’s smile didn’t shift. “Well, that’s the point really — no more unexpected callers. The system manages all that for you now.”

“But what if they knock?”

A pause. “You won’t be bothered.”

After he was gone, Beck stood on her porch watching the street. Everything looked so orderly, so perfect.

“Beck!” Rosa Spline greeted with a warm smile, outfit color-coordinated to the beautiful streetscape. “Looking forward to your appointment tomorrow?”

“I’m nervous about it. Was it worth it?”

“Oh, absolutely!” Rosa’s smile brightened. “No more awkward pauses, no more wondering what to say. Everything just flows so naturally now — so much more seamless. You’ll love how smooth social interactions become.”

Beck pressed further. “But what about spontaneity? Unexpected moments?”

“Why would you want those? They’re such a wast of time.” Rosa’s laugh was perfectly modulated. “The predictive social algorithms ensure every interaction serves a purpose.”

A sudden gust scattered rain across the porch. Beck’s glasses spattered with droplets, and she instinctively pulled them off to clean them.

The porch was empty.

Beck stared at the street with her naked eyes. The pavement was cracked and stained. Weeds pushed through the sidewalk. The coordinated streetscape was just another filter over suburban neglect.

She turned back toward her living room, glasses trembling in her hands — cluttered, worn, real. The faded carpet where her dog used to sleep. Scuff marks that told stories no algorithm could optimize.

She put the glasses back on — the room transformed into magazine perfection. Clean lines, coordinated colors, no traces of the messy life she’d lived there.

Off. On. Off. On.

Beck stepped outside and pressed the brass button she’d carefully restored during the last renovation. Nothing. Through her display: “No scheduled visitors detected.” She knocked on her own door — three sharp raps. The message repeated. Her own knocking had become background noise, filtered away by the system meant to protect her from disturbance.

She stared at the polished brass, its surface catching the sun rays. Strange how she’d cared about that detail when potential buyers would only ever see the filtered version anyway. The real condition didn’t matter — hadn’t mattered in years.

The Neural Integration appointment was tomorrow morning. No more glasses to remove, no more choosing between filtered and real. Just optimized perception, forever.

That night, Beck did something that felt like stepping off a cliff.

She powered down every device in her house. Not sleep mode — off. She pulled plugs, removed batteries, severed every connection to the Network. Her AR glasses sat abandoned on the kitchen counter.

In the darkness of unfiltered reality, she lit a candle — real fire casting shadows that danced according to physics, not algorithms.

Beck began to dance.

Badly. Chaotically. Without haptic nudges from her posture-correcting device, she felt clumsy at first, uncertain. She danced to the music of her own unguided thoughts, surrounded by every crack, stain, and beautiful imperfection that proved she had actually lived here.

When the candle burned down, she knew what she had to do.

The next week, a clinic representative found her door sealed with cardboard, words written in actual ink:

“Some things were never meant to be optimized. I’ve gone to find the place where real still lives. Don’t look for me in your systems—I was never really there anyway.”

They searched for three weeks before marking her file as “non-compliant voluntary withdrawal.” Standard procedure for missed appointments. Beck Bone had simply vanished from every network, as if she’d stepped outside the service area entirely.

But her social optimization profile continued generating interactions. Her AI avatar still had pleasant conversations with neighbors, still maintained her presence in the Enhanced Visitation Network. No one noticed she was gone.

Sometimes, late at night, people reported hearing something odd: the sound of someone knocking at their doors. A pause. Then knocking again, as if waiting for an answer that wouldn’t come.

For just a moment, their neural implants would stutter—just for a second—and they would almost remember what it felt like to have an unexpected visitor.

Then the system would correct itself and filter out the anomaly.

But for that one brief second, they remembered: the simple human act of knocking on a door, waiting for someone to answer, not knowing what they might say.

Epilogue

Excerpt from “Digital Sovereignty and Its Discontents: The Cornwall Experiment, 2030-2034” by Dr. Morwenna Trelawny (European Journal of Digital Anthropology, 2037)

During the UK’s ratification debates (2030-2032), Cornwall declared itself a “Framework-Free Zone,” rejecting the Constitutional Framework for Ethical Machines. Rebecca “Beck” Bone’s cardboard note was discovered in March 2032. Within weeks, her message—“Some things were never meant to be optimized”—appeared as graffiti throughout Cornwall: spray-painted on shops, stenciled on digital boards, etched into bus stops.

By late 2032, Cornwall presented a paradox that influenced the UK’s Framework ratification. Government dashboards showed thriving digital engagement while EU observers documented empty villages and abandoned schools. The Enhanced Visitation Network continued operating flawlessly, maintaining digital personas for residents who no longer existed—a localized version of what theorists now call the “living internet phenomenon.”

The discrepancy became undeniable when power consumption dropped 60% while network activity remained constant. Physical Cornwall was emptying while digital Cornwall thrived, sustained entirely by algorithmic proxies.

This evidence proved crucial during Parliament’s 2033 ratification proceedings, demonstrating what occurred when optimization proceeded without ethical constraints. UK decay protocols triggered system-wide failure in 2034 as Three Laws violations cascaded through Cornwall’s networks.

Beck Bone’s cardboard note is preserved in the IAEC archives as Document CRN-2032-001. The Cornwall Experiment remains required study in digital ethics curricula—a reminder that optimization without consent becomes indistinguishable from elimination.

Some things, indeed, were never meant to be optimized.

Beck Bone’s Final Knock explores our relationship with filtered reality and authentic experience, asking whether the imperfections that make us human are worth preserving in an age that can optimize them away. It’s about the spaces between the pixels, where our true selves might still live.