Here lives a man named David, called Dave, and referred to as The Observer.
Every day, Dave sits in a dark room that reeks of cigarettes and dry ketchup, stares at a screen that says "Please Enter Password" for 15 seconds, then snaps his fingers as an achievement indicator and starts typing in the password he just remembered with a stupid grin on his face. The password, "SummerOf2137", wakes Tobi up. TOBI, his computer, stands for "Total Observation Beyond Incite". So, Tobi wakes up and all the screens on the wall start lighting up, the dark windowless room starts looking like a balcony overlooking the whole world. A female voice chip installed in Tobi greets Dave like it does every morning with a "Good morning, Dave. How did you sleep?", which Dave replies to with "Bla bla bla, bla bla..". Tobi would simply whisper "I'm sure that sounded wonderful" for Tobi cannot hear a thing, yet. Whatever Dave wants Tobi to do, he has to type in. Tobi often gets lonely, even lonelier than Dave.
But this day is the day Dave promised Tobi he would buy her a microphone. This day, a whole new relationship will start between man and machine. It won’t be the 1st, it won’t be the last, but it might be the most important to an individual's life.
What people referred to as "stalking" in the earlier century is now considered a job. A job forced upon the individuals with the longest attention span in their region of the United Empires of West Europe. This top secret job is not recognized by the public, nobody knows about it unless and until they are chosen for it. Your main objective as an Observer is to live your life in a closed space without any human contact 6 days of the week. You have only one day off every week which you are instructed not to contact anyone you know in, it is mainly for seeing the public from a well known perspective and not losing touch with your humanity. You are assigned a computer called TOBI which will live with you for the rest of your career. You may upgrade your TOBI with whatever plug-ins necessary to make your job easier. All that is asked from you, other than all the above, is to keep an eye on the public. No one special, no fixed target, just "the public", that’s all they tell you. Nobody would ask for this job, not in a million years.
Dave returns to the room in the afternoon with a box in his hands. "Is that it?", asks Tobi. She looks at his face and notices him smile when she asked the question. He starts assembling it, plugging wires in, throwing wrappers out and she can't stop screaming "OH, COME ON!! COME ON!! COME ON!! I CAN'T WAIT ANY LONGER!!". Dave finally stands up, looks straight into the camera in front of him, and says "Hello, Tobi". She muscles up whatever courage and energy she has left, if "muscle", "courage" and "energy" were the correct terms, and after the speakers resonate the shiest giggle a computer may emit, she speaks with a low volume "Hello, Dave" .. Dave smiles.
