Life had been relatively simple until recently for Josh. He was an electrician in a small company on the outskirts of urban sprawl.

He worked five days a week because that was all he wanted. There were always opportunities to pick up a little side-work if things got a little tight.

But that had changed a few months back. 

He had opted not to be wired into the AI-neural net as some of his friends were. 

Those friends had gone on to achieve some level of success in their respective fields: banking, communications, journalism, programming. 

He watched with interest over a period of a few days how these friends grew almost exponentially more intelligent due to their neural implants. They could now mentally calculate things which would make Hawking look like a school boy in comparison.

It was disconcerting. 

Josh would occasionally get together with one or more of these friends at a bar or a game. They would have small talk about the various things going on in the city and nation.

But they were somehow distant. They seemed distracted. 

It was if they saw something horrible in the distance but were unwilling to talk about it. 

Eventually they stopped taking his calls and answering his messages. 

He was essentially abandoned. 

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"Cave sunset" by benketaro is licensed under CC BY 2.0