Transparent

I woke up from cryostasis with all the memories of my past life in place, as I was revived from stasis for one purpose and one only: for those memories to be passed on to next generations. They didn't need me for that: by the time I woke up, my memories had already been uploaded across the neuronet. No one asked my permission, any more than they would ask me for permission to give me a shower if I'd been a caveman: it's something we take for granted now. In this world there is no memory that is private. Everyone else was used to that: after all, you gave up your privacy yourselves, but for me it'd take some time to adjust. Everyone told me that in this world, I would be accepted for who I am, and that I had less to fear from them than from the closest friends I had in my past life, for they could truly understand me, unlike anyone who had ever lived before.

I thought I'd be ready for anything, but it's not the technology that are the real future shock, it's the culture. When I walked out the hospital and saw how I could access all information about any passerby on the street, and realized how they could do the same with me, I felt worse than naked, as if I was stripped of skin, muscle, organs, every layer laid bare not just to the eyes of those around me but to the thoughts of everyone in the whole world, thoughts groping around the net like electric arcs around an electronic brain. 

No one could understand my need for privacy. They didn't call it privacy, either, and said that I misused the word. They said that what I wanted was secrecy, and that one only needs secrets from one's enemies. When they saw how in my past life, I used to have secrets from everyone I knew, they felt how this could only mean that deep down, everyone in my world used to be each other's enemy.

I could turn off telepathy if I wanted to, but they said there would be nothing else for me to do if I did. No one would care to get acquainted with me without telepathy, certainly not now that all my memories were already online. It would just make me an outcast until I'd turn it back on, and so I remained transparent. It took a long time before I even dared to think again. When I did, it was as it were in a stutter, and it wasn't until I looked into another's mind and saw how petty I was that I laughed at myself and let it go.