2/5 starsIn a world where society exists, something as simple as an idea can have so much power. A smart and authoritative man with wisdom past his years taunts his authoritarian government adversary with his ultimate pithy sendoff as he gets impaled by a spear symbolic of the problems in society: “you can kill me but--you can kill one head of the hyd--- you can-- uhh --- you can--can’t kill an idea”. And Omnison looked up from his reading and wasn’t sure whether the stuttering effect was in his internal reading voice (his speech problems extended into his internal monologue) or whether they were in the text-- he had terrible reading comprehension due to phone addiction, he lost interest after reading anything longer than a tweet. The process of reading his fanfiction was riddled with snack and Instagram breaks. He returned to the fluorescent dimension of amateur storytelling.
Then from across the street, a cute pale boy came into view. Being myself- a shy bookworm type, with my own vices to be sure, but pretty nonetheless-- really an unappreciated beauty but damsel in distress type- I get some attention from guys. But Xbabdu doesn't count Omnison was skeptical. He had never had a real conversation with a girl, so he could not relate to the characters. Omnison was one of the test subjects for a new age high density living situation. The Ups called it the future. The people who begrudgingly set aside their morals for the promise of free food called it hell. The living situation was based on the premise that much of human interaction -- a resource that once taken away proves to be invaluable -- can be simulated on the computer through text chat, internet forums, and comment sections. After that, the rest of human needs can be engineered to perfect efficiency. Living density is thus only limited by the height of buildings able to withstand the occasional earthquake, and the amount of raw building material available. The logistic limits on population density falls out when nobody is allowed to enter the outside--or know about it. If you were wondering about any other unaccounted for needs of humans, take Omnisons’ steady intake of toilet paper and access to high speed internet as evidence that that wasn’t a huge problem--yet. Omnison returns to his screen after a snack and a grumble: ”I hate lazy foreshadowing” because he was an A.i. bot grafted onto a body made to be a sex slave. Looking back, I always thought he should have the same rights as humans, but I hadn’t really read enough science fiction to ponder that deeply, so I just ignored my thoughts and euthanized him after two weeks like the instructions told me to. But I'm getting off topic here. So despite my looks I was still virgin to healthy and fulfilling relationships and still hopelessly lost in the fantasy of a perfect man: stunning emerald eyes, thick black hair that you could get lost in, intensely decisive and authoritative, but somehow still a good leader with a heart of gold. Also at least 5’9”, which is above average height because if I forgot to mention, we were all twelve years old. Across the ridge, a cute pale boy was coming into view from the corner of the street I already mentioned. He had stunning emerald eyes and was also twelve. Something about the ‘Well that's a kind of stupid coincidence’ thinks Omnison out loud ‘Also, this fanfiction is self aware in a way that doesn't really work’ he continues. Omnison has lived alone his entire life, so his thoughts just come out, the sound of his voice reassuring him that he does--in fact--exist. way he walked was just so confident and self-assured, its like everything I want to see in myself. ‘That's a little strange,’ Omnison remarks again ‘the author of this fanfiction accidentally broke character and remarked something about him/herself that actually should have been in the past tense. I wonder if that mistake is indicative of an amateur author's tendency to project their ideal selves onto the protagonist’ he thought to himself The pale boy came over to me and initiated small talk. I learned that his name was Anthem and he was a member of the underdweller class. The Monied coerce underdwellers into uploading their memories into the Server in exchange for small tips. “Nice chip. I can see that you haven’t uploaded your `ries recently. How about that? You do realize that if you fail to comply you become an enemy of the state, right?” I am quietly disappointed that he wasn’t talking to me as a reaction to my mating ritual, which consists of tossing my hair from from side to side and staring suggestively at my phone. “Oh yeah sorry *blushes* I guess I just forgot. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I would love to go with you to feed the panopticon.” I prayed that my flirtatious gambit would pay off. As we walked in awkward silence to the memory depot, we had to pass the Shining: a ray of harsh heat that pelted down through the occasional gap in the Grid that floated above us. My deceased family, and I are/were all underdwellers, eating scraps and rats and living mostly in the darkness (our eyes were made to have increased sensitivity to light with neurochemical treatment given generously to us by the Moneid Uppers). It was a brutal existence, and only the occasional cute boy brought happiness to a young femme like me. I was a little skeptical of Anthem’s profession, considering he was helping hold down the middle class, and also considering that I am a very class conscious person. But it wasn’t that big of a deal considering that a) he was cute and b) he explained to me that he only did this job to feed his family. “I figure if someone is going to be paid to coerce underdwellers into uploading their ‘ries, it might as well be someone nice” he told me. That speech really cleared up my doubts of his character and further proved his pure heart. He really seems like the protagonist type, or at least a love interest I thought to myself. Omnison was getting bored with this predictable story and decided to skip to the end. The last paragraph read: The government man monologued evilly: “No matter how hard you try to make a change against the authoritarian oppressive dystopian government you alone cannot make a change, YOU ARE MERELY A DROP IN THE WATER OF THE OCEAN OF THE WORLDS PROBLEMS!” Anthem looked at him with a defiant gleam in his emerald eyes, his gray tunic in tatters and his nunchucks strewn on the ground out of reach. With perfect eloquence, he shouted “WHAT IS THE OCEAN IF NOT A COLLECTION OF DROPS?” Then the AI overlord, looking down, muttered, “pathetic human spirit; individuality cannot not prevail, for it is a threat to the System.” And he flushed Anthem down into the AI supercore network fragment megapixel lattice array system core. Anthem let out one last scream of pain. As he sailed away from me,I managed to work out his last words: “I loved you the whole time…” FIN thanks for reading, please rate and comment :P xx” Omnison contemplated the incoming request with slightly cruel and certainly unjustified malice. Omnison rated it 2/5 stars and left one succinct comment: “Cliche and poorly written but entertaining.” He failed to mention, however, that the story, however cliche it was, had made a profound impact on his fragile human soul. The fantasy of young love left his heart yearning for connection. He looked around for something to fill his lovelorn heart but found nothing but the cold metal corners of his shipping container-esque living space. Then he experienced the same existential crisis that all humans eventually do. He fell to his knees and stared up at the Gods,screaming, “ISN'T THERE MORE MEANING TO LIFE THAN JUST 6 METAL PANELS, A COT, AND THE INTERNET”. These types of thoughts extend through human existence and generations like dye in a water flow scale model experiment, like the shifting sands of clouds in the atlas of the human experience, all mixing and matching, all reason and struggle and love and pain is the same, every book or movie is just a different perspective’s glimpse into the cosmos of human experience. At the very same moment that he screamed his primordial scream, a panel opened up in his room. The new panel had a picture of a cat on it, which answered his question in a soothing font: “Yes, There is more to life than just 6 metal panels, a cot, and the internet.” This gave him confidence that his life had meaning. For a couple more days he sat in his room, imbibed his Soylent green is made of people, watched porn and vapid futuristic dystopian Netflix shows, then slept soundly on his cot. Only on the seventh day after his internal crisis did he come to the realization. He stared at the comforting cat poster with indignation and asked: “WHAT IS THE FURTHUR MEANING OF LIFE THAT YOU HAVE ALLEGED TO EXIST?” he screamed, reenacting his initial outcry hoping for another cat poster. No more cat posters came, and the existential angst started bubbling up inside. Next, he read The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, and started to construct his worldview around the book. He theorized that he was the only Earthly being with free will, and all others were mere robots and simulacrums put there by God or an orthogonal abstract force. Unbeknownst to him, he actually was, in fact, the lone autonomous being in his universe. He was beginning to see that he could control the world around him in ways he did not yet understand. As Omnison continued to stare into the face of the cat, which to him represented all that was unsatisfying in the world, Omnison’s angst started to build. On the first day, he was muttering to himself and pacing around his prism. On the second day his whispers escalated to screams. The anger inside him started to leak out of his pores as if he had eaten a greasy pizza made of angst and his cardiovascular system was reminding him to avoid further greasy foods through the cruel defacer of acne. Omnison felt a sudden increased appetite and started drinking Soylent green is made of people, straight from the nozzle at the constant rate limited by machine pumping it into his cup. His anger grew inside him and his appetite grew with it. Eventually he felt limited by his prison, and his awkwardly constrained limbs started pushing at each of the 6 enclosing walls. Somewhere in the middle of day four, Omnison broke out of his cage and began to wreak havoc on the neighboring shipping containers. A scientist observing his breakout in the yard, noted to his coworker, “We probably could have made a more existentially satisfying cat poster.” His friend nodded frantically in agreement. This is when Omnison’s conscious brain realized that his constrained living environment was actually just the government experiment he signed up for a couple years earlier. It was also completely voluntary. But his subconscious brain had already accrued so much existential angst that it was too late to slow down, he had reached escape velocity on the comfortable atmosphere that is sanity. He started thrashing about wildly and started eating indiscriminately. His body was suddenly able to digest metal and dirt and cement and leather and dogs and cats and everything. His growth rate increased and by the fifth day he was the size of California. His head easily passed the Ozone layer while standing up, so he chose to lay down and continue eating the Earth. Despite Mankind's best efforts, they could not even come close to stopping Omnison. Eventually he consumed the entire planet, and became the planet itself, curled up in fetal position. The moon orbited him and the atmosphere warmed him like the thin layer of air that strokes your leg hair when you get goosebumps from the cold. Omnison stared up at the sky, each eyeball the size of China, and saw his reflection or at least someone who looked exactly like him–look back at him. And then he heard the man speak. As Omnison’s eyes adjusted, the scene became clearer and clearer. He saw himself-or the form that closely resembled his former self- from behind talking to a large crowd. “This is my mini universe experiment. This stunning achievement of scientific progress was created using graphene nanotechnology with several spoonfuls of singularity.” The audience laughed appropriately and proto-Omnison continued “You have just witnessed the final poetic moments of the first ever mini universe with a clone of myself being the focus. It really goes to show that we do, in fact, live in a society. Also, global warming” |