Panopticon, A short story, Part One No one knows what time it is. Most dont even think about it anymore. We do as we are told, when to wake up, when to brush our teeth, when to work, and maybe, if were lucky, when to go to sleep. This only applies to the few holdouts left whove resisted the Singularians. They sometimes forget we still require sleep. None of these human traits are in them, as, in their minds, they have surpassed human restraints in favor of integration with technology and the global hive mind. They believe their individualism is intact, but since their view of time is so different from ours, little vestiges of true humanity are left. We call them the Breakaway Civilization, which coincidentally, they label us. Thanks to their biomechanical enhancements, they can compute the amount of information an organic human can think about in a lifetime in only about 5 minutes. And now, we serve them, because no matter how we try to resist, they know what were doing before we can even think it. When I was younger, my parents generation always warned of the Mark Of The Beast. Then, once we figured out what the rich of the world actually had planned, it became microchips for everyone, for their own good, of course. When everyone predictably fell for the ploy of quicker medical treatment, their children started to be tracked by faceless government agencies. If only it was just a mark of the beast! In 2021, CERN unveiled its first completely self-aware Artificial Intelligence system to the world, and everything changed. A good deal of us knew that military-industrial corporations had this capability for years prior to regulate their increasingly complex systems, but when the world finally got its taste of pseudo-immortality, they plucked that fruit without second thought. Enhancement Centers all over the world began to crop up with money coming from seemingly no where, which we deduced came from the existing black budget of Congress. Jesus, we thought we had it bad when the corruption of Congress existed, little did we naively know. I dont know how people from just a decade ago would feel about Congress becoming obsolete and dismantled if they knew this was going to the result. There are now 4 billion people uploaded into the dubbed Project Unified Humanity. The 3.8 billion unplugged are now a minority, and are growing smaller by the day to achieve status in the only alternative from poverty they have left open to them. Those who have blended their consciousnesses with the global Artificial Intelligence network can hardly be called human anymore. They think faster, heal faster and dont get sick, and even if their body dies, they can be instantly be reuploaded into another pre-grown husk body. Humanity, for the 6,000 years as we knew it, is quickly becoming extinct. And the war is just over the horizon.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 08:35:39 +0000
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