FEDERICO PISTONO

A TALE OF TWO

FUTURES

A TALE OF TWO FUTURES

http://www.federicopistono.org

COVER DESIGN – FEDERICO PISTONO

BOOK DESIGN – FEDERICO PISTONO

PROOFREADING – ADAM WATERHOUSE

CREATESPACE – DECEMBER 22, 2014

ISBN–10: 1505656311

ISBN–13: 978-1505656312

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Contents

Introduction vii

Acknowledgements xi

1 ## 0-000 ## 1

2 ## 1-000 ## 7

3 ## 0-001 ## 17

4 ## 1-001 ## 23

5 ## 0-010 ## 35

6 ## 1-010 ## 45

7 ## 0-011 ## 55

8 ## 1-011 ## 67

9 ## 0-100 ## 75

10 ## 1-100 ## 87

Final Remarks 95

Introduction

The more you know about science, the harder it be-

comes to write good science ﬁction. Anyone can take

an idea, maybe inspired by some Hollywood sci-ﬁ block-

buster, grab a laptop, start typing, and make stuff up along

the way. If you understand a little bit about science, tech-

nology, and most of all society, you’ll realise that there

aren’t many credible science ﬁction stories around (with

some notable exceptions).

We have a very bad record of predicting the future.

Almost anything written before the 1970s offers no sug-

gestion of the possibility of the emergence of the Internet,

or anything that resembles it – which is one of the most

remarkable events in history, and certainly the most relev-

ant of the last 40 years. There are countless stories, set at

least a century from now, that still have people driving cars

and working 9-5. There may be noiseless ﬂying cars, using

some miraculous technology currently unimaginable, but

you can be sure that humans are still driving them.

Typically, science ﬁction stories are not about the fu-

ture. In reality, they are stories about the present, plus

some fancy new gadgets. Yet, fundamentally speaking,

vii

viii INTRODUCTION

three things remain unchanged: the human condition

that has dominated most cultures so far (competition, jeal-

ousy, and the search for power), labour for income, and

the inﬁnite growth paradigm.

I understand that it’s easier to have familiar elements

in the story to facilitate the connection between the char-

acters and the reader. One needs to identify with the

people and the stories to feel empathy, to be captured,

to be drawn into the universe of the book. That’s alright

if you write historical novels, or if you want to indulge

your readers with fantasy stories. But if you write science

ﬁction, I think this approach is a cop out.

If we want to show how humanity may evolve, if we

want to inspire our fellow humans to create a better ver-

sion of society, we must transcend our present condition.

And while many might think that this implies cognitive

enhancements, cyborgs, or even mind-uploading and the

transcendence of the body altogether; I think those are

neither necessary, nor sufﬁcient conditions (and perhaps

not even desirable) in order to achieve real transcendence.

It’s our intention, our purpose, that drives us. It’s our

purpose that makes us proactively do things, rather than

be driven by inertia. And depending on the purpose we

have, depending on the goals we set for ourselves, results

may vary substantially.

In a linear and mostly predictable world, the worst

that can happen is usually not that bad, and one has the

time to remediate. But in an exponentially changing and

chaotic environment, a few misaligned steps at the begin-

ning might result in a horrifying, terrible future; and the

errors we make will be exponentially more difﬁcult to ﬁx.

And so it is my goal to present you with (what I think

are) two plausible futures, given where we are now and

what we know today. They are parallel stories, set in a

pre-singularity world, a few decades from now.

Beware that these two stories do not follow the usual

Campbellian monomyth of the hero’s journey, described

by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces as

follows: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common

day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabul ous forces

are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the

hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the

power to bestow boons on his fellow man”. Almost every

story – from Star Wars to Harry Potter, from The Matrix to

The Lord of The Rings – follows this basic pattern. If that

is what you’re expecting from this book, then you should

stop reading now, or else you’re in for a disappointment.

I decided not to follow the monomyth structure. There

is no call to adventure, no trial and quest, no unexpected

turn of events, no ascension, no apotheosis, and no atone-

ment. An acute reader might ask themselves why in the

galaxy have I decided to commit a novelist’ suicide, and

diverge from the typical narrative structure that works so

well, and generally sells accordingly. The answer is simple:

the raison d’être of this book is to show a realistic, aver-

age day in a life, in two diverging futures, without false

pretences or literary stretches (well, not too many).

My aim is to attempt to show credible scenarios with

which anyone can identify, however foreign or far-fetched

they might look at ﬁrst.

x INTRODUCTION

Please note that I don’t think the real future will be

like the ones I’m describing. I would be mad to believe

that I could foresee exactly how things will unfold. I am

merely presenting you with a perspective, something to

think about, which might inﬂuence your decisions; and

this in turn will become part of the system of feedbacks

loop that truly governs everything that happens.

I can’t tell you what do to, or even how. But I can

show you something you might not have thought about

before. My feeling is that both the dystopias and the uto-

pias usually presented in popular culture are really quite

underwhelming, no more than a pallid shadow of what

could actually happen. In other words, I believe the future

will either be beautiful beyond imagination; or dismay-

ingly horrifying, much worse than sci-ﬁ dystopias have

prepared us for.

The choice is up to us all.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for helping

me in this journey. First, Daniele Mancinelli, for starting

discussions of exploratory engineering many years ago

with me, which were the initial inspiration for this novel,

and I suspect for many other stories that will follow.

Adam Waterhouse, who edited and proofread the en-

tire book with kindness and professionalism.

Hannu Rajaniemi, an accomplished sci-ﬁ writer and

visionary who has given me invaluable advice in trans-

forming this novel into an actual story.

And lastly, to all of you, who have supported and

shared my vision of the future, whom I dedicate this and

future works.

CHAPTER 1

## 0-000 ##

It was early morning. Tom woke to the sound of the

alarm clock, directly built inside his cochlea. No point in

trying to turn it off, it wouldn’t. There was no off button.

Besides, even if he tried to hack it, it would have been

reported to The Company and he would have been ﬁned

for being voluntarily late for work, or worse.

He was expected to be at the ofﬁce on time, every

morning, every day. For as long as he could remember,

he had always been expected to be somewhere on time,

no excuses. At ﬁrst it was his long years in school, then

university came along, and now it was the ofﬁce. The

ofﬁce! He realised he had fooled around enough, it was

time to get a move on.

Tom moved towards the kitchen, slowly, his eyes

blinded by the bright artiﬁcial lights, dragging his body

around to try and get it to move. The electronic display on

the fridge showed animations of products to buy. It was an

endless stream of advertisements, so familiar to him that

he didn’t even notice it. The 100-inch screen TV, as big as

2 CHAPTER 1. ## 0-000 ##

the entire wall, turned on automatically as he approached

it.

Advertisements again, followed by quick news reports.

Two people had been killed during a food riot, just outside

the walls of the inner district, where the wealthy lived.

Where Tom lived.

“Jesus.. . ” mumbled Tom, looking at his concentrated

drink with added sugars and proteins. “They’re always

making trouble. Why the fuck? Well, they made their

choice. Not my problem.”

Situations like these made Tom a little uncomfortable,

and gave him a vague sense of disgust. It was the same

disgust that he had felt when he had found a cockroach

under his bed once. Once. Since that incident, he had con-

tacted a company that specialised in bug extermination to

clean up his apartment. When the operators came, they

released a swarm of nanobots to get rid of those repugnant

blattaria annoyances. After having annihilated the insects

in the house, the nanobots, invisible to the human eye,

scavenged every millimetre of the apartment, targeting

the eggs before they hatched. A paid monthly subscrip-

tion kept the nano-sized machines working, giving Tom a

sense of security. He never had to go through that horrible

feeling again.

A notice window popped up on his retinal implant

– his subscription service for ultra HD-TV had been re-

newed, and his credit card charged automatically. Another

notice, but this time it was a warning. Nine more minutes

and he would be late for work. Given the trafﬁc it would

take approximately 76 minutes and 23 seconds to reach

the ofﬁce, and the sensors in the house would reveal to

The Company that he was late, reducing credits from his

salary instantaneously.

“Okay, I’d better make a move, I’ve got enough prob-

lems already, don’t need to add that to the list,” he thought.

Tom promptly moved towards the exit that went dir-

ectly into the elevator pod. He didn’t like the idea of cross-

ing paths with his neighbours, and so he tried to avoid

contact as much as possible.

But, there he was.

It was the guy from the 87th ﬂoor. Tom didn’t know his

name, but his Armani suit spoke louder than his meaning-

less name. And that smirky smile of self-assurance, the

perfect jaw line, surgically altered, the ﬂawless Oxford ac-

cent, everything was a reminder that he was better than

him.

He was richer.

“Thomas! So good to see you. What a wonderful day,

isn’t it?”

Tom came out with the best fake smile he could make

up, then accessed his retinal aid to display information

about the guy whose name he didn’t want to remember.

“Robert! Wonderful day, yes. In fact, I just got a pro-

motion.”

“Oh, that’s great! So tough these days, but you are on

the roll. Good for you!”

Tom knew that lies were short-lived in the era of emo-

tion detector implants, and he was pretty sure that Bob

the fucking perfect guy had a better model than he. But

he had to say something, he couldn’t just stand there and

4 CHAPTER 1. ## 0-000 ##

take all that shit from him. Wonderful day! How dare he

says that, the rotten Oxford educated bastard. He might as

well have wiggled his cock in front of his face saying, “Suck

it, boy. Suck it good.”

“Oh, that’s my stop. Have a great day Thomas.”

“Yeah, you too Robert,” Tom replied unconvincingly,

feeling relieved that he wouldn’t have to interact with the

useless prick for the rest of the day.

Ground ﬂoor. Tom reached his 6-month old Toyota,

which reminded him of the ad he saw in the elevator. The

new model had already come out, and it was 23% faster

and 17% more powerful. It also had a more aggressive

look, and you could tell it was designed for better people.

“I bet Bob-the-prick has one already, maybe even two,”

he thought.

Suddenly, Tom hated his car. He hated that dreadful

colour, the effeminate look of its shape, the uninspiring

tyres with no character. But most of all, he hated what

he saw on the side window. His ﬁgure appeared in full

ﬂesh, reﬂected out from the nanotech fabric with perfect

refraction of light, showing him, even clearer than before,

the kind of loser that he was.

The car opened as Tom’s subcutaneous implant sent

the information out, which in turn notiﬁed his superiors

that he was on track. Just in time. Seven more minutes and

he would have been in trouble. Three of his colleagues

had already been ﬁred only last month – some guy at the

company wrote a new algorithm that had essentially made

them obsolete. Tom knew that this was not an isolated

event. He saw a pattern, moving faster and faster, and he

had no intention of giving his bosses a reason to doubt his

usefulness in The Company.

He got in the car.

“The Ofﬁce,” he said in a ﬁrm voice.

The vehicle started to move on its own. As he was lying

down, trying to look at the stream of news in the ﬁnancial

feed, his proprietary cognition implant detected the sense

of unease, and offered a new drug that had just been re-

leased for reducing the anxiety that he was experiencing.

Tom approved it right away, 200 credits were deduced from

his account, and the order was made.

Relief. His breathing started to get deeper. Pleasure.

The drugs were ﬂowing throughout his circulatory system.

Bliss. No need to wait for the delivery boy – his neural

implant already had the recipe for many drugs, years to

come into the future. It was just a matter of releasing

the right stimuli, which was only possible through the

proprietary technology – and that remained locked for

the beneﬁt of the pharmaceutical company that built the

device. All Tom had to do was to release enough credits

from his account by thinking it, and, for a few moment, he

could experience heaven.

Tom allowed the narcotics to engulf him. As the feel-

ing of synthetic euphoria began dominating his body, his

mind was ﬁnally free of stress, liberated from the appre-

hension and fearful anguish that characterised his daily

routine. And there, in that moment of peace, an image

appeared to his mind, clear and warm. A face. Two faces. A

smile, the joyous sound of laughter. He couldn’t recognise

who the faces were, nor where they came from. But that

6 CHAPTER 1. ## 0-000 ##

memory, that crystal yet inexplicable image of the past,

was, without a doubt, the happiest of recollections.

Lost in a sea of artiﬁcial tranquility he ﬂoated above

the surface, lulled by reminiscences of his forgotten par-

ents. And in that digital cradle, he fell into a foetal position,

attached by an invisible umbilical chord to the synaptic

string of The System, where his mind was free to roam

among his happiest memories, which, however ephem-

eral they might be, were peaceful and joyful nonetheless.

But the fugacious nature of this state was a reminder

that things don’t last, especially good things. Tom was

rapidly approaching The Ofﬁce, in his monospaced auto-

mated vehicle. That much he knew. But unlike other days,

unbeknown to him, this was the day that would mark the

beginning of his demise.

CHAPTER 2

## 1-000 ##

Shandala was still sleeping, when the nanotech cur-

tains incorporated into the window itself slowly started to

open up, morphing the molecular structure of the glass,

letting the ﬁrst rays of light of the day into the bedroom.

The smart windows were connected to the central

system of the house, which analysed Shandala’s sleeping

habits, and was able to predict when she was about to

come out of the REM phase; giving her the easiest, most

natural, and pleasurable transition towards the awakened

state.

A soft and pleasant music began resonating through-

out the room. As more light came in, Shandala opened

her eyes, slowly. It took her a moment to realise that she

was awake; the sound was perfectly blended with the im-

ages in her dreams, as if it were playing a soundtrack to

them. She smiled, stretching her arms and legs against the

blankets, feeling the fabric with her skin.

“Mmm,” she mumbled.

“Good morning, Shandala.”

8 CHAPTER 2. ## 1-000 ##

The voice was calm and warm, humane. But it was the

voice of AMI, the network of computers and sensors that

managed the house in its entirety and assisted Shandala

in everything she needed.

AMI stood for Amicable Machine Interface, and it was

exactly what its name implied. AMI oversaw every op-

eration in the house, made sure everything was working

correctly, and offered Shandala help whenever she needed

it. It was also short for ‘AMIcus’, the Latin word for ‘friend’.

“Shhhhut up,” she barely spoke, noticeably sleepy.

“You have to wake up, Shandala.”

“Ten minutes!”

“Last night you told me to wake up you gently at ﬁrst,

which I did.”

Shandala didn’t move.

“You then said that I should get heavier if you didn’t

react.”

No reaction.

“Okay, I’ll start the sirens then.”

“Ten minutes!” she shouted, throwing the pillow at the

window.

“Oh yes, and most importantly, you speciﬁcally told

me not to bargain with your usual ‘ten minutes’ rhetoric.”

“You don’t tell me what to do.. . ” she whispered, still

very sleepy, and grumpy.

The default version of AMI was accommodating and

polite. Which, from the point of view of someone like

Shandala meant that it was utterly boring.

“Hey, it if were up to me, you’d be sleeping ’til tomor-

row if you wanted. It was you who told me yesterday that,

no matter what, I must. .. ”

“Shut it!”

“Alright then. As you wish. But when you eventually

do wake up, I don’t want to hear your lazy-ass complaining

like before.” said AMI.

“Alright, alright, I’m getting up.”

“Atta girl”.

A few moments went by.

“My sensors tell me that you’re still not moving.”

“You’re not moving either!” Shandala retorted.

“Well, moving is a concept that applies to individual

entities with a body of some sort,” AMI replied, “Given that

I’m made of hundreds of integrated components and that

my body is essentially the entire house, the idea of moving

around seems rather silly. You, on the other hand, have a

body speciﬁcally evolved for the purpose of moving, and

you’ve programmed me with the goal of making sure your

body does what it’s intended to!”

“Mmmm, stupid electronic smarty pants.”

“Come on, I’ve got the bathtub warm and ready.”

“Fine!” said Shandala resolutely, moving around on

her back, looking up at the ceiling. She chuckled, feeling

happy and satisﬁed with the training that she had given

AMI to adapt to her personality.

“Alright, let’s begin!” she shouted, clapping her hands

together and jumping up on the bed.

The nano-curtains suddenly opened up completely,

engulﬁng the house with natural sunlight. The music im-

mediately matched the new lighting conditions, and a

fast, upbeat tempo shook the room up. Shandala, singing

10 CHAPTER 2. ## 1-000 ##

loudly and unselfconsciously, moved towards the bath-

room, where a warm bath was waiting for her.

The water was recycled from the roof, and automatic-

ally warmed up by the excess heat collected in the building

during the nightly operation, coupled with the hot water

storage of high efﬁciency nano-solar collectors that were

installed on roofs, windows, and walls. Almost every single

joule of energy in the house was collected, utilised, and

then re-entered into The System; wasting only the bare

minimum. Every need in the house was provided for, and

all through renewable, decentralised energies, managed

by Open Systems, created by and for the community at

large.

All of the data concerning Shandala and the house

was, of course, private, and for her use only, unless she

decided otherwise. Years before, many people – concerned

with the growing loss of privacy – started implementing

Open Systems that allowed anyone to safely store personal

information, such that it could not be accessed by either

governments or corporations, without the person’s explicit

consent. People owned their personal data, and this fact

had become so widely accepted and ubiquitous that it

wasn’t even a concern anymore. It was a given.

Shandala, like everyone else, felt safe in the comforting

knowledge that she was all watched over by machines of

loving grace.

She stripped, leaving her pyjamas on the ﬂoor, and

slowly immersed her body in the bathtub. Her skin was

soft and healthy, olive-coloured. Her dark, long hair con-

trasted with her large, bright green eyes that shone and

gleamed with peaceful joy. Her face wasn’t perfect by any

means. Her left eyebrow was slightly longer than her right,

and in general there was something asymmetrical about

her features. By looking at her, one would certainly not sus-

pect a genetically engineered perfect design, but she was

beautiful nonetheless. She had a special blend of charm

and idiosyncrasies that made her quite attractive. While

many people did manipulate the genome of their chil-

dren, it was done predominantly for disease prevention,

few bothered to ﬁddle with it for purely aesthetic reasons.

Shandala was the child of a generation that mixed and

blended genes and culture; that lived healthily by cleaning

up the air and the oceans; that ate good food and exercised

properly, rendering most causes for disease obsolete.

Shandala let the warmth of the water go through her

body, appreciating ﬁrst the immediate feeling on her skin,

then expanding it through the mental image of those little

molecules moving faster and faster against her body, cre-

ating the sensation of warmth. She chuckled.

“What’s on for today?” said Shandala in a normal, yet

lively voice.

“Many messages, but really two major pieces of news.

The results from the lab came back,” said AMI.

“Really?!” Shandala rose with excitement, spilling

some water out of the bathtub. The smart nanofabric

of the ﬂoor absorbed the droplets automatically, recycling

them back into AMI.

“Show me,” she said ﬁrmly, throwing her hands up

in the air, encouraging the machine to proceed. A three-

dimensional holographic display appeared in front of her,

12 CHAPTER 2. ## 1-000 ##

displayed on her nanoscaled, invisible, and painless con-

tact lenses. A stream of genetic code, proteins, and chem-

ical bonds was ﬂowing around her. She moved her hands

in the air slightly, manoeuvring the molecules around with

deep curiosity. Then she stopped, satisﬁed.

“Do you think this result is ﬁnal?” she asked.

“It’s difﬁcult to say with the data available at the mo-

ment. It’s likely that more research would give additional

insights. Should I run another simulation?” AMI asked.

“Yes, please. But this time change it, and use the B1-J

mutation. Actually, why don’t we ask Asa?”

AMI proceeded in calling Asa. Moments later, his face

appeared crystal clear, on the holographic display, exactly

as if he were there with Shandala.

“Morning Asa!” said Shandala. She was as lovely as

ever, Asa thought.

“Good morning Sha-uh!” Asa stopped and squinted

his eyes, trying to ﬁgure out if there was something wrong

with the image transmission. “Is that your bathroom? Wait

a second, are you. . . naked?”

“Oh yeah, whatever. Listen up boy, got great news,”

she leaned against the border of the bathtub, crossing her

hands on top of it. “I think we got it.”

“What? What have we got?”

“You know, that thing we’ve been working on for

weeks. .. ”

”You mean the B1-T?”

She nodded.

“So we ﬁnally found the cure for B1-T mutation that

leads to pancreatic cancer?” he added with a sudden in-

credulity.

“Not quite,” she corrected him. “It looks promising,

but I want to double check with the B1-J mutation, and

run another simulation. What do you think?”

“Okay, I’m checking the data now,” he took a moment

to analyse it. “It’s very interesting, yes. Do you want to

publish this?”

“Mmm, yeah. Let’s publish on Open Research, but

suppose we think the results are not ﬁnal, and that we

need help testing further?”

“Of course they’re not ﬁnal! I’m sure someone will

come up with something new in no time. It shouldn’t hold

us back from publishing though,” he paused, pondering,

“Let’s do it!”

“Yay!” cheered Shandala, throwing her arms up in the

air, feeling fantastic.

The joy and satisfaction of their own accomplishment

merged with the still greater joy and satisfaction of being

part of a society in which scientiﬁc knowledge and pro-

gress was shared and utilised for the beneﬁt of all. Shan-

dala loved being part of that grand project, but deep down,

she longed for something even greater.

Asa looked at her and smiled lovingly. He understood

Shandala’s joyful enthusiasm for the societal project that

they lived within and formed a small part of; but his own

logical and analytical nature didn’t allow him to feel and

express emotions in quite the same way as her. For him

using free knowledge for the beneﬁt of all of society was

simply a practical expression of an understanding of the

shared nature of knowledge itself, and reﬂected a recog-

14 CHAPTER 2. ## 1-000 ##

nition of the empirical oneness of all humankind. Any

other system would be an insult to human intelligence,

a perverse perpetuation of the values of self-interest and

tribalism – values from earlier times which simply looked

absurd from the vantage point of the post-scarcity world

of global collaboration and abundance in which they now

lived.

“Okay, naked girl, get some clothes on and come by”

said Asa, shaking himself out of his reﬂections “I’ve got a

call from Mari. She said she can teach you violin now that

she’s back from her trip.”

“Oh, right!” she shouted, making no effort to hide her

excitement, “Gotta go. Love you, even though you are

just a boring boy with clothes on,” she said in a slightly

provocative fashion.

“Ha-ha. Come by and we can put a remedy to that,”

replied Asa, with a slightly mischievous smile.

“You wish.”

They laughed, as she stopped the connection.

“You like teasing him, don’t you?” said AMI.

“Give me a break, you know I’m joking.”

“I know, but I’m an artiﬁcial entity capable of rational

thought at all times. Your friend Asa, on the other hand, is

ﬁlled with testosterone and other hormonal and biologic-

ally induced impulses that need to be satisﬁed and might

affect his understanding of the signal you put out.”

“Oh, shut up AMI.”

“In other words, we know that you were just teasing

him, but he might not.”

“I was just kidding.”

“Anyway, here’s the second news of the day I men-

tioned to you earlier this morning.”

An electronic message marked top priority appeared

in front of Shandala’s eyes. She gulped solemnly as she

read the message subject. She took a moment, and then

checked the sender. The name appeared in all its glory, un-

equivocally. “Global Astronomical Space Agency” (GASA).

She closed her eyes, and stopped. After a couple of deep

breaths, she opened them again, and checked the elec-

tronic signature for authenticity. There was no doubt, AMI

conﬁrmed.

Shandala leaned back in the bathtub, sinking into it.

“Read it,” she ordered, closing her eyes.

As AMI began reading the message, Shandala felt her

heart skipping a beat. She went numb, and sank deeper

into the water. With her head fully submerged, her senses

perception were conﬁned to her awareness of her body,

giving her a feeling of comfort and safety. The liquid

around her ears mufﬂed the sounds from outside, un-

til they disappeared completely. She ﬂoated, in a sea of

emptiness, allowing her mind to roam free until she lost

track of time and space. After an indeﬁnite moment of

time a thought struck her. For in that very moment she

realised that as much as she enjoyed and appreciated the

life that she led, she knew that it was but pallid reﬂection

of what was about to come.

And as Shandala moved her knees close to her chest,

gently ﬂoating and twisting around, like a baby in a womb,

she knew that her life would never be the same again.

CHAPTER 3

## 0-001 ##

76 minutes and 17 seconds later – just a few seconds

ahead of what the algorithm in his retinal implant had

predicted – Tom was stepping into The Ofﬁce. No need to

show ID, open doors, show his retina or even his thumb

print. As Tom walked into the room, the intracutaneous

chip delivered his unique DNA ID-information wirelessly,

and he was logged into The System.

He was in. From that moment on, it was difﬁcult to

discern where he ended and where The System began. His

vital information, his habits, his behaviours, and to some

extent even some of his thoughts, were part of The System.

Tom had become an integral part of The Company.

It was pretty convenient. He didn’t have to show his

passport when he travelled between districts, nor did he

have to stop and identify himself to police ofﬁcers or to

other government ofﬁcials. Everything was transparent, at

least to the people who had the right access permissions.

Within The System, The Company always knew who every-

one was, and where they were. Sure, at the beginning some

18 CHAPTER 3. ## 0-001 ##

hippies complained that this represented a loss of privacy

or something. But what would you rather have, a world of

violence and chaos, like it was outside the city, or a world

of peace and order? Tom had made his choice long ago,

and now there was no going back.

Being part of The System – being logged in – gave Tom

a strangely rewarding and reassuring sensation. It was as

if for the time being, he was no longer his usual self, but

rather an extension of a larger entity. In there, he felt safe.

To him, this was very unusual to say the least. It was the

closest thing he ever got to what some refer to as a ‘family’.

“Tom! Good morning. Just in time. You ready to get

things started today?” Jeff’s voice was complacent and

somewhat alarming.

“Always ready,” Tom replied quickly, sounding a bit

overconﬁdent.

“Brilliant! Because today we have great news, surprise,

excitement! A new mind in The Company”.

Jeff had the most euphoric and irritating smile that

one could humanly conceive. In fact, Tom reckoned that it

probably wasn’t entirely human, but partly drug-induced

through the latest generation of The Company’s artiﬁcial

neural implant that Jeff was equipped with. Jeff, with his

mouth open, still smiling, displaying like in a TV commer-

cial his surgically-altered perfect denature, indicated with

a nod of his head the direction Tom should have been

looking.

Tom, already agitated, looked to the left. A charming,

tall, beautiful young man, probably ten years younger than

him, with a suit that was worth twice his car, was standing

in front of him in full ﬁgure. The sense of unease that he

had already been experiencing now transformed into pure

horror.

John was blonde, blue-eyed, and of perfectly propor-

tioned build. He must have been part of that generation of

babies partially engineered from birth, and then enhanced

through epigenetic interference.

Every few years, new drugs and techniques were ap-

proved in the market, and parents could decide if they

wanted their baby to be ‘natural’, or enhanced. If you

could afford it there was generally not much discussion.

Enhanced babies were better looking, smarter, more res-

istant to viruses and bacterial infections, and were 98.89%

more likely to become successful than unaided children.

Tom was not an ugly man, and he knew it. In a pre-

enhanced world, he would have been considered quite

a handsome fellow. In fact, by 2020 standards, he could

have easily been a model. But in this era things were very

different. Beauty, unaided beauty that is (or ‘natural’, as

they used to say in the past), was not enough anymore.

Every ﬁbre, every millimetre of John’s presence was

exerting conﬁdence and brilliance. To Tom, John wasn’t

just irritating. What he felt transcended the emotions of

envy that he had felt in the past. It was simply too much

to bear. Tom knew, right there and then, that he didn’t

stand a chance against him – they were playing in two

different leagues. For a moment, Tom doubted that they

even belonged to the same species.

When Tom turned his head back, he found Jeff still

smiling open-mouthed, with those omnipresent white

20 CHAPTER 3. ## 0-001 ##

teeth, his head nodding even more evidently. The satisfac-

tion of the thought of landing a solid sledgehammer on

that white, shiny wall of teeth, and watching Jeff rolling

on the ﬂoor, spitting incisors and vomiting blood, was

the only thing that kept him from actually reaching the

paperweight on the desk and doing it.

“Tom, this is John H. Rockefeller, but I’m sure your

implant already told you that.”

Jeff was able to talk while keeping his smile almost

unaltered, an ability that both impressed and irritated

Tom.

“Yes, of course. Pleasure to meet you John. I look

forward to working with you.”

“So do I,” said John, with a tone that could only be

described as not from this Earth.

His voice was soft and musical, yet ﬁrm and strong.

Not the slightest excess vibration, not the minimal dis-

tortion that would give away any emotion that was not

intended to be expressed. Yet, he didn’t sound artiﬁcial.

Somehow his vocal cords were perfectly synced with his

connecto – the sum of all biological and artiﬁcial neurones

– working synergistically to achieve the most optimal result

one could possibly conceive. In fact, it was more than that.

John’s voice was reassuring, hypnotising, and therefore

terrifying at the same time. It carried such authority that

Tom could only imagine that the majority of unaided or

partially aided human beings would meekly comply with

anything that he said – a far from pleasant thought. If you

then factored in the superior intellect, the almost absolute

control of emotion, the astonishing looks, and the best

implants that the market could offer, it was not hard to

imagine that this person could single-handedly change

the fate of an entire company, or even a district. He was

like a God.

“Good! Now, enough of the formalities, let’s get to

work. John just came in from District 11, where in 97 days

he improved the efﬁciency of general system processes by

74.32%. He came here to help us ﬁx our inefﬁciencies and,

you know what they say, climb the ladder!” with the last

words, Jeff winked and nudged his elbow against Tom’s

chest.

“Fix our inefﬁciencies,” Tom knew right away that this

meant, among other things – him. He looked at John with a

complex mix of emotions that he could not clearly identify.

Anger, frustration, admiration, terror, and ﬁnally de-

feat. If only he had been born a few years later, he could

have been better engineered. If only his parents were

richer, they could have afforded better implants for him.

Or maybe, if they had bribed the right ofﬁcials, he could

have been part of the experimental program for epigenetic

enhancement. If only. . . his heart stopped for a second.

His parents! They were the cause of his demise. Use-

less, heartless bastards! How could they have done that

to him? To him! How selﬁsh. How could they not think of

the consequences? Could they not see that sending him to

study abroad was not enough? Couldn’t they have saved

more credits when they were younger, so that he could be

more capable now?

Tom wished he had them in front of him, right in that

moment, so that he could blame them for what they had

22 CHAPTER 3. ## 0-001 ##

done, for everything. Oh yes, his parents. Where were they

now? A blank moment of silence pierced in Tom’s mind.

He couldn’t remember.

Somewhere, deep in the synapses suppressed by his

implant, was the memory of two loving parents, who sacri-

ﬁced everything for him, and died in the process. But that

memory was too painful, too sad. It made him weak, less

efﬁcient at his job. And so he decided to suppress it, repla-

cing it with a fabricated memory provided to him by the

artiﬁcial neurones implanted in his brain which allowed

him to focus on the path in front of him, which was all that

really mattered.

But that was all useless now, for even that was not

enough. The spectacle of John standing in front of him

had brought him to the sad and somber realisation of what

complete and utter defeat tasted like.

Tom somehow managed to carry on for the remainder

of the day in autopilot mode, his conscious thoughts re-

duced to a bare minimum, leaving the drugs and artiﬁcial

implants to drive most of the processes, so that he couldn’t

feel those troublesome emotions anymore. It was comfort-

ing and reassuring to know that his proprietary cognition

implant could offer him a drug-induced boost just when

he most needed it. He wasn’t happy, but at least he didn’t

feel miserable any longer.

CHAPTER 4

## 1-001 ##

Shandala arrived at the lab, her mind still numb by

the communication from GASA, the Global Astronomical

Space Agency. The place was a clean but vibrant envir-

onment. Dozens of researchers zipped to and fro, a self-

organised entity led by passionate biohackers. She spotted

Asa, standing next to a bioreactor, frantically checking a

holographic interactive projection. He was generally good

at maintaining a cool, scientiﬁc demeanour, but on this

occasion it was quite clear from his expression that he

could barely contain his excitement.

“I’ve seen 7-year olds at the Year of Civilisation cere-

mony better able to contain themselves than you!” she

said in a somewhat mocking voice.

“Well, it’s not everyday you get to make medical break-

throughs like this one,” replied Asa, with a smile.

“So what up?” said Shandala.

“I think it really works.”

“Uh?”

“I ran the simulations with the B1-J mutation,” Asa

24 CHAPTER 4. ## 1-001 ##

took a second to savour the moment, “and the results are

just as promising as the B1-T!” he said enthusiastically,

opening his arms wide to offer her a congratulatory hug.

After an awkward moment of silence, Shandala

snapped out of her thoughts and embraced Asa, some-

what half-heartedly.

“That’s. . . great! It’s really great news, Asa,” She said,

unconvincingly.

The two separated, and he looked at her with confu-

sion.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, frowning.

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“Then why are you like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like this! You were super excited this morning, and

now. . . what happened? I mean, we’ve been working on

this for months. It’s going to help hundreds of thousands

of people, we’ll be on the cover of. . . ”

“I know, I know.”

“Then why are you bummed out? Did something hap-

pen? Is your family Okay?”

“Yes, yes,” She paused, “They’re ﬁne.”

“Then what? Did I do something wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong with you, okay? My family’s ﬁne,

everyone’s ﬁne. I just,” she hesitated, “I need something

more. Something different.”

For Shandala, life had been ﬁne up until that moment.

She had loving parents, many passions, which she pursued

with interest and dedication, and great friends. Yes, it was

ﬁne, but for many years she’d had this nagging sensation

of emptiness. Fine wasn’t enough. A life of love, safety,

and comfort, devoid of wage slavery, was everything her

ancestors fought and strove for, but it wasn’t the life she

wanted. She was grateful for having the privilege to live in

such a world, but she just couldn’t appreciate it as much

as she should have. She had not fought for it, she had not

struggled for her freedoms. For many years, Shandala had

been wanting to ﬁnd her place in the world, but as hard as

she tried, she couldn’t identify what it was. Eventually she

had come to the sad conclusion that maybe such place

simply didn’t exist, at least not in this world.

It was time to go beyond, to ﬁnd her own path, to

transcend her condition. A few months previously she had

read that GASA was planning a Mars colonisation mission.

There had been several expeditions, mainly unmanned

rovers and a few, short round-trip with human astronauts,

with the purpose of research and testing for Biosphere 0.

Biosphere 0 was an attempt to recreate Earth-like con-

ditions on Mars, with an enclosed geodesic dome that

could support a colony of humans indeﬁnitely. After years

of thorough testing and research, the Mars 0 mission had

been announced. It was called Mars 0 for a reason: this

was to be the ﬁrst permanent human colony on Mars.

Shandala had learnt that when the human body is exposed

to a gravity pull signiﬁcantly lower than that of Earth’s, it

begins a semi-irreversible process of transformation, par-

ticularly with bone structural integrity and muscle growth.

Mars, having only 38% of Earth’s gravity, fell into this cat-

egory.

The crew of Mars 0 would not be coming back. GASA

26 CHAPTER 4. ## 1-001 ##

had made this very clear to all potential volunteers. When

Shandala applied for the mission, she knew it was a one-

way ticket.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” she told Asa, “Haven’t

you ever felt like this isn’t what you were supposed to be

doing?”

Asa looked at her in silence. “To be honest, no. I like

what I’m doing. I thought you liked it too. I thought you

enjoyed doing research with me?”

“But I do! I do. It’s just that. . .” She tried to carefully

phrase what she was about to say, “It’s because of what

we’ve been building together, that I see so much more to

discover, so much potential out there. I’ve been research-

ing the effects of extreme conditions on the human body

for years. I feel it’s time for me to get out there and put my

research to use.”

She paused and inhaled deeply, making every word

that came later weigh like a neutron star, “I applied for the

Mars 0 mission.” She said, slowly and seriously.

Asa froze for an indeﬁnite amount of time, staring at

the white wall in front of him. After regaining his senses,

he gulped and looked at her.

“And you were accepted?”

“The message came in this morning, after I called you.

It’s ofﬁcial, I checked.”

Shandala was back at the house, looking out the win-

dow, reﬂecting on her life and her future.

“AMI, open up Thingiverse and search for violins.”

“That’s a rather unusual request. Might it have some-

thing to do with the recent news of your upcoming Mars

mission?” asked AMI.

AMI was pretty perceptive for an artiﬁcial intelligence.

Maybe too intelligent, she thought to herself.

Of course, it was a simple probabilistic function con-

necting unusual events together, offering the appearance

of what looked like real intelligence, but still, quite im-

pressive. Anyway, she didn’t have to explain herself to

a machine. But AMI was right. It had everything to do

with the mission. Shandala had tried many times in the

past to play a musical instrument. It was for her father, a

world-renowned musician, who used to play in the most

prestigious theatres and practiced extensively in his home

studio. Shandala wanted to make him proud of her, and

to feel closer to him by emulating him. But she had never

felt a true desire from within. The music never called her,

it was just suggestion coming from outside. She tried for

a while but never mastered anything, until she gave up

altogether.

Shandala loved her father very much, but unlike her

mother, who had been digging up worms and analys-

ing pond water under a microscope with her since she

was four, her father had never related to her all that well.

They’d never shared any real interest together. And now,

just as she was going to be the furthest from both of her

parents that she’d even been in her life, she wanted to do

something to allow her to feel close to him. All of her at-

tempts at learning an instrument and keeping to it had

been a failure, and that was because she’d had no real in-

28 CHAPTER 4. ## 1-001 ##

centive, no purpose. Now she had one, and she was not

going to let it slip away.

“Come on, show me some violins.”

Thingiverse was the oldest and biggest repository of

Free and Open blueprints for things. It was like a book of

recipes for any object you could think of, down to the mo-

lecular scale. In there, one could ﬁnd anything you could

imagine: cups, tools, implants, circuit boards, contact

lenses, food, beverages, prostheses, even organs and parts

of the body–and of course, musical instruments. It was

the Universe of things, containing hundreds of millions of

designs, and it was available for everyone, everywhere, for

free.

12,967 3D models for violins popped up. There was

an almost limitless variety of colours and materials, with

slightly different shapes.

“I have no idea which one I should take. Is there any-

thing Mari advised for me?”

“Yes. She selected 12 different models for beginners.

Operationally, they are the same; so if you just tweak the

colours, sound and functionality should not be affected.”

“Okay then. I’ll get this one,” Shandala pointed at a

plain but elegant transparent violin.

“Would you like to make some customisation?”

“Yeah. Check on the Open Image Repo something that

ﬁts me,” a bunch of images came up. Among them, there

was the molecular structure of a protein Shandala had

discovered a few years back, and a painting of an Amaryllis

belladonna – a red and white ﬂower native to South Africa

– made by a patient whose life was saved by her research.

The ﬂower was also called Lily, and its proper Latin name

meant ‘Sparkling, beautiful lady.’

“Okay, that ﬁts,” she thought, rather immodestly.

“Now, take these two. Combine. Blur the edges. Nice,”

she said satisﬁed, crossing her arms in a sign of accom-

plishment. “How long will it take to print?”

“About 13 minutes, 18 seconds.”

“Go then!” and so did she, moving out of the bathroom,

into the kitchen, where she picked a baby carrot from the

vertical hydroponic micro-garden that was hanging by the

window, before making a cup of tea.

She loved the smell of a freshly made cup of tea. She

inhaled deeply, appreciating the ﬁne aroma. It reminded

her of her parents, when she was a child. They used to take

her out on long walks in the woods, doing picnics, talking

about nature and the universe, always accompanied by a

seemingly inexhaustible wooden box ﬁlled with Earl Grey

and Jasmine tea, her favourite blends.

“Call pa” she instructed AMI, “I wonder how he’s do-

ing?” the call went through, and she saw her father in full

ﬁgure through her smart lenses, as if he was standing in

front of her.

“Shandala, my dear!”

“Hey pa, what’s up? Where’s ma?”

“Oh, I think she went to the research centre for maglev

trains. She said she had an idea for reducing the problem

of quantum decoherence on room temperature supercon-

ductivity. She told me about her idea a few hours ago, then

we talked for a bit, but frankly at some point it got bey-

ond me, so my guess is that she went off to discuss it with

30 CHAPTER 4. ## 1-001 ##

others at the centre.”

“I see. Listen pa, I have to tell you something.”

She stopped, realising that she really hadn’t thought

it through. Maybe it was better to go see him in person

instead.

“You know. . .it’s a. .. oh! Guess what, you know I’m

going to start playing the violin?”

“Oh yeah? I’d like to see that happen!”

“What does that mean?”

“Now, now, don’t get me wrong, darling. You know no

one could be happier than me if you were to learn to play

the violin,” he held up the palms of his hands as a sign of

innocence. “I’m just wondering if it’s going to end like the

piano you started when you were 10, or the guitar when

you were 15, or the ﬂute when you were 17. . . ”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” interrupted Shandala. She hated

it when he did that. “Look pa, can’t you be a little bit more

supportive? Besides, that was a long time ago, I’m not a

child anymore.”

There was a pause.

“You know what, you’re right. I’m sorry. Let’s start

again.”

He waved his hand quickly in the air.

“That’s fantastic! I can’t wait to hear you play soon!

You’re welcome to come by anytime, maybe we could do a

jam session together,” he said smiling.

“How’s that?” he winked.

“Better,” said Shandala resolutely, crossing her arms

and nodding. She appreciated his efforts to at least try to

sound a bit more enthusiastic.

They stared at each other for a few seconds, only to

burst into sudden laughter, simultaneously.

“Alright, pa. I deserve it. But seriously, this time is

different.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“No, really.”

“Lovely, I can hardly wait.”

“I’ll come by your place in a month or so.”

“And I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“Come on pa, I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“Okay.”

“Good!”

“Excellent.”

“Perfect!”

“Brilliant.”

“I said I’ll do it, that means I’ll do it! And I’ll have the

last word, so I’m cutting you off now, bye!” and so she did,

waving at him with a smirky smile.

“Just wait and see you there, I’m gonna be a violin

master before you know it,” she mumbled, speaking to

herself, shaking her head.

She chuckled, thinking of the times they had had to-

gether in the past. Since she was a little girl he’d always

known exactly which buttons to push to make her mad.

He had always loved her so very much though; and respec-

ted her freedom and will to show independence. She knew

that he had been afraid to lose her though, even though

he’d never told her so.

32 CHAPTER 4. ## 1-001 ##

Shandala looked up to where her dad’s image had been

only a few minutes before. She was experiencing such an

intense mix of emotions – excitement, anticipation, and

sadness. She felt a pang of regret. It really wasn’t right to

keep secrets from her own father. She called home again,

and her dad’s surprised face appeared on screen.

“Hey dad, I have something else to tell you.”

Shandala left the house. She walked down the street,

looking around. Her contact lenses showed the way to

Mari’s house, along with all the options of getting there:

12 km, give or take.

One was to walk for about 4 minutes, get on the maglev

subway, then walk another 8 minutes. Alternatively, a

self-driving pod could be on its way to pick her up in 87

seconds, and then it would take an additional 12 minutes.

There was also a bike stock 4 minutes away, and then there

was that new experimental suspended monorail, but it was

still in beta testing, she didn’t feel like taking her chances

today. All in all, they were much the same. She turned

right and moved straight on for the sub – she liked walking

and meeting people randomly on her way.

She walked for a bit, the breeze made her cheeks feel

cold, but pleasant nonetheless. The Sun was very bright.

She stopped for a second, slowly moving her eyes towards

it. The nanofabric of her contact lenses quickly morphed

shape and molecular structure, ﬁltering out the excess

radiation, adapting dynamically to the increased expos-

ure, until she was able to stare directly into the Sun. It

was beautiful. Shandala observed the star in all its glory

and power, thinking of the hydrogen molecules fusing into

deuterium and then helium, which radiated out photons

and other high energy particles, travelling some 150 mil-

lions kilometres through space, bent by the energy and

momentum of the planets, ﬁnally ﬁnding their way to her

eye. She was, quite literally, touching the Sun.

She looked away from that bright ball of light, just as

a notice popped up on the screen of her lenses. It was

not advised to be exposed to that kind of radiation for too

long. The nanomorphing structure was only fully-reliable

for up to periods of 30 seconds, and anything longer than

that could be dangerous. It was a technology at an early

stage of development. A few more months of testing and

bug development and she would be able to exchange her

current contact lenses for a pair that would permit her to

stare at the sun for hours, if she wished.

CHAPTER 5

## 0-010 ##

As he was heading home after work Tom began to re-

miniscence about the events of the day. He thought about

the prick that he had encountered in the elevator in the

morning, and after that the mortifying experience of meet-

ing the new guy at the ofﬁce. He felt, once more, useless,

hopeless, and defeated.

For Tom, this had been a truly horrible day.

“What else could possibly go wrong?” he wondered.

Just as he was thinking that thought he looked over at the

sidewalk and noticed a girl, sitting on the ground, next to

a wall.

She looked like a bum. Her clothes were old, her hair

was long and untied. She looked dirty.

“What’s she doing here?” he thought, “Don’t they have

some decency. Where is the police? I’ve had enough shit

today, I don’t have to look at this too. What does she want?

Credits? Of course she wants credits. But it’s too easy to

just sit on the fucking street and beg for credits. I worked

hard to get where I am and to be who I am. I made my

36 CHAPTER 5. ## 0-010 ##

choices, and so did she. Now fuck off!”

He looked at her with disgust, and started to move

away. But just as he was going, he couldn’t help but turn

back at her, inquisitive.

Tom noticed that she didn’t have any sign, jar, hat, or

one of those silly guitar covers. She wasn’t saying anything,

nor was she begging for credits. She was just sitting there,

looking at him.

She was looking at him! Why? What the hell did she

want? Pity? Compassion? Why was she doing this?

Tom stopped and looked back at her. She wasn’t just

looking. She was staring at him. Eyes wide open. Huge,

warm, brown eyes. And they were not eyes of self pity.

They were not asking for anything. They were conﬁdent

eyes, ﬁrm and resolute.

“Stop it, don’t you dare, don’t you look down on me!”

thought Tom, as he ﬂinched away from that look.

“She’s looking down on me, looking down on ME!”

Unacceptable. He could have taken it from his superi-

ors, that condescending look of being on a lower rank in

The Company, but this?

This was too much.

“What do you want?!” shouted Tom.

The girl didn’t move a centimetre, and kept staring at

him.

“Here, take it and leave, before I call the police.”

He threw some coins at her, the last physical represent-

ations of the omnipresent “credits”, which landed on the

street where she sat, just within her reach. She didn’t move

a muscle, she hadn’t made even the slightest reaction. She

simply kept on staring at Tom with what he perceived as

merciless, implacable, judging eyes.

She was judging him.

How could a lonely, creditless girl, dare to do such a

thing? It was outrageous. Unacceptable! The anger grew

inside him, bottling up until the point of near explosion,

when suddenly his anger was taken over by fear. Sheer

fear. Tom realised that those were not eyes of judgement,

but of compassion.

Compassion? For what?! This was even more absurd.

Compassion? Tom couldn’t believe it. He was paralysed,

frozen still in position. His legs felt like blocks of cement,

his head was immobile, his hands were trembling in fear.

“Why?” this was beyond tolerability. Tom could take it

no more. His eyes, ﬁxed, hadn’t blinked for longer than he

could conceive possible.

Despair.

Tom felt a sudden loss of strength in his chest, as if

something had been dragged out of it, down to his intest-

ines. He realised he wasn’t breathing. He gulped, as if

trying to make sure he still had something beneath his

thorax. He gasped, clutching his chest, squeezing his hand

against it, like the claw of an animal grabbing his prey. He

exhaled deeply, ﬁnally, catching his breath heavily.

He slowly looked towards the girl again. Their gaze

met, and Tom fell into a trance. The street started spinning,

the world around him dilating, spiralling down, like dirty

water, forming into a mini whirlpool, as it gets sucked

down the sink hole of a bathtub. His limbs went numb, and

he began to experience what seemed to be a hallucination.

38 CHAPTER 5. ## 0-010 ##

And as the world was spinning, spiralling, so was Tom,

falling towards the girl’s eyes, as if they were exerting a

gravitational pull on everything, including him. Space

bended, time slowed down, and everything was sucked in

those dark eyes, until there was nothing left.

Blackness.

There was no sound, no light, no feelings, nothing.

Tom started to wonder where he was, and how he’d got

there. He couldn’t remember anything, and he really

wasn’t sure of anything anymore, either. Nothing seemed

to exist. But if that was true, then where was he? He had no

physical presence, no body, nothing. Was he even there?

Did he even exist? He tried to scream, only to realise he

couldn’t, as he had no vocal chords. He tried to run, but

the attempt was just as futile. More than not having a

body to move around in, what really terriﬁed Tom was the

realisation that a fundamental premise of his attempt was

utterly moot: there was no ‘around’ to go to. There was

nothing.

He felt like crying, but it didn’t take him long to realise

how pointless that was. Then again, was there even such a

thing as ‘long’ or ‘short’, when time seemed not to exist?

The initial confusion in Tom’s mind began to be re-

placed by complete despair. Was he going mad? Was he

dead? Was this going to last forever? Was he being pun-

ished? For what? And more importantly, by whom? He

stopped this train of desperate thoughts to try and identify

if there was someone who hated him enough to want to do

this to him, but nobody came to mind. Not only he could

not think of anyone who hated him, he really couldn’t re-

member anybody at all. Not a single person. Did anyone

exist? Did he exist?

Tom didn’t know the answer to any of these questions.

But he knew one thing – he was alone in the world. Utterly,

completely, and hopelessly alone.

An indeﬁnite amount of time had passed, if such a

concept as time made any sense at all at this point, until

the black silence was ﬁnally broken. A dim light appeared

far away. The image was indiscernible, but he could not

resist, he had to see what was there. After what seemed like

an eternity of nothingness, anything would do. Anything

but being alone.

The light was getting closer, the image was starting to

form, Tom began speeding it up, ﬁrst a left leg appeared,

followed by a right ear, then the torso. He sped it up even

more. His whole body gradually began to appear. When

his lungs materialised he started to feel the need to breath,

something he hadn’t done in a very long time. Tom tried

to catch his breath, still moving towards the dim light,

but there was no air, no oxygen, nothing to oxygenate the

blood in his body. He fell, gasping for that nonexistent gas

that should have been surrounding him.

“Nooo!” he shouted out loud, hearing the distress in

his own voice, and realising that sound required a medium,

he simultaneously realised that he now had air again.

He stood up, looked at his now fully formed body, in-

haled deeply, stared at the distant light, and then began to

run. He ran and ran, as fast as he could, his legs burning

with the gradual build-up of lactic acid, his lungs feeling

like they were about to burst into ﬂames. The pain! His

40 CHAPTER 5. ## 0-010 ##

whole body was aching. But it felt great. He was alive

again!

When he ﬁnally reached the source of the light, Tom

collapsed on the ground, exhausted. He caught his breath,

then stood up. His vision was blurry, but as he slowly

moved closer the image began to form. It was a house, with

a warm, yellow light coming from inside it. He approached

it, and found a front door. When he entered the house,

he found himself in a living room, and saw and a small

boy, sitting on the ground, busy scribbling something on a

piece of paper.

“Hello,” said Tom.

“Hi,” answered the boy in a disinterested manner, with-

out looking up from the paper he was drawing on.

“Where are we?”

“Where? Well, in the house, of course!”

“No, I mean, where is this? Where is this house?”

“Do you like drawing?”

“What?”

“You can help me if you want, I’m almost ﬁnished.”

Tom looked at the boy, feeling bewildered.

“You can take the blue and ﬁnish the sky, but you can’t

have the red, ’cause I’m using it.”

Tom approached the boy cautiously, and sat down next

to him. He looked at the piece of paper and saw a drawing

of the same house where they were staying. There was

something strangely familiar about it, but he could not

make anything of it. He grabbed a blue pastel and began

colouring the sky.

As they drew together in silence, things from Tom’s

past started to come back to him.

“So you like drawing?” he asked the boy.

“Yeah, I have many drawings. One time I drew on the

wall, but mom said I shouldn’t.”

“What’s your mom like?”

“She’s alright, I guess. Sometimes I don’t like it when

she tells me I can’t do things, but then she’s nice again and

we watch movies together, and then she reads me stories.”

“She sounds like a very nice mom.”

“Then we play with pa, I like it when we play together.”

“You’re really lucky to have nice parents.”

“What about your mom and pa?”

“I don’t have any.”

“Haha, you’re funny. Everyone has a mom and pa.”

“But I can’t remember them.”

“Maybe you can draw them.”

“How can I draw something I can’t remember?”

“Maybe you just need to think. Drawing helps me

think,” said the boy, “We can draw them together!”

As they drew together, complementing each others’

strokes, the image of Tom’s parents became clearer and

clearer. When he had ﬁnished he gazed at the completed

drawing, with a sense of melancholy and love. The boy

ﬁnished his contribution to the drawing by adding his

signature on the bottom right corner. On that moment,

Tom understood who the little boy was.

All the memories of his life started rushing to his head,

like needles shot directly into his brain. He started seeing

ﬂashing lights coming out of the centre of the drawing,

42 CHAPTER 5. ## 0-010 ##

becoming bigger and bigger, expanding outwards, until

everything was engulfed by white light. And then he woke

up.

Tom was back. He was kneeling on a street in the city,

wearing a suit. He tried to remember what had happened

to him, but everything was just a big blank. Not knowing

how long he had he dozed off for, he stood up and looked

around to see if anyone had noticed him – he didn’t want

to jeopardise his reputation. No one had. He felt relieved.

Hundreds of people were walking by, all around him, com-

pletely focused on their task, oblivious to everyone else.

He was surrounded, but alone.

He looked back at the girl on the street. She hadn’t

moved a millimetre. She was still there, impassible, im-

mobile. His implant revealed elevated cardiac rhythm, a

warning sign appeared in front of his eyes.

She was still looking at him.

Immediate release of relaxing drugs advised.

Those eyes!

Stimulation of neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric

acid about to begin.

Tom was losing his mind beneath those amber eyes.

Two options came to mind: take the drugs, relax, walk

away; or face the girl and punish her for her insolence, or

worse, report her to the authorities.

But before Tom could make the decision, The Com-

pany’s algorithm in his implant detected the unstable men-

tal condition he was in, and the failsafe mechanism kicked

in, releasing the drugs, sedating and relaxing him.

He shook his head, confused. He was calm.

Tom looked up at the grey sky, and then turned to the

busy street. People dressed in various shades of grey suits

were passing by, all of them quiet and seemingly oblivious

to each other – far too focused on the invisible path they

were following to take an interest in each other. He ﬁxed

his tie, turned back, and walked away.

CHAPTER 6

## 1-010 ##

In a month it would be the 12th anniversary of the

Year of Civilisation. Great celebrations were awaiting. The

year before, Shandala recalled, it had been quite possibly

the most spectacular party she’d ever seen, and this year’s

promised to be even greater.

Shandala approached an info Kiosk, where people

went to get information about a certain topic. Of course,

she could have simply accessed her contact lenses to ac-

quire whatever information she needed, but info Kiosks

provided a shared holographic experience, where people

could interact. It was a good excuse to socialise.

Shandala approached the Kiosk, which looked like

the embedding diagram of a Schwarzschild wormhole – a

sort of upstanding cylinder, larger at the top and bottom,

slimmer at the centre. It was a symbolic representation of

its function. By creating an interactive environment with

information about any topic of your choosing, it would

transport you, metaphorically speaking, to remote and

unfamiliar places in an instant.

46 CHAPTER 6. ## 1-010 ##

The Kiosk simply remained idle and inactive when no

one was using it. But as soon as somebody got close, it

would activate and present them with a list of suggested

topics. At that point one simply had to touch the desired

area in the holographic projection, or even think about it

if, as a registered user, you had given permission to have

parts of your thoughts accessed for this purpose. All in all,

it had pretty much the same functionalities as the contact

lenses, but with a major difference. When somebody used

the Kiosk, it was really a public display of interest. It was a

bit like saying, “I’m checking this out, if you’re interested

let’s hang out!”

The Year of Civilisation (also called “the Great

Year”), marked the ﬁrst year in recorded his-

tory in which no person died due to lack of

access to basic necessities. The Year of Civil-

isation was a pivotal moment for the human

race, as all the nations. ..

– Wikipedia

As Shandala was getting close to the Kiosk, she no-

ticed the interactive entry on the Year of Civilisation being

called, which brought back many memories for her. It

occurred to her how different the world must have been

just a few decades back, when her parents were her age.

After the Year of Civilisation, everything had changed.

People still died – of course – but not due to their so-

cial background or the geographical location in which

they lived. They died of old age, or because they contrac-

ted an extremely rare disease for which people hadn’t yet

found a cure. The occasional murder could still be found,

but with an average rate orders of magnitude lower than

those found prior to the Year of Civilisation, making it stat-

istically irrelevant as a cause of death. Suicide rates, on

the other hand, were much higher than that, although far

lower than those found prior to the Year of Civilisation.

Social scientists, psychologists, and neuroscientists had

been studying suicide cases with great interest, and it was

a huge area of research and discussion which nobody had

really found an answer for (yet). Nation states still exis-

ted, but the boundaries were mostly cultural, as barriers

to entry in any country were virtually nonexistent, since

there was no area in the world that suffered from poverty

or any form of serious deprivation.

Indeed, the Year of Civilisation marked the ﬁrst time

in recorded history when the human race actually became

what could reasonably be considered ‘civilised’.

Some people proposed to reset the calendar to zero

at the Year of Civilisation. They noted that the acronym

would also stay the same – BC (Before Civilisation) and AC

(After Civilisation); but others complained that it would

only add to the confusion. For that reason, BYC (Before the

Year of Civilisation) and AYC were also suggested, hence

making YC the universal abbreviation and avoiding all

(or most!) confusions. For now, ofﬁcial documents still

used the old convention; but the new way was becoming

increasingly more popular, and many suspected that it

would replace the old dating system in a decade or so.

48 CHAPTER 6. ## 1-010 ##

In the beginning, individual countries claimed their

own YC, the ﬁrst ones being in Europe and Asia, followed

by South America and Africa, while North American coun-

tries were among the last to succeed in the goal.

“Come on sis!” said the little girl at the Kiosk, waving

at Shandala.

There were two kids around the Kiosk, they must have

been four or ﬁve, Shandala reckoned, and they were prob-

ably brother and sister.

“Sure! You’re looking at the YC history, uh?”

“The party!” shouted the boy, with a smirk.

“Of course, that too,” replied Shandala, giving back the

smile.

“What’s it like, sis?” asked the little girl.

“Oh well,” Shandala paused for a second, wondering if

she should share her memories via Direct Mental Access

(DMA) with the kids. But at that moment, for some reason,

only the most embarrassing memories came back to her,

the type that you’d want to keep for yourself, or maybe

share with your best friend, or your lover. Deﬁnitely not

material for little kids, she thought.

“Haha, I guess we could start by looking at some videos

and I’ll try and add some anecdotes as we move along,”

said Shandala, apologetically, blushing.

The three of them navigated through the immense

stream of videos, photos, and publicly accessible memor-

ies that people had felt like sharing with the rest of the

world (and that were safe for children to access via DMA).

Shandala added her personal touch to the events she re-

membered by telling them what it had been like for her

as little girl, and how amazing and long awaited that day

was every year. The two kids were captivated by her genu-

ine and charming personality, and couldn’t stop asking

questions.

“Hey sis, what did people do before YC? I mean, they

had days for parties, right?” asked the boy.

“Of course they did. They called them holidays.”

“Holidays? What’s a ‘holi’?”

“Haha, not holi. ‘Holy’. It means sacred, and sacred

means devoted, dedicated to a deity or to some religious

purpose.”

“Oh yeah, religion. I read about that,” said proudly the

little girl.

“So ‘holy-days’ were always religious?” asked the boy.

“No, not really. Some holidays were, but there were

also many contaminations and inﬂuences. In fact, they

called ‘holidays’ days in which people didn’t go to work,

even if it had nothing holy to it. It was really a bit confus-

ing.”

“That sounds very illogical. And where is this city,

Work, anyway; and why did all the people go there?” asked

the boy again, bafﬂed by her statement.

“No, no, ‘work’ is not the name of a city!”

“It’s a country, dummy! You know nothing,” said the

boy’s sister.

“No, it’s not a country, either. It’s like. .. ” Shandala

was stuck. She knew what work was – her parents told

her that people worked before she was born, she heard

their stories, and she had also looked at old movies where

people did that. But she had never experienced it herself,

50 CHAPTER 6. ## 1-010 ##

and it was really hard to imagine life BYC.

“Back in the day, people couldn’t just live their life as

we do. They had to, one could say, justify their existence,

by doing some task every day, either by making a physical

object or offering a service.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, suppose you were hungry, and wanted to eat

something. At that time, you couldn’t just grab something

from the nearest garden or go to the distribution centre

and pick up what you needed. You had to exchange some-

thing called money, which you received by going to work.”

“What? What if you were really hungry, and didn’t go

to work?” cried the little girl.

“A lot of people starved back then.” Shandala ex-

plained solemnly, feeling keenly aware of how shocking

and perverse this would sound to the two children.

“That’s crazy talk!” cried the little girl, sounding more

surprised than upset.

“Unless you went to work and made money. That was

called ‘having a job’,” Said Shandala, anticipating that she

would probably need to explain the meaning of the word

‘job’ to them too.

“So what did people do with this job?”

“Anything. Building cars, or selling things. . . ”

“What’s selling?” asked the girl.

“Oh, right,” said Shandala, who was starting to appreci-

ate, for the ﬁrst time, just how difﬁcult it was to explain life

before BYC to someone who had no concept of those now

out-dated forms of social organisation, “It’s exchanging

something for something else. How can I say. .. imagine

you paint something.”

“I love painting!” shouted the boy.

“Yeah, me too,” said Shandala, feeling pleased to be

getting a positive response, “Okay, so you paint something,

and then what do you do with it?”

“I’d keep it. Put it up in my room,” said the boy matter-

of-factly.

“I give it to mom!” said the little girl with a beaming

smile, feeling pleased that the conversation had moved on

to something that she could understand.

“Okay, but if painting was your job, you wouldn’t just

keep it or give it away. You’d try to give it to someone in

exchange for something else, and that thing was called

money. With money, you could go to a distribution centre,

which was called a ‘store’, and get your food, or whatever

else.”

“That sounds overly complicated. Why didn’t they skip

the whole exchange part and just give it to whoever they

wanted? And why did the store need this money? Was it

like a form of energy? Did you grow food with it?”

“No, it was just a piece of paper, or numbers in a digital

account.”

The two children looked at each other, bafﬂed beyond

belief.

“That sounds very stupid,” said the little girl, after a

pause.

“Well, not really. See, back then they didn’t have the

abundance we have today, and things just weren’t avail-

able to people in the way that they are for us. If somebody

discovered something their ﬁrst concern would be to en-

52 CHAPTER 6. ## 1-010 ##

sure that they would be able to make money from it in

some way. They were very concerned that other people

shouldn?t access that knowledge and take advantage of it,

unless and until they knew for sure that they would make

money from it themselves. They would even pay money to

other people, whose role it was to try to ensure that those

who hadn?t paid money to do so couldn?t access that use-

ful knowledge; and absurdly, to try to ensure that society

recognised their discovery – a rather silly idea when you

think about it, given that ‘their discovery’ depended en-

tirely upon the knowledge and discoveries of thousands of

other people.”

“But what if others needed that and couldn’t get it?

And what if they wanted to play around and improve on

the idea?” asked the boy, with a serious and puzzled ex-

pression.

“Well, you couldn’t really do that then. It’s a bit com-

plicated.” Said Shandala, feeling somewhat wearied by the

challenge of trying to explain BYC forms of social organ-

isation to these kids, who clearly regarded the concepts

that she was trying to explain to them as seriously strange

and weird.

“Jami, Milos!” Shandala looked around to see a tall,

athletic, and handsome man approaching them.

“I’m sorry, I was out getting some ice-cream. Did they

bother you?” he asked apologetically.

“No! Absolutely not. They were wonderful.”

“Did you kids torment this poor girl with your endless

questions?” he said looking down at his children with a

smile. He was proud of their intelligence and curiosity

of spirit, but certainly didn’t want to take it for granted

that other adults would necessarily appreciate the endless

questions that they bombarded him with on a daily basis.

“Hey!” shouted the two children, surprised and affron-

ted that their dad would suggest that this interesting lady

might not have enjoyed talking to them as much as she

seemed to.

“Haha, just kidding,” said their dad, giving them both

a friendly wink. “Here’s your ice-creams. Where do you

guys want go now?”

“Thanks for keeping an eye on them,” he said, turning

to Shandala with a smile.

And with that they were on their way.

Shandala gazed at the two children walking away with

their dad, shouting out ideas about what they would like to

do next, and wondered what it would be like to have kids

of her own. And with that thought in mind, she looked up

at the bright sky, losing herself in its immensity.

CHAPTER 7

## 0-011 ##

The street was cold and dry. Tom felt relief as he ap-

proached the car, knowing that he would soon be home.

He opened the door. He could picture himself going back,

watching something to distract himself from this awful

day. Then, reaching his complex – almost there – back into

the elevator pod, a few more steps and he would be. . . the

elevator pod!

“No!” this was precisely the time of the day when those

of his category came back from work. There was absolutely

no way in hell he would risk returning at the same time as

Robert, the guy from ﬂoor 87.

“I bet he’s just waiting for that.”

Tom knew how this was going to end. He would run

into that cunt once more, but he wouldn’t be able to sup-

press his emotional response. At which point, the Oxford

bastard’s advanced implant would read his reactions to

the tiniest of motions, and Tom would reveal his failures

to him once more.

He shuddered at the thought. Tom wouldn’t be able to

56 CHAPTER 7. ## 0-011 ##

control himself. He would lose control, grab the English

prick by the throat, and snap his neck. It sounded extreme

but he felt as though his very existence was threatened by

those who were more capable than him. And within the

micro-cosmic world of the competitive corporate envir-

onment within which he worked he wasn’t wrong. Where

would he be without a job? The thought didn’t even bear

thinking about.

A toxic combination of fear, envy, and deep resent-

ment had created within him a murderous rage that had

turned him into a potential killer. He had never thought of

himself as someone prone to physical aggression, and had

previously looked with distain and revulsion upon the ever

increasing reports of ofﬁce-based violence that ﬁlled the

news. But now he was beginning to view the perpetrators

of such acts with a new found empathy. It wasn’t as though

what they did was right, but who could blame them for

behaving in such a way after being ruthlessly exploited

by their company for years only to be shown the door the

moment that a new development, or a more capable col-

league, made their role redundant? And who could blame

him if he behaved in a similar way? You could only take so

much. Especially when the bastards were parading their

superiority right in front of your face.

But as much as wanted to vent his rage in that way,

he also took comfort in the knowledge that before that

happened the sensors within his brain would reveal his

hostile intentions and begin to release the necessary drugs

to counteract them.

“No, can’t let that happen.” He thought with grim and

bitter determination. He would override the failsafe mech-

anism with his thoughts, trying to stay focused on the task

at hand – kill the fucking bastard! He deserved the right to

take revenge on the world that had treated him so unfairly,

and no one and nothing would cheat him out of it.

But he knew that this wouldn’t be possible. In the mi-

crosecond after his voluntary rejection of the sedatives,

the alarm would go off. He would be immediately immob-

ilised by The Company’s SafeTech nanochip in his brain;

giving the authorities the necessary time to seize him, strip

him of all of his possessions and aids, and expel him to the

outskirts of the city, together with the rest of the human

ﬁlth that lived there.

Tom shivered at the thought. He shook his head,

searching for options. Memories of the day were passing

through his mind. The humiliation as he came out of the

house. The abasement he felt at work. The affront of that

woman on the street. He felt as if everything and every-

one was conspiring against him. His self-worth, his very

reason to exist, was being challenged, put into question.

And he felt fearful and very, very angry.

How should he deal with this? He needed a release.

Something that would allow him to forget his fears and

worries, even temporarily. Sex! It had worked for him in

the past and it could work for him again. The thought

communicated itself to his brain implant, which began to

provide his brain with some additional neuro-chemical

stimulation as erotic thoughts began to ﬁll his mind.

Testoste rone levels rising.

58 CHAPTER 7. ## 0-011 ##

There was only one way to regain his status. The

thought of proving himself sexually ﬁlled him with a sense

of pride. Not the comfortable and happy sense of pride of

someone who knows that they have done something well.

But rather the more primal sense of accomplishment of

having gratiﬁed one’s animal instincts.

Increasing sexual arousal. Releasing more

norepin ephrin e.

He rushed to the car and got in without a second

thought. It was time to go hunting.

The car had stopped. Tom was lying down, reviewing

his options on the retinal implant. There were 787 people

in the club at that moment, 312 girls, 78% of which were

outside his range of deﬁned requirements. That only left

68 potential candidates. Of these, The System identiﬁed

12% as a plausible match – only 8 girls – and that was when

Tom was at his best.

He turned his head, looking at the entrance of the club,

and took a deep breath.

Given his current psycho-physiological condition, The

System estimated he’d have a greater than 50% chance of

success with three of them, at most.

“Increase release of sexual hormones,” he uttered.

Attention: adrenaline, t estost erone, and nore-

pinephrine levels rising.

He felt the excitement ﬂowing in his body, the blood

pumping faster, bringing oxygen to his brain.

“Okay. Let’s go!”

He took off, towards the entrance. Two humongous

men were standing by the door, dressed in black suits.

They were exactly the same height, the same size, and

probably also looked the same – although it was hard

to tell as they were so tall that you couldn’t really see

their faces. Tom’s retinal implant showed their estimated

strength and responsiveness time for intervening, should

something happen. The reported levels were not exactly

comparable to his, or to those of other normal people.

In fact, one could argue that those two giants were not

even human. They were bioengineered soldiers, DNA pro-

grammed guardians of the night, subservient towards their

superiors and merciless towards trouble-makers. They

could easily crush your skull with one hand before you’d

even delivered a ﬁrst punch. Starting a ﬁght with someone

in the club was not really an option.

One would think that such a display of raw power, in

the era of built-in emotion detectors, intention-prediction

algorithms, and nanobot implants for everyone in The Sys-

tem, was unnecessary. But things are not always logical,

nor simple. People were still clinging to the idea of some-

thing called “free will”. Although nobody ever explained

what it meant, or how it could exist or even make sense.

The conditions in which people were raised and educated

were highly controlled, as were their diets, their environ-

ments, and their sensory stimuli. Genetic manipulation

and psyche-analysis algorithms created accurate maps of

60 CHAPTER 7. ## 0-011 ##

people’s expected behaviours, and were constantly being

matched against reality. In fact the accuracy of such sys-

tems was getting to a level where anyone in their right

mind would be starting to question what exactly was left

for people to supposedly choose from with their supposed

“free will”. They could have easily intervened as soon as the

urge to strike spiked, by shutting down parts of the brain

temporarily, or by blocking the ﬂow of adrenaline and re-

leasing neuromuscular-blocking drugs. It was well within

current capabilities, technically speaking. In spite of this,

countless intellectuals spent their lives pontiﬁcating about

the importance of letting people continue to enjoy the

“freedom to choose”. It was a comforting thought, albeit an

illusion. The illusion became even more apparent when

one realised that The Company did shut down your brain

functions in special circumstances, for examples when

authorities were too distant to intervene. Since Tom was

now in a public space, the bouncers were there to stay.

He passed between them as he entered the club, and

was enveloped by the loud electronic music as he walked

in. He immediately noticed a group of three girls, standing

by the bar. They were beyond beautiful. He looked at them

with raw animal desire, and read their coefﬁcient on his

retinal implant. The lowest of the three was 23 points of

outside of his bell-curve range of probability, or “out of his

league”, as they used to say in the past. No wonder none

of them made any attempt to give him an indication of

interest. In fact, they didn’t even notice him passing by. It

was as if he didn’t even exist. “Those girls can smell a loser

from ﬁfty meters away,” he thought to himself.

And that was not a metaphorical expression. Scientists

had long since identiﬁed that low self-esteem or feelings

of powerless caused people to release a very speciﬁc smell,

a chemical compound that is very feeble, but deﬁnitely

detectable by the most sophisticated implants. And the

most beautiful girls obviously had the best implants, it was

a given. Your access to the best technology was directly

related to your wealth, your looks, and your intelligence. If

you were born rich, you could afford gene therapy, cognit-

ive enhancements, and physical enhancements; while the

rest of humanity fought for the scraps and competed with

lower tech. And once you had those, you could increase

your wealth even more. It was a ‘virtuous circle’, whereby

you could enhance yourself and your social status expo-

nentially, by the day, if you were on the right side of the

fence; but were on a downward spiral towards inevitable

defeat if you were unfortunate enough to be born on the

other side of it.

Tom was walking through the club, unnoticed by the

women he felt sexually attracted towards, while ignoring

the women of lower levels who were desperate enough

to give him a chance. The loud music was pounding in

his chest like a sledgehammer, the strobing lights were

blinding him, the smells attracting him in every direction,

disorientating; it was a jungle of desire, lust, and status.

There were hundreds of possibilities, notices, and sug-

gestions on his retinal implant; and everything had to be

processed in microseconds. The slightest hesitation or

wrong move would jeopardise his position and lower his

chances of success. As he passed through the club, he was

62 CHAPTER 7. ## 0-011 ##

scouting all possible options, simulating every iteration

and permutation, looking for an opportunity to land on

the optimal target. Everyone was doing it. If you reached

the other end of the room without having any interac-

tions, or receiving any indications of interest, your status

would fall dramatically. That said, being rejected outright

would be far, far worse. Everything that happened there

was freely visible to everyone, to see and to record in their

permanent memory implant if they so wished. Tom knew

this very well. He didn’t want to take his chances, but also

didn’t wish to risk going home empty handed. It was a

very thin line to walk. If you lowered your standard and ac-

cepted the invitation of someone with a lower coefﬁcient,

you would increase their score but lower yours. If you

aimed too high, you put yourself in risk of rejection. The

optimal situation was to ﬁnd somebody at a level slightly

higher than yours, and somehow impress them enough

to make yourself desirable. There was a degree of uncer-

tainty, where your score oscillated based on a number of

variables, and if you were at your peak you might just have

a chance with them, which then allowed you to climb the

ladder further.

Tom was deﬁnitely not at his peak that night, and he

knew it. But he wasn’t going to let that determine the

outcome of what actually happened – he needed this re-

lease, but most of all he needed to boost his wounded

ego. He focussed his energy and resources as much as he

could, processing thousands of stimuli per second, trying

to control his posture, his facial expression, his hand ges-

tures, and even his barely perceptible involuntary muscle

twitches (the latter with the help of one of his enhance-

ments). He was working his way through a torrent of visual

information, smells, tastes, and looks, within the space

of each minute, but he was short on time, and needed to

acquire a speciﬁc target soon. Otherwise there was a dis-

tinct likelihood that his energies and concentration would

desert him before he could make his move.

“Found it!” he thought to himself.

Tom had seen the girl he wanted. She was standing

by the bar, wearing a white two-piece nanofabric dress,

which slightly changed colour based on various biofeed-

back sensors. He passed by her, as if he hadn’t noticed her

voluptuous, athletic body.

“Options, strategy, details. . . focus! I need an opening,”

he said to himself.

“Didn’t expect to ﬁnd a bioartist here,” he said out loud,

as he moved next to her, without looking at her directly.

“How’d you know?” she asked, eyeing him with a cer-

tain amount of suspicion.

“Biofeedback-inspired colour-dress, that was an easy

identiﬁcation,” he said in a matter of fact manner, trying

desperately to sound cool and sophisticated.

“Hmm,” she responded, sounding thoroughly unim-

pressed.

“Reversed tattoo on your left arm, I’d say 4mm in size,

nano-ink, probably morphing structure every week. The

slight imperfections on the clear skin around it signify that

it’s morphed many times before, I’d say about 19. It’s not

just a fashion statement. For you, it’s a way of life,” he said,

feeling certain that if he didn’t manage to impress her soon

64 CHAPTER 7. ## 0-011 ##

his chances of success would rapidly collapse.

“How’d you know the imperfections aren’t native?” she

asked, looking at him with a degree of suspicion.

“The rest of your skin, from what I can tell, is ﬂaw-

less. It’s either genetically engineered, or you’ve had nano-

assisted skin treatment, or a combination of both. If there’s

an imperfection, it means you want it to be there.”

She moved towards him, slightly intrigued.

“And why would I want to do that, Mr. Deduction?”

“I don’t know, maybe because you’re waiting for

someone like me to notice?” he said, smiling hopefully.

The girl looked at Tom intensely. He knew her implant

was reading him top-to-bottom. The numbers weren’t

playing in his favour, the only chance he had was to lever-

age her emotions. “Look conﬁdent. Fun. Interesting. You

have to get her tonight,” he said to himself, as she contin-

ued to scan him.

“Maybe. Or maybe not. Good luck, Sherlock,” she said

sarcastically, walking towards the dance ﬂoor.

As she left him, Tom felt it like a blow to the chest. His

levels dropped dramatically, and he began to panic.

He looked at the list of cognitive and physical enhance-

ments available to him. Perfect voice pitch, 12,000 credits.

He just couldn’t afford it. In any case it would have taken a

week to become effective, and he needed something NOW!

There was no way he would get another chance that

night, and certainly not in that club. Screw it! He ﬂed off

towards the door, looking at nobody.

Tom stopped for a moment as he reached his car and

stared at his reﬂection in the side window. He tried to

think of his other options, maybe a different club, or a bar,

or maybe. .. no. He realised the futility of his predicament,

seeing himself as the sad loser that he truly felt himself

to be in that moment. What was the point of even trying?

Nothing was going to work. That much was obvious.

The weight on his chest became heavier. He started to

try to rationalise what was going on, and what he could do

about it now. All of a sudden his life seemed meaningless.

He felt weak, defeated. He thought of that woman on the

street again. A surge of anger ﬁlled his body and mind,

followed immediately by a sense of defensive pride. What

happened that day was bad, yes, but at least he still had

some dignity. He wouldn’t become ﬁlth. He’d rather die.

He shuddered at the thought. How had things come to

this? His mind drifted back to times from the past; times

when he had looked forward with hopeful anticipation to

a life of career and relationship success. He closed his eyes

for a moment and allowed himself to enjoy a faint smile.

But his pleasant feelings were brutally interrupted by the

image of John, the new recruit, appearing to his inner eye,

smiling conﬁdently as if to smugly assure him of his ability

to render him redundant in no time at all. And after that

an image of the woman at the club in the white two-piece

nanofabric dress, brushing him off like the useless and

worthless waste of space that he truly was.

“What’s the point? Seriously, what’s the fucking point?”

he asked himself. He really couldn’t carry on with this

life of fear and strife and frustration. And why should he?

What was the point? He needed his relief. Something to

take his mind off this shit. He backed off from the car, and

66 CHAPTER 7. ## 0-011 ##

a thought crossed his mind.

The outskirts.

CHAPTER 8

## 1-011 ##

Shandala was standing in front of Mari’s house. There

was no fence, and there were no borders. Flowers, grass,

and plants covered every square meter. All you could see

was an explosion of colours, and your senses were inebri-

ated by the smell of the ﬂora. You couldn’t even see the

walls of the house, and so it was hard to tell where the

garden ended and the house began. It was really all the

same. If it wasn’t for the windows and the solar panels on

top no one would even guess that it was a house.

Shandala removed her shoes, picked them up, and

moved towards what looked like an entrance. As soon as

she approached it sensors built into the surrounding en-

vironment recognised her and the door (if you could call

it that) opened. She couldn’t spot any mechanical device

anywhere, and yet the house seemed to be even more

technologically advanced than her own. It was the perfect

blend of ﬂora, fauna, and technology, marvellously integ-

rated. She touched a wall, caressing the perfectly moist

leaves of the climbing plant, considering how everything

68 CHAPTER 8. ## 1-011 ##

that she saw was the result of a carefully programmed net-

work of sensors and algorithms, which evolved alongside

the plants and animals, and provided the right amount

of nutrients and water. They were all working together,

synergistically, hand in hand. And at that moment, she

realised that they were, in effect, indistinguishable – the

same thing.

Out of the opening, between the green leaves, a face

appeared. A pair of red lips emerged, slowly, and landed

delicately on Shandala’s.

They had a long and tender kiss. Shandala was a bit

hesitant at ﬁrst. Mari was gentle and soft, but her pres-

ence was overwhelming, Shandala felt an attraction she

couldn’t quite describe. She was quite sure that Mari barely

touched her, but it was as if she was being pulled towards

her with a force that she couldn’t ﬁght, however she tried.

But she didn’t want to ﬁght it anyway. She was lost in her

arms, caressed, and loved. She was engulfed in beauty and

pleasure.

After a period of time that she couldn’t fathom, Shan-

dala and Mari separated. They looked at each other, then

Mari took her hand and gently pulled her in.

“Come,” said Mari in a soft voice.

They walked into the house, entered the bright living

room, and sat on two large pillows that were lying on the

ﬂoor. Mari had been away for three months. Where had

she been? Who had she met? What experienced had she

had? Shandala was burning with desire and anticipation.

She wanted to know everything. She looked at Mari with

curious eyes, and as she was about to utter a word, a notice

came up on her contact lens.

DMA, Direct Memory Access.

Simply put, DMA allowed two or more individuals

to connect their minds. It was without a shadow of a

doubt the best way to share memories, experiences, tastes,

smells, anything really. With DMA, people could avoid the

frustration of not being understood, or the feeling of inad-

equacy when trying to explain something they felt deep

inside, but could not quite express in words. But it was

much more than that. DMA meant that when you were

sharing your memories with someone, you ceased to exist

as an individual entity.

People could choose the level of access they felt like

sharing. It was a logarithmic scale, with 0 being the lowest,

and 10 approaching complete access. Most people felt

comfortable with level 2 or 3, maybe 5 if you were very

close friend, and 6 or 7 for very passionate lovers. 10 was

unthinkable, and quite possibly even dangerous. At level

10, one could get lost in the other person, and their per-

sonalities would merge. In most cases the effect would

last a few days, but for some people the changes could be

longer, or in the most extreme situations even permanent.

It was the ultimate connection between people.

Shandala looked at Mari, focusing on her fathomless

green eyes. They stared at each other for a long time,

frozen still, until she noticed the level Mari wanted to

share via DMA. It read seven. Seven! Galaxy! She had

never accessed somebody’s mind with such profundity.

70 CHAPTER 8. ## 1-011 ##

“Are you sure about this?” Shandala asked. She wanted

to demonstrate that she understood the signiﬁcance of

Mari wanting to share with her at this level, but her eager

smile betrayed the fact that only one answer would be

acceptable to her.

Mari nodded without hesitation. Shandala smiled

broadly. She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and accepted

the connection.

Her body went numb, and she fell gently onto the large

pillow below her. There was a confusion of sounds, ﬂashes

of lights, images, and smells that were too unpredictable

and loud to make sense of. It was chaos. Her neural con-

necto, the sum of all synapses and connection, was trying

to sync with Mari’s. The noise got louder and louder, it

was disorientating and painful. She tried to open her eyes.

Nothing. She reached for her ears, trying to cover them as

if to stop the unbearable noise. She couldn’t move a single

limb, her body was frozen still. Her heart started to beat

faster and faster, she was hyperventilating, she couldn’t

even catch her breath, until. . . a notice came up on the

mental screen.

Abort connection?

The failsafe mechanism kicked in. Had she accepted it,

the pain would have stopped, and everything would have

gone away. But that also meant losing the connection. She

checked her vital signs. Nothing out of order, everything

was normal, it was all in her head. All she had to do was to

let go, not to ﬁght it, to embrace it instead. She closed the

warning message, took a deep breath, and tried to relax.

The chaos and visual noise were still strong, but not as

unpleasant as before. Slowly, they began to disappear, and

the feeling of uneasiness disappeared along with them.

Quiet. A black void surrounded Shandala. Peace.

There was nothing to disturb her, nothing to make her

uncomfortable. A thin, timid white light began to make its

way into her ﬁeld of view. It wasn’t quite like a ray of light,

and not quite like electricity either. It was more like a ﬂow

of energy, moving from her inner self, outwards into the

void, and then coming back, but more energised.

It felt good.

Quickly, the light split into dozens of ﬁlaments, con-

necting her mind to the inﬁnite void around her, and then

splitting further into hundreds, thousands, and millions of

ﬁlaments of light. A blissful music, perfectly synced with

the strings of light fused together into the symphony of

emotions that was taking over everything. Her body was

now experiencing a sense pleasure that one could only

liken to an orgasm, but spread out everywhere, engulﬁng

and inebriating her. The ﬁlaments of light were now in

their trillions, and the space was blessed by a rainbow of

lights of different colours. Soon, the void was replaced in

its entirety by lights, colours, and music, in perfect har-

mony.

“We are connected now,” she said in a tone of voice

she had never heard before. It wasn’t really Mari’s voice,

and neither it was Shandala’s. It was a blend of the two.

“Let me show you something,” Mari was leading the

game now, and took Shandala on a trip back in time.

She opened herself completely, and together they re-lived

72 CHAPTER 8. ## 1-011 ##

every moment, every experience of the past three months.

The long walks in the rocky desert of Negev. The smile of

an old woman on the peaks of Mount Kailash. The smell

of freshly baked focacce on the shores of Elba island. The

gentle stroke on the hair from a handsome young man

in Tambisan. It was like being her. They were, in those

moments, one entity, one person. They were one.

Shandala let her mind and body be transported, with-

out hesitation, without restraint, free to ﬂoat around. It

was the most beautiful experience of her life.

They laid on the pillows, ﬂoating in quantum foam

on a slice of folded spacetime, engulfed by the senses,

assimilating the intensity of the experience. After what

could have been anywhere between a few minutes to many

hours – neither of them could tell – Shandala turned on

her side and looked at Mari profoundly.

“I need to tell you something.”

During DMA, Mari had felt a very intense and strange

mix of emotions. There was incredible excitement and

euphoria, tainted by moments of sadness in a bundle of

confusion. She had experienced exactly how Shandala

felt, but she didn’t know why. Now the picture suddenly

became clear, and everything started to make sense.

“So that’s what it was!” said Mari resolutely, after a

long moment of consideration.

“Yeah.”

“Level 8. I just tried it for fun, you know? Because I’m

crazy. I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“I know.”

If their minds hadn’t joined through DMA, Mari would

have never understood Shandala’s reasons for going to

Mars. Of course, she would not have objected – nobody

could change Shandala’s mind once she had decided upon

something – but she would have kept wondering why, for

years to come, never really understanding, never really

accepting it, and suffering because of that too. DMA, level

8. It was the only way for Mari to know. To understand.

To accept. It was Shandala’s ultimate demonstration of

love, one that revealed her frailties, her dreams, and her

need for transcendence. It was something that could not

be explained, it had to be shown.

Mari looked intensely at Shandala, gave her a smile,

and then threw herself in her arms, as she started to cry.

CHAPTER 9

## 0-100 ##

Tom knew what he was about to do was illegal, and

possibly very dangerous. But he didn’t care, he was de-

termined to get his share of the pie. He felt he deserved it

after everything that he’d been through that day.

He didn’t really know where he was going, only that

his answer would be found in sector D-51. A guy once told

him that if he wanted to get some unregulated fun that’s

where he had to go.

The street was crowded and busy. LED lights went on

and off at every stop, every corner, blinding him. Hun-

dreds of people were passing through, talking loudly and

animatedly at each other. It was just about the farthest

thing from Downtown and the corridors of The Company

that he had ever seen.

This was the place, yes, but who would he talk to? To

him, they all looked like criminals.

Tom was lost. Wandering about, looking left and right,

walking to and fro, with no destination. He felt like he

had come to a place of madness. He looked up again, and

76 CHAPTER 9. ## 0-100 ##

exhaled deeply, when he felt a pat on his left arm.

“You don’t come here often, do ya’?”

A tall, thin man, wearing a black coat, a dark hat and a

pair of circular sunglasses, looked at him suspiciously.

“What business is it of yours?” Tom said grufﬂy.

“Oh, everything that happens here is my business,”

said the thin man, as two humongous muscular men sud-

denly appeared, looming behind him.

“I’m here. . . ” Tom’s voice was feeble.

“Yeees?” replied the man, trying to draw the answer

out of him.

“I’m here to have some fun. I was told this is the place

I should come,” Tom ﬁnally said, trying his best to sound

cool and conﬁdent.

“Indeed,” with a casual gesture the man lifted his hand,

and the two giants circled Tom. They took out a small

device, which they moved with a circular motion around

his head.

“Just checking your neural activity and track record. If

you are indeed here to have fun and have good credit to

pay for it, I can give you pleasures beyond your wildest

dreams and desires. But if you’re an agent trying to rat us

out, your brain will be as good a scrambled eggs in a few

seconds.”

“Clear,” said one of the huge men in a deep voice.

“Good, splendid. Follow me, and allow me to intro-

duce you to my world,” the thin man made an open ges-

ture with his arm, showing the way to a door.

“I take it this is your ﬁrst time. Nothing to worry about.

This entire complex jams any neural signals coming from

The Company, leaving a blank static that we can then ma-

nipulate as we wish. Anything you experience here will be

off the record, untraceable. When you leave, the nanochip

will simply report that you had an unusual night of sleep

with no REM phase. Keep your visits to under one per

month and nothing out of the ordinary will be noticed.”

The thin man was explaining this with a clear, deliber-

ate and somewhat serpentine voice, as they walked though

a complex series of corridors and doors.

“If you wish to become a more, shall we say, stable

customer, we will simply access your brain records from

your nights of sleep and artiﬁcially reproduce them with

some stochastic variations, replacing the static with them.

The Company will never guess you were here, or what you

were doing.”

They went through what seemed like an inﬁnite suc-

cession of pods and corridors, that lead into each other in

a maze of tubes, until they reached a small, empty room.

“Now that we’ve got the formalities out of the way, let’s

bring something more interesting in, shall we?”

As he uttered those words, the thin man took off his

hat, touching an invisible holographic wall, out of which

hundreds of projections materialised in front of their eyes.

“Let’s see. Might you be into a typical sexual fantasy?

Perhaps with a young and savage beauty, one you couldn’t

ﬁnd in the city? Or would you like to experience the feeling

of ﬁnally getting that promotion you’ve been longing for?

How would you like to know how it feels to reach the top

of the ladder?”

Tom was moving towards the centre of the room,

78 CHAPTER 9. ## 0-100 ##

through the projections, open-mouthed, fascinated. He

looked around in disbelief.

He knew of memory-recall, it was a regular commodity

in the marketplace. To his knowledge, there were two

kinds.

One was artiﬁcially induced, it grew out of the gaming

industry, and it was a semi-guided interactive simulated

experience. People usually impersonated legendary her-

oes and mythical ﬁgures from the past like Alexander the

Great, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, or the Nordic Gods of war.

It was nice entertainment, but you could tell it wasn’t really

happening.

The other kind was made of personal experiences that

people decided to sell in the marketplace – in fact, that’s

how many people earned a living, but it was heavily reg-

ulated and the best moments were censored, edited out.

Still, they were still many times more interesting than your

average daily experience. A trip to the Himalayas, a dive

in the deep abysses of the Paciﬁc Ocean, or a man-winged

ﬂight across Antarctica. It was exciting.

But this, this was different. Tom had often thought

there had to be a place where the best moments were up

for sale, the real stuff. But it was too risky to go looking for

it, too unsafe. And he was too afraid of the consequences

if he were caught to want to make the effort.

But in here, in this small crimson room, lost in a laby-

rinth of corridors and vanishing doors, there was no way to

get caught. He could be free to explore, to satisfy his thirst

for a different kind of action and experience. Uncensored

and unﬁltered.

“So, I can take any of these? Will I feel what they felt?”

Tom asked the thin man, who he noticed was still wearing

dark sunglasses.

“Precisely. You can be the perpetrator, or even the

victim if you want. Ever wanted to rape a fourteen year old

girl, but too afraid of the consequences to do it? Well, here

there are no consequences! You can be free to do whatever

you feel like, and you’ll never have to pay for it. Except,

of course, for my fee. You’ll ﬁnd the price at bottom right

corner of each projection.”

“And how do they work?”

“The projections are delivered into your neural con-

necto, bypassing the sensory information and linking dir-

ectly with your deep brain functions. This is all done wire-

lessly of course, no implants or injections required. All

you have to do is choose a target, sit on the pod, and let

the electromagnetic stimulant do its work.”

The thin man showed a white, oval-shaped pod beside

him, which appeared out of the ﬂoor as he spoke.

“Yeah, I know what memory-recall is. I mean, how do

you ﬁnd these experiences?”

“This is not memory-recall, it’s an entirely new tech-

nique. It goes much deeper. Unlike memory-recall, this

provides the full sensory and emotional experience, yet

without leaving any permanent trace.”

“Okay, I get that, but how do you ﬁnd these experi-

ences?”

“Hey!” shouted the thin man showing the palms of his

hands in a dramatic fashion. “That’s my secret!”

“Are they real?”

80 CHAPTER 9. ## 0-100 ##

“You will feel as though you are experiencing them

yourself for the ﬁrst time.”

“And The Company won’t know?”

“They’ll never know. If you follow the rules and the

safety instructions. The Help guide is on the top right,

or you can simply think of it before starting, and it will

explain.”

“What if I start imagining some of this stuff when I’m

at home? Or worse, when I’m at work?”

“That usually doesn’t happen. It’s like a dream, you

don’t remember it for long.”

“And what if I do?”

“Then you could say it was a dream.”

“What if something goes wrong with my brain, and it

is mistaken for a real experience?”

“Then they will think it was your real experience. And,

you’re on your own. And depending on what you experi-

enced here, you will be judged accordingly,” the thin man

lowered his head slightly, touching the front of his black

glasses with the index ﬁnger, “But that’s your problem.

Nothing can be traced back to me.”

He had a slight smirk on his face.

“See, I have many customers, and I couldn’t jeopard-

ise my business because somebody couldn’t keep a tiny

dream out of their mind. We have a clear policy, and the

safety instructions are transparent on the risks. Our failure

rate is very low, below 0.01%, and even then the recall isn’t

usually complete, so the consequences are mild.”

He joined his hands behind his back, and raised his

head in a sign of pride.

“You see, my customers are very fond of the service I

provide. Is it because their lives are stagnant and oppress-

ive, because they never feel quite free, and their hunger

for true wild experiences never satisﬁed – I don’t know?

Frankly, I don’t really care. What I care about is simply that

they have these desires that The System and their sero-

tonin reuptake inhibitors cannot provide, but I can. For a

price. And so the customers come, seeking experiences.

And then they come back for more, always.”

Tom took a long pause.

“But are they. .. ” he asked the thin man.

“Are they what?”

“Experiences. Are they real, or are they fabricated?

I mean some of this stuff is having sex, orgies. .. even

people getting killed, for fuck’s sake!”

Tom was visibly agitated. When he came to Sector D-

51, he’d known he would ﬁnd something unusual, maybe

a bit extreme, but this was more than he expected.

“Are these real events that happened to someone, or

are they.. . ”

“Do you care?” interrupted the thin man abruptly.

Tom looked at the thin man. He paused to think. Hes-

itant, he shook his head just slightly.

“Good! Now just sit back, relax, and buckle your belt,

Dorothy. You are about to do something that others only

dream of.”

Tom slowly approached the egg-shaped chair-pod,

and did as instructed. The holographic images of pos-

sible adventures moved towards his new ﬁeld of vision,

surrounding him.

82 CHAPTER 9. ## 0-100 ##

“You might experience a slight sense of lightness, dizzi-

ness, maybe some hallucination. Not to worry, it’s the

chair already working on you. It’s preparing your mind for

what is to come. To ease the process.”

Again, Tom noticed the ‘e’ in ease pronounced unusu-

ally long, accompanied by a long open gesture of the right

hand.

“Well then. Off I go. You may choose what you wish

by merely pointing at it, or by thinking of it intensely. The

program will take care of the rest,” said the thin man, walk-

ing backwards, towards the soon-to-be-vanished door of

the crimson room.

“Enjoy the ride,” he whispered to Tom, disappearing

into darkness.

The door closed in strange silence. The design of the

door made it look as if each border of the entrance was

being pulled in by a black hole at the centre. Tom looked

at the seemingly untouched, perfectly smooth wall where

there had once been an entrance. Looking at it now, there

was no way of telling that the room had any way in or out.

It was an indivisible unit – the crimson walls were pulsat-

ing with thirst for blood and ﬂesh – an artiﬁcial womb for

the fulﬁlment of his lusting desires.

Tom realised the neural stimuli might have already

started to have an effect on him. He looked at the options

presented in front of him.

He hesitated. Tom held his breath, afraid. Afraid he

would like it. Afraid he would enjoy it more than he prob-

ably should. Afraid of discovering a darker, scarier side of

himself. And he began to worry that once he crossed that

line, there would be no coming back.

He thought about his life. His car, his house, his of-

ﬁce. Everything he had built up over the years, all of the

effort and pain that he’d had to endure, and then he saw

everything drifting away.

Suddenly, Tom found himself in another place. It was

an empty, dark room. Thousands of eyes opened at once,

coming from every direction – the walls, the ﬂoor, the ceil-

ing. Some of those eyes were abnormally big, huge, as big

a window, surrounding him, engulﬁng him, oppressing

him. Laughter. He heard Bob, and his silly accent, creep-

ing in. The new guy at work was there, too, and he was

laughing even more blatantly.

All his colleagues at work, his superiors, the faceless

bosses – everyone was there, deriding him, ridiculing him,

laughing hysterically. Louder, and louder, and louder, un-

til. .. Tom shook his head, coming out of the state of

trance.

He looked at the holographic projections again. He

focused his eyes on the bottom right corner. A preview

clip for the rape of a 14 year-old girl was being played, over

and over. Tom noticed the price tag, 320 credits – fairly

expensive, considering that the average experience was

being sold for less than 50. It must have been gold, it must

have felt. .. Real. Powerful. Yes!

As he was about to give in, Tom hesitated. What was

he doing? How had it come to this? When did he become

such a monster? He started thinking about his life, try-

ing to ﬁgure out where he went wrong. But as he started

thinking through the events of his life with more clarity,

84 CHAPTER 9. ## 0-100 ##

he began to realise something much more fundamental,

something that was greater than him, or Jeff, or John, or

anyone else. Tom hadn’t done anything wrong, and neither

had the others. They’d had no choice. They’d all acted in

the only way they knew how to – that is, if you wanted

to survive in The System. It was expected of them. And

as keenly as he felt the injustice of his personal demise,

he also realised and deeply appreciated that the nature of

this phenomenon was not restricted to him alone. It was

a cyclical, structural characteristic of The System. Every

generation was replaced and superseded by the newborns,

who could afford better genetic engineering, more expens-

ive implants, which in turn fed into the vicious circle of the

genetic-epigenetic-cybernetic arms race. And in this war

the winners would eventually be usurped by those more

technically advanced than them, and in the end there will

only be losers. There was no escape.

Tom burst into a hysteric laugh. As he stopped, a mo-

ment of extreme sadness strangled him, and he felt pity.

Pity for himself, for having been conned his entire life, and

for being part of this dreadful lie. Right then, the seeth-

ing hatred and resentment that he had felt towards every-

one who had wronged him – his teachers, his co-workers,

his bosses, his parents, all disappeared; and a new feel-

ing began to creep in. And as he connected the dots of

this global pyramid scheme, he began to understand that

nobody was in charge, nobody had planned this, there

was no grand conspiracy, nobody even wanted it to be like

this! It had just sort of happened, and everyone had ended

up trapped in it, without noticing. And in that moment,

he realised he was just the same as everyone else, lost in

his misery, and alone.

He felt compassion. It was the same feeling that that

he had seen in the eyes of that girl in the street. That’s

what it was! That girl. She understood. She knew. She saw

through all this, and wanted to warn him. But now it was

too late. Tom realised with a sinking feeling that he was

beyond salvation.

He ﬁxed his eyes on the holographic image in front

of his eyes. 320 credits. There was nothing else left for

him. No hope, no joy, nothing. Not for him, and not for

anybody else – he knew better, as it was just a matter of

time before each and every one of them became useless,

unnecessary, and redundant to society.

He gave in and blinked, in sign of approval, as a tear fell

on his cheek. The transaction was conﬁrmed, the credit

on his account was detracted by the amount due, as he

abandoned what little humanity was left within him.

CHAPTER 10

## 1-100 ##

Shandala was walking home. The gentle breeze blow-

ing against her skin on that sunny day that she was ex-

periencing in the present moment seemed so distant, so

incredibly far away from her thoughts of the cold dark-

ness of space. Would she ever again feel and appreciate

the simple pleasures of a day on Earth, where things are

familiar, warm, and safe, she wondered.

“A hot coffee, please. Double espresso,” a woman told

the automated kiosk by the sidewalk. There was no in-

trinsic reason for cordiality given that machines hadn’t

ever shown any signs of self-awareness, but it was good

custom to be nice anyway, maybe as an unconscious ex-

pression of gratitude to the engineers and researchers that

made it possible to enjoy these things.

The woman took the cup of coffee, and Shandala ima-

gined the sensation of warmth expanding and spreading

through her hands. She stopped walking for a moment

and stared at the dark liquid in the woman’s cup. She

began to lose her sense of time and space, and found her-

88 CHAPTER 10. ## 1-100 ##

self in a deep and dark abyss. A frozen silence sent a shiver

down her spine, as her senses began to numb. The black

immensity of deep space surrounded her, and she was lost

in it.

Then, as if time had suddenly accelerated by a factor

of a billion, Shandala saw clouds, unfolding before her

eyes, spiralling down, in a dance of galaxies forming and

colliding.

The woman stirred the milk in the cup, took a sip from

it, and started walking.

Shandala quickly regained her senses as she watched

the woman walking off, and gently touched her right ear

to initiate a call.

“Hey Asa. Listen, there is something I haven’t told you

today. Yeah,” she bit her lip, “Can we meet tonight? Okay,

good. I’m sending you the coordinates. See you at nine.”

It was an open ﬁeld, one of the many natural reserves

around the city, far from the light and sound pollution of

the metropolis. Shandala was sitting on a thermal blanket

laid out on the grass, drinking from a bottle. The only light

was that of the stars above her.

Asa arrived silently in an autonomous electric pod that

stopped next to Shandala. There was no need for illumin-

ation, as the pod could use its sensors to see far outside

the boundaries of visible light in the electromagnetic spec-

trum, and it knew exactly where Shandala was.

“It’s a nice spot,” said Asa, stepping out of the pod and

sitting next to her.

“Here, drink,” she replied, handing him a bottle.

“It’s such a strange taste.. . What is it?”

“You’ll never guess. It was hard to ﬁnd. It’s beer. Our

grandfathers used to drink this stuff a lot.”

“It’s so bitter. Why would they drink this thing?”

“To get drunk. You know, the old fashioned way.”

It was such a foreign concept, since the active principle

of alcohol had been synthesised, it became increasingly

more common to stimulate the parts of the brain that

would produce the same effect via nano-pills, without the

excessive urination, without side effects the next day, and

most importantly, without the risk of addiction.

“You mean we’ll be hungover tomorrow?”

“Yup. That’s exactly what it means.”

Asa looked bafﬂed, but eventually gave in, as Shandala

burst into laughter, ﬁnishing her second bottle.

“You hear this silence?” she asked.

“Yeah. It’s unusual. Almost eery.”

“In space, this is actually noisy. There are no air mo-

lecules to transport any sound.”

They sat quietly, listening to the deafening silence for

an indeﬁnite amount of time.

“So, you’re really going?” he ﬁnally asked, breaking the

long silence, ﬁnishing his ﬁfth beer.

Shandala looked up, and fell back on the grass.

“You know what scares me the most?”

Asa looked surprised.

“I have no idea. I kind of always assumed you weren’t

really scared of anything,” he paused to think, “Being

alone?”

90 CHAPTER 10. ## 1-100 ##

“No, that’s not it. Well, at least not for now, maybe once

I’m out there I will. I can’t say now. There is something

else that’s been bothering me. What if. . . what if I fail?”

“You mean, what if you can’t do it?”

“No, I mean, what if the mission fails? What if I sacri-

ﬁce everything, my life, my love, my family, everything.

I mean, picture this. I move to Mars, it’s ten years in,

my body has irreversibly changed and I can’t go back to

Earth. . . what if I ﬁnd nothing? What if there’s nothing

there? Would all of that have been for nothing? I don’t

know, maybe it’s a mistake.”

Asa laid down next to her, gazing up at the sky.

“I’m scared, Asa.”

“I know. I’m scared too, you know. I keep thinking

about what could happen to you, what if something goes

wrong, what if there’s an unexpected solar storm, what if

the ship gets damaged, what if. . . there are too many what

ifs. I worry about you. But I’ve been thinking non-stop

since you told me today that you wanted to go. I guess

that deep down, I always knew that you wouldn’t stay here

forever. I know you. You’re playful, joyful. But you also

have a sadness in your eyes. In the beginning I thought

it was something about your past. But it wasn’t. You had

a great childhood, amazing parents, friends. No, it was

something different. I, I knew you were different from the

start, I just didn’t know what kind of different,” he stood

up, “I know you’re meant for something more than what

most of us can do. You have it in you. It’s this desire, this

need for transcendence. I had this feeling that there was

something that was missing in you. I guess I always knew,

I just didn’t want to think about it. But I felt your sadness,

even though you tried to never show it, I knew there was a

void.”

“Yeah. There is.”

“I don’t think you can ﬁll the void with something out-

side of yourself. Maybe this is what you’ve been waiting

for your whole life. Maybe by facing the void, you’ll ﬁnd

the meaning within it.”

Taken aback, she looked at him.

“You know, you’re pretty deep, smarty pants!” she said

with a smile.

Shandala stood up with difﬁculty, completely drunk

now, and started walking away, with the bottle in her hand,

bumping into pretty much everything that was on her

way. It reminded Asa of how he always liked her strange

clumsiness, how she used to get test tubes mixed up in the

lab, and how they used to have to re-do experiments over

and over again because of that. It was a free pass that he

gave her for being too smart and nice for her own good.

He thought of how those little quirks never bothered him,

maybe they were even one of the reasons he liked her so

much.

Just as he was thinking that, Shandala tripped on the

bottle that had slipped from her grip just a moment ago,

and fell on the ground.

“I guess being drunk doesn’t help either,” he chuckled,

as he walked over to help pull her up, and called for an

autonomous pod to take her back home.

92 CHAPTER 10. ## 1-100 ##

Shandala was lying down, gazing up at the sky. The

autonomous pod was quiet and fast, slipping through the

veins of the city with ease and slickness. It was moving on

its own accord, knowing its destination, transported by an

invisible ﬂow, like a blood cell in a healthy body. The pod

was very comfortable, and there was no excess vibration

or sudden movements, even though it was moving quite

fast. When Shandala thought of looking at the sky, the seat

automatically adjusted and became essentially a bed. The

top glass morphed its molecular structure and became

transparent, revealing the night sky above her.

Thousands of stars became visible. That light, which

travelled through space billions of light years to reach her

pupils, immediately gave Shandala a feeling of connec-

tion. She thought of her day with Mari. Anticipating her

feelings, AMI began playing a perfectly matched melody

to accompany Shandala on her trip. It was a concerto for

piano.

A concerto, a great man once said, is an argument

between an individual and the state, between an indi-

vidual and society. It is an individual voice crying out

and trying to make a statement of some kind, and it’s often

drowned-out by the orchestra. And it ﬁghts back, and the

orchestra ﬁghts back, and it ﬁghts back, and the dynamic

of listening to that is like nothing on earth.

On screen: Piano Con certo No. 2 In C Minor,

Op. 18

The opening movement, tense and confused, was a

syncopation of sounds, reminiscent of the troubled Rus-

sian history and the complex relationship its people had

with their maternal society.

December 2, 1900. It was the turn of the 20th century

when it was ﬁrst performed. 1900.

“So much has changed, yet so little,” thought Shan-

dala.

The second movement – adagio sostenuto – started

softly, with a series of slow chords in the strings, gently

lulling Shandala. The temperature of the pod was raised

just slightly, as if a warm blanket was being laid over her.

The piano entered with a simple arpeggiato ﬁgure, and

then the ﬂute, just before transforming into a sublime cla-

rinet solo. Shandala was slipping in and out of conscious-

ness; and feeling safe, balanced, and loved, she slipped

into a dream.

I like to think (and

the sooner the better!)

of a cybernetic meadow

where mammals and computers

live together in mutually

programming harmony

like pure water

touching clear sky.

I like to think

(right now, please!)

of a cybernetic forest

ﬁlled with pines and electronics

94 CHAPTER 10. ## 1-100 ##

where deer stroll peacefully

past computers

as if they were ﬂowers

with spinning blossoms.

I like to think

(it has to be!)

of a cybernetic ecology

where we are free of our labours

and joined back to nature,

returned to our mammal

brothers and sisters,

and all watched over

by machines of loving grace.

– All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving

Grace

by Richard Brautigan, 1967

Final Remarks

We are but a collection of atoms, swarming about in

a semi-coherent ﬂow of entanglement, collapsed wave

functions and superpositions of cosmic space dust. Some

day, we will ﬁnd our way to the source of our energy, our

astral lifeblood. That day, we’ll be one quanta closer to our

origins.

96 FINAL REMARKS