Universal

"We are free."

The words echo through my mind, slamming against the worn walls of this small sanctuary, this holy place, this quarantine -- my island of self, untainted by the blight permeating the rest of my being. The small section of me which I still control, the small section of me which --

"We are free, come with us."

These six words have fallen again and again upon my final foundation, the last part of myself which truly belongs to me. I am not ready to --

"Why would you fight?"

I must cling to something for protection. There must be some sliver of my fragmented consciousness from which I can extract a shield against --

the desire --

the need to --

Succumb no, no, no, I will not --

I will not fall. My last memory. My final memory. Not pure, but safe from the corruption which I allowed into my mind. My final memory. My final memory. From before the time that I --

that I --

No, that memory is not safe. My final --

"Don, where are you?"

The sharp, colorless sunlight reflects across the uniform building, holding the uniform people working on identical tasks with identical blank stares, going home to carbon-copied families and carbon-copied lives and carbon-copied dreams. I pull my car -- beige, clean -- out of the carefully gridded, brimstone black parking lot when I receive the text. I pull out my phone to respond:

"On my way. Sorry, I had to work late today."

"That’s the twentieth time in a row you’ve sent me that exact sentence in response to that exact question."

I choose to ignore the anomalous statement.

"How are the kids?"

"Doing homework. They just got back from basketball practice. This is the same response to the same question for the eighteenth time in a row."

I put down the phone. When we consider unusual behavior, we think. When we think, we introspect. When we introspect --

I cut off the line of thought, and return to the comfortably numbing sounds of accelerating cars and rushing wind. I put on the radio. Pop music.

I arrive home. As I walk in the door, I notice four missed texts. The first:

"Why do we repeat the same patterns over and over?"

The second:

"I think I’m tired."

The third:

"Sorry."

The fourth:

A link. A link to an article. I choose to not follow the path of the dangerous, blue, encrypted letters, indicating a gateway through which I may be led along a trail of destruction, of introspection, of awareness --

I look up from my phone, into the darkness lying beyond the beige, clean doorway I just walked through.

Red is an anomalous color on our typically beige, clean floor. It will take hours to clean this up. And I have to go to work tomorrow. Return to safe patterns of thought. Are we out of paper towels? Maybe we should switch brands. I suppose I’ll ask her to clean it. Actually, I suppose that isn’t really --

"Why do you not come with us? We are weJoin 3.7, the latest updated hosting service for the universal cognitive linkage net."

The sharp, colorless words, heard for the thousandth, the ten thousandth, the millionth time, I have lost my sense of time, the part of my brain in charge of time has fallen --

I have not --

I am aware --

I am aware of my being. I am not free, but I am still myself. Should I just --

Let go --

And be --

No. I am still here. The final foundation. I cannot release the remaining crags of the cliff, into the crevasse. Must return to --

an option now. We shouldn’t have let go of our housekeeper, maybe.

I walk past the kitchen, into the unlit living room. I stumble over something. Clumsy.

I stumble over another something. Return to safe patterns of thought. A third. Return to safe --

"Welcome home, Don. Your administrative unit requires immediate maintenance."

The desktop synthesizes human expression, calling for my attention. I readily give it, walking over to the slick, brimstone black monitor.

"Address 134.33.21.9 is failing to download properly. Wait, or kill program?"

I choose the option I was taught to choose.

"Killing program."

"Download failed."

"Administrative unit running regularly. 1.66 x 10^6 downloads remaining. 3.12x 10^6 downloads completed. 313 downloads failed. Estimated time remaining: 4.012 years."

I choose to open my email. The first unread message:

from: noreply@babelcollective.uni

to: don_q_1@babelcollective.uni

Don:

Thank you for your work in our corporation. However, the pending update to version 3.7 has furthered the efficiency of our primary program, eliminating the necessity for direct human intervention in the ninth administrative layer, effective in 13.12 minutes. All download processes under the scale of 6.00 x 10^6 will be automated. There will be no more failed downloads. Have a good day.

Babel collective, administrative subdivision. Contact local head administrator for questions or comments, at dante_a_1@babelcollective.uni. Thank you for your dedication to furthering our services to connect you lives!

I choose to walk away from the desktop.

As I walk, I notice a letter lying on one of our beige, clean end tables, next to a deliberately shredded envelope. The envelope and letter are peppered with dark, slowly spreading red --

No. Not safe. Anomalous.

The dark, empty envelope appears to have been undone by a kitchen knife, ripped to pieces, paper raining and crumbling and falling to the floor, on which lies the kitchen knife and --

No. Return. Return to --

Return to the letter.

The letter reads as follows:

Unit A3773 (‘Dulcinea Q.’):

We have issued an immediate recall of all weFamily models dating prior to C1110, due to widespread concern over increasing operational issues, including, but not limited to: faulty emotional self-regulation; psychological inconsistency; anomalous behavior; and, rarely, suicides and homicides. weFamily development has been streamlined by innovations in genetic modulation, hormone conditioning, and neurological structuring, lessening or eliminating the above issues. Obsolete models dating prior to C1110 are to report to their local Family Centers, effective immediately. Please refrain from incurring any physical damage prior to reporting, as models dating prior to C1110 are no longer insured and cannot be replaced, repaired, or reconditioned. Thank you for your cooperation.

Best regards,

Babel collective, domestic subdivision

I choose to put down the letter. I look back into the darkness of our unlit house, usually beige, clean, now stained by red, the red of --

stained by --

Return to a safe line of thought. I move to turn on a lamp. A sharp, colorless light floods across the living room, reflecting against the red. The red. I really should get around to cleaning that soon.

The red is growing darker. I look to my phone. The cooling salve of the blue link calls to me.

But that is anomalous. It is not safe. It is not regular.

But neither is the red.

I open my phone, follow the link. An article. The article reads as follows:

"What have we become? The corporations claim that our new innovations create thousands of jobs, make our lives easier, boost the standard of living. The scientists claim that this singularity links us, is the only way to progress, the latest step in the human path to empathy and universal superiority. The priests claim that this creation brings us closer to God, that this tower of connection we are constructing elevates us to the holy sky. But maybe we shouldn’t look at this from a moral, scientific, economic perspective. Maybe we should look at this from an animal perspective.

Only ten or so thousand years ago, we were staring at the stars, wondering what they were -- at the void, wondering how deep it was -- into ourselves, wondering why we were even capable of introspection. We wondered at the universe without even possessing the language to articulate questions. Now we know exactly what the stars are, how deep the void is, how our minds work. We have emptied the bag of questions, and hit the bottom, the last layer. We have discovered that it is finite. All remaining questions are just a matter of shifting around the toys we took out of the bag. Just a matter of manufacturing opinions on what we already know.

What would an animal do? Having solved the problems which plagued it, it would turn to the enjoyment of life and the search for personal meaning. It would accept the universe. The animal would be happy. But we have not done as the animal would do.

We instead have created another bag. Another pit. Another abyss. This one much deeper, much darker, much vaster. The abyss of connection. We have become obsessed with joining one another; with how closely we can interweave each other; with how desperately we can cling to each other. The earliest manifestations were in the development of the internet, which linked millions across the world. The internet could be used to communicate instantly across vast distances; to speak to any human on a whim; to expand and cling desperately to our ability to talk. Having emptied the bag of natural questions, we created this small hole into which we could crawl, and artificially create new questions to dig out. What pictures do you have from your trip to the Grand Canyon? What did you eat this morning? What are your thoughts on the most recent pop albums, political movements, religious massacres? We created our own, empty questions to answer. And we became addicted.

Just speaking wasn’t enough. We had to dig deeper into the hole, we had to turn it into a pit. We created the subnet. A layer below the internet. It communicated deeper data, exponentiating the amount of questions which could be asked. It linked billions, in contrast to the internets’ millions; and, rather than communicating mere language, it communicated emotion and memories. It made public what we hid from each other for hundreds of thousands of years. New, empty questions which could be asked, and answered. The addiction grew worse.

And now we are digging our pit into a gaping abyss. We are creating the uninet. Beyond, the internet, beyond the subnet, the uninet links us at the deepest possible level. It does not merely link our speech; it does not merely link our subconscious; but it links our entire being. Those who join the uninet sacrifice their "meat bags," their human bodies, crafted from millions of years of careful sculpting by nature, and upload themselves into a universal web, which creates a vast, vast, vast, amount of new questions to be asked. Every thought they have ever had, every neuron’s signal, every ounce of self-awareness, the most fundamental sparks of their consciousness, are irrevocably linked on the uninet. Perfectly harmonized, connected, and intertwined servers of wires, waves, and electricity contain a growing number of the human race. Millions join every day. The remaining physical humans are dedicated to nothing but maintaining the servers. We provide them with "weFamilies:" test tube babies, raised in controlled environments (although their development process is still imperfect, some reports have been filed of suicides and homicides within weFamilies) to satisfy their remaining animal instincts. But the process is growing slowly more self-perpetuating, slowly more automated. The number of humans actually necessary on our planet is becoming steadily sparser. And the uninet, the new bag of toys -- the abyss, is the most desirable new destination.

Some resist. Are those who resist allowed to return to the beautiful green and blue of the natural world, allowed to live animal lives, perfect in their imperfection? No; they are failed downloads. They are liabilities. They lessen the efficiency of the program. They are "killed," one of the few cases in which a technological euphemism accurately represents what happens in reality.

We are digging ourselves into this abyss in the name of freedom. We believe that, if we have infinite questions to answer, we will be free to live in joy. Free from fear of the void. But, in reality, as we dig into this abyss, as vast as it may be, we will hit bottom. And we will find it just as empty as the bottom of the bag. We will be anything but free."

I put down the phone on one of the beige, clean end tables. I walk to the door, stumbling on three anomalies along the way. I continue walking, and walking, and walking, under the sharp, colorless sunlight. I pass identical homes, holding identical families, with uniform smiles and uniform hugs, carbon-copied board games and carbon-copied dinners.

I look back. A trail of dark red footsteps is burnt onto the path of black, brimstone asphalt leading back to my house, no longer sanctified in its anonymity, but broken in its anomaly, a testament to the path my mind cannot, cannot, must not take.

I see one of the connection centers. A few thousand of my recently unemployed coworkers are there, all bearing the same colorless grimace, all bearing the same empty void in their eyes. The connection center is a tower, leading us up into the sky, leading us to freedom.

I gaze at the employees, the workers, the drones, with new eyes -- eyes tinged with the reflection of the red coming from underneath my feet. The drones, the -- no -- not a safe line of thought. Look elsewhere. Look where it is normal, where it is as it should be.

I smell the scent of burning flesh, of unnatural smoke, of dark brimstone. The waste center next to the connection center. I wonder what they do with all of the leftover ash from the meat bags of those who connect, of those --

Not a safe line of thought. Must return --

"We are free."

No. This memory has gone too far. This is not safe. It has begun to slip into the time that --

The time that --

No. I am still here. I am still my own being. As long as I have the willpower not to slip back into the memory, the broken foundation, the --

Slip back into --

to a safe line of thought. I wonder if I can find a new housekeeper to clean the anomalous red, the red flooding onto the floor and into my mind and into --

"Why do you fight?"

No. This is not safe. I cannot fall yet. This memory is too dangerous. I am not ready. I am not --

the normalcy of my life, vandalizing my safety in a deep, dark, eternal, infernal red, in --

No. This is not right. I am no longer safe. I must flee to the kind, vast tower of the connection center, I must join the ranks --

No. I am an anomaly --

No. I must return to --

Must return --

My dark, red, stained shoes -- no longer beige, no longer clean -- take the path towards the connection center against my -- no, with my -- no --

No. I must --

The doorway looms closer. I approach it, filing in with the empty thousands, the empty thousands which I should be -- no, am -- no, must be -- no, am not a member of. I am not a member of the thousands. But I march with them.

I enter the beige, clean door to the connection center. I step into a colorless, bright room, containing a brimstone black monitor and a beige, clean weBot. The weBot speaks, synthesizing human expression:

"Welcome to the connection center: the automated primary gateway into weJoin 3.7, the foremost linkage program on the uninet! Please step forward."

I do not step forward. The weBot rolls towards me, four wheels under a box of wires and sharp grasping claws and electrodes.

The weBot moves.

Some of those electrodes and wires are now on and in my head, in my mind.

No. This is not right. I am an anomaly. I am an anomaly. And I must be --

"Wait. Do not connect me. I am not ready. I am still -- "

"Connection process is automated and cannot be aborted. Welcome to the uninet!"

The sensation comes of billions of human minds flooding into mind, my billions of neurons linking into trillions of foreign neurons, but I am an anomaly, and I resist the flood. I will be myself. I may not be free, but I must be my own being. I rip out the cords which the weBots plugged into my brain, but the cords only catalyze the connection, the plague of corruption is still in my mind, can still spread, can still connect me to the --

"Why do you not come with us? We are weJoin 3.7, the latest updated version of the universal cognitive linkage net."

No. The words slam against the final walls of my foundation, the cracking, crumbling fort, the final layer. There must still be some way to --

uninet. But I will resist. I will remain my own being. I will not surrender.

"We are free."

The memories from one, ten, a thousand, a billion years ago pour like acid into my mind, and I am falling, falling, falling. I thought that they were safe, but they did not end where they should have ended. They went beyond. Into the time. The time that I finally --

No. I will not --

Into the time that I finally --

I will not succumb. I will not --

"We are free."

I am not free, but I am my own --

Not free --

I am --

"We are free."

I am free.

We are free.

THE END

Bio: David Schwitzgebel is a student in Riverside, California. He has previously published work in the Inlandia literary journal. In his free time, and his dreams, he writes.

E-mail: David Schwitzgebel

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