Copyright 2020 Sonny Clarke
Sometimes it takes a major shock to the system to allow you to completely relax and stop the fight against gravity. In the midst of a catastrophic event you come to the realisation that nothing you do really matters. I guess this is like the mythical drowning syndrome: your mind gives up allowing your body to stop clinging to life, your scalp relaxes, your shoulders drop and your sphincter finally loosens. It had been such a long time since I had taken a carefree shit that I found it hard to remember the satisfactory sensation but here I was, at the eleventh hour sitting on the throne, taking the most joyful dump in all eternity while outside, the world collapsed around me.
They had been predicting the fade for some years by this time; so long in fact that citizens were lulled into a false sense of security – not in my lifetime so why worry about it! but lately we’d been experiencing quite a lot of dull intervals; moments of dipped light, vehicles braking without reason, late or missing meal deliveries however it was usually quite quick to all come back online again so nobody worried too much. The longest fade that we’d experienced was last April, I remember because the networks were swapping out the reality screens at the time – a monthly event in newer buildings like mine that were hard-wired and remotely managed. Instead of resetting my reality wall to the continuous live action streaming of a new resident in my building, the wall was somehow reset to my own broadcast.
For a moment I was captivated by the pot-bellied, middle-aged resident who was sitting in his armchair incessantly jiggling his legs. I had grown so used to seeing someone else’s face in my screens that my own image was a stranger to me. Since that fade, there had been several reality screen swap outs, but mine continued to broadcast my own image 24/7 in every room of my apartment. I’ve been enjoying an unheard of level of privacy and become quite fond of this self voyeurism, watching my own dull life play out in real-time in front of me; it proved so much better than my last broadcast of Awkward Amy from apartment 9. Amy was one of the residents who had won the chance to upgrade into the new building (lacking the social or financial acumen to make a choice) by agreeing to be an all-access broadcaster. Creeps and perverts could earn special subscriptions based on their performance and make use of any of the cameras located in her shower or beneath her lavatory, there were even camera’s implanted inside her body for those who were into the more anatomical kinks.
The city programmers had sweated around the clock trying to solve the growing fade issues and our great Leaders kept reassuring the people that a patch would soon be released that would fix all our problems but the truth of the matter was that they couldn’t fix it; the problem was not with our hardware but with our airware. We were approaching complete burn of our air space and the only thing that would put an end to fade was going dark. Of all the things we had learnt to control, non-renewable resources were still the thorn in our side and just last month, an airship had exploded mid-air due to the extreme heat from our global networks. It took months for the Politicians to admit that it was a possibility to go dark and months more to admit that it was indeed a probability but when they finally announced a predicted time line, an undercurrent of invisible panic set in; A worry that seethed under the existing river of stress that was already part of our day-to-day existences, living on the light side.
I believed it was morning when a knock came at my door, since the weather intervention the light was permanent, it made it easier on the eyes that constantly watch glowing LEDs. As a result, I had long ago lost track of where in the day or possibly night we were and I wasn’t one to keep a diary. I walked to the door, I could see the big news in the corner of every information screen in the apartment, there was only one story on show ‘6 hours until we go dark’. It was like some sinister New Years count-down clock from the old days except combusting air would replace the fireworks display.
“Amy?” I was surprise to find her on the other side of my door. She welcomed herself into my apartment and immediately spotted herself on my reality wall.
“Hello! You’ve got my broadcast this month!” She wailed gleefully and I was momentarily gagged by her idiocy, ‘You’re in for a treat, I sleep naked!” She giggled and gasped in what I think was an attempt to be sultry but just made her look like a horse suffering hiccups.
She wandered around the room and finally sat down at my bureau, reading my work messages on the desk top. “What can I do for you?” I swiped the surface to power off to her prying eyes.
She turned to face me and took a breath, “What do you think will happen when we go dark?” In her face I saw fear, probably the first real emotion she had ever felt.
“What do you think will happen?” I reflected lazily as I slid into the couch.
“The TV’s will go off...” I nodded at the obvious, “We’ll lose connection to work, to friends, to the world...”
I quickly picked up where she left off, “Our food will stop coming, transport will shut down, the weather intervention will cease and the locks of this building will all open letting anyone come,” I paused for effect, “Or go....” I stopped then because she was sobbing but I could have kept the inventory going, our lives were controlled by it, no our lives were it - an all pervasive, centralised thing that buzzed invisibly through the air.
“I’m scared,” She blurted snot from her nose, “I won’t know what to do”.
I kind of felt sorry for her. She was too young to remember the Integration, too young to remember quiet and privacy and too young to remember what it is like to make your own decisions. Her generation was born with wiki-implants. A screen which organised their everything from calendars to dinners to work tasks. All they know is to sit in their apartment and follow the chimes – a chime at six o’clock wakes them (am or pm who knows it’s all the same light), a chime tells them the shower is ready, next breakfast will be delivered to their table – always oatmeal since the world committed to shedding 16 trillion pounds of fat, the carbon price was quickly exchanged for a calorie price when we realised that it was easier to attack obesity rather than our carbon imprint. After breakfast it was time for the treadmill and their entertainment screens will show pictures of trees and sunshine walkways and so went the day in 3o minute billable increments of tasks – billable because that was their job, existing, consuming on demand. In my youth we talked of the rat race, work-consume-die, today’s youth are stuck in the rat trap where only two things are expected of them, consume-die.
“Have you spoken with any of the other neighbours, perhaps they can tell you what to do?”
She shook her head, “Charles won’t come to the door, he thinks if he uses everything less then he will go dark later than everyone else and Christian just keeps babbling on about Hale Mary.”
“Who’s that?”
Amy shrugged, “The lady above I think, the one that keeps popping out children like it’s her job or something.”
“Well, Amy, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I can only suggest you find a way to break into your dumb waiter and get whatever food is stored inside so you don’t starve to death waiting for help!”
She looked at me with mouth agape “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take a shit.”
I escorted her to the door and locked her out while I still could. I imagined she’d go back to her room and do weird things for me in front of her monitor, thinking she was broadcasting onto my reality wall.
I walked over to the wall sized window and looked out on the street, my eyes traced the white tar along the road, up the gutter, the smooth white concreted glare of the building across from me and up to the sky.... it looked the same, light, tired, like an old fluro that was just hanging in there, a light that had been left on too long. The weather intervention was created to fix the fluctuations of mother-nature giving us consistent, unending dry light, a concept dreamed up by the productivity generation. I can barely remember what it is like to see stars or trees and grass that aren’t a manufactured image – someone else’s memory recreated to tease me and looking not quite right. It was time all this was over. I unlocked my desk drawer revealing an old paperback book that I’d held onto through the long years. I made my way to the bathroom and lifted the lid of the lavatory. Dropping my pants to the floor, I turned and sat down on the warmed and sanitised seat. A buzz sounded, like electricity bees swarming and then the light slowly died until it we were dark.
Sometimes it takes a major shock to the system to allow you to completely relax and stop the fight against gravity. In the midst of a catastrophic event you come to the realisation that nothing you do really matters. I guess this is like the mythical drowning syndrome: your mind gives up allowing your body to stop clinging to life, your scalp relaxes, your shoulders drop and your sphincter finally loosens. It had been such a long time since I had taken a carefree shit that I found it hard to remember the satisfactory sensation but here I was, at the eleventh hour sitting on the throne, taking the most joyful dump in all eternity while outside, the world collapsed around me.
They had been predicting the fade for some years by this time; so long in fact that citizens were lulled into a false sense of security – not in my lifetime so why worry about it! but lately we’d been experiencing quite a lot of dull intervals; moments of dipped light, vehicles braking without reason, late or missing meal deliveries however it was usually quite quick to all come back online again so nobody worried too much. The longest fade that we’d experienced was last April, I remember because the networks were swapping out the reality screens at the time – a monthly event in newer buildings like mine that were hard-wired and remotely managed. Instead of resetting my reality wall to the continuous live action streaming of a new resident in my building, the wall was somehow reset to my own broadcast.
For a moment I was captivated by the pot-bellied, middle-aged resident who was sitting in his armchair incessantly jiggling his legs. I had grown so used to seeing someone else’s face in my screens that my own image was a stranger to me. Since that fade, there had been several reality screen swap outs, but mine continued to broadcast my own image 24/7 in every room of my apartment. I’ve been enjoying an unheard of level of privacy and become quite fond of this self voyeurism, watching my own dull life play out in real-time in front of me; it proved so much better than my last broadcast of Awkward Amy from apartment 9. Amy was one of the residents who had won the chance to upgrade into the new building (lacking the social or financial acumen to make a choice) by agreeing to be an all-access broadcaster. Creeps and perverts could earn special subscriptions based on their performance and make use of any of the cameras located in her shower or beneath her lavatory, there were even camera’s implanted inside her body for those who were into the more anatomical kinks.
The city programmers had sweated around the clock trying to solve the growing fade issues and our great Leaders kept reassuring the people that a patch would soon be released that would fix all our problems but the truth of the matter was that they couldn’t fix it; the problem was not with our hardware but with our airware. We were approaching complete burn of our air space and the only thing that would put an end to fade was going dark. Of all the things we had learnt to control, non-renewable resources were still the thorn in our side and just last month, an airship had exploded mid-air due to the extreme heat from our global networks. It took months for the Politicians to admit that it was a possibility to go dark and months more to admit that it was indeed a probability but when they finally announced a predicted time line, an undercurrent of invisible panic set in; A worry that seethed under the existing river of stress that was already part of our day-to-day existences, living on the light side.
I believed it was morning when a knock came at my door, since the weather intervention the light was permanent, it made it easier on the eyes that constantly watch glowing LEDs. As a result, I had long ago lost track of where in the day or possibly night we were and I wasn’t one to keep a diary. I walked to the door, I could see the big news in the corner of every information screen in the apartment, there was only one story on show ‘6 hours until we go dark’. It was like some sinister New Years count-down clock from the old days except combusting air would replace the fireworks display.
“Amy?” I was surprise to find her on the other side of my door. She welcomed herself into my apartment and immediately spotted herself on my reality wall.
“Hello! You’ve got my broadcast this month!” She wailed gleefully and I was momentarily gagged by her idiocy, ‘You’re in for a treat, I sleep naked!” She giggled and gasped in what I think was an attempt to be sultry but just made her look like a horse suffering hiccups.
She wandered around the room and finally sat down at my bureau, reading my work messages on the desk top. “What can I do for you?” I swiped the surface to power off to her prying eyes.
She turned to face me and took a breath, “What do you think will happen when we go dark?” In her face I saw fear, probably the first real emotion she had ever felt.
“What do you think will happen?” I reflected lazily as I slid into the couch.
“The TV’s will go off...” I nodded at the obvious, “We’ll lose connection to work, to friends, to the world...”
I quickly picked up where she left off, “Our food will stop coming, transport will shut down, the weather intervention will cease and the locks of this building will all open letting anyone come,” I paused for effect, “Or go....” I stopped then because she was sobbing but I could have kept the inventory going, our lives were controlled by it, no our lives were it - an all pervasive, centralised thing that buzzed invisibly through the air.
“I’m scared,” She blurted snot from her nose, “I won’t know what to do”.
I kind of felt sorry for her. She was too young to remember the Integration, too young to remember quiet and privacy and too young to remember what it is like to make your own decisions. Her generation was born with wiki-implants. A screen which organised their everything from calendars to dinners to work tasks. All they know is to sit in their apartment and follow the chimes – a chime at six o’clock wakes them (am or pm who knows it’s all the same light), a chime tells them the shower is ready, next breakfast will be delivered to their table – always oatmeal since the world committed to shedding 16 trillion pounds of fat, the carbon price was quickly exchanged for a calorie price when we realised that it was easier to attack obesity rather than our carbon imprint. After breakfast it was time for the treadmill and their entertainment screens will show pictures of trees and sunshine walkways and so went the day in 3o minute billable increments of tasks – billable because that was their job, existing, consuming on demand. In my youth we talked of the rat race, work-consume-die, today’s youth are stuck in the rat trap where only two things are expected of them, consume-die.
“Have you spoken with any of the other neighbours, perhaps they can tell you what to do?”
She shook her head, “Charles won’t come to the door, he thinks if he uses everything less then he will go dark later than everyone else and Christian just keeps babbling on about Hale Mary.”
“Who’s that?”
Amy shrugged, “The lady above I think, the one that keeps popping out children like it’s her job or something.”
“Well, Amy, I’m sorry I can’t help you. I can only suggest you find a way to break into your dumb waiter and get whatever food is stored inside so you don’t starve to death waiting for help!”
She looked at me with mouth agape “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take a shit.”
I escorted her to the door and locked her out while I still could. I imagined she’d go back to her room and do weird things for me in front of her monitor, thinking she was broadcasting onto my reality wall.
I walked over to the wall sized window and looked out on the street, my eyes traced the white tar along the road, up the gutter, the smooth white concreted glare of the building across from me and up to the sky.... it looked the same, light, tired, like an old fluro that was just hanging in there, a light that had been left on too long. The weather intervention was created to fix the fluctuations of mother-nature giving us consistent, unending dry light, a concept dreamed up by the productivity generation. I can barely remember what it is like to see stars or trees and grass that aren’t a manufactured image – someone else’s memory recreated to tease me and looking not quite right. It was time all this was over. I unlocked my desk drawer revealing an old paperback book that I’d held onto through the long years. I made my way to the bathroom and lifted the lid of the lavatory. Dropping my pants to the floor, I turned and sat down on the warmed and sanitised seat. A buzz sounded, like electricity bees swarming and then the light slowly died until it we were dark.