Man and Machine, Machine and Man

It starts with our past, the “futuristic” age, when technology suddenly took a giant leap. The fancy stuffs were all there. Autonomous cars, robots, artificial intelligences, but i guess those are all the same things eh? Smart machines.

People make big about it. AI overlord, killer robots, super AI that supposedly creates the whole world as we know it. You hear it all the time, all day, everywhere. Everyone were saying it. But guess what? That ain’t the real problem. Oh no it ain’t. The robots and automations ain’t the problem. Fact, we got ‘em under control. We totally did.

But instead, something else blindsided us, took everyone by surprise. And that, is transhumanism. Man and machine mixed. No one saw it coming. Those that did, didn’t think it’d be a problem. Those that didn’t, dismiss it as mere fairytale. But it ain’t some dreamy fairytale. It’s real. Way too real. Ain’t in the freaky sense, but in the “I got a chip in my brain sense”. When it finally became real, no one saw the problem. That, was a horrible mistake.

See, some genius came with the idea to advance the technology of smartphone even further than how it was. We had those devices on hand right? It’s still physical back then. Still separate.

Then came the smart-wads that developed that high-tech prosthetic. The one connected to your brain, act like a real replacement, one you can control like really control y’know. Hooked up to your nerves and all.

And Augmented Reality? Bringing tech to the real world thing? The idea that we could integrate reality and technology. That the virtual world and the real world, can be put together to some supposed co-existence.

Mix those all those up and what would you get? A nightmare is what. The ingenious fools had a eureka moment. “We could mix together the virtual world and the real world, but what if we mix together the machine, and the man?” That was probably the idea they came up with. And so they went. They enslaved themselves to their work.

Only a few years after they first announced, or as they called it, “revealed” their project, it bore fruit. They had the actual prototype on hand and they didn’t wait long show it to the populace.

Guess how they react? They pissed themselves, metaphorically speaking. Those dogs hollered and barked. That someone actually succeeded and created a tech that can directly interact with the brain. It was a simple tech, a simple electronic chip hooked up to the brain that allows someone to control devices simply by thinking.

You could turn on your phone just by thinking it to. You could write just by thinking up the words. Draw just by imagining things. It was amazing. Artists and inventors could finally realize and make true their wildest imaginations. Scientist and engineers could operate at their peak efficiency.

It was simple. But it revolutionizes everything. This simple small chip, changed everything.

At first it was like having a smartphone hooked up to your head directly. With the help of their smart-glasses, you’d make calls, send messages, write notes, check the weather and time, browse the net, use your social media, even play games without using an actual device on hand. Basically anything your phone can do, you can now do with your head.

It got even better with the oculus implant. No no, not those Virtual Reality thing. These implants are like, machinzing your eyes, y’know. Like a high tech soft-contact. But instead of putting something in front of your eyes, it put something else in place of your eyes. Freaky, but at that point in time, basically any organ could be mechanized in one form or another already. The eye was a simple thing. And it was even more amazing to the people, since now they ain’t gotta wear those bothersome glasses anymore. Can just display it on the eyes right away now.

Truly it was Transhumanism. The line between man and machine couldn’t even be called a line anymore. But that ain’t the problem, not exactly. Man got mechanized, sure, freaky stuffs, weird if you think about it, but it ain’t bad. The blind got their eyesight back, the deaf their hearing. You get the idea.

But it can’t all be good now, can’t it? The world ain’t that kind. Everything comes with a price. So does this.

Let me get on a little tangent with a little story eh? Once upon a time, man came up the idea of Internet of Things. Basically make things not on the internet, be on the internet. Amazing right? Turn on your light from your phone. Open your door without touching it. Create a holographic remote control for your new Smart TV. But that posed a problem too. Connecting everything means sacrificing privacy. It all exist in this giant space everyone can access called the internet now. And it means people of the unsavory kinds, the criminals, can also access them. Of course they’re not going to leave it well alone. But that’s not really a big problem. As we have the criminals, so do we have the police. The security people. The good guys. And they did their job. It went well. Internet of Things,

But then guess what.

Comes the little chip that mechanizes people. That connects people. Doesn’t take genius to figure out what happens next. People were truly connected. Privacy, became a myth.

Eventually, someone figured it out. That everything is truly connected. People, the world, and everything in it. And so, one day it just happened. One witless miscreant, did it. He exploited the connection and spilled the beans, so to say, on every single thing.

Thanks to them, now everyone, knows everything, about everyone. Privacy no longer exist. The human brain, is powerful you know. It could process information at an astounding speed, even one with an extreme size. But that became our downfall. With the amount of information that got buffeted to our brain, it might have been kinder for us all to just die right away back then. Some did, but in comparison, the amount was really small. Most people survived.

Imagine that. Knowing the dirty little secret, the filth, sins, guilt, sorrow, despair, joy, dreams, aspirations, hatred, anger and love of everyone on Earth. The amount was not the problem let me tell you. It was so many things yes, but we could process it, lest we would have died. But that’s the problem. We could. We understood. We felt. We remember.

The weight of the emotions and the memories, destroyed everyone. We should have died then, killed ourselves. But we also gained the courage, willpower and strength of the others. And so we survived. We lived on

What happened at D-Day, changed everyone. We all reacted differently. Were affected all in different ways.

Except for one. One constant.

Between all those emotions and memories? One thing stood taller than the rest. Darkness. The darkness of humanity. Deep inside, everyone carries with them a certain kind of darkness. It’s different for everyone. Unacceptable desires, unspeakable evils, harrowing secrets. But they’re all dark all the same.

And it is by resisting this that we become good. That by accepting the existence of our darkness, yet refusing its wiles, that we humans, can become moral.

And imagine. This darkness that we should be carrying by ourselves, were shared.

The weight of an abyss of fathomless darkness against a single person.

Morality no longer exists. The concept of right and wrong, disappears. That line between evil and good, gone.

Anarchy reigns. Chaos everywhere.

Some would say, the apocalypse have come.

It went for days, weeks, months, years.

Until it just stops.

One day, everyone just stops. No more violence. No more deaths. No more destruction.

No one knows why.

Perhaps, they became accustomed to this darkness and could finally cope with it.

And so life went on. Just like that. As if it never happened to begin with. As if for the past few years, man weren’t devouring man on street as if it’s the most natural thing to do. As if thousands haven’t died screaming in horrible pain. As if the ruins they’ve rebuilt over, weren’t the ruins of their own cities. Weren’t littered with the corpse of their neighbors, of their families.

On a glance you’d breathe easy. Sigh in relief. That the horrors i spoke were just that. Old tales of the past.

It is.

But it’s our past.

The world burned.

It was horrifying.

But even worse is the fact that it burns still.

Quietly.

Until one day, it will finally, consume us all.