“The Future Lies”: In dystopian times, the Network does the thinking

This book was a finalist for the 2024 Colorado Book Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy.

The Descent of Man

First, humans were 
domesticated by religions, 
for power and control.

Then, humans were
domesticated by corporations,
for profit.

Finally, humans were
domesticated by machines,
for convenience.

Prologue

You never questioned what the Network wanted you to do, since the Network did all of the thinking. It seemed so intelligent that no one remembered the artificial part. So everybody obeyed. Obedience was a convenience that no one thought twice – or once – about. Everything just was what it was; there was no because, for as far back as anyone knew. You might as well call it forever.

In exchange, the Network kept everything running. All that was known, when things were still known, as Simulacrum. But that word had too many syllables. Now they just called it the Show – a bottomless sewer of digital refuse the Network concocted from leftover human ideas. It was nonsense you watched on small slabs you could find anywhere. Made out of plastic and glass that you couldn’t turn off, or turn down. Charged by the Sun, like any electronic that still carried power. 

You watched out of habit, and you watched to forget the perpetual torment of being a human. And when that distraction was no longer enough, you flipped the slab over and hammered it off of your forehead. For as long as it took to discourage a rogue prefrontal neuron from sparking a thought that might lead to a question. Or an answer.

You could count on the Network to keep the Show going, all day and all night. With all of the interest that a farmer might have as she tosses out grit for the chickens to peck. As much as the livestock demanded, and not a bit more. 

So a species that went to the Moon, built cities, cured illnesses, and wrote music that could crush you to tears…could be taken for granted, like chattel. 

Or as The Immortal once said, when no one could hear him, ‘I want people as easy to manage as a rock resting flat on the ground.’

If those rocks on the ground, duly glued to their slabs, favored anything the Network might happen to serve, that show would be Kill It! Till It Die! (No one found fault with that syntax. And nobody knew that ‘syntax’ was a word.) 

Kill It! was the flagship event of the Show, appearing on slabs everywhere. It was a synchronous orgy of twitch skills, by players that everyone followed. Players who seemed to have everything anyone watching could want. In this life, at least. No one was sure what the actual number of viewers might be. The Network said billions, but no one could count. Regardless how many, the goners devoted their eyes to these pixels of avatars, posing on slabs. 

And so it went on, as each second-hand life ran its course. On the infinite treadmill of now, ever after. Gathering dust, and then offering it up to the wind. Sometimes things seem like they won’t ever change. Especially when things are the worst. 

But nothing can ever quite stay the same way. And then comes a day, when all you expected to happen, did not. It might be the simplest thing, when you weren’t really looking. A product of offhand curiosity. A crack in what seemed to be permanent. 

‘That…’, as the poet Leonard Cohen once said, ‘that’s how the light gets in.’

Part I

‘Your typical city, involved in a typical daydream…’

–Robert Hunter

The best of the players of Kill It! Till It Die! were like musicians who could shutter their eyes, and just improvise. Whatever the game was, on whatever day, the best ones figured out all the right notes to play.

Itch-ass, alas, wasn’t one of the best. His avatar on this particular day was sitting disheveled, in a saddle on the back of a virtual horse. At the wrong end of a cattle herd, making its way up to Abilene.

As unclothed and semi-clothed wretches from all parts of the realm were waiting for the game to begin, Itch-ass called out on a private chat channel, to his best friend and partner for the day.

‘Stink Foot!’ he said. ‘Remember that time in that war, and the game was about to be over, and I had the same points as you did? But you let me kill that last guy? Then I was the winner?’

‘I do remember that.’

‘I won that day! I won the game!’

‘You sure did.’

‘Only time I ever won!’

‘Was that the one time?’

‘Yep. Best day ever.’ Itch-ass let that recollection sink in a bit longer. ‘That was so cool.’

‘Yeah. Long time ago.’

As the start time approached, the Network dug up an old song that created an atmosphere, tuned to the game of the day. Itch-ass was quickly distracted:

I’m an old cowhand, from the Rio Grande,
but my legs ain’t bowed, and my cheeks ain’t tan.
I’m a cowboy who never saw a cow,
never roped a steer cause I don’t know how.
Sure ain’t a-fixin’ to start in now;
yippie eye-oh kai-yay… 

Still on the private line, Itch-ass said, ‘Stink Foot! What’s a steer?’

‘What?’

‘In that song. What’s a steer?’

‘I don’t know. Who cares?’

‘I just don’t wanna kill the wrong thing.’

‘It’s a little too late to be worrying now.’

‘My best game ever, comin’ up!’

‘You better hope it is. You’re just about down to your final fuckup.’

‘I told you before – this controller’s messed up.’

‘I gave you mine, remember? It worked fine for me.’

‘I just keep thinking, “Don’t fuck up this shot.” Then I do.’

‘You’re better off not even thinking.’

‘Can’t help it. My points are so low.’

‘And when you get nervous, you scratch your ass. And then, once you’re 
distracted, you shoot the wrong thing.’

‘I can’t help it! I’ve tried everything!’

‘Try not fucking up. You’ll get sent up the hill…’ 

‘They don’t still do that! I mean, do they?’

‘…use you for spare parts. You’ll be like, “Where’s my eyeball? What happened to all of my blood?”’

That goofy old song was the only sound now in their headsets. 

‘I can’t fuck this up,’ said Itch-ass to himself. ‘I just cannot fuck up.’ 

But his insides were still not convinced. 

She had used much more water than she cared to spare, to wash what was left of the blood off her hands. Clean enough now for the steering wheel, but her shirt… Her shirt couldn’t keep all the rest of the blood from soaking on through to her skin. She could feel it begin to get tacky. It formed an adhesive that stuck to her chest.

All that was left was the map and the road. As if there was someone else driving. As if someone else was sitting there now, but not her. Inside of this sweltering box, north of nowhere, thinking none of it, none of it was happening to her.

Someone else, following squared-off pieces of map, fluttering there on the opposite seat. Segmented apart at the folds. And someone else now saw the city, that rose from the plains up ahead.

‘Keep going,’ someone else must have said. 

‘Keep going!’ 

‘Keep going!’ 

‘Just go!’

Someone else could see lines faded, there on the pieces of map. Someone else turned, where they needed to turn, to aim at the place on the map where the hospital waited. With the aid that was desperately needed.

Someone else might actually make it there now; the route was as straight as the edge of that map. 

Until someone else, suddenly. Stopped. 

Blocking the road were abandoned old cars; tangled-up heartbreaks of metal. All of them facing the city ahead. Someone else opened the door of their truck, and stepped out to examine the graves. And their knee buckled in, as soon as their ankle took weight. 

Someone else found a baseball bat, in back of the seat of their truck. With the bat as a cane, they hobbled toward what was still left of the cars. 

Their foot nearly snagged on the problem itself. Tire spikes, lined up like shark’s teeth, all pointed straight out of town. Using the bat, she pressed down on one spike. The spike laid down flat from the pressure. When she lifted the bat, the spike angled back up. So that was the message. Everyone’s welcome to leave.

But her way was into the city. So she tried to find something to lay on the spikes. In spite of the oxidized state of the wrecks, a fender or hood might still do the job. But she was too small and weakened by now, to pull loose a piece big enough.

Under a wheel that was missing its tire, was a big-enough, flat piece of metal. Face down on the ground. Once she cleared it of dust, she could just barely read the old sign’s faded letters:

WRONG WAY
STOP
SEVERE TIRE DAMAGE

She dragged it the best that she could, and then dropped it in place. The warning sign instantly provided a bridge, so the spikes wouldn’t puncture her tires. Some day she might laugh at the irony. But nothing was funny today.

She turned back to her truck, as a volley of thunder discharged from the west. She felt the wind chill the blood under her shirt. 

‘All wind, no rain,’ as her father would say. 

But as she drove over the sign, and the spikes she’d disabled, past the slag of old cars that were parked there forever, an ominous cauldron of clouds flooded over the mountains. Heading toward where she was going.

A fresh gust of wind blew half of her segments of map through a window. And there they’d be waiting, till someone else found them.

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Type of Story: Review

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