An Inhuman Condition

This is my doing. It’s me, and I accept that. Sartre said our actions and decisions make us, and this war is mine. It’s inside me now, and I own that. The world, my isolation – it’s my fault. I’m not saying I caused the political bullshit, but it’s like the pieces of a puzzle. You start with these odd, disconnected bits and assemble the corners, work along the border and fill in the middle from there. At some point you should start to see what the photo is, but I didn’t. There was no box to show me the end goal; it was all blurred. I never even finished the damn thing, but they saw the picture first. Envisioned and given life through my work, there was no way to unsee it, and then they remade whole, damn planet in my image.

Looking back I feel like a naïve child. When we started using DNA to manufacture microprocessors, I should have made the leap. When we tagged ourselves with radio-frequency chips in the name of healthcare, people should have filled the streets in anger, but instead it was all a convenience. We were coddled at every step with the cushy blanket of progress. We dumped ourselves to the Internet, gave it our thoughts, wants, emotions – we became it. We reinvented ourselves as pixels communicating at unprecedented speeds. From the server room to the home then the coffee shop and the pocket, the next logical step was under the skin.

With rampant dematerialization and convergence giving us smaller computers, the lines blurred between our devices. The desktop computer was a television, the laptop made phone calls, the cellular phone checked email and our TVs browsed the Internet. People carried a record store’s worth of music on something the size of a cigarette pack – a library of books the size of just one. We could buy any novel, song or movie in the world and have it on a gadget in our pocket within minutes. It was the fastest and most effortless form of consumption our species invented – the Internet. Once the ones and zeros made their way into every home in the country, there was no coming back. The ease of consumption consumed us all.

Once we were all praying at the altars of God Internet, any advance that made it faster, shinier, more inclusive, involving was lauded as a step in the right direction. We laid bandwidth pipe as fast as we could, replacing old lines with faster ones every few years. Our wireless speeds lagged behind, but even they caught up in the end. The towers went up everywhere, and the signals only got stronger. Corporations spent billions researching and implementing technology to connect us as fast as possible. Once that began, the cell phone companies started selling full size tablets and laptops the same way they sold phones. Nobody needed a dedicated line into their home when they could connect from anywhere in range of a tower. They were obelisks of triumph, the final step to connecting the world and uniting it under one religion – God Internet.

The migration to blanket wireless brought about the connection of new devices. We put computers in our cars, in our homes, in everything. We built smart streets, smart appliances, smart bathrooms – you could put a computer chip in anything and have it communicate sense data in real time over the network. The smart widget industry boomed. Millions of parents bought TVs that could tell them what and how long their kids were watching. Smart cribs would interpret the type and pitch of a baby’s cry along with movement data to suggest what the infant wanted. Smart sneakers could help correct bad posture. Smart ovens would adjust temperatures to ensure food never burned. The only thing a person needed to know was how to operate all of their intelligent possessions, and so we managed to get even dumber.

People stopped calling friends or meeting in person to catch up. With the Internet everywhere and immediate, they no longer had to bother with anything else. People joined websites to have conversations, post every opinion and experience, and share photos of their friends and family. When you did see groups of people together in real life, they were always on their laptops or cell phones. You couldn’t have a ten minute conversation with most people that didn’t involve pulling out a cell phone or tablet to text or read email. For some reason the instantaneousness of the Internet replaced the immediacy of real life. It was as if our human bodies only needed to exist to get our minds on the Internet. At some point even the religious began going to church online; now they don’t even bother. The new God has church every second, everywhere in every thing.

All the while I was in it; I saw it happen. Computers were already in most homes by the time I was growing up. They were still big and bulky, slow things. The Internet was just starting to be less of a bulletin boardinformational tool and more of a hang outcommunication spot. Instant messaging was all the rage in school, and when the social networking sites popped up, we all migrated there. They were separated by niche at the beginning – like an evolved message board where the focus was on you instead of what you were saying. People all had their own little place to fill with whatever garbage would feed their narcissism. Teenage girls uploaded half-naked photos of themselves. Boys would brag about their latest sexual victory. Internet pedophiles would find those half-naked teenage girls and sexually victorious young boys and lure them to dark alleys with a van waiting. The worst qualities of people manifested themselves in spades on the Internet, and yet we still signed on.

If there was some dark part of us we wouldn’t dare express in public, we put it online. A priest with a midget-on-donkey fetish would never have the opportunity to live out his desires while stuck in the church, but the Internet brought midget-blowing-donkey action trotting to his steeple. Housewives with leather fetishes were free to dominate and be dominated. Business executives who dressed like schoolgirls and begged to be paddled found relief that they weren’t alone. Most of these kinks would have been buried and suppressed if the anonymity of the Internet hadn’t come along. Closet racists found each other and spread like herpes. Many discussions were plagued by anonymous retards writing “Jew this” or “Spick that” without warning. People began inciting fake arguments for their own amusement, and the practice became common enough to give them their own name.

Intellectual rigor vanished, and Internet celebrities became real celebrities. Their names were known throughout the world for posting a stupid song or video on the Internet. It only took a few minutes to upload and some dumb luck to become a household name. This phenomenon brought hoards of would-be non-celebrities looking for their five minutes, feeding their need for a connection, a justification for their narcissism. People endured any embarrassment for the chance to be one of the Internet’s beloved. “They like me; the users posting on this forum really like me.” It was pathetic.

The new attention span was now, and any sense of place or history vanished. Culture was a reboot of an imitation of a spin-off of a copy of a remake of a clone. People didn’t refer to history, but they might refer to a clip of someone’s reaction to another video with a popular actor portraying a drunken retelling of some historical event. This disposable, nothing culture infected traditional media and our personal lives. We used to talk about going to the grocery store or having a bad day at work with one another – real, tangible experience. Instead we began talking about whatever dramatic, exciting electro-garbage we found on the Internet.

This attitude shift is what allowed it to happen. There was a time when people would have said no, been cautious enough to consider the implications of their actions, but the Internet was inside us. We were junkies, living avatars, an interconnected web of chatter devoid of content. When they offered an Internet that couldn’t be turned off – a true, permanent integration that would upload us once and for all without the need for wires and screens – we couldn’t line up fast enough. The first surgery was clunky, but successful. I had a front row seat to the historical event that ended history. We had welcomed technology with open arms and warmed ourselves with its plague blankets.

The medical industry was already using pacemakers powered by the human body. We had manufactured computerized hearing aids implanted under the skin. We built lifelike robotic prosthetics that translated signals from the brain stem into real-world, real-time movement. It was the next-best thing to building a new hand or foot. We could make a permanent contact-lens that actually grafted to the eye tissue. A few microchips inserted in various organs could actually communicate with each other using the body’s existing nervous system to fight disease faster, digest more efficiently and treat chemical imbalances of any kind. A great deal of maintenance happened under the human hood, and it wasn’t long before we were adding features.

The body modification culture was probably the first to rave over it. From ultraviolet tattoos to wearable circuits, these rivet-headed kids with a love for Cyberpunk science fiction were the early adopters. They were already used to wearing metal shit in their arms and faces, so adding computer junk was just a fashion statement at first. It went beyond that once the med industry started “fixing” people with tech. Vanity surgery was already commonplace, and it was just another level of commitment to the gadgets and wires to embed them under skin. Some of them just liked the idea of having a computer in their arm like it was a fucking Power Glove, but others liked the exposed wires and unfinished look. It was like seeing Robocop without his armor. I figured the fad would fade, but it quickly became mainstream.

Our Internet had already been assaulted by the third dimension fad, but it wasn’t until we put it into people that it became reality. After a person integrated, there was no need to use it actively. If I saw a bird in the past, I would have to search a vague description from memory to figure out what kind of bird I saw. With a little enhancement, my eyes sent an image to processors in various portions of my brain that would compare the bird to trillions of bird pictures and have an answer to what bird I saw before I knew I was curious. The process of information anticipation reached a point where wanting to know and knowing were almost seamless.

The first system was more like a regular computer experience. We used an ultra-thin membrane to project semi-transparent images over our traditional vision. Sensors in our fingers allowed us to manipulate the projected information like a mouse. We could type on a hallucinated keyboard, and tiny speakers in our eardrums played sounds only we could hear. Communication advancements led to better speech recognition and the invention of neuro-processing units let us tap straight into our thoughts. Instead of playing sounds next to our ears and letting them generate the electrical impulses that amount to hearing, we skipped straight to generating the impulses bypassing our organic hardware altogether.

People quickly became their computers. Instead of having a disposable gadget to upgrade every year, we started going in for regular technology upgrades. Smaller, less-visible tech was envied. Having the newest biotech was akin to having the biggest TV or the fastest, flashiest phone in the past. The ever-expanding networks, increase in storage capacity and component shrinking brought prices down significantly. Once it became a profitable major trend, the competition grew fierce. Companies that used to be big names in separate markets all found themselves fighting for breath in the converged industry. If the tech was a generation or two old, the most expensive part of integration was the surgery itself.

Lucky for us, the government decided to subsidize integration surgery. We couldn’t get government sponsored healthcare for the first 30 years of my life, but when people wanted to become as traceable as a cellular phone or a car’s GPS navigation, the government jumped at the chance. Why wouldn’t they? If someone has a microscopic camera over his retina and it’s part of a system connected to a public network, then the government can intercept that data. If you’re connected at all, they can track you within a mile or so just by looking at which towers you’re near. For some reason the flashy techno-gadgetry of it all blinded people to the obvious implications to privacy and personal freedom. But to point that out was a form of heresy. It alienated you as a Luddite, as an opponent of progress. Nobody listened; they would just tell you to move out to the woods and grow a beard.

That’s where I found myself. I felt like the sole voice of reason in a world gone insane. I had the wrong job to be saying these things, and everyone knew it. They kept me around for a few years as a legacy product; I led the team that invented the first biocircuits after all. This nightmare was a direct consequence of my labor. I didn’t want this though; I had never even imagined this future was possible – that we’d let it happen. I just wanted to cure blindness, deafness, heart disease. I wanted to be able to rebuild failing lungs and kidneys. I wanted to save people – not turn them into fucking machines. But that’s what they wanted all along I guess. There’s no point in mourning the end of humanity. It’s obvious to me now that we never valued it from the beginning.

“Turn me into the first fucking cyborg,” someone said to me.

It took about two years for the fanfare and praise to stop. I went from a technological rock star to the crazy uncle nobody wanted to talk to. That’s how long it took them to destroy me. Day in and day out, my only motive was to help people. When it came time to save them from themselves, there was nothing I could do. Even with their computer-enhanced hearing, nobody would listen. I was the big fucking hypocrite – the ungrateful bastard. I tried to use my position in the industry to make people consider what we were doing, but the only reaction was progress, profit. When I gave my speech at TED, the backlash was intense. The company had to fire me immediately, but it knocked their stock down a few pegs. I started drinking.

I spent the next few months writing articles, doing interviews. I tried to make people see we were killing ourselves. It took me a while to realize that I was just some big joke; people were laughing at the irony. When I drunkenly split open my arm to rip out an RFID chip on daytime television, that was it. They kept calling, but I stopped answering. It was pointless; I had no efficacy anymore. I was impotent to save the world, depressed, embarrassed and angry.

I used my severance to start a tech firm, but it quickly sank. I tried to market alternatives to integration: glasses, gloves, headsets that would give you the same experience without being “on” all the time. Our production costs were even higher than integrated circuits, but you didn’t have to eat the high price of surgery. We sold enough units to stay afloat for a few years, but profits were never great. I lost my best people to higher-paying biotech jobs. When the government subsidized integration, we closed shop for good.

To put it lightly, I was bitter. Everything was taken from me. I kept my lab open and worked eighty-hour weeks alone. I stayed up all night, slept half the day. I shifted all of my efforts back into biotech. I developed a circuit that would drastically reduce the power consumption of integrated devices. When I sold it to my old employer’s largest competitor, they took a hit. They were forced to liquidate within six months, and the bliss of schadenfreude kept me going. That beautiful biocircuit was only step one of a much larger plan.

The cash let me open a small R&D lab in India. Those boys did the heavy lifting on my pet project while I revised the power problem. I had something in mind that would need a lot of juice to run perpetually. I sold bits and pieces of the tech along the way to keep us going, but the profit was never a concern. Every time we made a big sale, the news sites would revisit my infamous TED talk and wrist-slitting breakdown. Analysts praised me for being back on the “path of progress.” I kept out of sight, and they likened me to Nikola Tesla. God Internet knighted me “The Nutty Professor.” They didn’t know how close they were to the truth, but I wasn’t going to slip up and give away too much this time.

It took five years to reach my goal, and the world quickly changed while I was gone. Practically everyone was integrated: infants, the homeless, the third-worlders. Every home, building, vehicle was smart now. Anything electronic or mechanical was connected to the network. Law enforcement abandoned bullets for e-guns that shot concentrated EMP similar to an explosively pumped flux compression generator: techno-Tasers. Armies equipped themselves with unmanned vehicles and kilowatt lasers. Printed pages disappeared entirely. All the identification a person needed, credit accounts, passport data, medical history – it was all stored on government-sponsored flash memory under the skin. The future was present. It was the perfect set-up to my punch line. I couldn’t have been giddier.

I had to rely on integration and cutting-edge biotech to achieve my three goals, but it was well worth it. The first goal was a personal electro-magnetic jammer that would detect signal ranges in use within a limited area and selectively jam those frequencies. The selective jamming cut down the power load, but it was still more than the human body could produce on its own. I’d figured out an efficient jammer early on, but power was always a problem. My second objective became battery integration and small solar cells implanted in my skin and sewn into clothing to charge the batteries. This was easy enough since other companies were already solving most of these issues without my help. With the higher power load of batteries, I could increase my system’s passive range of a hundred feet out to half a mile. The increased range would only last about an hour at night, but could go for almost six in the daylight.

I had fun walking down the street watching my jammer in action. People were lost when they couldn’t connect. I emptied crowded coffee shops and got the beach to myself. It was beautiful, but I wasn’t done. People started to recognize me, and I wanted a more permanent solution. The signal loss ensured that the network cameras didn’t record me, but it wouldn’t be long before the cops figured it out and came after me. Unauthorized signal jamming had become a first class felony and carried a mandatory minimum prison sentence of ten years along with an outrageous fine. The dependence of police and government on those wireless signals practically mandated that they bury anybody foolish enough to interfere with “progress.”

The ever-intrusive tech-nonsense was everywhere. It wasn’t possible to hide away and ignore it anymore, and that’s what spurred my final goal – an integrated, reusable EMP and shielding for my internal equipment. I wanted to watch the circuits sizzle around me. I dumped money into the project and my overseas teams spent countless hours improving and revising low-inductance capacitors and Marx generators. Governments were very cautious about their EMP research, so I practically had to start from scratch. I couldn’t risk posing as a contractor and being exposed to the high level of scrutiny that goes along with working for the man. We had operational models after a year in the lab, but shrinking the designs and reducing power needs took the longest.

Once I had the efficient, finished design, I closed the doors in India. I sold off whatever assets and research I could and gave my guys very generous severance bonuses. The news came as a shock since I’m sure they assumed success meant some sort of lucrative contract or ongoing career, but I like to think they left rewarded. It took a while to find a private surgeon smart enough to implant my new tech but dumb enough not to realize or callous enough not to care. I had to drive to Mexico and take a boat to Cuba since I couldn’t fly anymore. I had to cross borders in secret and rely on the confusion of my signal jamming to keep any law enforcement from catching on. The whole trip down was an adrenaline rush; I felt like a futuristic secret agent.

It took seventeen surgeries spread out among six weeks. I spent three months recovering in Cuban luxury, and almost lost my drive in the process. Something about relaxing in the sun made me want to give it all up. This was my life’s work, and my vacation felt like retirement. My Spanish had come a long way for someone without an internal translator, and having time to read, sleep and enjoy myself without the burden of work was amazing. Looking back, I think that was the most tranquil I’ve ever felt. I was happy – legitimately happy. I don’t think I’ll ever feel that again, but it was my choice. I accept that; it’s my war, my burden.

What brought me back to the battlefield was an in-utero integration. They actually implanted a fetus, connected the damn thing to the network. Even before birth we wanted to turn ourselves into machines – there was no innocence left for the human race – nothing sacred anymore. I cried for the first time in decades, drank a fifth of tequila and trashed my hotel room. It was time to field-test the new equipment. I started my journey back to the States and used my former fame to book a spot at the upcoming TED conference. All I had to say was my demonstration would change the world. When someone with my reputation makes that claim after years in seclusion, people get curious. I had hundreds of offers for interviews. Companies wanted to buy my “revolutionary technology” sight unseen. Pitiful.

When the big day came, I made them wait before taking the stage. I let the clapping dull into a precious, awkward silence. Once the wondering whispers filled the room, I gave my speech. I gave them the politically correct, abridged version of my story. I reminded them what life was like before we ceased to be people. Whenever someone got up to walk out, I assured the room it was history they would be turning their back on. I kept them captive through my demonizing rant to make sure it was all on the official ledger. I wanted them to know for certain where we stood, where I drew the battle line.

I ended my speech.

“But that’s all yesterday. Yesterday the world was filled with people, or at least beings that resembled people. Tomorrow is another story. Tomorrow’s people will be machines if we don’t do anything to change it. I’ve accepted that, and as you all know it didn’t come easily. It brought me grief, embarrassment and suffering to get here, but I hope you appreciate what I’m about to do for everyone in this convention center. You all get a second chance.”

“I’m going to turn you back into people.”

That’s where the recording stops – my gift to an organized room of robots. The cameras couldn’t record the chaotic grinding, gnashing crowd of unplugged human beings after. All communication to the convention center was severed and I slipped away leaving them all to relearn talking, listening and looking for themselves.

An attenuator is an electrical component that reduces the amplitude of a signal. Attenuators have been a core component of electronics since the first signals were broadcast. I’ve found a handful of people willing to join me on this new battlefield, but the war is everywhere. We’ve named ourselves after those magnificent signal slayers. I’ve been dubbed Attenuator Zero by the media, and I very much like the sound of it. Whenever I send a message now, the machines listen. They know what I can do. They know my demands, and they know the terms of engagement.

Resist Tomorrow.