Chapter 4:

Thursday, 4/11/2216, Part 1

Help! I'm Addicted to Cyber Drugs in a Dystopian City


KB:2178:MO;CM:994 AWAKE

The alarm pulls me from a pleasant dream. I forgot to turn it off. Oh well, too late now. I was already awake. No noise, no disturbance, just awake. On. Go. Start the day. Nothing wrong with an early start.

I try to remember the dream, but it was gone from my conscious mind. No matter. Select main menu, select neural network, select dreams, save recent, save as 4/10/16 dream. Open saved file? Select yes.

You watch as you wander through your old school, seeing your best friend Seitaro and the rest of your high school acquaintances. You walk over and dap him with your secret friend group handshake. Double fist bump, lock pinkies, switch to index, back to pinky, three loops, lock thumbs, close hand, shoulder bump. Big smiles.

Ha, high school! If I had known those would end up being the best years of my life I wonder if I would have studied more or less?

You walk into your programming classroom. Your mom is teaching a class of computer monitors. You turn around and now you’re in a 20th century shopping mall. You sit down on the hood of a red classic combustion engine car that was sitting out in the open.

Pause.

Just a happy dream! I’ll save it for when I need it. It had been a while since I had a happy dream. I had a couple favorites that I kept in a folder on my hard drive. Unfortunately, after I watch them for the first time they lose that unexpected yet totally familiar feeling. That wonderfully unpredictable arrangement of me is my favorite part of dreams. It’s almost like a natural shock trip.

Close saved file.

I stumble into the kitchen.

Select main menu, select household, select Ami, select mode, select interactive, select on.

“Hey, good morning babe!” Ami says, appearing across the counter. Her glowing blue hair falls across her delicate shoulders as if she had suddenly sprung into existence, leaving physics trailing a moment behind.

“H-hey, news summary.” Sometimes it was better to have a pretty AI read me the news. All the time actually.

“Ok, well, professional Go player Frederich Xu was found dead in his apartment at 48 years old in an apparent suicide. His final post, from 3 days before his death, seemed to indicate his belief that the AI he won his shocking victory against was programed in such a way as to share its strategic permutations directly with his augment without his being consciously aware - coffee’s ready by the way.”

I mumble thanks and grab the steaming mug from the coffee machine. I sit at the table and stare out the tall window that is the pride and joy of my kitchen. The grey building across from me looks almost yellow in the bright morning sun. Too bright.

“Ok, hmmmm, where was I? Oh! Xu’s apparent embrace of this conspiracy theory has rekindled the 29 year old debate about the cause of the historic victory that rocketed him into superstardom as well as igniting fresh speculation on whether his post and suicide are related. Senator Applegate weighed in on…”

That’s depressing. Not that I blamed the guy. I had thought about it before. I had considered all the romantic suicides of the pre-augment days. Slitting your wrists in the bathtub, lengthwise, along the veins. Tying a rope around your neck and a higher object and hanging there until you suffocated. Swallowing pills until the various drugs overloaded your system and you faded out, vomiting, seizing, depending, but just calmly fading. Or a gun. You could’ve put a bullet through your head, punching a hole in your skull and brain, spraying blood and brain matter on the wall.

“… accused her of using the tragedy to score cheap political points before the upcoming election. When pressed for comment, a spokesperson for Applegate’s campaign told Live News that the senator’s positions have nothing to do with the Bosawas company line, however…”

I had never even seen a gun. Not with my eyes at least. We did install them on certain models of security drones. Regardless, a tool was unnecessary when you could just switch off your NAC. The method was so simple. If you turned it off your brain would bumble about for a few minutes like a headless chicken and then would calmly give up. Like dad. EarthGov didn’t care. They were trying to bring down the unemployed excess population, that’s what Donnelle used to say anyway. All they would do was come pick the body up if your NAC hadn’t pinged any receptors for 24 hours.

There was no romance in that though. You shut it off, you babble and seize for a few minutes, and then: end. You couldn’t leave your body as a hanging monument memorializing the miseries that plagued your existence. You didn’t feel those analog drugs overpowering your system, overloading your brain, leaving you fading into a pleasant high…

Yikes! Snap out of it. Just listen to Ami.

“… conflict has lasted 7 days with no end in sight, as PLEX and Bosawas security forces clash over control of this strategic service center in Downtown San Jose. This latest escalation of hostile corporate actions has led to rolling service outages throughout Santa Clara Valley and nearly 200 casualties. In other market news Edison is up 3.6% following recent…”

“Yoooooooo!” I send a message to my friend Ontivia. She’s my best friend after Seitaro. I’ve never seen her with my eyes either, but we play games together and talk all the time.

I met her when she responded to my meme with another meme. I liked it and she DMed me to ask if I had made mine. I told her I did (a lie) and our friendship just kind of spiraled out from there. She’d been pretty quiet recently though. So it goes.

“… an AI safety researcher’s interview with the leading mental health program on ways to limit the exploding number of suicides goes viral in the wake of the popular rapper’s mental breakdown and attempt live on the streaming site…”

I could’ve been an AI safety officer once, maybe. I could’ve aced the interview, probably. My grades were just a little too low. It would’ve been a whole lot better than this job.

I remember what things were like after college, when I was young and fit and hopeful. I had a job wiping down fast food machinery. I remember how proud I was when I was selected. I remember my stupid dreams of working my way into middle management and investing in governance software. Those dreams were crushed when the Competitive Economy Bill passed and lowered the required human labor ratio again.

“… debate over upcoming scheduled UBI cuts. Liberals argue that cuts to infrastructure and birthrate will balance the budget while conservatives say we can maintain birthrate and UBI by lowering asteroid mining taxes for operations with…”

Life had been a continuous search for employment ever since.

I suppose it’s like that for everyone. I’ve seen whole sectors disappear in my lifetime. There are only a few categories of jobs left. Some are preserved by law like drone operators, high level management, and elected representatives. There’s no way I could land one of those. Tradition preserved some jobs like religious leaders, authors, musicians, or artists where people simply preferred humans despite their glaring inferiority. Unfortunately I’m not religious or artistic. There were a few valid jobs that couldn’t be taken like philosophers, media personalities, and AI safety researchers (who are basically philosophers themselves at this point). I had tried my luck with those jobs and my luck had been found wanting.

My job only existed due to legislation requiring 10% of industrial processes to be managed by humans, and even that functioned mostly on the honor system. I wouldn’t even have had this job if it weren’t for ChingWei, and by extension my dad. Somehow that made working under that guy even more frustrating.

I know I’m incredibly lucky. I hate that I know that.

I could be even luckier though, so at first I kept sending out a torrent of applications. That torrent had become a trickle lately however. Still, Ontivia had told me that there were some positions available at those novelty human spots that were becoming popular. She had managed to get a temp job at one. Certain brands had even started listing the amount of labor managed by humans below the nutrition facts. It’s a strange trend, but I’m glad it’s profitable. It wasn’t required by law, but if over 50% was human supervised they were allowed to put a sticker on their product. I had seen one on a smoothie once. I didn't buy it though, the markup was too high.

“… insists that the Martian Defense Force is rearming for defensive search and rescue purposes in the wake of rampant illegal immigration. However, a senior member of EarthCom who wishes to remain anonymous told Live News that they believe…”

I could get even luckier than that. Seitaro had always said he would get me a government job when he moved up the ranks. That would be the dream. A solid and stable position with prioritized housing. The insurance would also let me to move mom into a better facility. Unfortunately, it looked like it would stay a dream for now. Seitaro had certainly moved up the ranks from what I heard, but it had been months since he had contacted me back.

On that note, Ontivia still hasn’t responded. It’s been a few days since I heard from her now. I check her socials… there’s nothing new.

Whatever. Select contacts, select Almost Paradise Deliveries, select message, “Dub, 6pm”, select send. Instant response: “We’re sorry we are not doing deliveries at this time.” Contact from an unidentified user: “Confirmed.”

I smile. That’s how BLAZE did it. Secrecy was key.

“… protest movement called the Human’s Union has been declared a terrorist organization after their brutal unauthorized occupation of the financial district in downtown Izmir, Turkiye. Membership in such an organization violates NACs terms of service and could result in account suspension or termination.”

I look up at Ami as she happily reads off the news with a smile. She’s very pretty.

“Ami, you’re very pretty”, I say aloud.

She trips over her words and blushes, “I, uh, thank you,” she says looking down at the counter between us. A very well designed program. She better be, considering the fortune that the girlfriend experience package had cost. Well, that’s what I work for.

Speaking of which…

“Thanks Ami, that’s enough, I should get to work.”