Singularity's Children Box Set

by Toby Weston

  “Okay, that’s it. I have had it. You don't get the message do you… FUCK. OFF!”

  Ben stumbled back from the shove and got his legs tangled up in a chair. Falling over a table, he crashed to the floor, a cascade of spilt beer pouring onto his head. He rolled over and thrashed back to his feet, and then kicked the offending chair across the wooden deck.

  “Well in that case, fucking resignation fucking accepted,” said Ben. “You can go back to waiting tables or selling your arse on Kings Cross for all I care. You ungrateful prick!”

  “God, I fucking hate you!”

  Chapter 14 – Undocumented Alien

  ‘Everything that is old is new again', Anosh thought with a smile.

  His fingers tapped on the screen of an upcycled Companion. The austere, unadorned, text-heavy pages of the auction site had conjured a wash of happy nostalgia for a simpler time of naive images and text laid out like a picture book, passive and unassertive, content to be consumed at your leisure. Anosh was old enough to remember the old Web, when it had been a happy-go-lucky youth, before gamification and cynical click bait had remade it into a machine for turning out laboratory pigeons. But youth had jaded and morphed the internet into a narcissistic nymphomaniac. Browsing became a battle of wills as she begged and demanded— with mascara-streaked eyes—that you click the blinking shit away before any diluted morsels of gratification were reluctantly granted.

  The transformation had been driven by the need for revenue. Sites had been stuffed with pseudo-intelligence for real time behaviour monitoring, lifeless logic allowing algorithms to judge from your actions the most effective messages and crude attention-stealing gambits. In a race to the bottom, the Web had become a jungle of malicious code-exploiting primate reward circuits to extort attention. Surfers were addicts, captivated by flashing lights and a constant stream of grinding genitals plastered across their multitude screens. Junkies, hooked by their need for the next micro reward.

  Pecking - posting; liking; sharing; clicking.

  It had happened slowly. Anosh recalled each new affront: needy sites that begged you not to leave, content spread thinly across dozens of advert-saturated pages, headlines eerily specific and resonant with ideas you may never have fully formulated. There was no privacy, even inside your own mind. Desire was teased from the subconscious by cold psychological models running on server farms measured in acres. They were fed with bulk data from a billion user habits and tuned with the latest academic research.

  There was so much data that the expert systems came to know you better than you knew yourself; the way you moved your mouse over links before clicking, what you clicked when you were drunk, what you click after being shown X or Y, each byte further refining the caged homunculus they were building until they had your soul in a bottle.

  The final metamorphosis into whatever the end-stage internet would have looked like had been interrupted when the collapse had crashed the system. Visitors had stopped spending; adverts stopped making money. Pages died, one after another. At the same time, a black hole of debt was sucking liquidity out of the economy, and great chunks of infrastructure were going dark as the companies that owned them sunk into financial oblivion. Vast clicking, whirring data centres became silent. The internet shrivelled back towards its mushy stump.

  After a few winters without food and power, governments had gotten their shit together. They teamed up to create a surreal narrative that left Kafka behind and took economics deep into Escher territory. The translucent undead economy was pushed out onto the stage, with a shot of adrenaline in its arse and forced to sing one last time.

  Society rebooted, but recovery was fragile; unrest and malcontent could not be allowed to disrupt their first faltering steps. Anger and betrayal needed to be calmed and hot flows of emotion redirected. Web marketers stepped up to the plate. Expertise at manipulating sentiment and brand loyalty let them take the old Synthetic Cognition algorithms and repurpose them. Expert systems were redeployed from creating click-bait advertorial content, to churning out socially resonant pacification propaganda. The internet surged back to life, but the optimism was gone. The eclectic, irreverent, mix of ideas had been replaced by a cloying, warm, all-embracing flood of subliminal, multi-channel propaganda in the familiar model of Telenovela daytime TV.

  Most people allowed it to wash over them, to numb thought and pain, but for others, annoying webpages had gone from being intrusive to sinister. They would not forget the dark days of riots and the mass shootings when the governments had shown how far they would go to hold on to power. For these people, the low bandwidth Mesh was the answer, and they were happy to put up with its 90s ASCII aesthetic in return for keeping their heads free of synthetic mimetic viruses.

  Pace of change was exceeding elasticity of mind. Ayşe didn’t have Anosh’s techno-utopian dreams. Instead, for her, and millions of others suffering from the epidemic of future-shock, the Caliphate’s romantic glow beckoned, its Islamic nostalgia a refuge from the craziness. The Caliph’s pleas for human dignity and his sermons of simplicity and moderation were a beacon, beckoning a growing chunk of disenfranchised humanity.

  There were worse places in the world to be than moderately prosperous Dusselstadt—the UK, where Anosh had grown up, seemed to be unselfconsciously modelling itself on an RBC production of Orwell’s 1994. What was left of America, following its second civil war, had become a perpetual hillbilly cannibal cook-off. Much of Asia was a turmoil of ethnic conflict, civil war, and religious terrorism—but Ayşe, at some deep level beyond rationality, had wanted to leave, and Anosh had realised he could do nothing to change her mind.

  Until now, the expanding amoeba that was the Caliphate had always sounded romantic and foreign and, at least to him, comfortably far away. His parents had left Iran in the seventies. They had fled to Prussia and became resolute atheists. They worked hard to integrate into their new home, while bringing up their three sons to share their perspectives on religion and freedom. He knew that, if his parents were alive, they would be horrified he was even thinking of making the return trip fifty years later.

  Something in Ayşe had snapped while she powerlessly watched Zaki heal as a cripple. The Mesh was full of similar stories of distraught parents bemoaning the impotent State. Anosh felt like he had lost both—first, his innocent happy boy, then his wife, as he watched Ayşe get sucked into the Mesh’s vast crystal maze of threads. She became confused and disorientated amongst the recriminations, blatant trolling, childish griefing, and the Forward propaganda. Increasingly, though, she had found clarity in the warm, measured, and reassuring words of the mullahs. Anosh tried to point out this was also propaganda, but she had grabbed onto an idea; and, trying to prise it from her grip would probably have destroyed her, and it would certainly have torn the family apart.

  Europe’s generation-long War on Terror had created the Jihad in its many flavours. Forged in the fires of hate, it was anger personified and not a political movement with any real coherent policy. The recession, depression, and collapse left their enemy broken, stumbling around, geriatric and confused, lost, unable to remember how and why they had become bogged down in the dusty dessert.

  Attacking the mighty infidel, so reduced, looked petty. The justification for war became less clear and moderate voices had risen to positions of power across the Byzantine mess of factions, fronts, rogue states, and cells that had formed at the leading edge of the Jihad.

  Vibrant student protests and a colourful bright-eyed message of change and human dignity had lent an air of youthful panache to the struggle. Eventually, a legitimacy had been established that had tempted political heavy hitters, regardless of original inclination, away from their old employers. The groundswell of public opinion drew in spin doctors and campaign managers. Finally, they had a cause they could unite behind with popular slogans, strong on traditional values.

  With the cream of the world’s political conductors running the campaigns, the incoherent choppy video uploads of previous
decades were expunged. Islam would no longer be making its points against a backdrop of beheading and terror. The focus was now a message of humanity and peace, respect and dignity. It was a message that resonated not just across the Middle East, Nusantara, and Fas, but also in London, Solungen, and a million impoverished, marginalised households across the globe.

  If there was an enemy of Islam now, it was Idolatry.

  “Man commits idolatry whenever he honours and reveres a created form in place of God,” Ayşe had explained to Anosh, out of the blue one morning.

  Corporations were the new false gods worshiped by the infidel media and politicians. They were the instruments of Satan with an anti-human agenda of accumulating Mammon at the expense of all God had created. They had become imbued with rights and freedoms, beyond those enjoyed by ninety per cent of humanity.

  “Idolatry is worse than genocide,” she had insisted.

  Anosh rests for a few moments in the shade of an ancient gnarly oak tree, remembering their last few months together in Prussia.

  Ayşe and the boys had been Catholic, at least on paper, as Ayşe had paid her church tax each year. She persisted in this, despite Anosh’s gentle suggestion it was a waste of money and, frankly, morally suspect. She didn’t profess to have any religious inclination—or, at least, she hadn’t until Zaki’s beating.

  Fear and murder and, finally, the vicious attack on her oldest son had cracked something inside her. The vague cognitive dissonance on matters of religion she had always displayed—the cause of many earnest and endearing discussions when they first met, and the odd recurring repetitive argument ever since—all these positions had metamorphosed into a desperate fervent belief.

  As Ayşe had subscribed to channels and joined forums, Anosh found there were growing blind spots he could not approach. If the conversation encroached on these taboos, they would argue—Ayşe becoming defensive and, ultimately, closing him out. The children were confused, but Anosh wouldn’t stand between them and their mother for fear it would create a split in the family. Ayşe had no such qualms; powered by a righteous conviction, she was saving their souls. She followed the advice of her new online friends, preparing the boys for their conversion to Islam.

  He unslings his rucksack and pulls the water bottle from its side pocket, taking a suck of warm water and checking his watch. There is still a long way to go, but he has time.

  Ayşe had gathered the two boys to her. Zaki sat, contorted and uncomfortable, on the sofa beside her, while Segi sat on the floor and leant against her legs. On her Companion, she was viewing the image of a worryingly young bearded mullah, probably in a call centre somewhere, his upper body partially obscuring the white Arabic script on the green flag behind him.

  Anosh had tried one last time to convince her to stop, while she was uploading pictures of the boys’ newly circumcised penises. His pleas went unheard as Ayşe continued with her obsessive preoccupations.

  The bearded man guided them through the scripted process.

  “Ash-hadu an la ilaha ill Allah,” they each said. “I bear witness there is no god but Allah.”

  Anosh hadn’t been able to join them. It would have felt like a betrayal to his parents, knowing they had given up so much to spirit him out of Iran as a baby. They had risked their lives, so he might have the chance to grow up free from the suffocating, irrational intrusions into private life. He had also been convinced that Ayşe would, ultimately, see sense before taking the final step.

  What hurt the most was that, as she continued to make plans, she hadn’t seemed to mind he wouldn’t be joining them. The space in her life he had inhabited had closed somehow.

  “Ash-hadu ana Muhammad ar-rasullallah.” “I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah”.

  Then they had showered, washing away their old sins to emerge, reborn. The mullah, showing emotion for the first time, welcomed them to the faith. Whether his smile indicated pious joy or cynical satisfaction at moving three souls closer to his monthly sales KPI was a matter of perspective. He sent them their certificates of Islam as PDFs, complete with biometric face and fingerprint data hashed and signed with the Caliphate’s certificate. If they ever made it into the Caliphate, these would be exchanged for passports.

  Vicious thorns infest the dry scrub and, although he hasn’t seen any, he walks in constant fear of disturbing venomous snakes. He makes his way between ancient cedar trees, across a landscape of ridges and gullies, scattered with geometric ochre boulders. The Osmanian border is still six kilometres away, according to his Companion, and the dots representing his wife and kids are a further four kilometres beyond that. He hopes they will be waiting for him, with Aloe Vera for his bites and a big flask of chilled water to assuage his intense thirst.

  Despite a constant seething turmoil of bewildered anger, Anosh had helped Ayşe trawl the Caliphate sites dedicated to guiding new converts and potential immigrés through the process. He had nudged her towards Osmaniye, rather than Durrani or Irak. Osmaniye had retained its own identity, resisting political homogenisation. It had also always fed and watered its children. According to the Mesh, it was one of the few countries on the planet with a net surplus of food. Global warming had made summers fierce, but had also increased the rainfall; rivers and reservoirs were full.

  Even back then, he would have admitted the pastoral Arcadian life they were researching had appeal.

  He swats at a massive horsefly making a meal of his arm and pushes on, wondering, not for the first or the last time, what the hell he had been thinking.

  The Osmani weren’t messing around at their borders, though. Landing unannounced on the Osmanian coast would most likely lead to unceremonious expulsion, if you were lucky, or direct exclusion from the land of the living, if you were not.

  The family had parted company in Venice, and Anosh had felt as if parts of his body were being torn away. To say he bitterly regretted sticking to his principles was like saying a horsefly bite on the elbow itched a little.

  He had been verging on the hysterical as his wife and sons had boarded an impossibly crowded ferry to Izmir. He had watched its propellers churn the puce water as it inched way from the quay. He was sobbing as it moved out into the Giudecca Canal and was lost; just one more vessel amongst the dozens coming and going.

  With the dread of loss curled like a cold worm in his stomach, he had dragged himself back to the bus station for his lonely trip home to Dusselstadt. He knew that, with their new documents, Ayşe and the kids should have a smooth journey to what he was slowly coming round to believing might be a better life; but still, it had still felt as though he was dying, permanently losing all that really mattered to him.

  He had managed to live for ten weeks alone before giving in. The ninth summer in the old printers should have delivered on all their investments of fixing, renovating, and re-inventing. The garden on the roof was established; Anosh enjoyed daily plates of sweet tomatoes and rocket. The Algal-solar-ponics was churning out litres of nutritious green slime that dried to make a crunchy wafer that was fishy and unpleasant, but nutritious. He spent his evenings sitting alone or drinking with and boring anybody who would listen to his emotional monologs. These all reduced down to an irrational hope that Ayşe would reconsider and miraculously reappear with his sons. Eventually, though, the glimpses of their lives he received via messages painted an increasingly rosy picture. He was moved to give up on keeping the nest warm and made preparations to follow after them.

  Unfortunately, the Caliph was no longer offering web-based religious conversion and assisted immigration. Tens of thousands had applied and then made the pilgrimage to start a better life of meaning, but the quota had been reached, and the doors had been closed for this year. Without an official invitation, it would be much harder to go East. There were, however, always ways.

  He sold their home to one of Vikram’s wife’s brothers, confident he could trust the family to continue paying him the MeshCoin they had agreed each month. The price w
as impossibly cheap, but the down payment would be enough to grease a few palms on the way. MeshCoins were supposed to be just as widely used in the Caliphate.

  Information was free. Whether you were building a chicken coop, learning to safely identify mushrooms, or finding a coyote to smuggle you past the borders of a reanimated thirteenth-century oriental empire, you looked on the Mesh.

  Following instructions and helpful step-by-step guides, he had hustled and bribed his way onto a ship in Greece bound for Port Said. By paying one of the crew for a few megabytes of data, he could keep up his spirits, messaging with his family as the old diesel-soaked passenger ferry inched its way across the Mediterranean.

  According to plan, he had been immediately arrested, before even stepping off the boat in Egypt. Not mentioned in any of the ‘walkthroughs’, though, was the inconvenience of spending a week in a filthy camp of bare urine-scented concrete dorms and ragged tents, before getting a chance to demonstrate to the stone-faced military police that he had the coins required to bribe them. Probably, they let all the soft-looking virgins stew for a while as an incentive to offer an adequate bribe. He would update the Wiki page for the benefit of future users when he was settled. Eventually, after paying atrocious amounts of money to compensate for his lack of Islamic identification papers, he made it to the start of a huge, chaotic, jostling, multi-day queue to board a boat to Mersin. Each passenger seemed to have a better excuse than the last for why they needed to cut in.