“Jazz music? Those people are playing music?” said Jagz as he pointed to the group in the distance making sounds with the strange objects.”
“Yes. And this particular song is one of my favorites, it is by a true legend of Jazz, Miles Davis. This song, Blue in Green, never gets old. It reminds me of the non-duality that exists, not just in the colors that we see, and the sounds that we hear, but in all of life.”
“Non-duality?”
“I am getting ahead of myself. That’s a whole different conversation. For now I want you to take a few minutes to walk around. Everyone knows who you are. Do not be alarmed. They are all friendly and happy to meet you. “
“Everyone?”
“This is where most of our life takes place. Most of the people here know more about you than you can probably imagine. We have been able to monitor your life, read your Quacks, and get a general sense of what is going on. We keep tabs on anyone who develops a strong social media following.”
“You are spying on me?”
“I can see how you’d feel that way, you will understand in good time. When you posted about meeting an Alien and how the Aliens were coming here to wipe us out, well, we just had to speak with you ourselves. You have developed quite a following and could cause quite a stir.”
“Yes and may I remind you there are people above ground looking out for me.”
“I know. We won’t keep you long. For now, why don’t you take a moment to look around and check out what the past used to be when fruit and vegetables still grew, when animals were alive, when music was created by real humans, and when people had personal interactions.”
Jagz began to walk around, admiring everything. He had never actually seen anyone cook in person. The smells were fantastic. They gave him a sample of roasted carrots and freshly seared steak that blew his freaking taste buds out of his mouth.
He watched a group playing a sport involving a bouncing ball and a hoop that they threw the ball into. He moved closer to a cow, afraid of what it might do, but he wasn't sure he was ready to physically interact with an animal, it was big and it smelled funny.
Jagz spotted some screens that looked a bit familiar, but still extremely different than the ones he was used to seeing. These screens seemed to be housed in something else, unlike the clear screens from above ground, these were planted within some sort of mounted unit; they had depth and a slight back to them. They didn’t respond when he walked by.
“This,” said Redd joining Jagz. “Is our main-frame. It’s where we monitor human activity in your world. We have other Uncommons above ground who are locked into the system that gather any information we need, plant viewing devices when we need to see, and gather the data we need. Since they are tapped in, we are tapped in. We go unnoticed by everyone above ground simply be-cause they have never thought to look. Until the Alien came everyone always felt safe and secure in their world thanks to the OIBs.”
“Can you blame them? An alien coming to our world, threatening to attack or change our lives is unthinkable, even with the Official Intelligent Beings guiding us.”
“Well, that is the thing. I don’t know how you are going to take this, but…”
“But what?”
“We have strong reason to believe that the Alien attack, and the Aliens in general, are a hoax.”
“What? Yeah right. You’ve got to be kidding me. I don’t think you realize this, but I had personal contact with the Alien. We spoke. He was as real as I am. Sure, he looked weird. Hell, he was from another planet. He was real web-damn-it! You don’t have to believe me, but millions of people up where I live do, so screw you if I need your sup-port.”
“Easy there, tiger. Calm down. We are not here to challenge what you saw. We believe you had a very real encounter with an Alien, but there are certain things that we have learned over the years that you may not be aware of.”
“Go on.” said Jagz trying to hold back his temper.
“For one, while you may believe that you are on the cutting edge of technology, you are actually kept from most of it. Schoron, the Being of Technology is far more capable than you can imagine. He built the system that you live in and you can be damned sure that he can manipulate it if he wants to. He can make you see things that are not really there. He can create a hologram, a living and breathing life-like hologram that could fool anyone that didn’t know better. Could even fool someone into thinking that they are in direct contact with an Alien.”
“Even if this was true, how could you possibly know it?”
“We have our ways. It isn’t worth getting into right now, but we have been noticing a lot of recent patterns. You are not the first person to seemingly become an international success overnight.”
“I am always searching for another voice out there, someone who speaks an ounce of truth, but all I see is the same bullcrappy boring praise from even the biggest cewebrities. I haven’t seen any-thing worth a damn.”
“Sure, right now with the interweb it has been harder to trace the past. They can manipulate the past as they please. But we have noticed others from above ground who have become extremely successful in a very short period of time and then vanished. We have reason to believe that you are next and that the Alien contact has something to do with it.”
“People vanishing? What are you talking about? Like who?”
“Well for example, about 30 years ago, when I was around 25 years old and you were a few years away from birth, I was trying to create better food for our compound. I was able to track a great farmer, a very intelligent man by the name of Jon Cleary, he shared his work about farming with anyone willing to listen. He was making huge waves in the community. This was, of course, when some people still ate real food—whatever they could get their hands on—when the substitutes that you are so used to now were only just coming into existence. Jon Cleary’s voice grew, and it grew fast. His unconventional farming practices were un-matched and he had the people’s support. Then one day, just like that, he was gone.”
“What do you mean gone?”
“He ceased to exist. The crazy part is that he had started to talk about farming practices from other planets. He believed he was tapping into Alien farming practices. He had been contacted and learned of a better way to grow food. Then, just like that, he was gone. It was the most bizarre thing anyone down here had ever seen.”
“So what happened? People obviously had to have known something was suspicious. Some had to have looked into it.”
“You would think they would, but they didn’t. No. Slowly, word started getting out that Jon Cleary had lost his mind. Before we knew it, praise turned to hatred. Somehow they had managed to turn on him overnight and eventually everyone forgot he existed.”
“And what about you? Did you guys find anything else out?”
“No, unfortunately we didn’t. That is precisely why when I heard you talking about meeting an Alien, I had to get to you before it was too late. You are a piece of a much bigger puzzle and by damn I’m going to solve it and set things straight!”
“Couldn’t this all just be coincidence? It sounds intriguing, but it was just one example.”
“I wish I could say the same, believe me, I tried to chalk it up to coincidence, but you and Jon aren’t the only ones. Years before a similar thing happened when I was only first going under ground at the age of 14. A woman who was expressing free love, Edith Maymoore, was making quite a storm in the media about the importance of not attaching yourself to one person, of spreading your seed around, sharing love, being free, and just like Jon, started talking about how Aliens were contacting her, speaking with her, how she even met one who wanted to share ancient ways that gave their planet so much more fulfilled than Earth.”
“And what happened to her?”
“Just like Jon, one day she was on top of the world, her social media followers were rapidly rising, the next day she was gone and all that was left of her was her devoted subscribers, who quickly turned on her
believing her to be mad. They did everything that they could to forget and destroy her image.”
Redd picked up a device. It looked like a small keypad. He pressed a few buttons until a screen turned on and began playing a video. It recounted what appeared to be some taped version of both Jon and Edith’s encounters and others with similar stories. All speaking to Aliens, gaining a following, and then seemingly disappeared from Earth.
“What is all of this?”
“A reminder,” said Redd. “That things are not as they seem up there. We made the right damn decision staying down here. No one above ground could ever see these videos, could even process them if they tried, not without being exposed to what you have been exposed to. But it helps to keep me on track, reminds me that what we are doing down here is right.”
“What are you doing down here besides rotting away? Living underground, hiding from the rest of the world?”
“Well, I should probably mention that there is a second reason we brought you down here.”
“Yeah? What might that be?”
“Well we want to let you in on a little plan. I can’t share all of the details without being certain that they won’t get out once you’re above ground. You never know who is watching. I’m going to need to ask you to keep this 100% to yourself. I don’t want to hurt you. I have no intention of hurting you. But if I tell you what I am about to tell you, I need to know that you are going to tell absolutely no one, or I will hurt you. By no one I mean no one, not even your girlfriend.”
“She isn’t my girlfriend, but if you touch her I swear to web.…”
“Calm down. Whatever she is, you two are pretty damn close and I can’t be making any exceptions.”
“I understand.”
“Do you understand or do you agree? I didn’t ask if you understood. I need to know that I can trust you and I am prepared to cause you severe physical pain if you break that trust.”
“I need some time to think. My head is spinning. Can I lay down for a few minutes?”
“Okay, but I need to know soon. In the mean-time there is a bed over there where you can rest.”
Redd pointed to a room with hundreds of beds in it, some occupied with people fast asleep, others were clear.
Jagz walked over and crawled into a vacant bed. He tossed and turned for a while, unsure of his place in this world. What is real? What does it all mean? Which side am I on? I didn’t know I had to choose a side. How can I really know what to do? Please, I just need some sort of sign. He thought.
As he uncomfortably tried to reposition himself on the bed he began to hear some relaxing music, and fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 16.
Jagz was sliding on something round. It was all around him and he was on his back slipping away, sliding down, slowly at first, and faster as he continued forward. He noticed what appeared to be wires of some sort, similar to the ones that flowed out of the corridors he cleaned at work. They surrounded him as he slid down one that seemed to be never-ending.
Jagz continued sliding, causing sparks to fly with each second that passed. He heard sounds of machines clicking, of storage drives working, of fans churning to keep this labyrinth of wires from over heating, of electricity passing through his entire body.
When he finally came to a stop, he seemed to be sitting inside of the world’s largest computing device on a processing chip inside of this great beast.
“So good of you to join me,” said Schoron the Being of Technology.
“Where am I? What is this place?”
“You are inside the great webwork that you call the interweb. The place where everyone’s thoughts, ideas, and actions are stored. We can see everything here. We know all that happens the moment that it happens.”
“But what about privacy? Was that ever a concern?”
“Privacy? What is privacy really? If everyone wants to be free, if everyone wants free speech, the only way for that is to allow for total and absolute openness. Freedom of speech means freedom of all information. It’s the only way that a society that wants to have free and equal rights can ever exist, because when you are hiding things, by default you are harming others, and quite likely yourself.”
“I’m not sure that I follow. Harming myself?”
“There was a time in history when freedom of speech entitled people to a right to privacy. But all it did was lead to more secrets. Those secrets created inequality, made some people feel that they had things they needed to hold onto, that those things were sacred, that they had information they didn’t want to share. It was in the act of not wanting to share that they stripped themselves of the one freedom they were trying so hard to protect—the freedom to exist equally, in peace with everyone around them. Secrecy harbored the idea that people needed to keep things to themselves, which in turn threw out the notion of freedom, no matter what people told themselves about their rights as human beings. It simply wasn’t possible to be free and hide information, and so privacy, as it once was, was taken away. Everyone could have access to everything. It may seem like holding onto your information is important, but by having access to everyone’s information, no one had anything to hide and thus no one had to feel separate anymore.”
“It sounds so controlling.”
“Ah but you have to understand. Though it took some adjusting, what actually happened was that people went back to their daily lives. They went on being themselves and they stopped worrying about holding onto secrets. They just took the world for what it was. They said what they wanted to say, they shared what they needed to share, and eventually people stopped caring about secrecy. They realized it was a trivial thing. It was unnecessary. It did no good to hold things in, which is why now we let everything out. It connects us all to a unified network of knowledge.”
“Is that why President Herd wanted to share the information about the Alien with me?”
“That is precisely why. One thing had been underestimated about the expression of feelings. Even though all of the world’s information has been open source, the thoughts, ideas, and feelings within ones own mind are much harder to express. Most humans have yet to express certain feelings because they have forgotten how to express them. You, on the other hand, seem to have no problem expressing how you feel and what you think. We have grown to see how valuable that is, how there was something beyond the interweb and infor-mation openness that needed to be addressed. The act of self-expression is far more powerful than expressing ideas, far more difficult to express clearly and competently. One must only be asked the right question, or ask the right question, for if he does, he may just find the right answer. For it is those that live in fear of asking the truth that never receive it. It is simple enough to believe that you are open and willing to hear all of the truths in the world, but if you can’t ask those questions yourself, if you can’t express those truths to the world, then you are no different than everyone else and you too do not understand how the world directs itself back to you.”
“So what are you trying to say?”
“Think long and hard. You’ll know.”
Jagz closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He saw everything—his life before he spoke with Mr. Herd, his encounter with Ani Rudh, his meeting with Shera, speaking to Redd, and then, in an instantaneous flash, his eyes opened like he was just hit with a bullet of truth.
“Schoron, what truth have I failed to see?”
“I think what you mean is what truth have you failed to confront, to ask.”
“Yes. Was I meant to see Ani Rudh?”
“It depends on your definition of meaning. Ask again.”
“Is Ani Rudh real?”
“Real is subjective. Ask another question.”
“Is your technology advanced enough that it could create a false image and convince someone it was real?”
“That question is accurate in more ways than you can even begin to understand.”
Chapter 17.
Jagz was shaken from his sleep. W
hen he looked up he saw an unfamiliar face.
“Mr. Jagz. Mr. Jagz,” said the woman peering over him in bed. “You must come now. You must come now. Redd has summonsed you. It is urgent.”
Jagz got up, collected himself, and followed the woman into the room where Redd was waiting. The woman hurried out of the room.
“Jagz, there have been some recent devel-opments and we need to act fast. I have to know if I can trust you. If you want to hear what I have to share, it’s now or never.”
“I’m in,” said Jagz.
“Okay, but brace yourself. This is going to get heavy.”
“I’m all ears.”
“As I said, we have strong reason to believe that your encounter with the Alien life form was falsified. Has anything indicated to you that this may be the case?”
“Yes. I’m beginning to think you are onto something.”
“Okay. Well, as I mentioned, we have some inside men above ground who have been collecting information for us. That information is only valuable if there is a plan. Now that we have found you, the missing link, if you agree, that plan can be set in motion. We have devised a way to take down the interweb. To restart things to the way they were.”
“You what now? Take down the interweb? You mean destroy it? I’m not sure I can get behind that.”
“You don’t understand. You are living in a world broken with lies. The Beings have tricked you. Mr. Herd convinced you of something that simply is not true. If history repeats itself you will be gone next. Your followers will turn on you, you will be hated and then forgotten, no one will remember you ever existed, not even your so called followers, not even if there are 20 million of them.”
“I know. It’s just things are going well in many ways. I have people who believe in me, people who listen to me, millions of followers who are inspired by my every word. I even have real human connection, something I didn’t even know was possible, didn’t even think existed a few weeks ago.”
Official Intelligent Beings: How Our Devices Became Us, And The World Consumed Itself Page 9
