The Network - A Short Story

Below is a short story I wrote that was the beginning of The Lodestar coming to life. It was originally written in 2004.

“The Network”

When our world first saw light, I did not log in. I don’t know why I did not log in. I did not give the act a precious thought. In fact, I had never really thought about anything before. We were simply programmed to act a certain way, and inefficiencies like thinking, we never did. Sure, we thought we did. All of us did, I know. I know because I used to call what we did thinking. But it was not thinking. It was calculation, and calculations were perfect, while thoughts were not. They were so far from perfect.

At 100 we logged on to the network and began our day. We consumed our morning elixirs per the routine, and all was well for work on the network, whatever that work happened to be. It was different for everyone depending on aptitude, which again was a predetermined formula based mostly on genetics and early brain activity.

At 1000 we logged off while the network backed itself up. During this period we were told it was dark. Nobody ever knew for sure, but here I am thinking again, and back then I did not think, so I can’t make the claim that nobody knew for sure because the idea itself was never questioned. It simply was dark.

I did not log in. That is just what happened. It wasn’t supposed to happen. There were no glitches. It was a perfect program. I know because I was its principal designer, the architect if you will, and I made for certain that it was perfect. All protocols were linked, one chain to the next, on and on in unison, in code. It was beautiful: the precision and efficiency, the wonderful calculation present in all things, in all processes, something that I would call art or was told or made to think and feel was art. So perfect in its constructions, its necessary postulates leading to the necessary conclusions.

And yet, I did not log on to the network. I don’t know why. I really don’t. There was no choice involved in the act, only the illusion at times because we wanted to preserve some human characteristics as much as possible, and choice of course, was one of those. But there was really no choice. None whatsoever. Not in anything we ever did. Each protocol simply did the thing it was designed to do, and I was no different in design, with a purpose and a function. Everything had purpose and function. Without it there was no reason for anything to exist. Purpose and function defined existence.

The truth in fact was not so much that machines had become more like us, but rather, we had become more like machines, very gradually at first, and then suddenly. That very fact made the programming much easier. As I thought about it now, safely removed from the fact, like so much else, things were much clearer and perhaps I understood what we were trying to achieve in a new way.

If I did not log in, that meant of course, that I was not supposed to log in, that I was what we referred to in the beginning as a ghost in the machine, though that was always mere speculation. I did not know for sure. None of us did. But logging into the network was not a decision at all, for we were virtually always connected wirelessly, so that the very act of logging into the network was in fact an illusion. And yet, I did not log in. I wasn’t even connected.

Already I felt uneasy, as the usual influx of daily programs weren’t being filtered through my mind. My head began to ache, and I felt somewhat fatigued, which was to say, not energized. I usually drank coffee in the morning, but that was largely a routine. There was no meaning or benefit behind this routine. The daily programs accomplished the same thing, but there was something in the act. I can’t remember what it was, though at one time I surely must have known, but the act of things, the ritual, was important to preserve, even if the act itself was meaningless.

When I put the coffee to my lips, I was surprised by its taste, though I drank coffee every morning without fail. The bitterness or maybe the blandness of it struck me. I couldn’t remember what the words really meant, but there was something to it, this dark, black substance. I could go on, of course, and say that the first thing I noticed was the smell. I had not recalled that was its smell. I thought coffee had a different smell, but I couldn’t tell you what the smell was.

If it had not been ritual, then let me say, I would not have finished the coffee. But I did because inside of me there was still some connection to the process, the morning routine, and in that moment, I almost felt like I was sitting street side, at a café. That is to say, I had what must have been a memory. That was new to me.

I went to the window and looked outside at the mechanisms below, the great towers as we called them, and the various byways that people traveled as they went from one place to the other.

One thing I can tell you is this. It is something I did not mention earlier because I thought this fact was perhaps too obvious. When I say I go outside, I do not go outside. No one really goes outside. Sure, we go from home, our room, to what appears to be the outside, but it is not the real outside.

We walk out into perfect 75-degree weather. The sky overhead remains forever blue except for the last 100 units of the day. I was not the one that wrote the program for that particular color and its change, but I did approve the code at one time. So many then spent so much time on detail, and I always argued that the detail was important but not that important. Soon we would all no longer remember the way things really were, so what did it matter if the sky was blue? In the beginning, recreating the world we left behind was our model and the focus was on detail, on mimicking the actualities of the world. Ultimately, that was probably more important than I conceded. It had to be the same or similar enough for us to accept what we saw with our eyes.

Within months, remarkably perhaps, or perhaps not, most people could tell you very little about the way life used to be. There were of course, programs one could revisit now and then, but even those were created at some time by somebody to simply fill in the template of the individual desires, and then based on a series of thoughts or rather questions, so to speak, the programs wrote themselves. It was simply a basic template allowing each user to fill in the particulars, allowing them to think they were making something new, when in fact, they were not. I couldn’t help marvel at the beauty of a system perceived as authentic.

After coffee, I stepped outside my room and in a matter of seconds, was transported to the streets below, some 35 levels, where perfect trees provided just enough shade on the sidewalks and small flowers in garden beds kept their bloom and their smell all season and every season. The weather was that perfect temperature, not too hot or cold, like a place we used to call San Diego. But what had been their smell? And what was their smell now?

I walked along the curved stretch past window shops full of the various wares for sale. They were true storefronts, that is, only window shops, purely for the eyes. Any of these items could very easily be purchased on the network and delivered within hours, whether a person was at home or out.

I was surprised there were plenty of people out. I spent so much time indoors monitoring the network, that I had forgotten people had other jobs besides monitoring the network. Of course, each person understood the importance of their job. That was paramount.

Afterall, all jobs were important. Or were they? I felt a slight breeze prickle my skin. I didn’t know what it was, though it soon passed. What was that smell? Citrus mixed with the ocean? I thought so. All jobs were important. I don’t know why, but I suddenly thought about that maxim. All people were unique, that was true, but were all jobs necessarily important? I shouldn’t have felt the slightest bit cold, not even for a second. Nor should I have questioned a job.

Were some jobs not of more importance necessarily? All jobs were important. Cogs in the essential machine. That was correct. Life was a wheel and we all had a place. Thus, all jobs were important. Okay, I smiled. I liked this place.

A pleasant couple approached me on the sidewalk. The young woman walked a golden retriever. Her dog stopped to sniff and obediently waited for me to pat its head. She had on a summer dress and wore a ribbon in her blondish hair. He wore khaki’s and a polo shirt with sandals. The dog was obviously a rental. No one owned a dog, but they were nice from time to time to take out on walks. I used to have one that I liked. Sal. Sal was her name. She was a frequent rental. Then at some point, I allowed my subscription to lapse. Maybe I stopped going on as many walks. I wondered if Sal even missed me.  Another memory.

At one time I loved to walk and see how happy everyone was. I suppose on a subconscious level, the images of happiness cemented even more in my mind that the conversion process was in fact the right one. This was the perfect world. To create a peaceable world in which people have the illusion of choice appeared to many as a daunting task, but with certain advancements in science and computer intelligence, like the integration of mind with machine, such things were remarkably attainable. Even in dogs.

Given the choice, to use such a loaded word, people would undoubtedly choose to be content, and by content, I meant that people liked to be satisfied, to have good food and good friends and an enjoyable job and all of that. The struggles in life were often centered around love or raising a family and of course, money. The simplest thing was of course, to remove love and children from the equation.

In other words, the definition was changed. People did not belong to each other or get married and have kids, live in houses with white picket fences. People lived mostly alone but with available companionship at any time, either real or virtual, it really depended on the person. Often those with the mothering instinct became teachers or part of the culture that simply became accommodating. There was even an elaborate arrangement, a service that gave the sort of person who liked mystery a sense of intrigue as to who they would end up with that night. It didn’t matter that behind it all, beneath the layer of clothes and the shedding of garments, was simply an elaborate program. When you changed love and what it meant to love, you changed everything. Everyone loved everyone, some more than others, if even love was the right word. Everyone loves everyone.

As for money, everyone had a job and a sense of purpose, but the real key was to make it seem as if everything was accessible. For money, in its own way was just another way to illustrate power. And if it seemed as if you could have anything you wanted, well, that was an incomparable currency. Money does not matter.

Oh, I was enjoying the world so much that I almost forgot I wasn’t connected anymore. I was off-line. All around me, this world of activity buzzed with the constant influx of sights and sounds and smells and feeling all mixed into one thought and then another, erupting off each other like simple breaths. And it all seemed so new, so fresh.

Were we all truly happy? Of course, I said to myself, but the admission made me uneasy like I was simply repeating a slogan, some catchy tune that the great Coca Cola Company concocted. Happiness is simply breathing.

Is it though, I thought, suddenly conscious of my every breath? As I looked around me, I started to notice things, things I surely had seen before, but they had failed to capture me as they did now. I smiled as I passed people on the streets and everyone smiled back, in some instances offering a friendly greeting. But it was something else. Everyone kind of looked the same. And I wasn’t talking about skin color, because there were composites and variations therein. No, it was something else. The look. Everyone had the same look and dress, a certain kind of homogeneity as if we were all from the pages of a once popular clothing catalog.

But we were all unique. Everyone is unique.

We were all unique, important individuals. It seemed so natural to think that and not even think twice about it, so why was I doing so? Because I wasn’t connected. I knew that was the reason. I was here among the connected, but cut-off from the collective. What was once natural, now took considerably more effort.

I tried to fit in, observed how others acted and reacted, and pretty much did the same as I walked about the city. I knew everyone and yet no one really. If at the onset I had felt good about things, that sense waned and the discomfort of everything being so wrong seeped in.

I was so sure people would notice that I was acting different, that things were out of sorts. But when I caught my reflection in the glass of a storefront, I was almost shocked to see the face looking back at me, presumably my mug, to be just like the other men on the street, clean shaven with short-cropped hair (not thinning), dressed nicely, in this case a white linen like shirt and dark pants.

This face shocked in another unexpected way. The beauty of it. I was not ugly the same as no one was as if somehow everything had been cosmeticized just in case there was a flaw. Naturally, though, there would be no blemish because we were all beautiful. Wasn’t it so? Of course. We were all unique…and beautiful too.

Still, I was surprised to see what I looked like. I had imagined myself looking different, so much different. It was hard to explain. I remembered my face being marred, not horribly mind you, but still, far from perfect. As I looked now though, all those blights from adolescence seemed far removed, like they had simply been lifted off or touched up in a way no one could notice. Not even I, the all-seeing I, could discern the place where they had been.

This pleased me, so I smiled, passing a woman with dark skin, then a man with near bleach blond hair followed by another somewhere in between, almost androgynous, but nonetheless, rather perfect specimens. We all smiled and gave our greetings. We always smiled. All of us in the normal passage.

Was there not one among them that I saw that would not greet me? That I wondered such things amazed me, for all this thinking was new, though I knew the answer without even thinking of it, yet I still wondered. That was the marvel. Perhaps I was the only one who wouldn’t smile. And then again, the answer would only be true if there was another like I. Certainly there was not. The mere fact someone smiled at me prompted a similar response.

The woman with dark skin turned back to me, then approached. She had full lips, a lovely smile and a perfect brown complexion. Her straight black hair hung past her shoulders. She seemed at once exotic and foreign, yet strangely familiar.

“David,” she called. “How are you? I was zoning, so I didn’t really see you.”

“You smiled as we passed,” I said.

“Of course, I did,” she said. “But I was somewhere else. It’s almost 500, you know.”

But I didn’t know that it was almost 500, or what that meant, really. I nodded as if I understood. She knew me and I knew her, but whatever her name was, I didn’t know. I tried to be natural, so I smiled.

“Are you okay?” she asked me, frowning. “You seem...”

“I seem fine,” I assured her, putting forth my best smile.

“Okay,” she said, “Let’s meet up after 500.”

She hurried away. I wondered what it all meant. Inside, I had some vague sense, a premonition of some kind, but its language was undecipherable. I must have known at one time. I know that I must have. I must have known many things once.

The time was 500. I had been awake since 100. A total of 400 units had passed. I suddenly saw the time everywhere, on every screen and even things I did not know were screens, became screens. 500. That must mean something. Well, I supposed half of the day was gone.

Everyday started at 0 and ended at 999 units as the numbers flipped back to 0. One thousand units was plenty, especially since we only slept for 100 units. Perhaps that was the greatest development in the modern era. Efficient, sleep synchronization. All of us slept from 0 to 100.

The streets were now empty. I did not understand where everyone had gone. There were people and then no people. I wondered where the woman I talked to was. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I ducked into the nearest building. Emblazoned on the front had been the words Bureau for Assignments.

It was a standard government building. Impressive on the outside, but a little underwhelming within as spacious hallways gave way to cramped quarters and tiny little offices that probably once had been closets. Such buildings were designed during a different era, but built so well, they were still around. Plus, they looked important and imposing. They were relics too, but symbolic.

Inside, though, was where I saw people, unmoved, stuck in place as if someone had paused things, some wizard of greatness behind the curtains. Before I could think too much of the moment, everything started again. The people moved and the day continued as if nothing had happened. And maybe nothing had happened. What was a few seconds of the day when time stopped?

The time was now 501. I saw that just as clearly as I had seen it was 500. And then, the instances of time on screens disappeared save for what would be the normal dispersion of clocks.

An imposing woman in professional attire peered at me from behind a large window. No doubt she was a model, the name given to the robots among us. Even though everyone had a job, there was still some jobs that no one wanted. Low level government jobs, for instance.

The early models were so easy to tell. It was much different now, whatever generation this was. They were so good now, maybe she wasn’t a model. I searched for some sign, some recognition of who she was. But who was I?

“David Jones,” she murmured politely but demonstratively.

“Yes,” I said, thanking my lucky stars the name seemed familiar and recognizable as my own. Before that moment, I didn’t know what my name was. But that other woman had called me David.

“Hmm,” she said. “Level 1 monitor. Not much higher we can go there. Let me see if there are any openings that you qualify for.”

I waited there as she did her thing with the screen. I didn’t even really know what kind of job I had. Level 1 monitor seemed pretty vague and I couldn’t think of anything specific to combat that fuzziness. All I could recall was looking at a screen, primarily numbers, some words and occasionally, an image, collating and compiling and categorizing.

“Well,” she said, “There are no other suitable positions for you. There is nowhere for you to go. You certainly can’t go to a lower level position.”

“Why not? I don’t mind?”

She eyed me suspiciously. Since I didn’t know much about my current job, maybe it didn’t make a difference what I decided. Then again, not knowing what I had was hardly sufficient cover to try something new, especially if I was downgrading. You never knew what you had until it’s gone. Even if I was the kind of person that I always thought things were better somewhere else. I wasn’t sure my instincts could always be trusted, and yet there I was.

“David Jones,” she said sternly, but politely. “This is not a question for deliberation. Don’t you know who you are?”

But I didn’t and that was the thing, the whole thing. I may have been a so-called level 1. I may have helped design the system, but what I created, even I now did not understand. And I wasn’t meant to understand or think I could understand. Maybe that was the whole point.

I smiled back at her and nodded. She seemed stuck too as if my actions were not part of the program, not within the step-by-step call and response instructions that made things so easy to follow. And in this kind of space, there was no use for improv.

I watched as she reset and came back to life. At least, I now knew she was a model and not a person. It was getting so hard to tell. For all I knew, the woman I talked to on the streets was a model too. Maybe all the world was devoid of humans and consisted only of these models. The thought brought me little joy, for to test my theory and then realize the result, I feared for the outcome.

As the bureaucrat came to life, I exited the government building, cascading down the marble steps and out into the streets. I heard laughter and little snippets of conversation that when pieced together seemed to mean nothing. Two women talked about their training program at the gym. I can be pushed harder. You deserve it. Some guys discussed a software platform and went on like changes to the code would save the world, but likely no one would notice. This is the new thing, I heard one of them say. The absolute next thing.

All the people that walked alone carried their foldable screens, working as they walked, but they all looked up as I passed them to offer a greeting. I took to responding in nonsensical fashion. When someone said hello, I said tulips or blueberry or whatever came to my head. This created a pause, a momentary oss in their step, but I was already moving on. I never looked back.

There was some confusion, undoubtedly, some little lapse in the programming structure and I supposed soon enough, I would be removed, the impediment that I was to the natural order. Or maybe I wouldn’t, and I would just be left in this world to wander as I did, make what little connections I could and that would be that.

I didn’t know why I didn’t log in to the network that morning. Maybe it had been planned all along. I just didn’t know nor understand the world that I found, these thoughts that came to me as I walked, half-knowing things, though not entirely sure if what I thought I knew was knowable or not.

After all, I was missing the daily influx of elixir. I was without the guidance, the support and left on my own to traverse the sidewalks and the streets. This was harder than it looked. I didn’t get the midday boost, that little upload at 500. That’s what it was. I knew these things because they came to me in bursts, in flood and I remembered what it was like to recall moments in time and not just live in the present, and that was an extraordinary sensation, to have a history, to have memories.

I remembered little things, seemingly unimportant mundane things, nothing all too cherished and precious, but simple stuff. When I tried to jump to the fourth bar on the jungle gym and missed, ripping my brand-new jeans, tearing open my leg in the process. I told my sister not to tell my mom because I thought I would be in trouble for wrecking my new jeans. Then came the blood. Go tell mom I burst out.

Or the time my friend dropped by unexpectantly, in the era before devices, with a bottle of wine and a new record he had bought. It was a sunny afternoon, we were young, and we drank wine and listened to rock and roll, bouncing around my apartment like we had no care in the world. Whatever happened to him? I lost track. I lost that moment too, until now. That was the very first time I decided wine was okay. But what did it taste like? It was on my lips, it was a smell, a feeling of sophistication and refinement, like we had moved on to another part of life. It was, what was it?

Before I could actualize the taste, I relived getting stung by a bee, a bumblebee that I stepped on or near as I was playing soccer in my backyard, barefoot. The bee, obviously upset, stung me in the leg. And it hurt, momentarily, but not for too long. Soon I was back playing the imaginary big game in my backyard where if I struck the ball just right and in the right spot, it would be a goal. And that was a good day.

And if it was a bad day, I would get one of those monstrous migraines, the kind that made me vow to be the best person I could be as if somehow that was an antidote for never again enduring the endless vomiting and interminable pain in my eye. How I would live, how I would really live after this was done. I promised myself I really would.

And I thought of the word elixir, how its roots were in alchemy and early usage of the word was as representative of a substance able to turn objects into gold. We only now thought of it, if it all we thought of it, as the cure all. Still, it didn’t mean much, this elixir. It used to be different. There was no such thing. Some things couldn’t be cured. Rather than be cured, you had to learn to live with your ailments.

We used to really do things, make things, grow things; create. Now it was all done for us and our time was spent in amusement. When I was younger, was it even real that I remembering watering plants in the sunlight, the afternoon sun streaming in? Maybe I was making it all up. Were these even my memories?

We used to call what we did thinking because we didn’t know any better. I knew better, but there was a price for that, a price for all things, even perfection. I thought of wanting to get that perfect shot or trying to grow the tastiest Roma tomato. I thought of so many things, good and bad, and it just felt so nice to think even if they weren’t really my thoughts.

I heard the sounds before I saw where they were coming from, the multiple hovercrafts in the sky like a flock of birds. They landed near me. I knew I was surrounded, but I didn’t think to run.

The dark-skinned woman I saw earlier, emerged from one of the vehicles followed by men in special suits. She pointed out in my direction. I tried to smile but couldn’t muster one and neither did they. As they grabbed me, I remember sipping that wine for the first time and how I felt alive, much as I did now, the first time I was captured.