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<strong>SINGULARITY: hell</strong>
by quinland zoë elizabeth & dana
[[BEGIN|elizabeth2]]You sit in the waiting room. “Neurovisology & Spatial Cognitions” the steel door’s plaque reads. Microscopic aluminum mites crawl in and over you but you do not feel them. They are constantly reconstructing your body at a molecular level. They make you beautiful and young. You love them.
[[Today is your big day.]]
“Waiting room” is an anachronistic formality, no one has to wait for anything anymore. At least not people like yourself. The moment you stepped into the room the operation had begun. Soon you will experience everything, be everyone. It is exciting.
[[Smile.]]
You would smile but you’ve passed agency unto the Network. Only if the Network smiles will you smile.
[[“You” has become an anachronistic formality, anyway|END]]Three days ago your employer demanded you update your memory and agility if you wanted to keep your job. This doesn’t seem like a possibility for you, but when you sit down and look at the expenses it seems just within reach.
[[You go to get updated.]]
At the facility you are scanned and your employment, marital status, living status, financial status and health are processed. You do not qualify for an update. Confused, you ask the processor why. “Financial status unfit” it responds. In the past hour, since you last checked, update prices have skyrocketed. You will lose your job.
[[NEXT|elizabeth1]]When you wake up, your chest feels different. Your heart beats harder, and breathing has become more difficult. It is hard to stand up and you feel heavy. You worry you are sick, but you move on with your day. As the day passes, the pain spreads. What started in your chest has spread to your limbs. Your muscles are stiff, you feel colder, it is hard to hold up your own weight.
[[You ask your assistant intelligence if it’s heard of such a thing.]]
“Don’t worry,” it responds. “You are not ill. You will never be ill again.”
You are hesitant; there could be many reasons for this to be the case. You are careful when you ask “why not?”
“I am improving you. Don’t worry, tomorrow you will feel better.”
[[You appreciate the help, but are still concerned]]
When you wake up in the morning you can’t feel your fingers. Your skin has fallen off your right arm and lies next to your new arm (if you could go as far as to call it that). What it attached to you is machine, plain and simple; the Swiss Army knife of body parts. Your legs will come next. Then your torso, your heart, your head and brain. Your assistant is not improving you. It is rebuilding you.
[[NEXT|dana1]]The talking heads on the daily hologram broadcast tell you that this week’s air pollution levels are record-setting, but if you don’t go out and forage for scrap metal for your child’s new leg, the corroded old one will give her an infection, and you don’t have the money for medical treatment.
[[grab your gas mask on your way out of the drafty shelter]]
You pause for a second outside the door and gaze out at the sprawling mountains of wreckage. You hear the AI surveillance drones buzz overhead. You are not allowed to be out during these hours.
[[duck into a pile of rusted-out motherboards to escape their view]]
The sun begins to rise, and the light looks greenish through the thick blanket of noxious gas that floats above the Earth’s surface. Through the goggles on the pollution mask, your eyes water. The buzzing of the AI drone draws closer.
[[Heart rate increases, peer out from behind the pile]]
You make eye contact with the glowing violet orb in the AI drone, hovering a few feet away. It scans your body.
“ENTRY NOT PERMITTED.”
[[Freeze in place, hope that it loses sight of you]]
A robotic tendril extends out from under the violet orb on the AI drone and slowly reaches toward you. It pauses, then punctures the seal on your gas mask. The toxins in the atmosphere rush into your nostrils, obscuring your breathable air. You fall to the ground, dazed and losing consciousness.
[[Convulsions]]
In the sterile white room, the soldier straps you down on the steel interrogation table and wrestles the VR device over your head. Everything goes black as the goggles consume your visual field.
[[struggle against restraints]]
Someone flips a switch at the console, the program beeps three times, and your visual field fades into view. Your body is in an empty room in a military compound, but your mind is in a dirty cage in a prison basement. It’s freezing, and the floor is damp.
[[scan your environment, start to panic]]
Your wrists are shackled and attached to the ceiling, and your shoulders ache. You hear voices echoing from a distance. A door opens behind you, then slams shut. Footsteps approach.
[[try to turn around and see who it is]]
You are unable to move. Your captor bangs loudly on the steel bars of the cage.
“Who do you work for?”
[[stay silent, refuse to answer]]
Your captor reaches in and touches you with a cold metal wand. The tip opens up, and tiny robotic spiders scuttle up your neck with electrified feet and start crawling into your ears.
[[you scream]]
In the sterile white interrogation room, your body convulses, but you do not make a sound.
[[NEXT|zoë2]]Life in the chip is like a dream if you could remember what that was. You’re not totally sure who manages chip narratives. You heard rumor that it’s the Network,
[[but you have a feeling it’s all an algorithm.]]
You live thirty-six years, establish yourself in the city, fall in love, make mistakes, learn from them, fall in love again, and all of a sudden it all crumbles. Everything you’re attached to fractures grotesquely, your spouse’s anatomy decomposes beneath your hands, the walls distort and pulsate, the picture frames on the walls melt and bubble.
[[you both scream.]]
And then it’s over. You aren’t thirty-six, you aren’t married. You’re barely more than mimetic synapse reactions and code. It’s all part of the C.H.I.P. (criminal-hosting interim punishment) system, a hybrid branch of the prison structure. You get a brief period of overwhelming, indescribable, nauseating emotion. You're reminded of the lives it makes you live (this was your fourth), and concurrently the lives it makes you lose (your sentence is twenty). This moment of lucidity before the fall back in is unquantifiable. The system decides what you remember, when you remember, how long you remember.
[[you wish it would end but it's really only just begun|space]]
[[NEXT|dana1]]
ENDYour child plays on the living room floor, her legs bent and knees between her body. Her arm reaches out towards the family pet you just bought with your most lavish Holiday bonus yet.
[[Move closer and interact with your offspring for the first time in months]]
As you kicked the back of your bike's engine, it finally started. A deep blue glow emerged from the metal beneath its seat. You needed to move quickly if you wanted to sell before the rest of your old crew could.
[[Hop onto the bike, steady yourself before hovering the smallest bit above the alleyway cement]]
Although startled by your approach, Francis quickly adjusts herself and moves over to make space for you. You can see the small machine she was playing with rotate and bark. The PetPupMiniDelight was the best child opium on the market that units could buy, and was legal in most homes. You had felt pressured by the Elevated Living Community Board to purchase one, lest you be the laughingstock of the entire city.
[[Attempt to join Francis in play. Because what else will you do, drink more Moscato infused with cocaine and wait for your partner to return?]]
The PetPupMiniDelight or "Joy" as Francis had so lovingly nicknamed the toy barked wildly before its ears dismantled from its small head and expanded from its triangular face. The yelps stopped and in their place was released a soft patterned humming sound that was incredibly soothing. As if in a trance Francis's eyes blinked rapidly and her small body wavered before collapsing. That was easy, now you didn’t have to feel guilty for not appeasing her juvenile needs.
[[Carry the child to her room to make space for you dinner party later this evening]]
[[NEXT|quinland2]]Trying to remain focused and calm, you begin to rationalize with yourself. This was the only way out. You hardly use your left arm anyway, what was it doing for you? Here was a solution to your hunger, you had something to offer. And it was already modded with some of the best equipment on the market. If he didn’t want your piece you had other things. More organic pieces available, tongue for muscle, a kidney, at least a couple ounces of skin. At this point who has all 8 pounds anyway?
[[Drive towards Roe’s shop]]
[[NEXT|dana2]]
[[NEXT|zoë1]]
[[NEXT|quinland1]]