Ubiquity

It wasn't until the banging at the front of my apartment that things started to change. There was no tinkling of the Orwell tubes #9 I had selected as my auditory alert tone, no fisheye lens security display of the front porch. But then again, nothing was working like it was supposed to. Not since the first class of quarter blockers were released.

Three thumps, loud enough that something could've been physically banging on the impact-resistant, polyurethane, composite door. Three independent websites gave it 4 and 1/2 stars for safety.

It could've been a malfunctioning delivery drone.

I ordered Orluxa to pull up security camera-1 on all displays. The wall-wrap display was silent; nothing but slow-falling static. The C-pad, the handhelds, the VR headset—even my wrist display; static.

Ctrl-Alt-Dlt.

Against every instinct in my operating system, I gravitated towards the disruption.

"Excuse me?.."

It was the door!

"My coms seem to be malfunctioning," it said. "You think I could come in for a few?"

My first thought was that someone had hacked into my chimed audio-alert system and was playing clips of old social porn as a joke.

My index finger clicked an imaginary mouse.

Close.

Was there a person out there? An actual, in-the-flesh, person?! Couldn't be.

Unfollow.

Two more. This time they were more like taps. "Hello?.. Anybody in there?"

BLOCK!

The only visitor I'd had in the six years since moving in, other than drone deliveries of course, was a maintenance guy to check on the plumbing. And I knew he would be here months ahead of time. Triple redundancy alerts and announcements on all appointments; No surprises; Collective Policy. That was more than two years ago.

"Hello?..I'm sorry bro, you don't even know my name. It’s—"

"No!.." I barked, "Doors don't have names." Stupid.

The door snickered. "...Tyler. My name is Tyler."

"No one’s here!" I don't even know where it came from. I wish I could delete it. But I had to say something. Didn't I? I'm much better on Twitter.

"No one? Not even you?"

"What is this?! Who are you?!" I said. "Web service is down. There's nothing I can do." That was a little better.

"That's all right," said Tyler. "My coms are fine. I just wanted to introduce myself. You know how awkward it can be when you meet someone new.

I genuinely didn't know.

"Look, help me out here, I don't even know your name. You can't just leave me out here without knowing who I'm talking to. At LEAST tell me your name."

"I don't think so." A much better comment.

Click Like.

Tyler's voice, muffled behind the security door, had a calming effect. Odd. I felt foggy, slightly hypnotized by his words. I remember thinking "Tyler" was too short to be a Twitter handle, or Facebook identifier.

"C'mon, you can at least tell me your name, he said. "You got a name don't you?"

I knew not to respond. Every time he said something, I knew better. But it wasn't that easy. If I was reading this on my tablet, or my VR headset, I'd relish the chance to tell him to fuck off. But this was different. I mean the guy was right outside my front door. Blocking him was not an option.

"You still there?…"

"Sandman442." It just came out.

"What?"

"That's my name."

This time it was more of a chuckle. "No, I mean your real name. The one your parents gave you."

I knew then that a certified crazy person was behind the door. Aside from standing on my porch physically banging on my door like a madman, he expected me to tell him my real name, a name ONLY my parents have ever known? Well, my parents, AND the Collective data miners. Tyler had to be crazy, but he seemed to be doing better with these interactions than I was. To say I was unequipped would be an understatement of Collective proportions.

No one really knows when it happened.

Not exactly.

One day you just wake up realize no one talks anymore. 

Not really.

Not face to face.

As a matter of fact, most people nowadays have never had an actual conversation.

Not in person.

It's all tweets and likes, blogs and FaceTime, for as long as anyone can remember.

Eons of evolutionary progress undone in a single generation.

I guess—technically—people still talk. Occasionally. But what they're doing—these crude, awkward, exchanges—can’t be considered actual conversations. The painful, forced, social interactions nowadays are only a means to an end. A last resort. Only after every automated electronic failsafe has—well—failed, that these stumbling, in-person, exchanges take place.

So when, by some tragic set of events, you're forced to actually talk to the guy replacing your web receiver, or the lady rescuing your emotional-support gopher from a tree, don't expect it to be a charming affair.

Luckily, after the International E-Systems Administration instituted the mandatory triple redundancies on all Web Collective devices in the Forever Act of '52, failures resulting in a total break in web service almost never happen.

I guess it wasn't always like this.

The blog's of the elders are filled with fantastic tales of social gatherings where in-depth conversations took place. Where vigorous debate—even coed-courting rituals, often under the guise of consuming alcoholic beverages for the purposes of consummating a sexual exchange, were not only common place, but actively sought out. Could you imagine? They say there are still tombs, on the dark web, housing ancient YouTube clips and archaic reality shows. From a time when every deal and meeting, every relationship and rivalry came from face-to-face interactions. Footage of a time when there was no other way, left as abstract reminders of the way things used to be.

No one really believes the stories. Not in anyway that matters.

Still, some of those outdated urges of personal interaction have managed to survive, tucked away in the ancient reptilian parts of the human brain.

Social pornography has been a constant growth industry for the last thirty years. Actual videos of people talking and eating food together get millions of hits. Even the kinky shit, like hidden camera footage of people arguing about what to watch on Hulu, goes viral. The newer stuff—the knockoffs—are easy to spot. They're awkward. Hard to watch. If you want authenticity you have to go vintage. As a rule, anything filmed before 2010 is, most likely, a genuine conversation, and not some staged interaction between two Instagram models reciting pre-written dialogue on a Collective approved production.

The Collective is what became of the internet when the three pillars: Amazon, Facebook, and Google, decided to unite rather than compete for our attention. The Collective was created for OUR convenience. Well, that's what they said. They promised, we'd never have to leave our homes again.

Eventually almost no one ever did.

The best anyone can figure is that, somewhere along the way, we simply forgot how to interact with each other without a camera, a keyboard, or a HD-infinity screen in between us.

A vestigial tail severed by digital buffering.

Under the Collective, everything is automated. "From conception to cremation." That's their slogan.

Birthing, learning, dining, cleaning, driving, cooking, dying...it's all available. All automated.

Even the criminal justice system. The prosecutions, the trials, the sentencing, all done by refined Collective algorithms based on the latest sociological and psychological research.

This is where things got interesting.

For the most part, outright incarceration had been deemed archaic—an inefficient and costly act of a bygone era. For the most part. Studies showed that most crimes are best dealt with using a mixture of restorative justice and vigorous electroconvulsive therapy. If that doesn't work, a technological restriction is then imposed, limiting the offender's Web access. Most people beg for the shock therapy.

In rare cases, now that capital punishment is outlawed, incarceration still proves to be a necessary tool of a functioning society. Even the Collective can't get rid of it entirely. But citizen confinement is done quietly and without pleasure.

All the simulations show that true psychological change, of a lasting nature, takes time. The data consistently reveals that, no matter the crime, regardless of personality type, if deemed necessary, optimal rehabilitative conditioning takes a minimum of twenty-five years before an offender can be safely released back into society. 

Stealing a stick of gum, or killing your neighbor; if the algorithms recommend prison, you'll do twenty-five years—or a "quarter block," as the Collective P.R. agents call it.

They might use fancy programs to determine sentences and programing, but the actual incarceration practice hasn't changed much in the last fifty years. Other than the behavioral reprogramming courses, prisoners are still treated like prisoners. They're stacked on top of each other, fed poorly, and locked behind steel doors and razor wire to pretty much fend for themselves. Except now, under the Collective, they go in as a group to serve their time. Every new year there's a new class of quarter blockers. They go in together and—eventually—they graduate together.

For the last twenty-five years, while the rest of us sat in our apartments and had our food delivered by drones and fucked our 10th-series oculus rift VR systems until our private parts grew chapped and raw, these men and women—the 4,539 inmates of the first quarter block class—were the only human beings in Collective territory still evolving through struggle, still honing their skills of manipulation and critical thinking on the fly. The only people still talking to each other.

It's been 51days-13hrs-9min-44sec since the first quarter block was released. The class of 2185.

Every social media outlet has a little clock graphic somewhere on the screen ticking away the seconds until the next graduating class is released. It's 313days—10hrs-50mins-16secs until next graduation.

As the rest us grew softer, more fragile, under the Collective's influence, the quarter blockers grew hard and cunning. Behind bars they developed charisma and charm, while we grew awkward and frail. For generations we were grooming ourselves to be victims while they were evolving to be whatever they wanted.

None of the algorithms or simulations predicted the armies. How could they?

Analysts still debate whether it was a haphazard frenzied set of attacks by groups of roving quarter blockers or an orchestrated execution of collaborating "deconstruction cells."

Within hours of their release they began to attack the service grid.

In the last few decades, with most people permanently sequestered in their homes, violent crime has dropped nearly one hundred percent. The police force has become nothing more than a legion of cameras, with battalions of unarmed drones, and high definition audio recorders. Crime prevention is more about "spotting and documenting" than prevention by force. So when a group of ex-cons, armed with a few blunt objects, began to destroy the universal receivers in the middle of Washington DC, there was no one there to stop them. Sure, fleets of poli-drones buzzed around their heads flashing annoying hazard lights, while ubiquitous speakers barked orders to "HALT" and "RETURN TO YOUR DOMICILES IMMEDIATELY AND AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE BUREAU!" The state microphones recorded every second of these toothless, clawless, commands. And of course, the entire incident was broadcast on every media outlet on the Web. But there was no one was there to actually stop them

It wasn't until Web access to nearly 50,000 homes was disrupted that the Collective's "troops of dissuasion" were finally mobilized.

They haven't been seen since.

While the first deconstruction cell dismantled Collective receivers, in an attempt to disrupt surveillance, halt billing and payments, and to provoke a general response from the Collective, another cell: the Faces and Voices unit, was tasked with recruitment. Their approach was two pronged. The Voices were to access allies & sympathizers through social media, and the Faces were to—get this—“convert allies by in-flesh persuasion techniques."

A group of the most charismatic quarter blockers, both Faces and Voices, literally smooth talked their way onto lot 23. The Collective studio's filming department. With the assistance of the entire staff, who'd been told by the Voices that they'd been ordered to help compile a mock message of rebellion for Collective training purposes, the Faces began recording thoughtful, inspiring, charming, and surprisingly, well-made, recruitment videos to be uploaded to the major social media platforms.

"Join the WORLD!" was their slogan.

It went more than viral; it gained Web ubiquity.

We soon realized that the Web and the real world can be two very different places. Other than the social media craze, actual everyday life after graduation passed rather uneventfully.

Until the rolling blackouts started.

I streamed and downloaded like everybody else. I shared the links with my Collective-approved FriendZone social circle. Before the first graduation we'd built our circle up to seventy-six members. Last I checked we were down to twenty-two. Twenty two! If it wasn't for the dwindling FZ numbers, and intermittent loss of E-signal, I may have written the whole graduation day chaos off as a hoax.

I guess it's easy to dismiss conspiracy theories from the safety of your laptop. Someone pounding at your front door is a different story entirely.

"Sandman, you still there?..It's gettin' cold out here."

I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I wasn't thinking at all. Maybe I was just reacting. Maybe I was curious. Or maybe I simply couldn't resist.

"Tyler?.."

"Yeah?"

"The name's Cassius."

"Cassius, hmmm. I like it."

"Tyler, gimmie one second" or maybe I just wanted to talk to someone for once in my life without a fucking friend request. " Orluxa unlock primary door."

FZ circle members: 21