Convergence is the New Black
A Black Mirror in a Silent Age
Joe stares at the bleeding old man in disbelief. All of the blood he found belonged to this man, and it was confusing to Joe to think that the man was still alive given the amount of blood he must have lost.
“Keep your voice down!” the old man says, half shouting half panting.
“Okay, okay. Are you…hurt?” Joe asks.
“You have eyes don’t you? I’m 70 and I’m bleeding. If my age doesn’t kill me, this gunshot wound surely will,” he says.
You gotta cherish sarcasm in the elderly.
“Now, have a seat and listen up. I’m glad you’re here. I have some very important information to give you before Satan comes for me,” the old man said.
Joe, still confused, obeyed. When a bloody old man tells you to sit, you listen.
“What do you have to tell me?” Joe asked.
“I have to tell you about the future. It’s going to hell in a handbasket, and this is how…”
***
About five minutes into this old man’s speech, Joe is beside himself. He learned that Archon was a secret information gathering agency. Basically a giant surveillance headquarters to monitor every living citizen. The agency collects the memories and life histories of all people through something called a “grain” — a small, grain shaped chip voluntarily(!) planted in people’s necks. Even babies have them. They are manufactured and monitored by Archon, marketed as a way for people to more easily keep up with the details of their everyday lives. They started being manufactured in 1970, and people took to them immediately. There’s not a single person that doesn’t have one now.
Archon also, as Joe was told, expanded their surveillance with something called the “Internet,” and “social media.” With these two things, Archon collected anything and everything people put “online” and compiled it into their filing systems. Every inch of Archon’s building was a living archive of people’s supposedly private lives.
Not only was Archon a manufacturing machine, but society was built around it. People strived to get jobs there, because it meant you’d made it, that you were giving back to the world around you.
“You couldn’t escape the ads on TV. Archon — creating a better future. What a crock of bullshit,” the old man said.
He told Joe that people would start off as janitors, and if they were lucky they would get promoted.
“I-I just got promoted today,” Joe stammered.
“Exactly,” the old man said.
But once they get promoted, people become literal machines to the system. On their first day initiation, they are abducted and implanted with a “super grain” that hard wires their brain to not question the motives of the company and promote it mindlessly to the public. They create and manufacture grains, and early victims would go on to create the Internet where social networks would thrive. In the handful of years before 2012, they even managed to create “smart” mobile devices that do everything you can imagine, including use the Internet.
***
“I was the assistant to the CEO, so I saw everything,” the old man said. “I didn’t have any qualms with the organization at first. The boss trusted me enough to not implant a super grain in me. He didn’t have one either, said he needed a sound mind to be able to run the agency.”
The old man pauses and gasps for air. He clutches his chest, but continues.
“But after the start of the millennium, I started to become concerned. My boss started to go mad with power, demanding employees to push harder for the public to be online. Things only got worse when sites like MySpace and Facebook took off. Then smartphones came…I still don’t know what half this stuff is! What is the point of it all?! What happened to wire telephones and written mail? I just —“
He stops again to cough, then swallows hard.
“People in the future are ignorant at best; they don’t realize how much we really know about them all,” he said. “And trust me, Archon knows everything.”
“So why didn’t you say anything? Didn’t you try to stop it?” Joe said.
“Of course I tried! But I was the CEO’s assistant, not the CEO. How do you think I got this?” He points to his bullet wound.
“So what happened?” Joe asked.
“I tried to tell people what I knew, that what was happening here was wrong. But these poor employees, their brains are wired to ignore any such arguments. It was all for naught, though, because one of the bastards reported me using one of those damn grains,” he explained.
“So they cornered me, and I tried to run, but 70-year-old legs can only take you so far. But, little did they know, the world was ending.”
“What do you mean?” Joe asked.
“I mean, while they were chasing me outside, the building was shutting down. It turns out there is a such thing as information overload. Archon had collected too much information to contain in its archives. People’s constant online updating caused every computer in the building to crash and overheat. In short, the web imploded, and the building exploded. The whole web shut down, and people’s grains, computers, and smartphones stopped working.”
“Wow. Why would anyone let this happen?” Joe shook his head.
“I don’t know. Before I transported myself here using this time travel button I created, the building was set to explode, and the people who weren’t in the building were killing each other and destroying anything in sight. They couldn’t handle not having access to the technology they’d shaped their lives around…”
The old man’s voice waned. He was fading fast now. Joe ran over to shake him.
“H-hey! Stay with me, man. Why are you telling me all this? What can I do?”
“What you can do, son,” he coughs, “is take this device from me. I traveled back here in a panic, to escape the apocalypse, but I hoped I’d find someone like you here. Take this button and use it how you see fit. Look for me here, in 1972, and do one thing.”
“What?” Joe asks, gripping the old man, trying to keep him conscious.
“Find me and tell me everything I just told you. Get to me early, so I can stop the creation of the web. It’s the only way we can save the future!”
The old man keels over, dead.