What happens to the historians when reality turns to fog beneath your fingertips? Where do they find themselves in this new, untethered society? Maybe they could have been useful, a kind of living server for memories, but they got the axe along with
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When the urge to disappear, truly disappear, overtook me, I’d lock myself away in my pod at the bottom of the bunker. Virtual world, blink of an eye, I was somewhere else entirely. There, I could run the old rituals, tap in to a synthetic version of
The dangers in my line of work had started to glare at me in ways I could no longer ignore, like the hot red indicator lights blinking through a fog at three a.m., warning of systems on the verge of catastrophe. My focus, not always razor-sharp, had
"Do you think the Singularity could ever exist?” they ask as I sit down at the dinner table, glass of wine in hand.
“Your question assumes it doesn’t,” I reply, taking a sip.
They look surprised. “So are you saying it does?”
“According to the lore am
I towelled off, shed the last clinging beads of shower water, and drifted upstairs. My skin felt new, but my brain was a swamp, tangled in a thicket of questions I couldn’t hack through. Reality, unreality: two mirrors, one always just out of reach.
I was never one for exercise, not understanding it had never made much sense to me. I mean, what was I training for? But the authorities didn’t care. Routine health checks and panoptic bio-surveillance made sure I kept up a baseline of physical fitne
The best days—the days that still flicker in my nervous system like a residue, long after they’re done and gone—were the ones where I disappeared into the work. Into the zone, as they called it, though it never felt like a zone to me. Time itself wou
I was deep in my zone, riding a current of volatile ideas, when the first flicker of annoyance crawled up my spine. Disruptions were like static in my ears; I didn’t crave silence so much as distance, absolute and uninterrupted. That’s why I’d built
I worked from home most days, let the silence roll over me like a heavy blanket, settling thick and muffled through every room. The noise of the outside world bled away until it was just me suspended in the hush, a smear of empty soundless air drippi
"Why did you start doing what you do now?”
They were up early again making something in the kitchen. No doubt to placate me after I walked off the other evening.
There was coffee freshly made so I thought I would play along for now. I stepped out ont
"Do you think The Singularity could ever really happen?” they asked while they kicked back with their feet up on my front porch.
“How do you know it hasn’t already?” I counter-offered.
“Do you not think we would know?”
“Well, if this was a simulatio
The idea of the 1% used to be a sort of punchline, a shadow in the corner that the most paranoid could pin their suspicions on, until it walked right out into the open and settled over everything. Then, as if someone just had to up the ante, there wa
I was starting to realise that, if you stripped away the bland, canned phrases of forced politeness, the only dialogues that felt remotely real were with a demon. If that. It was sort of amazing, really, how in a world where everyone was cocooned in
It was my scheduled return to the office, that once-a-month ritual that never made sense, yet persisted. The desk phone sat there, launching its piercing ring into the stale air, old technology still stubbornly alive amidst screens and cloud drives a
They sidled up next to me while I rested my feet on a tree stump and said, "You've seen them too, haven't you?" I already knew what they were talking about; the words formed a looping static over the scene, and I didn’t bother to puncture it with any
I inhaled from the pre-rolled cigarette laced with Premium 9.1.80, bracing for that sharp, crystalline rush. I shouldn’t have been smoking that toxic junk and letting it foul up my bedroom, but I needed space—a place to lie out and let the inside of
One moment I was filled with rage and confusion about my life, the next thing I know I'm playing cards, drinking whiskey, chuckling at their jokes (which Satan had an abundance of), and feeling like nothing else mattered.
Had they put something in my
“Do you like your job, Walter?”
My glass was about to reach my mouth when the question came out of nowhere. “Yes, I suppose,” I said.
“You suppose?”
“Well, it's like any other job. Sometimes it's interesting or even creative, other times it can be re
“Do you ever wonder where your life has gone?” I wished I could have one day without them around. It would have been blissful, but did I deserve it? Was it a fitting punishment for my sins, or did they just happen to be the catalyst for my suffering?
“The postmodern societal structure was a goddamn trap, you know? Insidious didn’t even cover it. It was built to coil around people and squeeze, keeping them locked in this endless loop of servitude and desperation. That’s the real trick of it—the wa
