Chapter Six — and the devil died screaming
Ultra-High Book One: A cyberpunk / dystopian fantasy
“Do you enjoy your work, Walter?”
My glass was halfway to being to my mouth at this point, and I was not sure where this line of questioning was going to go “yes, I suppose.”
“Suppose?”
“Well, it’s like any other job at times it can be interesting even creative, and at other times it can be downright boring but, generally speaking, I enjoy it.”
“What do you enjoy about it?”
This time, the whiskey had reached my lips, and as I swirled the brown liquid around my mouth, allowing it to settle into an embrace with my taste buds, I pondered for a while.
“Well, I take the design code and construct reality for a large part of the worlds surviving population. Knowing people are living in and experiencing my creation as their world is a pretty awesome feeling.”
“You feel like a god?”
“Not exactly that, although there are many that do.”
“So, what do you find boring?”
“The 5 million spreadsheets and reports I have to fill out every month, the bureaucracy and the politics, even when very few people who live between realities ever go in the office. I mean who is reading this shit. I thought that after the last great war all of this would have stopped, hell I thought work would have stopped, after all, what is the point now.”
“Well, you’re keeping people safe from harm,” they said with an evil glow “And what is the book you are writing about?”
“Well, that’s not for work.”
“Yes, I know that, but you spend as much time as you can be glued to that keyboard on your tablet thingy pounding away, what are you writing?”
“Well, it’s more than a book it’s an app about the history of AI and data science and the technological influence big business took in replacing politics and religion. The idea is to educate people about the persuasive propaganda and language they use to manipulate us into their way of thinking and how it led to where we have now, complete control and domination of even the very thoughts and health of the citizens of this world.”
“Oh, so you’re a bleeding hearts liberal.”
“Do you want me to staple your fucking chin to the floor and blow out your brains again?” I was standing up before I knew it
“No, no, Walter calm down I am only teasing. But really why are you writing this book app thingy about that anyway? I mean there is no one in reality to read it.”
“I don’t fucking know. I have a few reasons, but I have been doing this for some time and I am a bit of an expert in the history of behavioural architectures and neuromarketing. I have studied sociology, linguistics, and persuasive language patterns, the war on information and facts, the tactics of propaganda machines, and the technological and psychological warfare used in the lead-up to the big collapse. I suppose I became obsessed about learning the tricks that the big business and the media used to entice people in and persuade them to buy things that they did not even really need, and then worse to trust them” I took a breath, realising I was still standing I sat back down on my porch chair and continued “I see it every day in the realities I create for the network not just in my job but on the mobile devices, social networks, digital TV, internet, car radio, on the street boards, the hologram messages, and double-dip chip incentives and it drives me mad that society is, even in Ultra-High-Meta, still sleepwalking into being slaves of big business. It is history repeating itself, but in a more controlled way and playing into the arms of the attention economy matrix of the network”
I looked at their expressionless face, maybe I was boring them as they had me, before I continued my ramblings “We all know that big business is running the show these days, that is to say, big tech and the techno-gods as religion used to, especially since the collapse, which they, or you, probably caused. Consumerism has again been engineered into a fanatical obsession of the masses and they don’t even know why they are buying the things they are buying, they don’t even know the things they are buying aren’t real and they aren’t living in reality, but they are obsessed and addicted and manipulated to do so by the network. Their addictions were fuelled and controlled and fought over by marketing psychologists and psychopathic business people around the world, who themselves, no doubt, were addicted to their own form of consumerism or narcotic lifestyle. All of us were being controlled then by the few that manipulated the world from the ivory towers of protection and corruption. Right to the point of convincing the masses to step into those pods just before the big collapse. The day the conspiracy theorist and religionists all said was coming but the consumers of the world ignored choosing instead to trust the techno gods. It came, and it went, and it left millions of dead in its wake only leaving those that listened to the techno gods, the addicted consumers and non-believers behind in their pods to become slaves to our new masters.”
I paused for a moment to take another sip of my drink. Ensuring that they were losing the will to live as I had done on every one of their tirades “You see if people knew and understood what controlling psychological language, techniques, and technology that big business, politicians and in their day the clergy used on people they could learn to protect themselves from it and even use some of the techniques themselves to spread a different message, one of positive reinforcement of a different healthier way of life. Even in Ultra-High they could learn to protect themselves, even with all the coercive manipulation technology to hand.”
“And are you the guy to teach them?”
“Don’t know, but should that stop me trying?”
“No, but in my experience, being the one to question the status quo didn’t turn out so well for me.”
“Well, maybe not, but does that mean you think you should never have asked the question?”
It was Satan’s turn to pause with drink almost mid-flow at their lips. I lit a cigarette awaiting their answer, as I did I couldn’t help but think I was starting to enjoy these conversations with the dark one, but I had to remind myself that they were the father of the lie, so I needed to make sure I did not let my guard down around them. The question remained why were they still there, surely there were more exciting people they could be intruding upon. It was a few seconds of mindless wittering inside my own head before I realised that they had been talking the entire time. As I zoned back into listening consciousness, all I heard was “and I don’t think it was really fair to do, do you?” as they looked at me expectantly.
They sat there just staring at me, waiting for my answer.
An uneasy few moments passed. I just looked at them and shrugged. I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t about to agree with the devil when I hadn’t heard what they had just said, after all despite all their rhetoric they were still the devil, and if all accounts are true, they were a very gifted liar.
But they knew I had not been listening or, at least, they should have. It doesn’t take a spiritual being or dark overlord to figure that out, it is just primary body language. But they didn’t seem too bothered. Almost as if they had counted on it, which made me more suspicious as to what they had been saying.
I lit another cigarette, they were still staring at me, I just shrugged again and looked away. The air was getting a little chilly.
Since the devil had been there, the distractions had gotten more frequent, but I was kind of glad of the company. When others were working from home surrounded by their AI families, partner bots, fake husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, and fake kids filling their fake faces with fake lard and sitting zombified in front of the T watching adverts and commands of big business, I was at home with the devil. I was having philosophical debates and conversations and often the best home-cooked meals I had ever had. It almost made the day of work bearable knowing I had that to go back upstairs into reality too. Knowing I had something more than others. But what was wrong with me? What the hell was I doing? And why the hell were they still here? Were they even real or was I suffering some kind of psychosis or even in reality anymore?
I had the devil on my front porch, sipping my whiskey and smoking my cigarettes like we were best buddies. And it was the fricking devil. And I hated the fucking devil and everything they stood for. Everything they had been responsible for and everything they had done. That was the entire reason I had killed them on that fateful day. The reason I had put the filthy barrel of my shotgun finally in their mouth, after the sickening things I had done to them, I blew their fucking brains out. I hated them. But maybe it shouldn’t have been them that I was blaming, after all, maybe I should have been looking in another direction. Or was that just what they now wanted me to think?
I turned and looked at them. They were looking at me with sadness in their eyes as though they had read my every thought. They looked at me, as tears rolled down whatever was on their face, “it wasn’t all me….” It was all they could say, and we sat in silence for the rest of that evening.
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This is a live cyberpunk / dystopian fantasy book writing project. Copyright is protected. It is a first rough draft so I would love to hear any feedback from readers. When the book is launched all that are signed up for this to my mailing list on the website below you will be sent a free Kindle copy of the book as a thank you for subscribing.
This project is part of the writing projects from my site sleeplessdystopian.com
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Image created, and designed by me
