#invasive technology

There he is, the guy who has been trying to kill you. His gun is drawn and aimed at you. You see his eyes glaze over with a software update. He fires anyway. He misses. You fumble for your own sidearm but the computer in your brain chirps, “I’ve detected a high source of stress and anxiety, I’ve taken the liberty of removing it.” The killer is now a blurry mess of mismatched pixels. You fire anyway and miss.

The killer fires again. You dodge behind a dumpster and lean around it, but just as you do, 74% of your field of vision is suddenly occluded with a large pop-up ad for UndreXXX, an AI company that specializes in generating life-like explicit pornography of celebrities and individuals. You duck back behind the dumpster as gunfire erupts once more.

“There’s no—” the killer tries to say, but you can’t hear over the moaning of the ad’s computer-generated version of an actress whose real-life counterpart doesn’t turn 18 for another 3 months. You aim the gun around the corner, whisper a quiet prayer, and pull the trigger until the gun’s slide locks back.

You lean around the dumpster and see him lying there in a pixelated mess, the browns and grays and blacks of the little shapes slowly being replaced with red ones. “Who hired you?” you demand. The killer promises to tell you if you’ll stop the bleeding. But you can’t find the wound in the mess of jumbled squares. You feel around for the gunshot wound to put pressure on it. Your hands become slick with something warm and vaguely sticky.

“I’m dying,” the man groans, but now you can’t hear anything over the jaunty little tunes of ska music blasting in your ears. Your computer tells you that it’s to help regulate the anxiety that it is detecting in your system. You swallow against the sharp, metallic smell of blood and feces as the killer’s bowels release when he dies in your arms. But now all you can smell is a medium-rare steak with a hint of barbeque sauce and the faint tones of a blooming onion and honey mustard. Your computer tells you the unpleasant smell has been replaced with one you’ve been registered as enjoying, but you wonder if you’ll ever be able to eat at that steakhouse again without thinking about this moment.

I blame my current media consumption. Rewatching Andor. Rereading the hunger games and reading its subsequent prequels. Rewatching Anon. Binging Leverage and Person of Interest. Hunting down old copies of Uglies and Maximum Ride. Rewatching Equilibrium. Going through old research for cyberpunk and solarpunk worlds I built for me.

I feel a huge dissatisfaction with the world. While not as extreme as the dystopian worlds above, so many tiny injustices piling up. A 50 hour work week just to make ends meet. Pausing a movie to catch a detail but only seeing an ad. Watching multiple sources pull different details out of context to highlight their narrative. A new system at work to “maximize oversight”. Another company mining my data.

And unlike most of the dystopias, there is no one tyrannical entity behind it all. A single place to focus my fury. It’s not just an Evil Corporation out to make maximum profits. It’s not a Totalitarian Government determined to control a populous.

It is multiple corporations trying to make a profit. It is different factions of government all trying to get their agenda pushed. It is all these different companies and parties and individuals scrambling for power and control and safety.

I just want to run away from it all.

When I was younger, I wanted the power to change the world. I wanted to be the Chosen One; to defeat a Great Evil and stop all the wrongs. I sought out ways to increase my power and influence, sure I would use them for the good and safety of everyone.

Which is exactly how you become the Great Evil that must be defeated.

Now I just want enough money and enough power to be left alone. Enough influence to get the things I need.

I see no way to achieve this in the world I currently live in. I want the powers that be to leave me alone. Yet in their version of the world, that is a threat. Anyone or anything outside of their sphere of influence, outside of their grasp, is a danger to the systems that currently hold our world in place.

There’s no one place to concentrate the fight, to rebel against. So many people say pick one thing and fight that. But there are too many things I care deeply for. Too many injustices to push back against. But that just plays into their hands. They want me hopeless. They want me overwhelmed. They want me to be apathetic and inactive.

I just need to find a way forward.