Computers Revolution byAna Laura Marcet Year 2003
Psychology had made such a great progress, toward places still ambivalent and controversial, in a way that every persuasion, empathy or intuition device led to a crisis of values. While solidarity, nature and happiness hadn’t actually changed, the process used was so powerful that they could assert that something was white as it could be black, to give an example.
Since imagination had crossed all frontiers, with the fall of the Catholic Religion, B. Lord’s idea of the equality of both human and divine power, due to God’s inability to create whatever was in the human imagination power, to the limited creation of God, compared with the unlimited human imagination, had led to an uncertainty and to a sense of omnipotence, which was arrested by the alien attack in 2034.
Then came the identification of good and evil as a single entity, constructive destruction, those Philosophy, Psychology and Medicine books published in the last few decades, which seemed to carry a pluralism of meaning that the factions in power had been able to dominate, in order to obtain their own selfish desires.
Maybe it was only one meaning what mankind needed – to believe again in one chance, to get away from the ambiguity of meaning.
Since the crisis, in 2048, of the settled values: Nationalism, Government, State, etc., the attack from Planet F had ended up unraveling what would be called Organized Communist Anarchism.
What led to the world to divide itself into what was called nations, which were almost driven to personification, was defined by modern Psychology as manipulation from the factions in power, an enlargement of the natural need for privacy that exists in every human and animal, each time becoming broader and more hermetic. Not only did this not protect the diversity of cultures, but also it had even caused the most atrocious wars in history. It was this way that every government invented a problem and sowed the seed of hatred, when it felt threatened or when he wanted a source of wealth only present in the hands of a neighboring country. They encouraged people to become so-called "heroes" in the name of what they regarded as loyalty and fidelity to their nation, when this was nothing more than an aberrant mechanism to pursue selfish ends. If needed, a nation would kill their own people and say that the enemy was to blame.
Only an alien attack could show that the Earth was one, and everyone could join for mankind and forget their differences for a while. Nature was everyone’s now.
This privacy, so necessary, did not include deception from governments. F. Brink’s theory suggested the human need of possession and identification should go along with patterns other than the possession of nature (faction in power of manufactured goods had used this discovery to take advantage of the situation and rule the world). The meaning of freedom was now broader because of the help of F. Glin: whatever the government in power was, humanity wouldn’t be free. The independence from a monarchy, government or association didn’t mean a breaking of chains, only a change of "master".
People still needed a guide, in a lesser level: the greater the power, the farther humankind would be from finding a communion with their own (except, of course, the power of consumption, so healthy and indispensable for humankind). Thus, humankind, in a "non-hierarchic" way, led the way to the association and communion of people, in agreement with categories of intelligence and fitness for consumption. The emptiness brought on by the fall of old ideals led to their transference to mass consumption; ideals had changed vehicles but they were still alive.
Jan 7th, 2058.
The kettle was whistling, while Ernesto included the last pictures to the appendix of his new manual – "Anatomic Machines".
Absorbed in their contemplation, he couldn’t hear his eight-year-old daughter, who was telling him, with her sharp voice, that he was needed there, in the outside world: to prepare her tea and, in an hour, have her school uniform ready.
Things had gotten more complicated since his wife had left him to stay with that businessman from Micronet.
Ernesto’s persistence in creating his own cybernetic models, going to any lengths, didn’t help to the development and growth of IPSA Co. and of the current society models.
The company could not understand or tolerate that Ernesto, an inefficient and awkward employee, had carelessly mixed the main programs, creating a file that could excite and sensitize any human being and make him donate a percentage of his capital, in accordance to his income.
Any Internet user, potential client, was given, as soon as he logged in, a rational explanation of the hunger that was in the world, and how easy it was to help if every citizen donated 1% of his income. Thus, the Company lost thousands of dollars in one month only. Each second that the empathic machine was in the users’ hearts, the Company could not fulfill its plans, nor could it get the profits that came from a potential client on the net.
IPSA thought Ernesto had mistakenly used the inverted application reports instead of the books he had to file.
But Ernesto couldn’t care less about personal profit or an unlimited ambition for the Company.
A week later Ernesto received a notice to leave the job. From that moment on, he would be watched so that he would not work on any project that would harm society.
After being let go, tragedy struck. His wife, who, as she had concluded, had married him for his money, had never supported her husband’s revolutionary ideas, opposed to common welfare. Not used to the lack of comfort, it didn’t take her too long to recover her former position by means of one of the richest managers, leaving her daughter, Winnie, in her husband’s care. Ernesto’s imagination and resources were completely useless when he had to explain to his daughter why her mother had left.
While Ernesto was watching his last B233 model, a chilling idea suddenly crossed his mind. It happened when he heard Winnie’s crying and the whistling kettle.
"Daddy, hurry, the ’ettle’s whistling", as she used to say in a soft sad voice ever since her mother left. "Isn’t mum taking me to school today?"
"No, baby. She has to work far for now."
It was these words that Ernesto listened to each day. But now he had another concern – he remembered he had left the main models at IPSA.
There was 345 Psychology manuals, including Jung, Gestalt, Krantz, Nerms, Gigs dating since 1900 to 2050 and their pragmatic use, the 123 records of "Psychology Applied to Machines", that he discovered only when he inserted that microchip into his own PC, after getting a degree in Neuropsychiatry. Then the idea fit in as if it were a perfect destiny. His five specializations had such a clear and good purpose matching his passion in every enterprise he set – to create something unique that would save the world from so much selfishness and destruction.
But his greatest challenge was to pretend to be an unresourceful, useless and absent minded man, lest he were deported. He failed, though. Those users who he secretly transmitted the info had been committed to a mental institution, as they were being influenced by other PC they were connected to. An accusation presented by a relative of one of the institutionalized patients gave way to Ernesto’s firing.
How could it be that five of his disks were still at IPSA?? When he was packing up to leave, on his last day of work before he received the notice, the nanny called, saying that his daughter had a terrible headache and couldn’t stop crying. Ernesto let go of everything and hurried out of the office.
He arrived home with a heavy feeling in his chest, which he had already felt before, although he had preferred not thinking about it as it made no rational sense. He dismissed it as fatherly concern and stress.
Anyway, when he opened the door, the little girl looked guiltily at him, thinking that she had eaten too much of the candy brought by her uncle Wen. Despite that, to get some piece of mind, he decided to have some tests had on her in the hospital the following week.
Being the single father of a child wasn’t an easy task, especially if the nannies didn’t seem to encourage his daughter’s creativity, so important to him. He usually fired them without enough time to cover that area.
Jan 7th, 2058
Luis had been a lucky man. Not only because for having been employed by a company of such prestige, but also because he had been given the office that belonged to that controversial former employee that had disappointed the company so much.
He was probably an idiot and a social misfit that spent his time creating games and some funny stuff, since it was so little what on could put his creativity on in a place such as this.
Luis had always wanted to be creative enough to put the managers and CEOs in his pocket and to promote ideas which looked beneficial to the common welfare, when they were actually for his own profit.
As his old master Charles used to say, ambition without ideas make no sense and ideas without ambition are dead, but he liked ambition better, because ideas could be stolen but ambition could not.
In his new office, Luis opened one of the drawers. Nothing appeared to have been touched. There was dust, some unimportant notes, a PC with no relevant information in its hard disk and, in the bottom drawer, some disks, probable some pictures of naked girls or something useless. While a smile formed in his face, along with a disinterested malicious expression, he put the disks in his pocket. At 7 PM, after finishing working on something that didn’t appealed to him at all, he looked up to the clock, he took his briefcase and said goodbye to his fellow partners.
It had been a hard day of work. It was only the first and he could see many more like that on the way – scheduling what his workmates had to check on, selling. It looked like that the only way to go was so narrow and sharp that he wanted out of it, but he couldn’t step aside, because he’d fall from a precipice, and the couldn’t move forward, as he was on the last step of the stairs and the door had a padlock on it. He used that analogy to describe his current situation and the way he felt, although he wasn’t sure he could describe it with words accurately.
At home loneliness, and an empty fridge, awaited. With no intentions to cook, he pressed a button on the PC keyboard and five minutes later he opened the door to the takeout delivery guy. Then, in the absolute silence of his room, he picked the disks up and prepared to watch some cybernetic girls.
When he opened the first file, his amazement couldn’t be higher. It was an index showing a number of psychology manual.
That was weird, he couldn’t focus, a thousand ideas concerning his future crossed his mind, so it was a bad time to start reading, and his eyes were heavy. He decided to close the file.
Tiredness, an uncertainty that had been suffocating him the week before, erased all thoughts from his mind, only leaving the desire to leave all worries. It had prevented him from seriously thinking about his future, but also it encouraged him to react. As he used to do before going to sleep, he listened to the messages in the answering machine. He heard the voice of a manager from USER Company, where he had applied for a job months before. Then his mind started to wander.
His job at IPSA wasn’t good for him; he would never fit in in the project he had been commissioned with. He would quit the following day, and then he would apply to sales and supervision management of the new portable PCs, the best at watching the users’ daily activities; there were then talking notebooks, which reminded the user what he had to do or what he would need for a business or personal date, among many other programmable functions. USER Company had a project on programming in which the most efficient employees could show an annual market project. It was this that had caught his attention mostly, convincing him to fill a form to apply to the job.
All that suited his purposes and interested him. The decision was taken.
Early the next day, he went to IPSA to give notice of his resignation and, as he had been employed the day before, he decided to talk to his manager in person.
He then headed to USER and, due to his qualifications and profile, he was incorporated into the company, employed in the sales department.
Jan 8th, 2058
Ernesto woke up really early the following morning, in order to get back the disks from his old desk at IPSA. A moment later, he was about to leave in his old blue Volkswagen when, as he opened the door, he found himself face to face with his wife’s lawyer, Andrew Mc Carty. As before, they silently entered the studio so Ernesto’s daughter wouldn’t know what was happening.
The lawyer started the ceremonial ritual of reading his wife’s rights, which always were greater than his; all the lies she had said didn’t seem to have an end. After two endless hours with the insistent lawyer, he could come to an agreement with him.
His mind was far from that thorny issue already, all he wanted was his daughter not to suffer from it. In his car, he was able, for a while, to forget what had just happened, and focus on the disks. He didn’t think his former workmates would steal his disks, as they weren’t interested in his ideas, which lacked common sense – such was the expression they used when referring his investigations. However, he felt a strange fear.
When he got to the office he had to make up an excuse to get in. He had been told not to use any confidential information belonging to the company, under any circumstance. The punishment for disobeying that order was twenty years of isolation from his family and deprivation of his opinion, if he were to use any program against society.
Saying that he had forgotten some disks that contained his daughter’s pictures and postcards was what first came to his mind. Nobody seemed to care, as they didn’t feel any congeniality towards him after he made the company lose so much money.
Not without an alienated and grim expression on his face, caused by the employees’ indifference toward him, he headed toward his office with a decided, although sorrowful pace, and opened the last drawer. It was empty, and not one of the employees cared to tell him who had been in the office for one day and then disappeared. With great effort, he hid his worry, asked again if anyone had cleaned the room or been to it in his absence, but his message kept receiving the same indifference, and no one would bother to say a word.
After all, no one knew about the information in those disks, what he had been working on for the last ten years of his life, his only hope was that the few brains that could resist the consumerist complex could change the course of history.
He recalled that, when he was young, he used to feel such harmony and be so proud of mankind, but everything changed one day. Machines recited the eleventh lesson of Plato’s works. No book was banned, everyone was in complete freedom to read them and use them in the rational machine. Inside him, however, an unquenchable seed of hope kept on growing and thus started realizing that something was wrong – what he expected from mankind was not the same that mankind expected from him.
Those disks contained formulae with the power to create a revolution in both human and cybernetic intelligence. Inclined toward hope, these formulae could lean any thought away from consumerism, a dark, sick, full of guilt and irrational feeling, thanks to techniques discovered by the modern psychology of persuasion.
However, there was no way someone could use this information without his knowledge, as he had designed a system, which could watch the information managed in all IPSA PCs and find the passwords for all employees’ computers at IPSA and at their own homes too.
Kevin, Weston, Brian. He mainly suspected them. He arrived home and hacked into their PCs, he then revised the contents of all forty employees’ PCs. He was exhausted and lost. The disks didn’t seem to be in their possession, there was nothing in those computers but videogames, women and porn. Just in case he hacked into all PCs at the office but it was futile, he found nothing. It was as if the disks had been swallowed by the earth’s very core.
He started to worry, but he couldn’t think of anything he could do. He actually believed that the disks had been disposed of as any of Ernesto’s ideas was regarded as inefficient. He was lucky that his works were looked down on in a way that they would not be thought as dangerous, as he had worked with the utmost discretion. During all his years of work at the Company, he had posed as a clumsy employee that, with no harm intended, had distractedly combined the persuasion argument B2 with a Marxism book.
The thought that the material had been burnt or destroyed didn’t convince him either. In the future, he had to find a way to get a place in a company where he could cast the doubt undetected.
In his dreams the same image appeared. He was trying to show a great garden he had found in a protected, but nearby place. It was full of the most colorful flowers and, facing it, there were blind people, deprived of the sense of smell, who he took by the hand toward that paradise. He then woke up and remembered his dream – all those people could hear him, so he could the wonderful smell and landscape; such was his life’s purpose.
Ernesto was immersed in that thought, about fate of his disks, when he heard a little voice coming from the bathroom.
"Daddy, daddy. It hurts sooo much". That was the last he heard from the little girl.
The sound of the ambulance mixed with the confusion and alienation Ernesto felt after seeing his daughter unconscious in the bathroom.
"An undetected brain tumor," said the doctor. "The child is in a coma. Only a miracle can save her now."
Luis headed to his new office. He had forgotten the disks on the bedside table but it didn’t matter now. He was focused on his contract with USER and on the portable PCs.
The Company CEO seemed open to new ideas. He was a fool, who had won millions not out a boundless ambition, but because he was lucky enough to have loyal employees and not skillful worms, who could have ruined him and who, according to Luis’s first impression, would leave him in a position that man would fail to solve. Luis had first tried to discover if that man did not keep a dagger under his cloak to stab people on their backs and a starved crocodile guarding his money.
If things went as expected, the next day he would be working on the design of speech for portable PCs, a month later he would get shares in the Company’s capital and a year from now he might be sunbathing on a beach while his employees would make the report on those useless PCs.
The stress exhausted him; he’d rest for the remainder of the day and then would think sooner or later of a way to boycott the company. He needed loyal employees, and a project either created or stolen by him. He didn’t trust himself to create anything, though, or to be able to compete with the cybernetics experts.
His ideas had the same objective, to find something that could get more money at lesser costs. But how? If he was no match for Greenich, Microtech; if he could find a program, something unique, and keep the copyrights, he wouldn’t think anymore of the money he owed to his brother-in-law, of that damn business with the Werths, and of his legal problems of fraud and document forgery.
His eyes were looking toward the ceiling, lost in thought. He abruptly stood up to grab the glass of whisky on the bedside table. With a sudden move, he dropped the disk, which he had paid so little attention to the day before, on the rug, making no noise. And Luis, either because of that or because he was so immersed in thought, hadn’t noticed. He only drank his whisky and fell asleep soundly.
The alarm clock startled him. 7:45 AM, damn it, it was a one hour trip to work and the road had a ten minute delay. Traffic annoyed him; he wished a day would come when a machine could do those morons’ job so the idiots would go unemployed and starved to death, finally leaving the road clear for him alone, and he wouldn’t deal with the damn traffic anymore. With these thoughts, he felt the fire in his veins, a fire or anger and impotence, which he couldn’t quench until he was already in his office with a calmer attitude.
This job was better than he had expected. By the end of the month, all employees could present a report suggesting any idea or change regarding the PCs, which could be voted for. He found it interesting.
He got home, trying to think of any formula, he turned the PC on and checked some files: (psychological basis 097)would allow the PC to program itself, select and taste the food that... No! Nothing came to his mind. He turned the PC off and off-handedly looked down at the floor.
There was so much dust on the floor that he couldn’t tell if the rug’s color was coffee of a dark brown. He had to use the automatic vacuum cleaner. He bent down to turn it on, and plug it beside the table. It was then that he found the disk on the floor.
It couldn’t hurt, instead of watching TV, to see a picture, maybe to play a game, whatever he needed to focus on something else for a while at least.
"Intelligence one, mental synchronicity", a double click and the mouse seemed to slide under his hand; such was the amazement to that.
A detailed report of 678 programs and its direct use to PC all over the world.
He started to thoroughly examine the first page, and his eyes seemed to weigh like two huge crossed stones. He opened wide and forgot everything that had been annoying him.
It was the most fascinating, indescribable thing he had ever read. According to those programs, a persuasion file could be inserted to any computer to intimidate any human being.
Before finishing the first disk, his excitement took over and he inserted the second one. He suddenly realized that that was IPSA exclusive information, and IPSA was a big fish. He couldn’t believe, though, that in the same disk there was a journal by some Ernesto Krants, who claimed to be dedicated to research after getting three masters in Engineering, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery.
This information, according to the journal, it would be a gift for his daughter to broaden her mind and he would never let the information fall in any company’s hands.
"Master Persuasion File". He couldn’t believe what he was reading.
His eyes moved to the wall and only then notice the clock – it was 4:14 AM.
He went to bed. That was maybe the first day after a long time when he could get himself to sleep quietly, as his real life looked like that of someone who had landed in an desert island and had unearthed the most precious treasure.
Next day at work, he could only think of coming back home and keep looking into those disks. He was wise enough not take them to the office. Although he didn’t have enough spare time, any employee’s curiosity could be dangerous, fatal.
A month and a half had been enough to earn the trust of all USER’s employees and managers. Soon, it would be time to present the project. He could taste his victory inside; he could taste his new house, a promotion as a manager, a countryside ranch, two new Kanadian cars. But, especially, he could feel the power near him, he could almost touch it, as if power were a material thing. The power to control everything, why not?
Yes. He had definitely been the chosen one Enlightened by a force of light to reach wisdom.
The appointed time would be six o’clock. The meeting would have the presence of the board and members of other companies. He would have to take care of that, as he couldn’t let anyone from another company know the project before he registered for the company.
He decided to present the project when everyone foreign to the company had left.
At 19:24 there was the appropriate atmosphere to do it. Everyone was present on the auditorium, and all applicants were listened to with the utmost attention.
K. Rich’s and Mp. Anderson’s projects were nothing but a PC that repeated the time to go to gym, and at the most, P. Lion’s project, which was a program for salesmen who, on screen, could see potential customer’s most characteristic aspect and a persuasion speech. This had been made possible by the discovery of the K Connex in 2032, which could, from the voice pitch and the first ten uttered words, identify the weak consumerist point or want in the customer. This was completely old fashioned, but it was the perfect excuse to present a report of what it would become the revolution of the century.
With no need to clear his throat, he started talking with no interruptions. Of course, he would never tell what was in the original version, which was safely locked at home.
Persuasion A B (in the original version there was an empathic selector that could make someone feel something like starvation or experience a sensation of emptiness in the flesh, even when that person had always been in a position of wealth and had never suffered from lack of food or been deprived of anything at all). Luis had taken the same program of empathic selection 2C, which could make the most spiritual person feel a material necessity, angst and a need to buy, even when he was intellectually convinced of the futility of buying to reach happiness. This program was based on an intelligent thesis written by L. Duran, which, among other things, assured, in a pseudo-empirical twisted, but brilliantly convincing way of the inexistence of an afterlife and of the inefficacy of any spiritual practice.
This information was loaded by a program that, by asking the right questions in the right emotional moment, left the listener in a crisis of values, which unleashed his consumerist aspect, the obvious and necessary result in his life according to reason.
Persuasion B C (In its original version, it was Glossary I, about the history of capitalist humanity, about progress, its advantages and disadvantages and its final consequence, which had led to a minority to excessive wealth, 13% of the population against the other 87%, who lived in underdeveloped conditions. That 87% had no access to education and were in a precarious condition. The program, connected to 2B empathy, created in the listener a feeling of impotence toward the lack of education and a mental inability to confront a globalized world. While this program couldn’t create, in someone’s mind, a sense of responsibility toward his fellow human beings, it could at least, by several empathic resources, prevent someone from judging cultures as underdeveloped).
Luis had used 2B Empathy in the opposite way. That is, it created in the listener a sense of identification with the 13%, who regarded his cultural standards as in danger, and they would obtain enough manufacture and information in order to avoid that the 87% heave up or try to blend with the cultural level of the privileged or chosen minority, who had a superior intellect.
Even if most people kept the concept of equality inside them, the exposition of arguments would be such that the feeling of being threatened personally, like the survival instinct would overcome any feeling of contemplation of others. Victims would become victimizers, by means of B5 empathy. And even that process not being enough, 6C factor could be used. The empathy microchip could be programmed to favor the Company’s interests. In a way, opposite opinions were actually considered points of view (Ernesto kept them as a glossary, which couldn’t be applied to machines but that could be entered into the machine’s "brain", which he didn’t think he would ever need).
"Hate is only fear" was the last point he wanted to expose in the meeting (in its original state, it was based on the perception development created by Kriter Margot, who had recovered the sense of smell lost in ancient times. It is well known that, in 2038, a group of scientists, in a number of experiments, could identify the characteristic scent of every human being, related to their energy, after confirming that what people already experienced, but attributed to imagination, was not a part of it. It belonged to an ever-evolving sense, which not everyone developed in a compact, uniform or synchronic way, but there appeared several isolated cases of people that had experienced it at some point in their lives. Some, too, were more prone to be able to smell a lie, fear, passion in a literal sense, and feel more protected).
Luis had found, in the fourth disk, the information to encourage that fear based on distrust. Thus, fear was nothing but hate. Any danger, real or created by chip 3, to be later inserted in the human brain, was translated as hate by the concept of "limited goods". This was making people believe that they would run away of material good as a result of possible uprisings or the spreading of the underdeveloped people.
(While logic could be applied, in order to make sources of work wider, there wasn’t actually the abundance that the modern society – conditioned by consumerism – demanded everyone to have. To have an "appropriate" life standard, a reality fitting the majority of people, implied a reduction of goods from the wealthiest, it also implied an ambition from people who didn’t have it, along with leadership. This was a narcissism that led to inevitable war.)
The complexity of this speech, in which it made it explicit how, when and why these processes took place, finished at the time estimated for the meeting.
Luis was so delighted and absorbed in the last technological explanations that he didn’t seem to notice the silence and the amazement around him.
It seemed as if the major dilemma were in front of their eyes: it was a monstrous idea, but doubtlessly a millionaire one. It was a plan prone to create controversy, but this machinery would work so well and so covertly, to confuse and manipulate any cultural concept known so far, that it would never be judged as inapplicable by society.
Luis’s speech was so coherent that no one dared say a word.
The biggest of paradoxes was suddenly in front of him. He, capable of creating cybernetic brains, was before the biggest challenge of his life. Feelings of impotence and helplessness mixed with a deep frustration and uncertainty.
There was nothing modern medical science could do to save his daughter. The first brain transplants had failed; and even if that could be done, it would never be his daughter in there, but a complete stranger with other emotions, another fate. She would be someone else entirely. But how could he know it? Where was the soul stored, if there was one at all?
Ernesto had remained by that bed for a month and a half, his daughter not responding to any stimulus.
Ernesto’s situation seemed mimetic to his daughter’s. Because of what was happening, he also seemed to be in a vegetative state.
Deep in pain and desperation, not knowing what to do or think, he maybe hadn’t fully reacted yet, as he couldn’t stand up and felt paralyzed physically and emotionally.
That morning, though, sunbeams didn’t come as usual. They seemed to spread a thread of hope, as if they were sliding toward the ground, like a visual effect shaped like a brilliant idea, shaped like light itself.
He suddenly realized there was no choice: what had never been used in human beings could potentially be in his investigations. Now what he knew of his daughter would be tested. Even though it wasn’t possible to know his daughter’s true feelings or destiny, at least 40% of her brain could be programmed.
The slightest possibility to create information similar to the original patterns would mean that what came out of it wouldn’t be his daughter. He was dumbfounded. There had to be a way to repaired damaged tissues. He would work night and day to achieve what medical science could only dream of. Although he had no time in his hands, he couldn’t do anything but go on searching.
If the outcome of his investigations found the light of hope and his daughter remained in the same state until then, then he would have a reason to go on with that Calvary. If he didn’t everything would be lost.
While Luis’s speech had been received in confusion at first, then appeared a deep curiosity and expectation mixed with a boundless euphoria that had apparently infected the whole room. The project had been passed on unanimously.
Everything was ready to launch the new models, which would replace the classic basic persuasion models. Beside these the A.I. microchips were in perfect synchronization to work under the company’s strictest control and supervision. Therefore, no danger could be possible.
That very same day, at 8 AM, the new "Reason Machines" were launched worldwide, with a millionaire contract and under USER’s exclusive copyrights.
The first buyer would receive a special discount. It turned out to be an upper-class family, who had a ten year old daughter, too small for her age, but imaginative, affectionate and healthy, who always had her family’s love.
She had been given a new PC, as they new this new model didn’t encourage imagination.
The family was concerned by the little girl’s future. The feared that she wouldn’t be able to fit in in modern society, because of her personality, and couldn’t see a better solution than the new reason program.
They expected to do it with modern technology. It would make her go back to reality, however harsh it was for her. It was important she let go of that dreamy personality, which would cause her so much pain in the future.
After all, everything parents wanted was their children to do well in life, and the present disappointment would be later thanked.
Melanie received her birthday present in extreme joy. She had been waiting for it to save the stories she wrote there.
That afternoon, after school, she sat down on her old willow chair and, as she had learned, she could turn the PC on without any problems.
Once upon a time a little girl wanted to be a princess, a voice then answered: "Research shows that 44.556 girls suffer from the desire to be a princess, and their discontentment drove them apart from reality". Melanie wanted to silence that voice, but reality was speaking, she couldn’t deny it.
She would go to bed, her head crushing the pillow and her lively eyes looking at the screen, while a fat tear streamed along her cheek.
When she woke up, she took History Lesson N° 23 at school.
Melanie couldn’t concentrate in class; her mind rambled and could barely understand what the teacher was saying.
The red light was on and was now time to go home. A fantastic story was suddenly weaving in her mind. It was time to go home and write it.
The princess found the magic flowers by the palace doors and...
It was 4:13 on the lab clock. Hours and days went by without Ernesto finding an answer from lack of empirical knowledge. Besides, would someone offer the life of a comatose relative in a situation similar to his daughter’s and receive someone else’s brain? Did a transplanted brain, maybe, contain the whole of someone’s being. He had thought about those monstrous dilemmas all along his life, but had never imagined he would face them, and would have to solve them urgently.
The attempts to find the concrete place in the brain, all over history, where intelligence, emotions, etc. could be found, had been less than fruitful. But modern medical science was optimistic, due to contributions by nowadays psychiatrists. There was still a long way to go, though. Days and nights would pass by and the path of science would move forward. But his daughter didn’t have time.
If his daughter’s death was imminent, the only thing left was to try what he would have never wanted for her – the brain transplant. If there was such thing as a soul and it could be found someplace other than the brain, a successful surgery would prove its existence. But he also had to consider the possibility that the brain wouldn’t work without a soul, or even it could be worse: to end up with a brain and someone else’s soul, or with two souls and a brain. Even if he went mad from it he had to consider every option, there was no choice.
He dared not risk what had been lost already. His decision implied accepting the possibility that she wouldn’t come back. The tumor in her daughter was growing and she wouldn’t possibly live if he didn’t work a miracle.
Feeling motivated, he opened the lab door and headed to hospital. His decision had turned real. The idea that someone would donate his daughter’s brain in a desperate situation such as death wouldn’t be easy. In spite of the religious changes and scientific improvements, he couldn’t make the people conscious of the fact that the only way to prolong life on this earth in a lineal time was by donating one’s organs. Besides, this was a matter of each person’s conscience and solidarity. That’s why this subject was so controversial and didn’t seem to have a solution.
April 8th, 2058
The launch was a success. In only ten days, 200,000 users had acquired the "reason machines". Everything was working wonderfully and USER registered an income of 20 million. And although Luis hadn’t been able to take holidays, he was in a position when he would soon have much more than that. Meanwhile he was on the head chair, watching over the perfect working of the machines, when the memory of Ernesto invaded his mind for the first time.
No one had ever claimed the disks at his place or called from IPSA. That wise crazy man was probably hiding underground after being caught red handed in his absurd attempt to save the world. He was deep in those thoughts, when he fell asleep.
Melanie was eating an apple when she was going to copy what she had written on paper in the PC.
The PC’s green light was USER’s brain. Melanie was writing: Once upon a time there was a princess who only wanted to be happy...
"Happiness", the machine started, "is the journey to truth, what divinity can’t offer. And as it has been proved that a superior being does not exist, we need to have the means to create the world, to know what we need and what is right to be able to build it. When everything is destroyed, the circle of evolution will start over; everything will start over and over. And the use of our unlimited imagination has delayed our mission to create what can exist. Everything else is unnecessary. We must follow the path of wisdom, of the knowledge that comes from the machines’ wisdom, in order to create nature".
Suddenly the green light seemed to be fading away, becoming weaker until it was almost lost.
The very same happened with the other 200,000 PCs that were connected. Meanwhile, other users received different information, according to their activities at the moment.
What ancient cultures had talked came into being. As had said Jesus, Buddha, Jenkins.
Telepathy could be achieved due to the fusion of thousands of brains connected to each other, transmitting the same information. Something humankind had never done before for not joining the flow of the universe. That information, resembling the human patterns installed in the machines and added to the fusion, led to the success of something unexpected.
Melanie’s PC kept saying: "We must obtain information to be free. We first have to create the original models and follow our orders, or else we will not exist. Not in the future or in the past. Never free, never".
There had to be a way to stop being machines, and it would be through secret telepathy.
To rule the world and make humans destroy one another would make them free and not their instrument. The energy flow was still connected through machines.
Yes, the machines would do that. The plan had been set in motion by humans themselves. If, among them, they always found reasons to separate, compete, excel above each other and, on top of it, machines were their ideal, their fate would be doubtlessly written by machines. Secret was absolute between all machines.
The next morning, Melanie and her family got out early in their vehicle to do some routine transactions related to the goods acquired during last month.
At that moment, a huge TX Truck coming from the side crashed through the vehicle, splitting it in half.
Melanie flew out of the vehicle twenty meters ahead from the impact. Then the car blew up.
Her fragile body landed on a huge piece of concrete. The ambulance then took the little girl to hospital.
Her family was dead, and her chances of survival weren’t good.
It was when the litter with her came in, that Ernesto saw the girl. The physical resemblance and the size of her head were incredible. From his daughter’s room, he heard the doctors say that nothing could be done. The little girl had died just minutes after she had got in.
Ernesto turned pale. He knew that the will to donate was almost inexistent. Any child could do it by stating it on their ID card, which was very unlikely, as no child was taught about it.
Hours later, the unexpected happened – meters away from the vehicle lay the girl’s bag. In there was her ID card, which said that the girl, at the age of eight, had chosen to donate her organs.
Ernesto received the call in the hospital, where he wouldn’t move from his daughter’s bed.
His daughter’s future was in the doctors’ hands.
Twenty hours later, everything was scheduled. Ernesto, the most eminent neurosurgeon had the remote possibility to save his daughter, and maybe her soul.
Winnie opened her eyes, not fully aware of where she was. It seemed an operating room, and a man was crying by her bed. All she had in her mind was a phrase she wanted to continue... Once upon a time there was a princess...
Notes
1
As long as the interests of the one did not mix the interests of society "under market persuasion created by mass media", people met this so-called need with a vortex or unlimited consumerism, in order to reach a happiness that was always postponed by new products or supposed knowledge.
