Shells : A Short Story

Henry
I swipe my hand past the scanner.  The mechanized box-- plugged into the wall, the wall into a grid, the grid into the network-- lights up from black.  White light shines on my hand and a spinning gear whirs.  With a click, the door opens.  My door.  To my house.  I step inside my world, my prison, beyond the foyeur and into the living room.  Papers clutter the coffee table, the couch opposing it is basic and red, with arm rests three times that of what you would need.  The home is the only place where excess is allowed.

Excess.  Like a wealthy class.  Like poverty.  We had enough of both to fill multiple Earths.  Maybe that's what they did, started Earth A: Upper Class, Earth B: Original Earth and Middle Class, and Earth C: Those left out to dry.  It's not a big deal, space colonization, so it is conceivable.

Excess.  Like animals we don't eat.  They were pets.  No longer allowed.  Shipped off to the Sun, all of them. Launched, in missile caskets, to the depths of blanketed nothingness.  Maybe burned in a big heap, burried in a large ditch.  If it is possible for humans to sell out individuals from their own species, what makes Fido special enough to stick around?

Excess.  Like listing off another crime of permittance or domination, authored by the human race.

And here I am, standing at the edge of my living room, my suit still on.  There is a photo of some of my friends on the coffee table, hidden almost entirely by legal papers.  I grab it and head to the kitchen.  The papers slide overtop of eachother.  Some float to the floor behind me, reading "State Sanctioned" at the top.

I don't know one of the persons in this picture.  The one at the center, the one everyone crowds around.  That is me, that guy in the center, with black hair, blue eyes, and a smile like everyone else.  But I don't know him, because I've never really ever seen myself.  Not for who I am, anyway, just who I want to be.  But that's the same with everyone in this picture.  I don't really know them behind their blue eyes.  I just see them, and interact how I feel I should.  It doesn't really go any deeper than that.  These people, my friends, are nothing more than fractal images, rearranging, shifting, combining to become absolute in their projection.

I set the staged smiles on the counter.  Eyes look back, but they don't see me.  I go to my refridgerator wall unit and type in a string of numbers.  My order to the machine is five-three-six, a chicken salad sandwhich with milk.  It begins humming, replicating the biology of yeast. A molecular structure is being laced within, and soon I will have a perfect copy of something delicious.  A perfect copy, just like Liz, this girl coworker of mine.  She's dead now, a copy in her place.  No one should know this, but I know this, because they slipped up in keeping all her variables the same.  They monitor us, track us, analyze us.  They compile lists on us.  Assessments.

I have a friend, Rich, he tells me everything Liz says about me.  She says I'm everything she wants.  But, isn't that what everyone always thinks?  She says I'm everything she's looking for, and I know this all along, and lose interest in her.  Anything she says, I know in advance.  I act on this knowledge.  I really know her, so I own her.  After awhile, though, I feel bad about knowing all of this intimate, personal stuff, so I approach her about Rich.  By then I'm the asshole she wants to fuck and Rich is the nice guy who can give her moral support.  I walk away having accomplished nothing.  She thinks little of me, and greatly of him, the betrayer.  And so she dies.  Assisted suicide.  She dies and they copy.  A replacement takes over and the fabric of society continues, missing not a single nuance.  But they fucked up.

My sandwhich takes a few minutes for the processor to work out, so I head back to the bedroom.  I unzip my suit.  From head to toe, my body emerges from its shell.  Shells, these suits we all wear, projecting what viewers want to see.  You might think I'm blonde, you might think I'm "white," or "black," but you'll never think wrong, because everyone is right in what they see.  Projections are always what you want to see.  Biologically, there's something we are most comfortable with seeing in other people.  Usually ourselves, sometimes the exact opposite.  Whatever life conditions have created our desire for visual comfort, these suits provide.  Neural pathways all networked, anchored to the shores of a bigger system.  The system of monitors and analyzation.  Assessments.  Assessments on what we need, relayed to all other suits.  In our hands, unique digital addresses tied to everything we do.  Our bodies, networked, like a microcosm of our government.  The last of my suit drifts to my feet and I step out.  I look out the window, dust settling in the sunlight, and the world is everything I want to see.  The window pane lies to insiders and outsiders.   You could put layers of cloth over them, but underneath it all, the layers of distance between the reality and un-reality mean nothing.

My sandwhich is done and my milk is cold. I set them down on some papers and pick up the important legal ones from the floor as I sit on my big couch.  It is comfortable and I am happy that this is my last meal.  A simple favorite of mine.  Chicken salad.  It feels false though.  There aren't chickens anymore.  Just us.  And them.  I look at the last paper I picked up.  It reads "State Sanctioned."  There's a line for my signature at the bottom, right under the final letters.

Information centers are automated by highly advanced, near-human intelligence.  Computers.  Sorting, watching, reviewing.  Making sure everything is in place.  Governments no longer exist, as computers are the law.  Everything is regulated by a networked AI.  Everything is integrated technilogically.  No one dares to step over the line. Safety and the progression of humanity is assured.  At least, for everyone that chooses to partake.

I sign the document.

"State Sanctioned Self-Termination" it reads.

And even if they don't choose, they're replaced and balance is restored.

Like Riverworld, where everyone who has died and been replaced wakes up on this strange planet.  Crowds of copies, and only together can they understand what happened.  Screams in the night, that's a new one. 

The Ship That Eclipsed The Sun

 

Comments

[[atropos]]

[this is good]

I really enjoyed this one. I hope you continue it because now I am immersed in this world you've manifested as long as the AI doesn't rebel as it did in the film  I, Robot. Great writing.

[Bollocker]

Wow, immersed?  That's like the highest compliment.  I don't know when I'll revist this thing, I just thought it was a cool idea.  It was basically what I THOUGHT A Scanner Darkly was about when I was high.  The suits, that is.  Turns out it wasn't what I wanted it to be, so I had to write it myself.

[Zackery Mondragon]

[this is good] Very much I regret, that I can help nothing. I hope, to you here will help. Do not despair.