THE GRID

Welcome back, June. Got in mind what you’re looking for?

“Yes, I want to know how to play ukulele.”

Very interesting. I see this is your first time purchasing a Music category Skill. As any other Skill, you can sign-up for short-term use or pay to engrave it into your long-term memory. Keep in mind, Indigenous Music’s level map is much different from those of your previously purchased skills. If you haven’t taken a look at it yet, feel free to explore and decide at which level point you want or need to be. You will have 10 minutes to do so without being charged. If you had trouble understanding the map, I can take you to Map Comprehension section where you can purchase or level up your skill. Would you like to proceed? Say ‘Yes. Take me to Ukulele Skill Map’ to proceed to Level Map. Say ‘I need to think about this’ to cancel transaction or ‘No’ to purchase Map Comprehension Skill.

June thought she probably didn’t need it right then, so she aborted. She also didn’t forget to comment on how weirdly distant her Buddy always is whenever she requests a purchase. Almost like he turned into a shop assistant rather than the Buddy who has been following her since birth. Oh, speaking of Buddies, they are AI friends each person in The Grid was assigned to upon their first tinge of consciousness, communicate with them entirely as the inner voice inside their heads. Buddies are created based on a readily-written prototype and connected to The Creator’s database, but are also customized based on their owner’s personality.

Transaction ended. No purchase made.

June, may I ask you something?

“Yes, of course.”

I see you have some concern. What was it that made you reconsider buying Ukulele skill?

“Well, I’m just not sure if I needed it.”

I see. Why haven’t you taken any Interim Aptitude Test lately, June? It’s been years.

“I don’t think I need to, since I was born in The Grid.”

Of course. The Grid Generation.

“You know, you suck at sarcasm.”

I tried. Anyhow, despite being born in The Grid and have a much more stable mind than The Firsts, it is still recommended that you should take the test once in a while, especially after significant incidents in your lifetime. The IAT will show you how those events have affected and/or helped discovering untapped regions in your brain. That way, GlycoZen would be able to suggest you the next step in your Life Path, the skills to assist that path as well as modifying your Emotional Management Plan. The test will cost you, but since it updates your Gifts and Likings, your enhanced brain ability is registered, so some Life Items will be reduced in price accordingly.

“And some will cost more, too. But I must agree, I probably should take that test, only not today. I wanna try and explore myself first.”

Yes, it is extremely difficult but not impossible. Only two people have done that in the 300-year history of The Grid. Now they are working for GlycoZen, writing the codes that help billions of others to discover themselves.

“Exactly.”

But with a price, of course. To do so, they must be expelled from The Grid, living inside frail bodies, doomed to die.

“Only natural, isn’t it?”

Quite rebellious, as always. But of course we always want what we don’t have. Merely a notion of being human. Or is it that…perhaps…perhaps you need to feel…rewarded? June, Dopamine is on discount at this moment and the promotion will last until the end of October.

“Have you taken the IAT yet? Anyone told you despite being passionate, you aren’t much of a subtle salesman?”

Haha. That’s funny, June. But there has been no scholastic study on the connection between subtlety and excellent salesmanship.

“Fair enough. Alright, WowDoge. I wanna go get some ice-cream now.”

Ok, June. But it still bugs me all those years why couldn’t you name me something else rather than an ancient viral meme dog of The Old World?

“What? I think that’s cute. Don’t you like it better than just ‘Tim’ or ‘Jack’? I only named you so because I love you so much, bud. I think I should get some credit for that, both as a cool human and as a cyberhistory aficionado.”

WowDoge chuckles and June starts skipping her way to Ice-Ice Emporium.

Choosing flavours at the parlor, June realized she hasn’t updated her Experience in a long time. She thinks it’s time to try the houjicha ice-cream, since the trend is now over.

She spent 300 Sparks to have houjicha available in her menu board and another 25 Sparks to try. Houjicha isn’t that good. A strong, roasted Old World Japanese tea that produces a brownish brew, color like a mix of chocolate and coffee, something the history books referred to as “mocha”. “Mocha” is history today because chocolate hasn’t been a common taste in The Grid for hundreds of years. It was once regarded as superfood when humans still lived in their bodies, mostly because only our tongues could comprehend the complexity of grounded cacao beans. In one of the stories June heard, chocolate was such a sensational produce that the first two flavours programmed for The Grid was vanilla and milk chocolate. The menu was downed to only the Madagascan bean after a few days because chocolate, being “burnt and repulsively poignant”, as the Chronicles of Digitalized Flavours wrote, is one of the rare flavours that doesn’t work in this world. In the much more laid-back publication, Taste Simulation for Dummies, it is advised that one should never embark on the journey of trying to replicate the taste and sensation chocolate has on human bodies for in this semi-physical world, that thing is “absolute shit”. Nowadays, the chemicals in chocolate are still being used to stimulate our brains, but stand under the name of Oaka — a designer drug that is illegal in many sectors in The Grid, mostly because it makes people happy and buy less.

June thought if she was born in The Old World, she might have been able to make her own houjicha instead of just paying to experience it. And chocolate. Yes, she could have been able to understand entirely the mythical bean that once drove the world’s economy in its heyday.

“Hey WowDoge, what if I could write a program that would let people experience MAKING something then trying their own product rather than just trying the finished product, that’d be great, right? Don’t tell anyone about this, by the way. It could be how I make shitloads of Sparks one day.”

Interesting. As I can see in The Creator’s public database, such program already exists, but if you could make it more glucose-consuming, GlycoZen would be very interested in buying.

“Ha!”, June laughs at her newfound anti-Creation standup material.

Speaking of glucose, your shopping impulses have been draining your account. Make sure you still have enough for your next Glucose Fill. You know it is the only thing that truly matters in life.

“I know, I know. I always have enough for it, you know that, WowDoge. Also, don’t act like you haven’t been perpetuating my shopping habits.”, she sighs, but in great gratitude for WowDodge, without whom she would be drowning in debt.

Glucose, the sweet nectar of life (literally!) is everything in The Grid. Our brains run on glucose and our brains are the sole reason why The Grid exists. Until this day, 98% of Earth’s brains is living the perfect life in The Grid. The first prototype of The Grid was built in 2016 by a group of brilliant young scientists. It was a virtual world experiment, first done on monkeys. Five years later, it was finally tested on a human volunteer named Tim. Timothy Hayes, being physically disabled and bullied for years, had only two choices at the time: to kill himself and temporarily raise (yet another) short-lived discussion on the internet regarding bullies or he could rid himself of his own body and find new life in The Grid — a promise land where his brain is the only thing that matters.

“The brain should be your only physical existence and should be the only thing that determines who you are and what you’re capable of.” is his most famous quote and one of the most overused propaganda in this world. But hey, after all, a guy once agreed to go on a head transplant back in 2014, which makes this sound quite a reasonable thing to risk everything for.

“Even with this body, I’m dead”, Tim wrote in his memoirs, “this blob of nervous tissue is everything that we are”. We all assume the blob he mentioned was his brain, though our brain is little firmer than a blob. Doesn’t matter. The memoir is The Grid’s All-time Bestseller anyway.

Back to the story, Tim never survived the experiment, but his secret admirer, Jane (not her real name — she wants to keep it a secret so Tim would have to guess when they meet in heaven), decided to carry on his dream. It wasn’t much of a tough decision for Jane, since she was also bullied for her body, which wasn’t skinny enough in the contemporary eyes. She signed up to be the second person to have her body removed. Unlike Tim, she survived the experiment and helped making The Grid reality, becoming one of the most mythical brains in The Grid’s history.

When this virtual reality made news, people started to doubt its moral and ethics. Some called Jane the dumb bitch who was stupid enough to sign up for the real-life Matrix. Cinefanatics even e-mailed the Wachowski siblings to ask for advice, but Laurence and Andrew wrote an open letter saying they had no comment, though they didn’t forget to cast an opinion that the chances of someone like Neo being born is virtually zero percent, they think. Sure, two sci-fi directors from the 90s probably aren’t the most credible source when it comes to science. But if a former Playboy Bunny could convince America that vaccination causes autism then being serious about the Wachowskis’ opinion was far away from being the dumbest thing we have ever done as a species. The Grid project, therefore, was abandoned until The Big Food Discovery paper was published.

The Big Food Discovery was mainly a study about what the world cares least: how modern farming had been killing Earth and the solution to that problem. What made it famous, though, is the discovery that life relies on food, and so does mortality. It was proposed in TBFD that “All food is bad”. Fat causes heart attacks and carbs makes you fat. Red meat encourages cancer, white meats are farmed with antibody and fishes contain mercury. Pesticides make veggies cancerous but organic produces aren’t proven to be that much beneficial either. Basically, food keeps you alive, but what’s in it that doesn’t help keeping you alive takes away your immortality. Sure, just like any other theses, it is there with the invitation to be proven right, which would make a scientist famous; or to be argued with, which would make someone a scholar. Of course, no evidence could convince us otherwise, since we all eat and we would all drop dead at some point. So with all those findings and the fact that you don’t have to consume regular food to survive in The Grid, people looked back at the project and saw the possibility of eternal life. Money started to flood in, The Grid started to be backed big time. After only 3 years, it was able to turn 16,000 financially capable people into 15,997 living and autonomous brains that can live forever (theoretically) provided that they are sufficiently fed with a secret glucose-based formula called GlycoZen.

(Hopefully will be continued)