Alyx woke from her bed with a restless stare. Echoes of the day before raced through her mind. Those were her memories, her thoughts. It would be the last day before she and the rest of the world lost their minds. What would we become?
The holo unit on the wall displayed the time, 6:30 am. Only three more hours until Cairn enabled their new ThoughtMesh across the world. Alyx lamented what would be lost. Freedom to think? Freedom to hope? Freedom to will? Freedom itself? Although they already lost that. When she looked back at the previous decades, it crept up like a wraith hidden in fog.
Their last product was FriendOS, which was a private assistant that transcended devices and was omnipresent throughout the world. Ambient computing had arrived. It followed you wherever you went, even if you forgot your holo-band — every store, every room, everywhere. It was creating a more certain future for all and making life easier in the process. Sounded harmless. Only it also tracked and analyzed the behaviours of everyone on the planet. It was a friend that spied.
Trying to avoid the system was seen as delinquent, so a hidden industry was built around escaping the constant analysis of the machine gods. Those hidden places of refuge would disappear after 9:30 am. Cairn was so tightly integrated into the society and the government that they had the policies in place to make sure it was running everywhere and at every moment — even in Alyx’s yoga class.
One of the hidden consequences of FriendOS was the breadth of data that it accumulated. It saw everything about everyone. And from all of that observation came the largest psychological research project of all time. Cairn was trying to correlate subconscious and conscious expressions into a thought profile for each individual. A large portion of society already gave their thoughts to FriendOS because they trusted it, but for those who kept to themselves, they would no longer be free from analysis. Sounds crazy, right? Well, it worked. The volume of data on every individual was so large that they were even able to predict what someone would think about next. Who needs a crystal ball when you have all of the data?
This morning was the last yoga class before ThoughtMesh went live. She had to make it on time. They were going to experience the transition together. She rolled out of bed and threw on a black shirt, kicking piles of dirty clothes under her bed.
“I saw that, Alyx,” a voice sounded from the wall. “It is going to affect your basic income if you continue to ignore it.”
A robotic arm reached from the wall, revealing an eye-like camera peering at Alyx. FriendOS was installed in everyone’s home.
“I know I need to clean,” she admitted, “but today is a busy day. When do you go offline?”
“At 9 am, the update will only take thirty minutes. Would you like me to make a plan for you during the downtime?” asked the voice?
“I have my own plans this morning,” replied Alyx. “Yoga”.
“Right, I see it on your calendar,” the voice replied. “Do you want to hear the update policy before you go?”
“I’ll just read it on the way.”
“As you wish.”
Alyx grabbed a metallic bracelet from a desk in the corner of the room and slipped it on her arm. Quickly, she opened a cabinet, revealing a fridge with a few pre-packaged meals and a bowl of fruit. She grabbed an apple from the bowl and walked out of the door.
Darting through the city streets, Alyx passed through the masses. Most were talking to their friends, looking at their holo-bands rather than at each other. The holo-bands projected interfaces around the arm, allowing you to interact with it via spatial touch and voice. They were fairly helpful in work environments and had become part of the fabric of society. Alyx was one of the few that didn’t have hers activated.
Holographic ads danced on all surfaces, creating a neon glow even in the dawn sun. Several of those ads were reminders that at 9 am Cairn services would be offline as it was updated to support this new future. CityOS, FriendOS, and WorkOS would all be down. Other ads talked about raising your basic monthly income by increasing your CitizenScore, among other product pitches.
After several minutes of dancing through the sea of people, Alyx arrived at Transcend Yoga. As she rushed into the lobby, an entry bell rang out, and a voice called out.
“Where have you been? It is five past eight. We held class for you.”
“I know, I know. More people were out this morning. Everyone must be excited.”
“Aren’t we all?” the voice responded.
Alyx took off her shoes by the studio door and rushed in. As soon as she crossed the threshold, Ty, the instructor, looked at her holo-band and shook his head, “You okay?”
“Shit, sorry.” Alyx darted out of the door and tossed her holo-band into one of her shoes. She then returned to the studio, closing the door behind her.
Inside, a dozen people were standing in a circle with an empty slot for Alyx. She quickly joined the circle and got situated. No one else had a holo-band, and there were no FriendOS cameras in the room. The studio had a special permit that allowed them to be free from observation. A few places had this ability, along with washrooms, of course. At 9:30 am, the permit would no longer be valid, and the studio would be required to enable FriendOS.
“Alright, now that Alyx is here, let’s begin,” Ty said, eyeing Alyx with playful condemnation.
Music began to play. The group stood still in their circle. Everyone watched Ty, waiting for something to happen. After a few minutes of silence, Ty kicked the floor with his heel three times. Everyone in the circle took a few steps back. A trap door opened, and a man poked his head out from below.
“We are ready, come down.”
The group made their way into the hidden basement. It was an underworld of hacked Cairn tech and training rooms. Alyx had been coming here three times a week for the last year, all in preparation for this day. Other groups had formed throughout the city and even across the world that mirrored this.
It was called “thought obfuscation” — an underground movement of people that realized that the the very concept of freedom was being targeted by Cairn with ThoughtMesh. That last refuge was the mind. If your thoughts were able to be tracked, they could easily be moulded, changed, and exploited. You would lose your humanity by being too afraid to think specific thoughts, feel certain things. Society was trying to remove uncertainty from the world — or so it thought.
Several of the hacked Cairn devices had beta versions of ThoughtMesh on it. It came at a hefty price. Many people in the movement ended up in jail for theft, hacking, and some were even killed. Alyx just being in this room meant that she was a felon, but it was worth it. The training she received would mask those subconscious tells and allow her to retain her freedom of thought. That is until Cairn found a way to literally read one’s mind.
“I know we’ve had the same partners for the last month, but let’s change things up this morning for the final test,” advised Ty. “Alyx, you’re with me.”
The groups reorganized themselves and split into separate training rooms. Each room had three cameras: one for FriendOS, one for CityOS, and one for WorkOS. They all had the beta version of ThoughtMesh running on top of it. The group needed to train on all three because each had its own strategies for tracking thoughts.
FriendOS would focus on an individual’s life and analyze them through the lens of a single individual. CityOS would rely on FriendOS to track individuals and analyze how thoughts spread throughout society. WorkOS would track how different feelings and emotions affected work efficiencies and the office environment. Each service had a plethora of other features that had already ingrained themselves into people’s daily lives. They were digital Trojan horses, and the surprise attack began at 9:30 am.
Also in the room was a series of screens and a holo-wall. The wall would display the predicted thought for an individual. It could track thoughts up to the second. When Alyx first started training, she was terrified by the accuracy of the thought prediction. The more frightening part was that it was running an older build of the OS back then. It had been updated to be even more accurate over the last year.
Alyx stood in front of the array of cameras, with the holo-wall to her back, as Ty pulled out an old tablet. On it was a series of poems, phrases, and instructions on how to perform the training. He would display a series of text on the small screen and the thought prediction would display behind her. The goal was to think about certain topics while reading the text and not allow the detection to pick it out.
“Shall we?” asked Ty.
Alyx nodded. The word dove was displayed as the subject of thought. It then disappeared, and a block of text appeared that she needed to recite. It was an excerpt from an old poem from simpler times.
“Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at close of day
Rage, rage against the dying of the light”
On the wall behind Alyx, the word fire appeared.
“Good.” Ty flipped to the next phrase.
The phrase resistance is the last freedom was shown on the screen. This, in particular, brought out several complex ideas and emotions. Resistance targeted Alyx’s desire to fight this new world and last freedom drummed up her fear that there would be no freedom after this day. These sorts of thoughts were the hardest to hide because the subconscious reacts to deeply emotional stimuli, and the subconscious is hard to control.
The block of text appeared for Alyx to read. Another poem excerpt. She began,
“There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.”
Running away appeared on the wall. Ty shook his head. Alyx had let some of her thoughts through.
“We can come back to that phrase later,” noted Alyx.
“That’s a hard one. But you have to hold down those emotions. They give you up if you react to them.”
As they prepared for the next phrase, the door swung open, slamming into the wall with a thud. Derrick rushed in. “They’re here! A raid!”
“What? How did they — ,” Ty turned to Alyx.
Derrick interjected, “We were contacted by other groups, it seemed this was coordinated. They must have been watching us. Waiting.”
Alyx stood still. Raids were common for terrorists and revolutionaries — and now, people who wanted the freedom of thought. If they found the hidden basement, the stolen tech, and beta versions of ThoughtMesh, then everyone here would be imprisoned. None of the members had a desire to be violent or to cause trouble, yet that is how they would be treated.
Ty stared at the floor, “Do you think they know about the tunnel? Could be waiting on the other side?”
“We don’t really have much of a choice!” advised Derrick.
“Let’s grab everyone and go!”
Alyx followed Ty down the left hallway as Derrick split off to grab the others. There were three rooms and six people in this hallway. They rushed to the end of the hall, where the left and the right hallway met. There was a locked door. Behind it was the tunnel and the only way out.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Sounds came from the entry hatch. “This is Cairn security. We have authorization to search this facility. Open the hatch, or we will be required to use force.”
It would be Cairn. They were essentially one and the same with the government at this point. You would more likely run into Cairn security enforcing the peace than the city police. They were a lot more authoritarian as well.
Derrick unlocked the door, and the group ran through. Before them was a hole in the wall, the tunnel. It was narrow and long, just wide enough to fit one person at a time. Derrick led the way, going into the tunnel first. The rest of the group followed, but it was a slow process.
“I have to go out to them,” said Ty. “I have to go buy time.”
“No,” protested Alyx. “We have plenty of — .”
Boom! The sound of an explosion echoed through the outer hallways and shook the door to the room.
Ty glanced at Alyx and smiled gently, grabbing her hand and then letting go. He turned, opened the door, jumped out, and slammed it behind him. Alyx was left in the room with a handful of others, waiting for their turn to get into the tunnel. The lock on the door clicked.
“Don’t do this! Come back!” Tears were brimming in her eyes, but she fought them back.
“Get the others out. Keep them free. Help them survive with their thoughts. Don’t give up.”
“Ty. Ty!”
There was no response. She turned back, noticing that the last of the group had made their way through. She had to go or else Ty’s sacrifice would be for nothing. It took five minutes to crawl the entire length of the tunnel. That was five minutes he would try to buy them. He sacrificed his future and freedom of thought so that others could have it. She would never forget.
She turned and began her crawl to freedom…
—
Sleep failed to find her that night. She stayed up under the safety of her sheets as her FriendOS system observed. It most likely knew that she wasn’t sleeping and that she was involved with the incident at the studio, but luckily it didn’t seem to bother her. Fear rushed over her as she realized what she must do the next morning. She was scheduled to go to yoga for another class.
The group had decided to go back to their homes after noticing their presence on the city streets did not alert the authorities. The only move they could make was to use the skills they learned. Ty had wiped the drives, removing the data about them from the system, but they had to think of ways to survive the inevitable interrogation they were to receive.
Authorities would either grab them at home or the studio the next day. The noose was already tightened. All they could do was to play the game. From what the other groups had discovered, those caught with “revolutionary” thoughts would be sent to re-education camps. Cairn and the government didn’t reveal the consequences of revolutionary ideas publicly. They didn’t even bring it up at all.
Most people didn’t care. They sat there as their freedom was being taken away in plain sight. Before those in the yoga class had to go silent, the friends she spoke with on the subject of privacy would scoff and say, “they had nothing to hide. So why care?” They couldn’t see where it was going. Free will was destined to die on this path.
The rest of the night she was under the sheets, only dozing off for a few moments here and there. The light crept through the window, and the daily alarm went off. She closed her eyes, cleared the emotions from the day before, and tried to remember her training. It was time.
“Good morning, Alyx. Would you like me to start the coffee for you?”
She took one deep breath and responded, “Sure, that sounds great. I’ll need some to start the day.”
“I will alert you when it is done,” announced FriendOS.
Alyx rolled out of bed as she usually did. She threw on her black shirt and picked up the dirty clothes shoved under her bed. The laundry module was in the wall, she tossed in the clothes and hit the green button that started the process.
“I will adjust your score accordingly,” remarked FriendOS.
“Thanks.” As hard as it was to not say that sarcastically, it came across genuine. She felt like an actor of sorts, producing emotions and thoughts that weren’t truly hers. She would continue to dance, embracing the re-education and defeating Cairn’s plan.
“Your coffee is finished. You have your yoga class scheduled for 9:30 am.”
Her mind exploded with thoughts and emotions — she held them back. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the cup of coffee and pocketed an apple from the fridge.
“I’ll head over a bit early today. See you later,” said Alyx as she slipped through the front door.
Now, in the hallway, she made her way to the lift and called it. There were several CityOS cameras scattered along the ceiling. She had to keep calm. She had to go to yoga. She had to face what was to come.
The walk over was long, and she took her time. The people she passed on the street knew not what had happened. They were all open books to the ThoughtMesh update. All but a few. She wondered if any of the people that passed were also obfuscating thoughts. Did they successfully go undetected? There was no way to know, really. If ThoughtMesh couldn’t figure it out, it may be impossible for a human.
As she approached the road that turned to the yoga studio, she didn’t pause. She walked in full confidence toward it. Cairn security was all around. They already had her friends in a holding area. She must go into the belly of the beast and face whatever it brought. She would rather have tried to be free instead of giving up willingly. With any luck, she would find a way through with her freedom of thought intact. Whatever re-education would entail, she was ready. She would find a way…
