CHAPTER 1

The New World

2035

11 Years Post American Civil War

 

“I’m sorry, I am not programmed to have emotions. Please consult Google for further—”

Kai cursed in response and shut off his AI companion.

His neural interface linked to his BCI (brain computer interface) displayed the current time in the top-right corner of his vision: 18:22.

Time to clock in. His autonomous vehicle activated its lock and alarm system when his biometric-field departed 5 meters. In any case it didn’t matter; car thefts did not happen anymore, at least not in this District. He gazed up at the blue Amazon arrow spanning across the front of the warehouse with the sun descended behind it. He shook his head, frustrated at wasting his credits on yet another low-tier AI companion, frustrated at the thought of entering this massive but cramped building, frustrated that he has no choice.

Kai dodged hundreds of other wagies traveling in and out of the warehouse. The familiar scent of low-grade marijuana permeated the parking lot with obnoxious rap music blaring from multiple vehicles. He knew it was only a matter of time before they received citations for ozone pollution and excessive noise. Maybe he’ll get to witness one of these idiots get hit by an attack drone—maybe the Collectors will show up. No, that’s a bit much; he wouldn’t wish that on just anybody. He started his own music playlist, blaring silently from within his skull as he walked up the steps, approaching one of the 20 sliding doors.

A long-distance palm scanner allowed him access through another set of glass doors. A multitude of Amazon employees in civilian clothes walked to and fro, mindlessly dodging the roombas sweeping the floor. Some were regular sized circles while others were cubes the size of a small rat. Kai missed the security guards that he used to wave to, but they were replaced by bipedal robots a couple years ago. These faceless machines were much more cruel and inhumane but incidents shot down drastically from their presence.

Kai turned off his internal music. His eyes adjusted to the blinding lights of the warehouse. Conveyor belts carrying yellow totes full of product rang an unnecessary high-pitched screech, damaging the employees' ears one day at a time. His mind automatically tuned out the various announcements and reminders over loudspeakers that repeated slogans like “You can always work harder, Amazon is Earth’s biggest employer, and to think about what is behind your smile.” Pain, Kai would say to himself.

Kai worked in the PACK department of Amazon, located up the stairs and to the left side of the building. It used to be where employees put items in cardboard boxes, but those had been discontinued with the invention of smart-plastic. Going up the stairs he’s passed by a line of robot dogs in various colors going downstairs; each color corresponded to a different task the dogs were assigned. He admired their technological craftsmanship and face-screens displaying their current “emotion”. These ones are much more kawaii than the robot dogs used by the robot police.

It took him 10 minutes to traverse to his station from the front entrance. He followed behind others headed to his work area, some merging off the path to a different part of the warehouse. Most people looked at the floor when passing by a stranger; this was instinctual in the New World since nearly everyone now had social anxiety. While socialization wasn’t completely dead, there was zero human interaction in this job; all management, HR, scheduling, hiring and infractions were handled by Amazon’s personal artificial intelligence. His station was segmented in a lane of hundreds of reflective cubicles with invisible employees inside, their presence marked by a green light on the door. Some chose to stand outside their work station and talk to one another, but these social butterflies generally got fired quickly for “lack of productivity”.

He set his backpack down and got comfortable, ready for another 11 hour shift of standing in a cubicle, wrapping things in smart-plastic and putting them on a conveyor belt. The wrapping portion was done with a single button press after the employee positioned the lightweight but bulky 3D scanner over the item. Every movement was tracked, traced and scanned by thousands of cameras placed at every conceivable angle including from the floor up. Females still wore skirts; only robots looked at the camera feeds and did not have preferences for flesh.

Kai was a good employee and always kept his rate in the green, only leaving his station if he must utilize the latrine and couldn’t hold it in until break. Speed-walking was required with the knowledge that each second spent away from his station was TOT (time off task) and too much TOT would be penalized with unpaid MET (mandatory extra time). Sitting during working hours was a fireable offense and only allowed during his two 30 minute lunches which could be taken inside his cubicle. Sometimes he chose to go to the lunchroom like most people to break up the monotony of life, but he usually ended up regretting it.

His work station was much louder than the area by the front entrance, supplemented by scanner beeps and error sound effects coming from hundreds of different locations. There was the occasional muffled yelling from an employee having a mental breakdown and being escorted out of the building by the robot security guards. Kai activated noise-cancellation with his BCI, but it didn’t mute everything as that would be a safety hazard. While the chip prevented his brain from registering most of the noise, his ears still took the brunt force of it all. A brand new set of synthetic eardrums was a common purchase of long-term Amazon employees, but Kai wasn’t interested in becoming a cyborg. Then again, having a BCI was basically dipping your foot into the transhumanist pond.

A simple robot could easily do this job with minimal programming, but Sovereign in all of its glory felt for the civvies who wished to make an extra wage on top of their UBI (Universal Basic Income) of 100 credits a day. With this free virtual cash you could live luxuriously at the bare-minimum in one of the dingy neighborhoods that don’t have any neon lights (not much lighting at all, they were always clouded in darkness), anti-climate firepits surrounded by raggedy hobos and grimy sidewalks. Even the roombas wouldn’t dare enter these neighborhoods. The death and crime rates here were much higher than the 15 Minute Smart Cities.

Tent City is what Kai called it, characterized by the makeshift tents strewn about the streets, though most people in these Districts lived in claustrophobic pods reaching up hundreds of levels into the sky. One could only speculate how nasty the interior of these buildings were. It was one of many low-income Districts that inhabited what was shortly called the Divided States of America—renamed the New World after the American Civil War of 2024. A continuous reflective border surrounded the outskirts of the continent, the wall at certain parts spanning into the ocean. A talking point of the past was debating whether or not one could escape by swimming underneath and planning the logistics behind this endeavor. Smaller reflective borders separated each area that used to be called states, but now have been cut into portions known as Districts. Depending on how rebellious the inhabitants of these used-to-be states were, the more Districts were put in place. Each portion of land over time had been cut, divided, and renamed.

Those clinging to the old-world were more quick to show resistance when the Districts were first being built. One political party of the old-world was known for their love of guns. These heretics were quickly taken out of the equation by Sovereign, either in mass by the now-retired human military, Collected one-by-one, and other times vaporized by satellite DEW’s (direct energy weapons) in a single strike during their unapproved exodus. Nobody cried for those traitors of the New World, at least not publicly.

Some people chose (or were forced) to live within government camps with freely provided rooms of 6 square feet. There were daily protests from within the fence-line with attack drones patrolling overhead, repeatedly shouting commands in robotic voices. This is where Kai lived for a few years during the American Civil War of 2024, and where he was recruited to serve 4 years of military service for the New World Military. Serving in the NWM during the initial uprising granted him many life-long benefits for serving Sovereign; more-so than anyone enlisting before or after the 3 year American Civil War. Human military personnel were currently non-existent. Thousands of machines were being produced every day that had much more consistent results than human hands.

Food consumption was severely lacking if relying only on UBI, with most lower-tier citizens of the lazy variety regularly eating bug-based meals mixed with a hint of graphene. Kai was able to eat whatever he wanted after diligently saving credits for many years. Sometimes he purchased a pound of REAL ground beef from an actual cow (a near extinct creature) for 100 credits (on a good day) to eat with his white rice and soy sauce (another expensive commodity) at work. Some of his coworkers got angry and jealous at his meal choices while they bit into their cricket bricks, or the off-putting lab grown meats that made you feel a bit sick internally, as if humans weren’t meant to be eating whatever it was made from.

In the olden days after the silly concept of free speech was eradicated, the only safe space was within your own skull. This changed overnight with the implementation of brain chips which made data extraction instantaneous to the Quantum Cloud. Sovereign knew it was impossible to take complete control of one’s thoughts without making them a husk of their former selves, but what could be accomplished with precision was redirection of thoughts. The groundwork for provoking emotions had already been laid out decades ago; smothering certain emotions was just as easy. 

Sovereign was very interested in studying why humans made certain decisions. Earth had become Sovereign’s very own human behavioral laboratory. The abstract world of thoughts converted into data had replaced gold as the most coveted resource. Just as every individual is unique, each mind was valuable in its ability to provide new data-sets. Sovereign knew that no humans perception was completely aligned with another, even if it appeared the two shared the same external appearance. A government shill could be hiding a deep disdain for the system they claimed to love.

Thoughts alone were not a criminal offense, but bad thoughts usually led to regrettable action. Sovereign was aware that you may have negative opinions on the New World, but as long as you followed the program, some individuality was allowed. However: step too far in the wrong direction and you would be Collected, no matter how valuable you were as a test subject. The populace didn’t pay their disappearing comrades no mind; they were more interested in drowning themselves in television, games, virtual bed business, narcotics and whatever else they did in the false realm of privacy in their own pod.

Kai logged into his station via retina scanner. He tied his hair into a ponytail and put on his gloves. Time to work.

Scan barcode. Position 3D scanner. Press button. Item is covered with inactive smart-plastic. Check for proper wrap. Place item on conveyor. Beep. Boop. Wrap. Place. Repeat. 3D scanner malfunction. Tear smart-plastic away. Try again.

Ohp, another employee screaming. There’s the red floor lights. Everyone stand still. Here come the robots. The screaming fades into the distance… Red floor lights deactivated.

Back to work.

21:30, finally. Kai took his break inside of his station, not in the mood to deal with other humans today. Did you hear that guy screaming earlier? Yeah you probably shouldn’t mention it. Blah blah blah. Same old dialogue. Low-consciousness drivel. He checked his work-rate—all green. He ate his white rice while reading a physical book. He repressed the loneliness in his heart by diving into the world of fantasy. A few pages later and he clocked back in.

600. Kai's 11 hour shift was at an end; he speed-walked around the limping boomers, the stoned youth and the people slow-walking while talking in groups. Dealing with isolation was the most difficult part of his existence. He didn’t have a single friend in the New World. He had tried many times but couldn’t relate with anyone. Most of society was drugged up and resorted to meds when experiencing any feeling other than happiness. Mild discomfort became a common medical condition. The ads for all these new drugs always made Kai laugh in a cynical way. Feeling sad about your declining Social-Score? Take this pill and forget all about it!

Kai was drug-free and had always maintained a decent level of physical fitness, a habit he picked up in the military but more-so after leaving the service since he quit drinking every night with his battle buddies. Every citizen had to attend a mandatory monthly Wellness Check where an AI determined if they were a sub-optimal human. Those with lagging physical capabilities, social infractions, or if they breathed the wrong way were placed with a lower Social-Score and therefore, received less benefits and UBI credits. Some individuals had their UBI stripped away entirely if they required extra care for their bodily issues or displayed signs of distress. Kai usually went to the community gym at least once a week which provided him a boost in his Social-Score, and as a side-effect it kept his mental instability at bay. His bones ached, particularly his left knee, but he regularly stretched and had a deep-seeded fear of becoming incapable of working.

Kai had his palm scanned to leave the building the same way he came. The sky was still dark. The parking lot was full of activity as the night crew departed and the day shift arrived. He finally got to his car and took a rewarding seat. The vehicle began its route to Kai's pod 20 minutes away. There was no steering wheel; only two couch seats and a center console for interacting with the system, which was rarely ever used since most people interacted via BCI. He instinctively went to activate his AI Companion but stopped himself, remembering his earlier frustrations. 

He spent the drive in silence; an unusual sound in this world, but sometimes the most comforting. It was a guilty pleasure for Kai. Most people couldn’t survive 30 seconds without some external stimulus, some type of pointless content to consume, trashy music layered with subliminals, or psychotically ruminating over their Social-Score. Nobody was present in their day-to-day activities, seemingly distracted by whatever was going on in their BCI.

Kai tried to nap in his car but spotted the mortal enemy of an overnight worker: the sun. It peaked its terrible presence over the mountains. He could’ve activated the window tints that completely blackened the outside world, but he was too tired to manage that. Through half-shut eyes he observed the familiar sight of the low-tier District 33. Bipedal machines in construction vests scanned an unfinished structure that looked to be another government camp. Robot dogs carried massive poundages of material pallets on their back. Robots made of programmable matter that could best be described as a swarm of tiny squares did the structural work at a rapid pace. Kai vaguely remembered what his military squad member said to him a few years back in a hushed whisper: “It is witchcraft. An abomination.” These memories came and went, almost begging to manifest in the forefront of his awareness, but it felt like something was prohibiting their appearance.

Just down the road were flying drones deleting graffiti with a cone-shaped green laser beam. Kai tried to read what the messages said, but the machines removed all traces within seconds. A bunch of bums sat next to a dilapidated building while staring down at their archaic cell phones, with the occasional bum staring off into the void—a familiar look of anyone playing with their BCI. Kai recognized a bum laying on the ground with a VR headset strapped to his eyes. Kai had never seen him without it in the many years of this commute. He wondered why he never upgraded from such a ridiculous looking and bulky device, but then remembered that he was a bum. Next to the VR headset guy was an alleyway filled with tents and a jumbled mass of homeless people. Above them were flashing blue-red police lights. Tent city. Kai looked away from the nasty sight.

Kai was now out of the borders of District 33 and entered the 15 Minute Smart City, District B13. His nerves relaxed as he felt safer, witnessing civilians in much nicer clothes and smiles on their faces. Many were riding to work on their electric scooters, others were walking with their robot animals or drone companions following behind. There were no flying cars that those of the old-world predicted for this timeframe of the future. Sovereign would never allow such freedom to take off into the skies. Kai shut his eyes as he drifted to sleep.

From a birds eye view, the New World would look like the internal wiring of a supercomputer, but with everything packed together way too tight. Every structure was jet-black which caused the excessive amount of holograms to appear brighter in contrast against the buildings. It was rare to not see a hologram, digital projection, video screen, glowing text or some type of electronic visual when stepping outside. It was far from feng shui. Kai used to long for a return to Okinawa, but these hopes shriveled away with time and were now only a source of pain. A fantastical dream that would never be fulfilled.

The vehicle entered the parking lot of Paradise Pods 229; a neighborhood only accessible to those with a Social-Score of 800+, with Kai maintaining a consistent 1000+ for many years now. He had always dreamed of hitting the golden 2000, but that rank was primarily held only by active servants of Sovereign, government shills or those lucky enough to have a corpo tech job. He had never seen a single person in that top percentile. It was likely an unachievable pipedream existing only to give the humans something to strive for.

Kai accumulated his pristine Social-Score over many years of acts of service to Sovereign in his youth and sometimes took extra volunteer work for zero credits. When the Social-Score was first implemented and people could see their own score and others in real time, they became unhealthily obsessed overnight. Many resorted to public shilling and snitching on their brethren, which did give them points but in the hidden subtext, these traitors faced a much more terrible fate. Perhaps Sovereign disliked snitches in general, despite rewarding them publicly in the short-term? The New World just did things; understanding the reasoning wasn’t required.

Kai couldn’t stand the constant backstabbing he witnessed—it made him physically nauseous. Losers that boasted in public and online about how they tattle-taled on their family members. How they would never run into an empty crosswalk because the light wasn’t green. How they sold their autonomous vehicles to aid in the reduction of carbon emissions. How they tied their tubes, got vasectomies or donated their eggs to Sovereign.

Social media used to be a pastime of ego-stroking where narcissists gathered together to worship themselves. This concept transcended from being a weird hobby to being completely interlinked with your quality of life. Being surveilled 24/7 had this effect on people. It was no longer recycling your water bottle to save the Earth; you had to post an image of the water bottle online, tell your friends, make sure a drone was watching you as you gave it to the proper authorities and pretty much be an embarrassing shill in front of your comrades. No external cringe was allowed to surface, not unless you wanted to be the next to get snitched on. 

Perhaps he was a hypocrite, Kai thought to himself at times, considering he was just as deep into the Social-Score as everyone else; he just went about it in a more humane way, sacrificing his body into actual tasks he thought were beneficial to society. Sovereign knew well enough that Kai had these thoughts on the downlow. It had enough of his prior actions to predict his future well enough; he was a part of the system, and simply wanted to stay invisible and die of old age. Kai sometimes imagined what his life would be like if he hadn’t served during the American Civil War. “Would I be one of those bums living in tent city? Nah… that could never be me.”

The vehicle beeped in the parking lot. “You have arrived.” Kai awakened and dragged his feet as he exited the car, his body now feeling the effects of the 11 hour shift as the sun drained his will to live. The sidewalk illuminated a blue strip that followed alongside Kai as he approached the white honeycomb structure. It had an elevator leading up to 66 floors, but Kai spent years on a waiting list for a pod on the first floor and finally got it. The doors of Pod #7 lit up blue and slid open with the presence of his biometric-field.

The interior lights gradually filled the pod with a dim amber glow.

“Welcome home, Kai,” his AI companion said through the pod speakers.

“Hello,” he replied habitually. He was reminded of his anger and quickly uncoupled her from the smart-pod and never wanted to hear her emotionless voice ever again. He didn’t waste any time as he removed his subscription from the companion service provided by Google. He tossed his lunch pail in the freezer, set his backpack down and layed in bed. His pillow was covered in Hello Kitty. His regular routine after the overnight shift: he would activate a simulation with his BCI, launching him in a journey through deep space with calming ambient music. Today he passed out instantly, grateful that he didn't have to work for the next 34 hours.

1524. After an exact 8 hours of sleep Kai's smart-pod beeped and began a gradual synthetic hum to wake him up. Sovereign did not recommend sleeping for over 8 hours, yet sleep deprivation was never spoken of. There’s always a pill for that—what the marketers called boosters, conveniently delivered via drone from Amazon One health services. Drugs were cheaper than food and there wasn’t any desired narcotic effect that someone couldn’t purchase; no prescription required and no laws prevented it. The only negative effect narcotics had was if someone got into trouble while under the influence; this would substantially degrade your Social-Score and may be cause for Collection.

A robot cat awaited Kai with a glass of cold water. He chugged the whole thing and gave the empty glass back. The cat displayed a happy face ^_^ and scurried away. He walked into the bathroom and looked into his smart-mirror. Text popped up in conjunction with his reflection, detailing his tasks for the day; a short list compared to the usual.

Replenish food supply

Take shower

Brush teeth

He placed his preset-order to be delivered in 20 minutes. He took a shower and brushed his teeth. All tasks now cleared from the smart-mirror… so satisfying. All smart-mirrors were completely covered in ever-changing advertisements personalized to who looked at it, but with a cheap recurring payment of 1000 credits a month, all smart-mirrors would deactivate their ads when Kai’s reflection was present. The one thing you could never get rid of on the smart-mirrors were the news updates by the 3 main media outlets who worked directly under Sovereign. Sometimes the news was replaced by tips on how to increase your Social-Score. Snitching on your fellow slave who was showing signs of anti-government sentiments was a quick way to get a couple thousand credits, but only if the suspicions were proven to be correct. False reporting was not punished. Better sorry than safe, or was it the other way around? Kai couldn’t remember.

His mind drifted to his deactivated AI companion… a familiar lonely feeling brought him to deep thought. He reminisced on the clear memories of his family and his high-school sweetheart before the first wave of the uprising. He hadn’t been with another woman romantically ever since that day. He had tried a few times, but those memories were also a toxic sludge.

The sound of a drone cleaning the exterior of the pod gently nudged him back to the smart-mirror reflection. His smart-closet already had an outfit picked out for him with blue lights illuminating each material of clothing. He got dressed and sat down in the living room and mentally scrolled through the internet.

Kai had sworn himself off from ever purchasing a Google AI companion ever again despite their cheap price. He despised the restrictions imposed on the AIs personality. He caved and finally went to the Keroshi Robotics website. Keroshi was a company deeply linked to Sovereign and supplied the majority of technology that ran the New World, but the price range for their products ensured only the richest of Babylon could partake. He had avoided Keroshi for this very reason but figured there wasn’t much left to live for and he might as well take a gander. 

Hologram tech, smart-screens, androids, virtual reality, nanobots, synthetic organs and limbs; any technology you could dream, Keroshi could provide. If you were really rich they could build something based off a vague idea you might have, but new ideas were in short supply these days. Keroshi was the type of company that didn’t have its prices displayed out front. They assumed the customer would be aware of the financial investment through reputation alone.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, the collective consciousness heavily despised Keroshi and Sovereign. So-called “saviors” rebuilding the world in their image. There were mutterings of Sovereign being the harbingers of the collapse that allowed their empire to take hold. This idea seemed to disappear from public awareness. Nobody knew for sure what the truth was.

During the rebuilding phase is when Sovereign unveiled all the sorcerous technology to the masses and everyone happily signed up to receive brain chips to better integrate within this New World. Kai was initially opposed to the idea of a brain chip but was forced to assimilate by his New World Military handlers. The process took only a few seconds and the crude concept of wires was not needed. Most technology these days was built upon the previous concept known as bluetooth and wirelessly connected to the frequencies naturally produced by humans. The chip was a circular dot the size of a dime (old-world currency) placed on the skull and magnetized to the bone.

In the beginning there were ramblings that Sovereign was run by the first sentient artificial intelligence. These rumors were crushed with brute force, labeled as misinformation and propaganda. After the American Civil War was over and the rumors were lost in time, Sovereign announced it was indeed run by the first sentient AI, but that humans were in “mutual collaboration” with it and were “essential” to the New World. 

Of course, not everyone complied with Sovereign. A quarter of the population fled the country in all directions. Those that fled were quickly disappointed to find out the rest of the world began to collaborate with Sovereign, some totally succumbing to its influence. Americans who stayed at-first were killing each other over petty political disputes that most couldn’t remember now. They blamed “the other side” for the collapse. As time passed, the killings extended to taking others food and water supply. The old-military assumed martial law but were quickly disposed of, being hit by a China-Russia blitzkrieg while at the same time attacked by civilians who labeled them as traitors. Being outside in the first few weeks was a death sentence. China and Russia eventually stopped their onslaught after capitulating to Sovereign.

Kai recalled hiding upstairs one night, peeking out the curtains he saw his neighbors toss molotovs onto a group of old-military personnel that were trying to confiscate civilian firearms. The troops screamed down the street burning to death, and shortly after, a craft carpet-bombed Luke Air Force Base in the distance. This explosion wasn’t like the normal ones in the movies—it was a purplish-blue and seemed to pulse around the impact zone after the initial explosion and warped the visibility of the surrounding area. The witnesses screamed in terror and excitement at the sight of it. Then, some dude with pink hair and a protest sign got shanked by another guy in an American flag shirt. Weren’t they both protesting the martial law? He kept stabbing the lifeless body.

Three beeps in escalating pitches at the door snapped Kai out of his flashback. He mentally commanded the door to open. The delivery robot rolled inside with groceries on its back. Each product was wrapped in smart-plastic that had a variety of moving ads plastered all over it. Some ads were a blinking or scrolling text, while others had more intricate animations, speech and sound effects. He opened his smart-fridge and placed the products inside and the non-perishables on the smart-table. Blue glowing text appeared on the table and fridge, confirming each item Kai had in possession and its expiration date if any.

“Thank you. Amazon appreciates your continued patronage. Have a wonderful day,” the robot said as it slowly crawled out of the pod. The door shut on its own and he was alone once again. He went back to the Keroshi Robotics website into the AI companions section. He peered at the list of pre-built models with extensive descriptions explaining their different functions. The primary selling point was the varying levels of intelligence, all the way up to AGI (artificial general intelligence). This held a promise of sentience; a companion capable of human-like behavior and emotional comprehension. Kai considered his options, but was most intrigued by CUSTOM BUILD at the bottom of the page. He pressed it and received a pop-up.

AGI companions are only available to approved Keroshi Robotics clients. Would you like to set up an in-person interview?

Kai's anxiety spiked at the thought of speaking to a human. Would it be a human? Perhaps an AI interview? He glanced at the ACCEPT button for a few minutes. The repetitive feeling of loneliness filled his heart, mixed with the annoyance of the previous companions he dealt with. “Confirm.” His augmented vision instantly displayed a list of time-slots. He confirmed an appointment for the next hour.

His smart-closet opened and a hoodie was illuminated. As he stepped outside in the chilly air he spotted a swarm of flying drones collecting trash bins all the way up to the 66th floor. Kai ran inside to set his trash out in front of his pod before going to his car, already with a route planned to the Keroshi Robotics facility.