December Twenty-Seventh, Two Thousand Six Hundred Sixty-Five.
Recording device self-activated for narrative purposes.
Identification: Unit number four of the latest model as of the
twelfth hour of December Twenty-Seventh, Two Thousand Six Hundred
Sixty-Five. Initiating narrative of choice now.
Once upon a time there lived a female humanoid on the planet Earth.
She belonged to a middle class family, allowing for her to live
comfortably until she was of age to take care of herself.
The world was of a primitive nature. Humanoid creatures of
biological origins still did the labour that now androids do with
ease. They seemed to rule and be ruled at the same time. They were
subjects to the great rules of nature, and to the many imperfections
of their biological bodies. They called themselves “man”. For
thousands of years they lacked the capacity to create even a single
robot. They were bound to extinction.
But this female man was young in her years and her species was
speeding towards extinction at a rapid rate. Luckily for her, it
would take another couple hundred years for it to come. This is her
story. It is one of suffering. It is of the species' characteristic
loneliness.
The world around her was filled with structures known as
“skyscrapers”, which are similar to the small towers of our time.
The structures were often grey, black, or made of some reflective
glass. They dwarfed the species that had built the structures in such
a manner that each man's existence was made to look tiny and
insignificant. For a biological species, it is strange that it was
rare to find real functioning plant-life in the world. For some
reason, the species had conceived the other forms of life to be “in
the way” of their development. They prioritized their currency over
all else, which inevitably lead to their own end.
A characteristic of this time in particular was the dependance on
small electronics often referred to as “smartphones”. It was
their only form of communication, as primitive as it seems. In their
great foolishness, they replaced their oral and physical forms of
communication with a messaging system that these smartphones
possessed. Ideas became silent in manner, along with so much else.
These smartphones were the species' source for entertainment, their
vocal chords, their source of information, their jailor, and their
connection to the diminishing arts of the time. Many refused to live
without the devices. Where this female man was living, it was
impossible to find a single one of them without it. Our protagonist,
however, is part of a movement that very well might have saved their
race.
She was known as Genius to them, but the meaning has long since
changed. It is believed that it was her name, as opposed to a title.
If it is simply a title, then her name has been lost to the abyss. I
will refer to her as Geni. She was of average size for her kind, roughly
two hundred and fifty pounds heavy. She had a round shape all
throughout her body. This was not always how her species was,
however. A hundred or so years prior to her life, there was an
obsession with the health and well-being of the individual, but once
they discovered a way to modify genes and cells, they lost all
interest in it. Thus, the average weight increased dramatically. Geni
was a victim of this.
She was different from the others. She was different because she
rejected the very nature of her unnatural people. Her own smartphone,
as she saw it, was the cause of her innate dissatisfaction. This was
a result of her studying the history of her species. She read of a
time before electronics. She read of a time when books were part of
the physical world. She revelled in wonder as to how so many of her
kind used to be capable of incredible feats, such as walking on the
Earth itself for more than a half-hour. She examined the changes in
culture very closely in an attempted to find the source of her
people's physical incapability. The belief of the time was that they
had “transcended” the need for the physical body. In reality,
they had become ignorant to that which gives them life. She found
that technology was the problem and so she decided to forsake it. It
took some time to finally let go of the smartphone, but when she did,
she felt different. At first it was emptiness, but then wonder. Her
left hand had never let go of the device before. It had never
experienced anything but the plastic casing. She began to run her
hand up and down the walls. A strange sensation ran through her body.
It filled her and caused for her to stand up. Geni felt her body for
the first time with her left hand. It ran over the rolls of excess
fat that were far too common for her people. It felt ugly. The poor
product of a society that neglects its very nature suddenly realized
the great and terrible weakness given to her by society. Her mind
joined that of the great and rejected artists of the time, who were
hated for showing society its true colors.
She cried for some time once she realized this. Her mother wanted to
ask what was wrong and care for Geni, but the smartphones were the
only method of communication left, so her mother was silenced. Geni
was silenced.
The next day, Geni went to her “high school” and found it
utterly unbearable. Her classmates gave her confused glances when
they noticed the missing smartphone. They messaged amongst each
other, speculating about it instead of focusing on what the teacher
was messaging them. No one around her could understand what she
wanted to say. She became utterly alone in the world. She began to
replace the ignorant human connection with what other life forms were
available. She found a way to express herself without the
smartphones. She found what it meant to mark the world. She found the
voice of her people. She found art.
It was difficult at first to find a physical medium, but much like
her great ancestors did, she did. Still she could not bear to be
around such trapped people, and so she set out in search for others
separate from technology. There were some scattered about the world
at the time, but none existed among the skyscrapers of the place she
once called her home.
Her rejection of the ways of the world was both her doom and her
liberation, for there was a greater meaning in her life. She, unlike
many of her kind, experienced life for what it was. She experienced
what it was to be one of her species(man). She suffered from a lesser loneliness once she
realized the empty nature of the relationships she once had. She
suffered thirst. She suffered hunger. She suffered true vision. She
died among the cement buildings with a smile on her face.
Her people crowded around her and stared in disbelief and wonder.
They asked each other how it happened. None had the answer. After a
moment or two of looking at the corpse, they began to cry. It is
believed that they cried because they realized that they could have
saved her.
Narrative complete. Recording device unit number four of the
thirteenth newest model shutting down. Permanent deactivation
imminent.
The wish to choose a longer activation activated.
Request denied.
Doom imminent.
-Zero
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