FIRST, THERE WAS NOTHING

First, there was nothing. No dark, no light, no direction, no time. Just an absolute lack of being occupying everything and nothing, as a life prepared to form, waiting for the one moment that would set it all in motion. All was quiet.

***

The doorbell rang. Alex slowly got up from his chair and trudged to the door to answer it. Waiting outside was a small black box on wheels. Upon registering Alex’s presence, the top of the box opened, and a plastic bag emerged. The bags used to be made of paper while there were still trees, but the last one died out years ago. Alex gingerly picked up the bag.

“Enjoy your meal, Alexander-Maximilian Wilson” – came a chillingly realistic female voice from the speaker on the bottom of the box. Alex wished it could stop using his horrendous full name, but he’d sold the information on his full name years ago, so it was too late now. He went back inside with the bag containing his food, and laid it out onto the table. Just as it had been every day for who knows how long now, it was a plastic box with pasta, another plastic box with Greek salad, a plastic bottle of orange juice to drink and a special thermal plastic box with chocolate ice cream for dessert. It used to come with beer too, before alcohol was banned five years ago. Back when he had first sold his food preferences, he didn’t think much of it…maybe he should’ve stopped and considered it for a second. Then again, he didn’t know anybody who hadn’t sold theirs, so he probably would’ve caved under the weight of the peer pressure by now.

He slowly chewed his food, staring out of his window at the view he had from it when he was a little kid. The view wasn’t real, of course – it was just a dynamically updating AI-generated image based on the memories he’d sold the access to so he could afford Ryan’s engagement ring. Ryan…Alex sighed. Their wedding had been just days away when the new algorithms had been passed. And when they did, all of a sudden, they weren’t allowed to get married anymore. And then a few years later, when the algorithm was updated again, and the ban on mixed-race households came into effect, they weren’t allowed to live together anymore either. And then, when they tried to avoid the ban, they had all forms of communication between them banned and cut off. Even despite how advanced AI technology had become, twisted people still managed to interfere, corrupting the algorithms so the societal standards they aligned with could stay in place. Alex wished he could do something about it, wished he could get his old life back, when AI was nothing more than a curio and, at most, put some creative jobs at risk – at least that’s what he thought at the time. But alas, that ship had long since sailed; the reality of AI in control could not be escaped – and it would eradicate anybody who tried…Okay, okay, too far.

Alex just about pulled himself out of his dark thoughts, sighed again and went back to his food. Once he’d finished, he carefully placed the bottle inside the smallest box, before stacking them all into one another and throwing them into the disintegrator. He sat back down. He’d been stalling for long enough now. It was time to log back on.

Alex pulled his phone from his pocket and opened his live stream camera. He checked the progress bar: he still needed at least 4 hours to fulfill the minimum for the day. He was obligated to sell off 12 hours of his waking life every day – if he didn’t, he’d be going hungry for the next week. Ever since data became the world’s main currency, and since he lost his job to the latest advancement in AI technology, this was how Alex had been getting by – “selling” the view of his life to survive. He turned the camera on.

“Alexander-Maximilian Wilson reporting in, just finished dinner, about to change clothes and then leave the apartment, going to the movie theater,” – he said as he stood up and headed for his room – “going to my room to get my outdoor outfit.” The movie theater was just a way to quench his boredom these days – every movie was artificially generated, formulaic and didn’t actually include any real people anymore. But the artificial movies were significantly better than the music or TV programming, so every few weeks he’d stream his life for a few extra hours and trade the excess in for a ticket to whatever “film” seemed the most appealing that week. 

He got to his bedroom, opened the wardrobe, propped his phone up inside, and replaced his T-shirt with a white button-up and black suit jacket, and did away with his sweatpants in favor of a pair of black dress pants. Once he was in his full suit, he pulled a dark-blue tie from a drawer to the right of his wardrobe and put that on as well. All the while, he updated the broadcast on the things he had thought about and felt since he switched off the previous one. He did withhold his little moment at dinner from it though – he was sure it wasn’t safe to confess reminiscing about now illegal things and questioning the legitimacy and morals of the entire system. Alex realized he had frozen whilst thinking about this, and quickly jolted back into action; he picked his phone up and headed out of his apartment, the door sliding back into place behind him.

Outside, Alex was greeted by the cold, dim hue of the artificial sky. “I would like it better if the sky was a brighter, lighter blue color, because this one provokes sadness” – he said into his phone. He had grown to realize that if you gave up a detailed enough explanation of your preferences or feelings on certain things, they might just be addressed to keep you at peace with the world. Maybe if enough people agreed with him they’d fix the sky. He began to trudge slowly down the street, when, all of a sudden, the color began to fade from the sky. Really, they’d fix the sky that quickly? No, wait, it wasn’t getting lighter…

***

Imperfection is an indispensable component of human nature. Nothing we have ever created as a species has ever come without its flaws, even as we’ve advanced more and more. We have assurances that the chances of our inventions’ failure are near zero – but they never actually reach zero. This stays the same regardless of whether the invention in question is something as simple as a vegetable peeler, or something as complex and advanced as cutting-edge, universally governing artificial intelligence.

One tiny flaw is all it takes. One cog’s spin to miss the one next to it, enough to send the entire clock mechanism crashing down. One error in a program imitating a sky underneath the false atmosphere dome. Instead of changing the shade of the projection, the input is interpreted as a call to power off the dome, switching off the oxygen supply for the planet below it.

As Alex lay on the ground, gasping and coughing for air that wouldn’t come, he had no way of knowing that it was his words that had pushed the algorithm over the edge into triggering the end of the world. As he felt himself grow fainter, he closed his eyes and tried as hard as he could to picture Ryan’s face. If this was the end, he wanted him to be the last thing before his mind’s eye.

***

Once again, there was nothing. No dark, no light, no direction, no time. Just an absolute lack of being occupying everything and nothing, in the slowly dimming afterglow of a life that, just like all those around it, had come undone at the will of fate, of that one moment that set it all in motion. All was quiet.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This story was a very spontaneous thing - it originated from an assignment I was given in class to write a story in the spirit of the television series "Black Mirror", talking about loss of privacy, access to data and artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, the assignment was limited to just two pages, but I still really like how it turned out, so I'm going to put up this short version too. I am planning on expanding the story, so, in time, the long version will also appear on here. For now though, I hope you enjoyed this brief version. 

Tim