Critical Mass, Chapter 24: Phoenix Rising

If there was one thing Thor had mastered in all his time in the underground, it was getting uptown without being noticed. To stay for long, undetected, that was another matter entirely. Fear tends to heighten the senses of the indigenous lemmings, giving them an almost superhuman ability to sniff out an outsider based on nothing but visual appearance. It had something to do with their innate preoccupation with physical beauty. Their entire culture seemed to be based on it, and everything in their culture was bought or sold… including physical beauty. Since their daily routines no longer involved strenuous physical activity that made one's body more and more defined and beautiful, they had to supplement ways to do so. For the right price, you could look any way you wanted.

Even their art was structured such that people who had the look that the masses revered while it was popular would succeed, and the rest, regardless of how good they were, could spend their entire lives trying to make it, and never succeed. It got so bad in the mainstream, that there was only an adopted, formulaic approach to music, commercial art, and movies that was considered "sellable," and could be produced, at little or no risk of rejection, by the in-house artists working for the corporation. All that was needed to package it up and spoon feed it to the population was a pretty face, and those were not hard to come by.

Thor had always been nauseated by this aspect of life up here. You couldn't escape it. It was everywhere. On billboards. On the sides of buildings. In the malls. And yes, in the air… replacing the polluted ambiance of life, nearly devoid of the sounds of nature that were drowned out by the commotion of man. A constant seamless bombardment on the God Box, the one way window to mainstream enslavement of the mind; formerly a device for the free exchange of ideas, information and entertainment known as Television, it had become a corporate owned and harvested mind-blast of proprietary collusion and advertisement with just enough fruit to keep the user from succumbing to scurvy of the mind, as they shelled out more and more money to stay in the loop so they could find out how to best spend the rest.

Even the Internet, where you at least had to "pull" what you wanted to experience, rather than have it pushed on you, was getting tedious, at best. Awash with an all-time high of commercial redundancy, it had reached a point of almost complete uselessness. Never had he imagined a time or place in all of history more in need of an artistic renaissance. To take supply and demand out of the equation seemed the only way to give it back its integrity, but then, without profit, who in this money driven culture would lift a finger to produce it. How much your value system changes when you remove money from the equation. What becomes truly priceless are the things no one can take from you. He had seen more diversity, intelligence, inspiration, and yes, beauty, in the graffiti on one wall of an underground pub's restroom than in the entire topside put together. And the music? The music of the underground, running the gamut of emotion and primitive energy, was a force to be reckoned with....

There were many things Thor would miss about the underground if forced to live out his days in this sterile environment, not the least of which was being able to walk from point A to point B without being stared at like a leper. He couldn't figure it out. It was like whatever it was that made him stand out was obvious to these people at a respectable distance, regardless of the fact that he was literally surrounded by people wearing almost the exact same clothes he was. The kids up here loved to piss their parents off by dressing like street kids; ripped up pants, leather, the works. It gave the "wannabe's" a little fake street credit with their friends, as well. Girls seemed attracted to this level of "comfortable danger," yet, if the genuine article passed in front of any of them, they could immediately sniff out the difference, and would turn up their noses and walk away without a second thought. Just a touch of realism in the right places was all it took. The rips in the clothes centered over recent rips in the skin, the leather, shiny and weathered into armor, complete with scuffs and blemishes, and an overall tilt toward function and away from fashion. However close he thought them to appear, he couldn't shake the feeling of eyes on him coming from everywhere.

He looked down just a touch, so as not to make eye contact with anyone and proceeded up the wide entryway stairs leading into the mall. There were hundreds of other people walking into the mall, most of them young people moving in small groups of ten or so. He picked out a group that was a little taller than him, but dressed similarly, and fell in behind them, moving in the same direction.

As they approached the large double doorway, he noticed a metal detector/ implant scanner, manned by one security guard. He had never been back to the stairwell to retrieve his weapons, so he should be alright, he thought, taking off his fingerless gloves to expose the implant underneath. As he crossed the guard's path, he kept him looking at his eyes, instead of his face, and thinking only of himself... "Everything staying calm this morning?" Thor politely asked with an insider's smile, a trick used to invoke feelings of comraderie in complete strangers; almost as if you know exactly what they are going through, probably because you do it yourself... a manipulation best used when there's no time to discuss things further and a decision about you is being made based solely on first impression….

"So far, so good, bro." replied the guard as Thor passed through the detector without a sound. He had his palm showing nonchalantly, while appearing to be using that hand to expose his left wrist. In either case, the passing was uneventful, which is what he was after.

"With any luck it'll stay that way... Keep up the good work!" he said, nodding, with a double thump on the counter with his fist on his way by.

"Thanks." he concluded enthusiastically, obviously starved for conversation in his job.

At first glance, he walked through the mall's open food court, a hodge podge of fast food and pseudo-gourmet trendy cuisine, and Jerrick's place flashed into his mind.... Had they really evolved that much? This didn't really look any different than the last time he was in one of these places... and yet...

Then it happened. Just as he walked past the storefront on his left, exiting the food court, he heard a soft voice speak to him. Directly to him, without a sound! It still drew his attention to the store, but had no identifiable source! It said "Would you like to try on some shoes, Mr. Stanton?" At first he jumped nearly out of his skin, but quickly realized what must be happening. Though they had all joked that someday it might come to this, he hadn't actually heard of it yet, but then, he didn't really know anyone with an implant. The chip somehow was engineered to transmit his personal bio-rhythm to the advertiser's computer so that it could transmit audible messages back to him, and only to him, directly into his brain.

They had been using chip-based ambient audio marketing for some time, but as the stores got more and more crowded and noisy, it became hard to hear the ones that were pinpointed at you. Sometimes just standing too close to another person got confusing enough. It was proven that too much noise, even quiet, ambient background chatter, actually affected the stores' bottom line, as people would have a tendency to get irritable after a while, and lose interest in spending money. This kicked the artificial telepathic marketing research into full gear.

This was one of the flagship malls, but Thor knew this would spread like a brushfire, and the ramifications were frightening to think about. Just like the all-encompassing convenience of the implant, this technology would be supported, no, embraced by the masses as a huge easement on the otherwise stressful lives of consumers. Only then, when it's literally everywhere, would the true danger be realized. If they can tailor the message to have an identifiable voice, how hard would it be to eliminate the voice altogether, and only project the message? Now our own heads weren't private? He knew things up here were bad, but he had no idea how far it had already gotten.

He sat down on a bench in the middle of the wide corridor, stores all up and down both sides, with people coming and going in and out of all of them. For the most part, they seemed happy… oblivious… even serene. He held his left hand tightly over the right, afraid to let go for fear of thoughts that weren't his own entering his head again. As with most things regarding loss of privacy or big brother, the only way it was really going to adversely affect someone is if they allowed themselves to become a target, right? We already succumb to every kind of poke and prod they impose on us, so how is this different?

He knew he was only temporarily playing Devil's advocate in an attempt to see both sides so he didn't grab a knife, cut out the implant, and do a 180 right back for the underground, but the facts were the facts, and this technology was fucking dangerous! Know Thine Enemy... Know Thyself.

Out of the corner of his eye, Thor caught a glimpse of a group of kids, aging from 14 to 18, playing recklessly in front of one of the jewelry kiosks out in the middle. It started fairly harmlessly with a shove or two, then escalated quickly into a squabble between two of the older ones. The big kid, on the left, reached back and made a fist, getting ready to hit the scruffy looking kid on his right, when they all suddenly dispersed, staring toward the ground, in random directions. They all shot off on their individual tangents quietly, slowly, and without provocation at exactly the same time, as if someone flipped on a switch! They each took just a few steps, some of them bumping into other people and each other, as if they couldn't see, then they seemed to snap out of it, looking around, finding each other, then taking off through the mall as if nothing had happened. Thor's jaw dropped open. He looked all around them, but saw no security telling them to disperse. As a matter of fact, he saw no security anywhere.

He had a pretty good idea what just happened, and it scared the shit out of him. To be sure, he would need to test a theory. He walked into the shoe store. In case something went south, it was close to the exit. He went into a quiet isle where it looked like there were no cameras. He picked up a random pair of children's shoes and opened up the inside of his jacket. He reached up, intending to drop them into his inside pocket, when...

He suddenly realized he was standing in front of a row of woman's shoes with his nose all the way inside one. It felt similar to waking up from surgery, momentarily unaware of where you are, or even who you are. He grinned, unable to identify the tickling sensation in his extremities. He suddenly became aware of people on both sides of him. He realized he was standing in a pretty busy aisle, and there were women laughing at him. He smiled, pulling his nose out of the shoe, and laughed as well, seeing the humor in the situation. He nodded at the women and backed out of the aisle, trying to figure out where he just came from. "Ladies..." he nodded again...

"Pervert!" one of them yelled. Wow, what a rush! He realized he had walked over to the next aisle and half way down it before stopping. He knew now this technology had already advanced much further than he had originally feared. He needed to get what he came for and get the hell out of here!

He quickly went down the men's shoes isle. He was in desperate need of some new tread. The boots he lived in were coming apart at the seams. As he walked down the aisle, all he saw was one pair after the next of the silliest looking, cheaply made, low ankle quasi-sport abominations he wouldn't be caught dead wearing. Finally, when he had just about given up hope, he stumbled onto a blast from the past. Right before his very eyes were a pair of retro-looking Doc Martens calf high steel toe boots. They looked just like the ones he remembered some of his older family members wearing, except they seemed to be making them a lot more heavy duty now. These were definitely him, and they were even his size.

He put them on; tossing his other ones in the trash, then went to go pay for them. That was when he noticed that there was no checkout in the store... Anywhere. He figured you were probably supposed to pay on your way out of the mall, but after what just happened, he was a little afraid to try to walk out of the store with them. He still had the tags in his hand, so he couldn't be accused of stealing, then bravely headed for the entryway. When he was just about to clear the threshold, he closed his eyes and cringed….

"Thank you for your purchase, Mr. Stanton. You have been charged 283 Euros for your transaction," he heard directly into his head again. It made him jump, but he was actually relieved. To do the rest of this anonymously, without the scrutiny of a checker at the end, was somewhat comforting. He stepped out of the store back into the busy corridor and stepped up to an information sign. It was touch screen and holographic, with a 3D isometric map of the whole building, so he didn't have too much trouble figuring out where all the stores he would need were located.

He figured it would probably be relatively safe to spend just one night in Stanton's own house, at least safer than having his account pop up on the computer at a motel. Here, everything was under one roof, so even if someone figured out what really happened to Stanton after he was killed, he would be gone before any of these purchases were observed. They simply wouldn't be looking here.

He arrived at Stanton's residence with a full stomach, nice clothes and a million dollar smile and paid the Autocab with a swipe from his wrist when prompted. He shut the door and it sped off on its GPS guided preprogrammed course. He had a pretty good feeling the police hadn't been here.

The only ones who know he's dead are the one's (or one) who killed him. To the rest of the world, he was a ghost anyway. It looked like they found what they were looking for, so why not? He got on the elevator and pushed Stanton's room number from the billing address on his account. It was, of course, different from the one on his ID. A man like him wouldn't advertise, but would definitely want his correspondence regarding his money.

The elevator moved up for quite a while, then turned 90 degrees to the right, and started moving to the right. It traveled a few more seconds, then turned another 90 degrees to the right and stopped. The door slid open to reveal two more sliding doors with the seam in the middle. He started to worry, as nothing was happening. There was a button on the door. He set down a bag, and pushed it with his left hand. He could barely make out the sound of a doorbell inside. His eyes opened wide... The implant!

He set down the other bags, then pulled back the glove on his right hand. The doors slid immediately open. He scooped up his bags and entered, the doors closing behind him to complete darkness. He heard a faint noise from behind that he knew had to be the elevator being whisked off at high speed to a neutral location. "Lights!" he yelled, but had no luck. "God Damn voice recognition..." He reached into his pocket and fished out a lighter. Striking it he cupped the small flame and looked around. The place had been thoroughly tossed. Everything had been gone through, but there was no evidence of a police investigation. He turned his attention to the wall by the entrance and flipped on the light switches. He decided that if this place was now his, whether he kept it or not, he wanted to clean it up at least enough so that he could think straight.

He started putting away the papers that were all over the floor, randomly to be sure, into a file cabinet by a large desk, then into the desk drawers themselves after that filled up. Inside the desk was a loaded Colt .45 1911 combat government model, just like the ones he had always carried. "Well, he had good taste..." He pulled open another drawer and saw something that made his blood curdle. There was a brand new pair of shock-cuffs, with the detachable remote handle exactly like the one he found at the scene where Kait was taken! Stanton's involvement didn't make sense until now. He must have been the one with the stunner... It was her body that was gone, and the cuff itself was missing too. Stanton attacked her, then was killed by the man who was stalking him. He felt sick all over again to be using the identity of the piece of shit that probably killed the love of his life... He only wished he knew for sure.

Still rummaging through Stanton's things, he switched on his computer. When prompted for a password, he simply scanned his implant over the electric eye, and it continued booting up. Thor couldn't help but admire the hardware, this thing was state of the art. He accessed the routines that governed the house, first. He overwrote the voice recognition software to accept his voice, instead, then looked up all existing commands and routines. After seeing what he saw in the mall today, he became very interested in security and privacy. He reprogrammed the computer for uni-directional operation and disabled any remote access by establishing a new, hard-line only firewall. Without wireless capability, nobody could use his activity as a homing pigeon.

All he needed now was to know what the police knew. He hacked, almost effortlessly, into the police mainframe and started searching for reports or assignments pertaining to Stanton or The Clan. He came across a special division assignment pertaining to underground organized crime, but it was a reference only, the files nonexistent on the mainframe. To hide it in this manner meant collusion with the FBI, NSA, or CIA, who he would not be trying to hack tonight...

There was not one word about Stanton. No missing person report, no criminal history, nothing. This was good, no matter what his decision was for the rest of his life, but he couldn't imagine living in this sterile, spoon fed psycho-fuck of a world any longer than he absolutely had to. He was going mad from the volume of his own thoughts, and didn't forsee finding one truly like-minded person up here, so he finally gave in to morbid curiosity.

"God Box!" he yelled to his freshly programmed voice computer. The blinds collapsed and a very large screen was revealed, flickering on to a menu channel. Thor couldn't help but smile and clap. "Popcorn!" he yelled, then looked around, just entertaining himself. He surfed the channels, imaginatively asphyxiated, until he passed out from sheer exhaustion; face down on the desk, to an onslaught of mind-bending dreams.

I see a world gone to shit around me

And a herd of people who could really care less

Bred to believe that this "All Knowing, All Seeing" governing machine hears the voice of the people, and thus, they're rendered powerless....

I see a chance for a future

where the greedy bastards who took our world are forced to give it back,

but this will never happen 'til the silent masses of sleepwalking puppets are ready to admit that things are not as they seem on the TV set,

and the bloated man's wreaking of media cover up .

 

Walls blind our eyes… spoon fed crooked lies…

 

Bloated mound of apathetic neuro-dialysis

Farting mass of pseudo-mental paralysis

Saturate

Bow down to corporate, mind-fed security

Bridging life and death and life through obscurity

Saturate

All day, whining, dining, selling, buying, fucking leave me be!

Can't get up, can't break free!

Can't get up, can't break free!

No God Box

 

He awoke, more terrified than refreshed, and vowed never to activate this damnable device again as long as he lived.

©2010 Steven G. Curry, All Rights Reserved