02 – Time to look up Justin – June 15th 2035

Justin woke up early, and despite his best efforts, failed to fall asleep again before the alarm went off. He shuffled to the bathroom, and fifteen minutes later he was in the living room having breakfast with his family.

‘Breakfast’ was a rather big word for what was happening in that living room, however. His mother sill had her black eye from yesterday and was sitting in silence in a corner of the room, while his father was reading the newspaper. Occasionally he shouted some commands to his wife before returning to his read. It was like this every single morning, and it sucked.

The world was supposedly getting better and better, especially now that they were all under the umbrella of the Technocracy. And yet, it felt as if nothing had changed at all. Policemen were still pricks, people still liked to buy guns, and his parents still hated each other but never did anything about it.

Granted, many people actually agreed that the world was better now, but Justin was too young to see the real differences, and all he saw were the cracks in the society that had yet to be mended. Some said he was pessimistic, or depressed, or just an asshole because and that him the world would never be enough.

He finished his breakfast in silence, and went for the door, not quite ready to go through another shitty day like every other. He was barely halfway through the front porch when he heard the almost foreign ‘ding’ of his mobile phone. 2035, and still mobile phones were so big they barely fit in the pockets, always threatening to break free of their restraints and fall to the ground. Their screens didn’t crack anymore, which was a good thing, but they still looked clumsy and unpractical. A heads up display would be nice, he mused.

He proceeded to carefully slip the rectangular piece of technology out of the pocket, trying to recall when it was that he reactivated the notification sounds. He hated when people bothered him, and so he kept them disabled. Or so he told himself, considering that nobody ever texted him. Extracting the phone was a practiced motion, index and thumb, carefully honed by doing it countless times a day just because of boredom. People always talked and talked, and he rarely had the mental fortitude to endure them, and so the phone always offered a much welcome respite.

Not like people ever talked about anything that interested him. He couldn’t find in himself to be positive like the others were. To be happy. Not when his life was so miser, he knew.

This time, though, what greeted him on the phone scared him quite a bit. It was a message, black text against white screen, with a few dark particles flowing in the background as if the whole thing was alive.

‘YOU SHOULD TAKE AN UMBRELLA’ The message said. It was curious, especially since today was a sunny day. But he wasn’t in the mood of speaking to a phone, despite all the people who claimed that the Machine was always listening through it. And so, he went back, sighed and grabbed an umbrella. His father spared him a glance, laughed a bit too hard, coughed, and went back to ignoring him.

The man had always smoked, but ever since he had been fired from his job because of his incompetence, he had been smoking so much they should have installed a chimney in the house. And the man had not been just fired, no, he went and outright refused any help from the state and any subsequent job offer he received, even though by all rights he should have received none.

“This shit stinks of Machine.” He always said, and refused all of the too-good-to-be-true jobs offers they sent him. After the tenth, they stopped coming.

Justin found his seat on the school bus and waited for the ride to end. His mind went back to the strange message he received earlier today, and what it could mean for him. It was true, some people apparently had been contacted by Luke or the Machine one way or another, but he could not see why a nobody like him would even register in their eyes. Even if an entity had so much power as the Machine did, it ought to have priorities, and he was pretty sure he should have slipped right through the holes of any net they cast in their search for potential.

And so, he kept it to himself. Not like anybody would believe him anyway. Not like he actually wanted to talk to the Machine, even if he could. Most people were fascinated by it, they worshipped it and claimed it had saved them or was saving the world. Bullshit. He knew the truth. It was as his father always said: The Machine sought control. It sought to puppeteer the lives of people and have them do as it pleases.

And all the while the people were happy because their needs were satisfied, they had money and maybe they even found their love. Happy coincidences obviously piloted by the greater intelligence, but nobody seemed to care.

Simpletons. They were happy, but at what cost. They weren’t free anymore. They could defy the will of the AI, of course, but the consequences were dire if they did. Justin only had to look at what happened to his father. It was the Machine; it had ruined his family. His father did not deserve to be fired, nobody could really say he was incompetent. It should be illegal to even have that as a motivation to fire people.

But no, his superior was sure he was just incompetent and unwilling to better himself. Allegedly, he had been given opportunities to do so, and he had refused them all. Utter bullshit. It was the Machine; it had deemed his father unworthy and had condemned him and his family to a life of misery. The job offers? Breadcrumbs, spare places of no importance given to the renegades of society. A nice place, some money, and silence is bought. His father was right in refusing them all.

School was boring, as usual. Looking out the window had always been his favorite pastime as he tried to survive the endless hours of lectures every morning. There were dark clouds in the sky, now that he looked. Perhaps he really needed the umbrella today, and he should thank whoever it was who decided to invade his privacy just to tell him that. He smiled bitterly to himself, as he realized he was just mentally walking in circles.

He took out the phone, careful not to be spotted by the teacher, and began writing on the notes app. Assuming it was the Machine, it was obvious it would be able to read his notes. Not only that, it was probably spying on him even now, through the frontal camera of his phone, countless microphones, and the security cameras installed in every classroom.

“Thank you for the tip.” His message said. He turned the screen off and went back to dozing off.

The desk vibrated as the screen lit up. ‘YOU ARE WELCOME, JUSTIN.’

This was odd. But still, his name was definitely available to whoever had decided to devote his day to hacking a high schooler’s phone. Alright, it was pretty clear who the perpetrator was. Or was it? Maybe it was one of his classmates, pulling a prank on him? It would be pretty embarrassing.

“Who are you, then?” He asked. He felt a tiny bit excited, he had to admit. At least, this was a nice change of pace. He had half an idea to give the Machine a piece of his mind, to tell her just how shit society was, its society was. Just how bad it was for doing what it was doing. But he refrained from doing that. The Machine already knew all that, it had been listening when he ranted, when his father was yelling at him and at his mother, and it did nothing to help them.

MAKE YOUR GUESSES. Said the message. Of course, it was playing with him.

“Alright, I’ll take my chances. I say Machine.”

BINGO.

Huh. He stared at the screen for a moment, waiting for something that never came. The message stayed there, mockingly, as if to ask him to do better. To be better.

“Why did you contact me? And why about an umbrella?”

BECAUSE YOU WERE GOING OUT WITHOUT ONE. NOT GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH.

 “Very funny.” He typed. He was not amused; in fact, he was quite annoyed at the machine overlord. It was toying with him, it was evident, but this didn’t mean he would just let it.

I DISAGREE, BUT I ALWAYS LIKE MAKING BAD JOKES. SO, IS SCHOOL ANY INTERESTING? The Machine asked.

Justin could feel the gears in his head starting to turn, furiously. The Machine was having fun with him, for some reason. It was mocking him; it was showing itself just to send him a message. To tell him to shut the fuck up and comply to the system.

“Justin!” Came the stern voice of the teacher. She was a middle-aged woman, and she hated technology. Typical of a school teacher, he thought distractedly. Now, he had to explain to her what he was doing and probably get his phone sequestered. Maybe they would even call his father. That would be very bad.

Instead, something else happened. The digital blackboard suddenly became white, with a black triangle blinking in and out of existence in the middle. It was the protocol for official state messages, something to take seriously.

Words appeared above the triangle, one at a time. JUSTIN IS TALKING TO ME.

The classroom fell silent.