“TO KEEP YOU UPDATED on the current circumstances, I’m still creating as many of these recordings as quickly as possible since we are being pressed by outside events that may expose our plan. Once exposed, there will be no message. Again, if you received this message, that’s a good thing because it indicates we executed the final signal before expiring. As indicated before, I may talk fast, run on, run out of energy, and disgorge jumbled thoughts. No time to dally.”

“The last topic covered our virulent creations. Next, I’ll provide more color on the aftereffects of our democratization of that apocalyptic tech.”

“Life changes in little increments over time. Imperceptible steps followed by nodding rationalizations. Disagreement draped in false logic and subtle propaganda. Things start out big and right and obvious, then they are fractured into unintended offshoots.”

“Terrorists used planes as weapons earlier this century, and we created security infrastructures to protect against that. Domestic mass murderers used high-capacity weapons to kill, and we added more security. But we never removed the weapons of war from the little despots. Instead, we clothed our rationality in conversations on improving mental health, then threw pennies at that effort.”

“When the Great Debacle devastated the planet and killed half the population, the switch was suddenly flipped to the other extreme. Nine billion ducks were initially in the water, none with the ability to fly away from the devastation. Amidst the anarchy of half of them dying instantly, the tech states resolutely took charge. It was so pervasive, it’s hard for me to remember life before that time.”

“The democratization of mass destruction was concurrent with the ubiquitous ability to accelerate the centralization of monitoring and control via advanced tech. The favorite tech for that today is drones.”

“Drones of all sizes, even to those barely visible, miniature stealth drones. They fly at all heights, peering through your windows day and night, keeping track of you. They’re ensuring you are conforming and not in your basement concocting the next societal cataclysm.”

“Every drone connects to the AI gods in the clouds, the series of interconnected networks run by the oligarchic demigod machines and their favored industries and industrialists. They spend their cycles actively processing these ever-compounding accumulation of inputs.”

“Imagine ten drones monitoring your piddling, insignificant activities during the day and what that does to the burden of humanity. Envision the wastefulness of such a species. We are but bees, ever-focused on constructing a hive to defend against invasive wasps and too spent of energy to build honeycomb for the larvae.”

“That description is the tip of the iceberg. Despite feigning the maintenance of the original U.S. Constitution, it has been maladapted and usurped by rationalizations that presumably exist to protect what remains of society. Every right that it once provided is now blunted in the name of safety for citizens and government. And we fall further into that endless vortex of fear and paranoia with each new adaptation of tech to hyper-enable our surveillance and control state.”

“Yet I can’t complain too much. I have no idea how many potential risks were eliminated in the last few decades. One or one billion? I’ll never find out.”

“But that iceberg is always shifting. Nanobots go unseen, gathering data from their sensors, relaying it back to the AI cloud. They’re yellow-flagging and red-flagging and commanding follow-up by mechanized, super-human varints who may show unannounced at your doorstep in full metallic regalia. You’d feel blessed to have your limbs intact after such a meeting.”

“Given emergency powers laws, a red flag supersedes any constitutional rights. With so many monitors pervading life, red flags spring up daily in our little gatherings of human domiciles like gnats in the garden. You’d need to turn every other citizen into a judge to grant the constitutional warrants required. As a result, warrants, fair trials of peers, and individual privacy have withered into the dustbins of history.”

“I must describe other tech, as you will soon have similar versions if you don’t already. Drones and nanobots augmented by cameras every ten feet, sometimes ten inches, as you walk outside. Low Earth Orbit satellites tracking your every move. Auditory sensors, sometimes biological, sometimes mechanical, often both. Olfactory the same. Facial rec the same.”

“Like the dog who used its sense of smell to find its master a thousand miles away, these sensors can pick up your scent from a long distance. A cellular fragment of your DNA carried by the wind. An image of your lip print on a cup across the room. This is further enhanced by human hybrids with similar DNA-enabled tech. They can easily use their superior vision, olfactory, and auditory capabilities to rat out the suspect, the questionable, the potential misanthrope.”

“But that’s only a taste of today’s monitoring tech. It is coupled in strength by control tech, integrated into everything you do. Most bothersome is the coercion, the subtle at first then not-so-subtle conditioning to use the approved systems.”

“Microphones and monitors and speaker systems and financial transactions and transport and mobile devices are always on, always listening, always monitoring. The final judicial body of the AI cloud then determines if the yellow or red flag police will re-educate or terminate you.”

“This activity is done somewhat secretly to avoid the appearance of state control, but not always. I predict my judicial hearing, trial, and judgement will arrive in the form of a hypersonic or drone-delivered missile, given the distance we are from any town. Sofia and I will be found guilty and sentenced upon first discovery of our plan and facilities.”

“Behind all this are the analytics and algorithms. AI code and logic coalescing and crunching in its nanosecond, quantum-enabled worlds. Consider the energy dedicated to this processing, the resource drain, the intense focus, the societal burden!”

“As a result, human creativity and advancement has stalled and regressed in many areas. No Mars colonies. No dreams about expanding to the stars. But again, a species without a few agreed-upon ethics is de facto precluded from those niceties. As mentioned earlier, the infinity curve will annihilate us long before the first human exits the solar system.”

“We have become as docile and compliant as ants, at least speaking for unaugmented humans. It’s hard for me to grasp where hybrids like chippers and grippers lie in the realm of consciousness and logic. I know they are connected to and under the control of their nurturing networks, but that’s a realm I can’t discuss.”

“That is like asking a mariquita, a ladybug, to understand and describe my recording setup. It can crawl on my microphone and maybe even find a meal, but it can’t comprehend its purpose.”

“You can’t completely fault the oligarchic structures, though. Our mottled species is both a human and hybrid amalgam anymore. Given our constant need for data, it’s difficult for most people to separate themselves from the interconnected networks of this world, irrespective of whether they use their traditional human senses and devices like cellphones or have integrated augmentations.”

“The human is the network, and the network is the human. Same goes for hybrids. This is for good intentions, on the surface. Keep the peace, sow harmony, ensure we’re safe from each other’s virulent creations, and comply with laws.”

“The fear of another catastrophic event became the perfect foil for oligarchic control. As always happens with human-run systems, and no doubt machine-run ones as well, they are grossly imperfect. Yes, the systems built by humans always amplify their worst fears and behaviors. The individual is subverted, utilizable at will by the machine and discarded when no longer valued or when perceived as a threat.”

“In this regard, I must consider what Sofia and I about to unleash. Even though my messages truly threaten nobody, anyone, or anything beyond our living dystopia, these dozen ten-second transmissions are clear threats to the ruling structures of the day.”

“Oh, I forgot to mention an insidious technology that my autocratic friends or fiends in control have implemented. That is the technology of regulating humans or hybrids by targeting intentional signals into the body and mind.”

“As early as the teens of this century, researchers discovered it was possible to effect simple body movements by generating external electrical signals at a particular frequency into various parts of the brain. Call it extra-corporeal control, but most just call it ‘ex-corp’ now.”

“This technology became further refined over the following decades. Even before the Debacle, it was reportedly being used by some governments to ensure the citizenry’s compliance with laws. Once word of this efficient, new control mechanism got out, increasing numbers of people wore protective headgear, hats, and the like to mitigate the possibility. This was until the oligarchs outlawed such methods of signal interference.”

“I don’t have a big problem with this tech in general. Just consider advertising for specific products. To a great degree, such commercial messages are now so refined, so targeted, and so individualized, you can’t help but buy whatever is being advertised. Direct mind control tech is a short step from that.”

“In those decades and even today, there are a few common uses for external mind control tech. These include using it for governmental and business needs such as forcing assembly line workers to stay awake on the job, or encouraging employees to appreciate their management. As robotic systems assumed control over certain occupations, some of the need for this tech diminished in industry. On the flip side, our governments actively employ these methods of mind control for control among the populace.”

“At one time, everybody assumed the governments would eventually mandate chipping or another kind of intrusive, direct human-machine interface. Either of these could ensure we were respectful little do-gooders in the post-Debacle anthills of humanity. Then along came successive revs of very sophisticated electronic coercion tech. The same purpose was effected without the obvious personal rights implications of chipping or forcing people to wear devices.”

“I’ll get back to the point, but new pressure is being applied to get chipped. It’s called a ‘Vistachit.’ This was invented in our own Westrich domain of Vista, apparently by our oligarch.”

“In past decades, the government and corporations had many ways to track everything about you: social networks, Internet browsers, cellphones and all forms of wireless data, financial transactions, and more. Why not mandate the next step and consolidate all that tech directly into a single forehead chip?”

“It’s clearly more convenient, or so goes the argument. Sure, that’s all fine if you forego personal privacy rights entirely. On the other hand, if somebody wanted to track your every move and intention, today’s tech even without the chip allows them to do that easily.”

“Back to ex-corp tech, for a minute. It’s not just about thought management. The transmitters can control your movements or anticipate your actions without ever touching your body. I suppose this ability to wirelessly impute instructions into the body’s electrochemical systems is old hat by now.”

“As a laser engineer, I understand the government has also used imperceptible light signals for mind coercion. It shows that these days, everything is a potential weapon, meaning everything is a potential control mechanism.”

“In the early decades, futurist visionaries called this world the ‘Internet of Things’ or ‘IOT.’ Funny name, and apt in its description. I doubt the creators of that term could have predicted that humans and hybrids would become just another ‘thing’ in the IOT to be controlled, operated, modified, maintained, and even eliminated.”

“By the way, please don’t assume when I say ‘government’ that I mean only the oligarchs and their lackeys. I use that term loosely to denote a government that is so tightly wrapped around the techno-bio-industrial-military-surveillance complex, it’s hard to distinguish one from the other. It is easier to consider it an interconnected mesh of entities with common and profitable interests.”

“Recall I mentioned incrementalism previously. It’s interesting how we allowed incremental changes to occur that got us to this point of humanity. As I think back in history, credit ratings were used to evaluate a person’s creditworthiness. The ability to obtain new credit, like buying a house, depended upon whether your score was high enough, based on your prior payment history.”

“It wasn’t a huge leap from there to social scoring. If I recall correctly, this concept originated in Asia and was ubiquitous there by the twenties. When you are both directly and subtly coerced into being subjected to monitoring and control systems, such as social media platforms, physical devices, and financial systems, you have no choice but to be controlled.”

“Your personal data, every move you make, every word you speak or type, every transaction, and now even every thought captured, is accumulated, evaluated, and scored in the AI beasts. You are subservient to the controlling systems, and a person becomes a physical avatar of a mathematical construct implied in data.”

“Sometimes this collection of your data is used to profit the companies whose products and services you might use. At other times, the beneficiaries are the government and other controlling entities in your life.”

“I’m not complaining, though. It simply is the new reality. We used to have some semblance of privacy, but the data revolution took that away. It’s an inevitable consequence of convenience and control.”

“I was born in 1999 and can hardly remember a time when I was not connected into a controlling network. There were, of course, local physical networks of neighbors and citizens, the church my parents made me attend, or even school.”

“But after I got my first cellphone, everything changed. I was hooked just like any other millennial. It didn’t matter if I was controlled by the device or social network or anything else. My networks became the all to me. My Baal. The altar at which I’d spend my time.”

“It was exhilarating for a while. For many years, it was hard for me to distinguish the differences between the actual world and the virtual ether of these very accessible, dopamine-inducing systems.”

“I was another flapping sheet on the long clothesline of other sheets, buffeted in the wind. That wind was whatever salacious story was fed to me in the moment – school, friends, media stars, lasers, conspiracies, oddities, conflicts. My mind was attracted to the extremes.”

“I had no grounding. No sense of my mind beyond my connection to the controlling networks. And I was no different than most humans. We were swayed and continue to be swayable by the medium of choice and whoever is clever enough to acquire control of our emotions.”

“As I stated before, this dynamic persisted for me until I found martial arts and meditation. Unfortunately, the dynamic persists across the species, though I can’t speak for hybrids.”

“People are lost without their networks. Less whole. They revel in being swayed. No, they don’t know they’re being swayed, and they revel in the dopamine hits of bias confirmation. They allow their networks to control their emotions and every aspect of their pathetic lives. It’s no existence; not in my book. I am an extreme exception, as is Sofia."