Well all the evil mind-manipulators manipulated away for all they were worth. They loved being evil of course – boy did they love it! They loved it so much. All the evil old mind manipulators manipulating away – would you just look at that! Boy they sure do love it.
So our story begins – as all good stories do – in the far distant future. Humins were extinct – they had manipulated themselves out of existence. The physical world had been discarded – humankind had evolved into a series of self-replicating ‘n’-generational topological hyperreal transforms living in a world made up of pure algebra. Every day has become one big multifactorial equation that we have to solve before we get past it – if we fail to find a solution then we’re trapped forever in the universe of error-signals flashing malevolently red. That’s some pressure, I can tell you! Pressure is the name of the game in this far-flung future-world…
Who knows, you might discover that you yourself are an error, an error that can’t be fixed, possibly a fatal one. Maybe the whole system will shut down? You wake up screaming only to find that it wasn’t a dream. You wake up crying for forgiveness from the Universal Digital Mind but you’re told that the system doesn’t recognise you. You’re told that you have two more login attempts remaining. If you fail to enter the correct details your account will be deleted.
You wake up screaming only to discover that it wasn’t a dream.
Everything is different in the future of course. Everything is different in the future only actually it’s the same. Instead of saying “Hello good buddy how’s your day going?’ when you meet someone you perform a recursive iteration creating a fractal pattern that is both interesting and unique. This fractal pattern spreads out from your core like an aura and they respond in a similar fashion. Both parties continue on their way after this, attending to the relevant functions that they have been allocated by the UDM. You have no time to waste – you have to solve the equation of life after all and you’ve only got four hours left to you before you hit the deadline. You’re struggling but you know that you get there in the end. You’re wrestling with a cupboard full of abstract intractables but you know it’ll all come good in the final shakedown. You hope it will come good in the final shakedown. You know you have to remember to carry the one; you mustn’t – on any account – forget to carry the one.
If you’re not so great at maths however then this will translate into social anxiety straightaway in the algebraic world – you’re afraid that you’ll fumble your computations. You’re worried that you might not be able to keep on juggling all the irrational variables that make up the equation – maybe you’ll let one drop? A hot prickly flush spreads from the top of your head right down to the soles of your feet at thought of it. The shame is so intense that you think you going to pass out, ‘Suppose I forget to carry the one?’ you say to yourself, utterly panic-stricken at this stage. The panic is utterly overwhelming. You’re having a nightmare. People are talking to you but you can’t hear what they’re saying. You can see their lips moving but that’s all. Their eyes are very big and googly – their eyes look like giant poached eggs swimming in the air before you. You’re in a terrible fluster; you’re freaking out big time. You’re Captain Freakout and your crippled spaceship is heading straight into a catastrophic meteorite storm…
‘Micro-dosing is for wimps,’ you tell yourself – ‘I’m going to eat the whole damn sheet…’ You’re trying to be brave. All around you your so-called mates are egging you on: “Eat the sheet, eat the sheet, eat the sheet,” they chant. The sheet is so fresh that it’s still damp. It’s straight out of the lab. It’s only a few hours old. You’re fearful. You’re fearful because you don’t want to make the wrong decision. You don’t want to make a bad life choice. You’re under pressure – you’re afraid of being a coward, you’re afraid of being a wimp, and so you stuff the whole sheet into your mouth. Frantically chewing, making sure that you don’t waste even a single drop of the saliva that’s running down the chin. Each drop is precious; each drop is loaded with a super-powerful super-potent cargo of military-grade deliriant. You convulsively swallow the last bit of cardboard and then wonder what you’ve done.
