Intrinsic Dialect

In a world where memories can be bought, sold and stolen, a struggling individual discovered a black market of long-lost memories. This place was like no other that had ever existed in the history of humankind, it could be a lucrative yet spiraling descent into the depths of despair and regret. As Oscar Wilde once said, “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want. The other is getting it.”

Art, whom by no standard could be considered the hero of this story, was desperate to make his contribution to society, he had run out of ideas and had become stagnant both creatively and financially. He refused but still succumbed to the idea of a quotidian life, he repudiated the concept of exchanging currency for his precious time, and was fully aware of his unlocked potential, but still struggled to find the key to unleash it. He’d heard from acquaintances about the existence of a black-market bank of memories that could be accessed through the Grid, you just needed a certain level of technological dexterity and currency to be able to ingress it. In his existential quest for meaning, he could pursue this path and find some inspiration in such a place, perhaps even a way to earn a living that would allow him to have extra time to follow his passions, in fact, maybe he could even find his true passion resting in this sea of forgotten memories. All things considered, he thought, anything was better than the monotony he was putting himself through, he’d take any risk if it guaranteed the slightest possibility to escape his status quo. To this day, Art could recount every detail of his experience, this, after all, redefined his life and his understanding of what it means to be human.

It was a cloudy and cold afternoon, the entire day had been overcast, static, and peaceful, just the type of environment in which Art reinvigorated the most. What anyone else would describe as prosaic and lifeless, he saw beauty and prosperity, but that’s just the way he was, he could understand and see life and events in a different way than most people could. In this setting he could be left alone with his thoughts, and during these type of days the world finally seemed to stop, and as tranquility reigned over the meadows and slowly crept into the city, in the same way a fox approaches its prey, his perspicacity would slowly crawl out of his unconscious to enter his conscious mind, enabling him to merge with the universe until they became a singularity, and when the perception of time seized to exist an infinite number of possibilities emerged. In these laconic lapses of total integration with the universe Art was able to contemplate the things that truly matter, he could live without being judged, cherishing every moment with extreme exuberance, like that of a child playing with a toy for the first time. In these trances, He could ask any question and obtain the answer, it was as if for a moment he could unlock all the secrets of the universe, for an ephemeral lapse of timeless existence, he could unlock his potential.

On the afternoon of October 28^th, 2066, during this moment of profound introspection where the unconscious meets the conscious to reconcile the self, Art came to the realization that he’d been wasting the last 10 years of his life. Showing up to his job filled with daily meaningless interactions with people who’d also forgotten what it meant to be alive, had completely drained his motivation and eradicated his passion. He realized he’d been dormant and a prisoner of life’s monotony, becoming aware of this condition created a deep desire to escape it. He could no longer continue to live a meaningless life, if he died tomorrow no one would remember him, he had never had an impact on anyone’s life, and he had never been able to connect with anyone, not even with his own mother. And so, it clicked, at this stage in his life he thought maybe the only way to find this connection was by making a considerable contribution to society, this would enable him to create an impact on people’s lives and could potentially find a way to connect with his surroundings. In the same way that big thinkers and innovators have done in the past; however, he was past the ripeness point of creativity, if he wanted to achieve this purpose and exonerate his nihilistic sentiments, he would need a shortcut. And thus, it materialized, he rushed to his computer device and took a descent into an abyss that would swallow him whole without him realizing it. He accessed the market of long-lost memories in search for some arcane knowledge that would allow him to become the capitalist monger that could lead to its ultimate freedom. It must have been the right place and the right time; he found something that quickly grabbed his attention an ad that read ‘What would you do if you knew your time of dying?” He selected this option to learn more about this memory and read the abstract. It was a memory involving a Technology discovered by Dr. Montagnier a few decades earlier, it merged the fields Genetics & Quantum Physics, it involved DNA testing and quantum-time travel. Art, having a science background himself, was intrigued by this idea and decided to pay a sumptuous amount for it.

I will attempt to explain how this technology worked, though I’m not literate enough to get into details and I also don’t find this extremely relevant for the development of this recount, nonetheless, I can understand some of you might be interested in comprehending how it worked. This technology was developed in 2031; it was immediately suppressed at the patent stage by a government agency due to being considered a threat if it fell into the wrong hands. Surprisingly, due to the tumultuous state the world found itself in this decade, this patent was ultimately forgotten. It involved collecting DNA samples from the desired subject and running its genome sequencing, once this information was obtained it was loaded into a Ploiarion, which was a single proton loaded with an integrated circuit and the ability to process information at the quantum level. This quantum computer also had the ability to warp space-time and create worm holes where it could finally turn the 4^th dimension nonlinear and travel back and forth through it. In the same way a computer runs if and while loops, the Ploiarion would travel across a pre-programmed time interval – usually range of time used was the average lifespan of a human – it would then match the DNA sequence against the existing databases in every moment in time in the defined range. Once the record of that DNA sequence was no longer found in the database of active citizens of the world, then the computer could conclude that the individual to whom the DNA sequence belonged to, was no longer alive, furthermore it was able to obtain precise date and time of death along with a cause.

When Art read this, he was flabbergasted. He could finally guarantee free will! If you knew your cause of death and you could avoid it, you could fool death and impose your conditions. It took him some time, but he raised money with investors for a marketing campaign and got a business model together. A year after his purchase, Art launched his company, it was an overwhelming success almost overnight. In the incipient stages the wealthy class was the one who benefited the most from this product since they could afford it. But soon enough, everyone wanted a piece of the pie, rich, poor, religious, atheists, the East and the West. Everyone wanted to know how much time they had on this Earth.

Of course, it was only natural for people who wanted to escape fate, for the first time in human history, you could know the exact moment of your death. A piece of information that was meant to liberate you from the precise certainty of death, had now become a burden to humanity. It led people to do one of three things, some people spent the time they had left attempting to fool death, some other people accepted their fate and lived life at their fullest, but the greater portion of the population lived in desperate anxiety. Like the mass psychosis you’d see in an apocalyptic episode. Most people who purchased this information ended up descending down a nihilistic chasm.

Art hoped that with this new technology people would be able to reconsider their lives and find the true meaning of our finite time on Earth. The realization of our limitations and mortality would lead people to live their lives at their fullest and focus on the things that truly matter: love, art, peace, empathy, family, charity, but no. It had the exact opposite effect. People became more selfish, they allowed their ego to rule over their lives, their needs, and their wants. Comprehending our endeavors had a pre-established perishable date generated a copious amount of anxiety in the masses which developed into egoism and led people to live more secluded lives where everyone was suspicious of each other’s activities. Knowing the exact number of days left on earth set people on a hoarding mentality, they had to gather as much money, land, and wealth as possible before their time was up, they had to make sure their families and needs were well taken care of prior to their departure from this world. This mentality is what led to our downfall, silly humans. What should have been an opportunity of unification became an iron curtain, but that’s the history of our species, these metaphysical concepts such as life after death are far too advanced for our comprehension and this lack of understanding is directly translated into fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety, man’s most primitive enemies. They never left us, it followed us, from the time we were hunters and gatherers, to the agricultural revolution, to the bronze age, iron age, industrial age, and into the information age where humans thought of themselves as gods in terms of knowledge, but not in consciousness. That was the problem with our society, science and spirituality where one and the same. Two sides of the same coin had humans understood this, they would have been able to control their egos and stop pretending to be gods and they could focus and achieve the enlightenment of one.

So, here we are at the edge of civilization. We’ve conquered all, we’ve tamed animals, crops, computers, robots, space-time, and even the atom. But we couldn’t conquer ourselves, the fear of extinction was what drove us to the end. As humans became increasingly anxious as their final days approached, they continued to accelerate the exploitation of resources of our Earth, leading to a faster environmental decline and the complete annihilation of resources. Everyone became suspicious of everyone, there was no cooperation of any kind as people sought to accumulate wealth to leave to their offspring and future generations, being cognizant of their mortality was what doomed our society, it created a division so vast that every single human saw each other as part of a different species. Cooperation ceased, this being one of the most important factors throughout human history, it has been our ability to come together and tell stories what’s helped us progress and reign over the animal kingdom. Humankind’s inability to come together inhibited progress completely, people were no longer innovative in technology, manufacturing, agriculture, art, science, engineering, nor anything that sets the human mind apart from other conscious beings on the planet. This lack of innovation and cooperation made the world enter a dark age, everyone lived in their silos, economies seized, and brute force emerged. People no longer wanted to trade their time for money, if they were going to die anyway, what’s the point of living a monotonous life? Just take what you want by force and hoard it, before someone else does it and you’re left with nothing.

World leaders observing the status quo of society witnessed this revolution in the human psyche and attempted to suppress it multiple times unsuccessfully. The only option left was to find a scapegoat and there was obviously a single cause that triggered this madness at the heart of humankind: Art. What started as a pursuit of leaving a contribution behind to the world that cherished his existence, had given rise to doomsday. Art was soon viewed as a henchmen of the apocalypse, he was now a wealthy man, had made his contribution to society, had reached all the pinnacles of life to be considered a successful man, nonetheless, ironically, he was just as unfulfilled, unhappy, and alone as he was at the beginning of it all. All the money had bought him the house, the car, the friendships, the fake love, the books, everything he ever wanted, but it didn’t bring him the most important things: inner peace and fulfillment. After all this time, Art was still unable to connect with anyone in his life, somehow he was even further away from connecting with his surroundings than he was before he started his entrepreneurial endeavor, but most depressingly he was further away from his own self than he was before. Those succinct moments of introspection that he used to have where he could tap into his consciousness and obtain any answer from the universe were days of the distant past, he failed to realize in those moments that his potential was meant to be exploited inwards not outwards. Projecting his potential externally led him to adopt society’s conditions and pursue the dreams of the collective psyche ruled and manipulated by the powerful men who run the world, buy a house, go to college, get a car, marry a woman before you’re too old, buy her a diamond ring, have kids, send them to school, make them go the same mind-numbing experiences that will allow the powerful men to retain their pawns in the prison they’ve designed for the masses. Projecting his energy outwards led them to live somebody else’s dream, had he only realized that he had to continue to look inwards, he would have woken up fully and would have been able to avoid the downfall that the world was experiencing with him being the epicenter of such chaos. If Art had only realized that the connection and validation that he sought was not in the world but in himself, he could have had the inner peace he always wanted. Instead, he chased someone else’s dreams, and he was now left empty, in despair, and carrying the guilt that was bestowed upon him for the moral and behavioral decay of the world. Money drove him, money seduced him, money imprisoned him, and now on the verge of his existence, he contemplated the chaos that reigned over the world and in a moment of realization, he wept. He wept for himself, he wept for the world, he failed to realize his true purpose and in this blur of wisdom he failed everyone else. But there was still time to amend his wrongdoings, he wanted to put an end to what he started and decided to take matter into his on hands. He decided to achieve a brief moment of introspection, so he went ahead and prepared a warm bath where he could sit with his thoughts and resolve his inner conflicts. Before he stepped into the bath, he played Exit Music (For a Film) by Radiohead, and thus it began. He delved into his psyche but could only find guilt, anxiety, fear, and melancholy. By the time the song had reached climax Art started feeling weak, his breathing and heart-beat decreased, his vision blurred, and the water in the bathtub had turned entirely red, the blood from the cut he incised on his cephalic vein had drained the life out of him, this was his solution, this was his purpose, this was his peace. Dying and finding peace in the midst of chaos was the last act of cowardice Art left to the world, a weak man will always choose death over life, Art was not the hero of this story as he could not even rescue his own life.