NEURONEXUS

At first, it was used to combat disease. Inserted unobtrusively behind the occipital ridge, the unit manipulated the programming of white blood cells to combat disease on site. From 2100, advanced keyhole surgery made it possible to have the NeuroNexus installed in less than 15 minutes without stitches. NeuroNexus gained a following that defied the wildest predictions of its cheerleaders. The results spoke for themselves. Through outbreaks of cruel contagious diseases that baked the tongue black and pierced the uvea before ending the lives of hundreds of millions, customers of NeuroNexus proved happy survivors.

By 2150, the year of my birth, NeuroNexus was capable of creating totipotent cells that could mature into anything one could desire. Creating new, better humans was the next logical step. In order to preserve the patent on the hardware, the company made all biological software opensource. At the same time, they introduced the NexusPrint module – a device that could synthesise biological material onsite to a brief beamed in remotely. If they could not brand all biological design, at least they could ensure their device was the only one producing biodata. So delighted were they at their monopoly of the hardware, they failed to see the possibility of the software to transform the meaning of the enterprise. No one predicted the drug.

The drug synthesized a feeling of euphoria on a scale as yet unimagined. In the early days, it created smiling Zombies, who walked about with mouths agape and eyes stretched wide at the beauty and joy of every moment. They laughed at trees, squealed with joy at ants, they had no sense of motive or desire, for everything was fulfilled in every moment. They were easy targets for thieves. Some completely uninhibited beings flung themselves off tall buildings and bridges, in search of meaning.

I was 28 when I submitted my design to NeuroNexus.

The drug had exposed, in its course of delirious destruction, a great undiscovered continent of loneliness and isolation. The problem, it was said with oleaginous frequency, from every chat show to celebrity biography, was that “no-one really knows each other anymore.” So, in one of my more bloody-minded moods, the idea struck me.

And after five years, several failed relationships, a few minor fires and a warning from the Securehome committee, I had my prototype command module. My module did not resemble the elegant cubes, polished octagons and plastic dodecahedrons that had anticipated it. I shaped mine into a sphere with a cleft at one end a point at the over. A heart.

Assured that NeuroNexus would “lose” my prototype, I made a second for submission. This took another few months and cost me a pretty penny in materials. But I had a certain pride, placing the original Locket on my mantlepiece, and packed its sister into a delivery drone, bound for the lion’s maw.

Eleven months later, long after I had forgotten the Locket, NeuroNexus, contacted me.

I noticed they had attempted to deconstruct the module as soon as they had received it. The package, delivered by drone, had all the hallmarks of tampering. Surprising, but not totally unforeseen. I had collaborated with a friend working for SecureCorp (still living, miraculously) to ensure the module revealed the secrets of its design to no soul but myself. The security systems he worked on for the intelligence services had some nasty, even aggressive, encryption software that visited exactly the same amount of damage any foreign device attempted to exact upon it. Judging by the tatty state of the module, a developer had exacted some pretty violent moves of my little prototype. I was told later, that the whole department had experienced a shutdown. Thousands of NeuroNexus modules had been affected, leading to a handful of hospitalisations, as a result of errors in the automated scheduling of disease regulation. I had no idea.

They had little choice but to invite me in. I drip-fed them the secrets. My eccentric design also precluded speculation. I had numerous run-ins with the department of product economy, who were completely exasperated by my design: so impenetrably embedded with infuriating redundancy. Finally, I was finally left alone, and given my own floor in NexusHub. The design was inimitable. The only significant concession I was to make was to sell the Locket as a plug in. I had initially designed the Locket to succeed the Nexus: it was capable of performing its key functions. But then one must make allowances for corporate greed. Within a year, we had clearance. The product was distributed on December 31st 2180.

In spite of my caution, Nexus found a way to stiff me. The Locket, was not sold, as agreed, as an ‘aid to human reconnection’. It was marketed as an alternative.

“Imagine you are looking out at a marvellous view - and you want to share it with your long-term partner who’s living on the other side of the world? No problem: just think it - and they will be notified. If they accept, they will be able to see the same view with your eyes – before long, you’ll never want to look with your own eyes again!”

Almost immediately the tool superseded the narrow confines even Nexus had designed it for. Why only experience things your potential lovers have - when you can experience anonymous thrills uploaded to the NexusCloud?

It was not long before professional experiencers sold their lives to the benighted masses. Suddenly, users could experience all the forbidden extremes with none of the fatal fear: base jumping, hunting with tribesmen, orgies with celebrities – for a fee darker experiences were available: warfare, murder, psychotic visions, amputation, the experience of death itself in a thousand violent permutations – all stored in perpetuity on the cloud by deceased experiencers who recorded their own demise as their testament to eternity.

I spent a year in despair – utter despair - as I watched family and friends withdraw into the cloud. The intimacy the Locket provided dissolved the organic link between humanity and their ‘real life’ intimates. Myself most of all, since I had refused to install the module myself, to the disgust of my friends and family. The glory of extreme experiences annihilated localised connections. What few saw in those early days but me, locked away in my hovel lights dimmed wishing the earth would swallow me up, was that the Locket was eroding language itself.

Soon, just about no one was living in the real world. The tiny minority who had abjured included myself: I had in fact never had the Locket into my own skull, much to the disgust of Nexus’s senior management, which perhaps explained their decision not to name the chief designer of Locket. They said it was for my safety. I tried to believe them.

Anger seethed in defence of a generation of zombies enslaved to a company who were the only font of experience. The ancestral memorialists began a deprogramming movement – ‘unplug’ - which exhorted their adherants to regain bodily autonomy. The psychological impact of removing the Nexus module meant few doctors signed off on the procedure. The memorialists detected a conspiracy. This led to some grizzly DIY operations.

I was under house arrest (concerns had grown) when I saw it. “Eliminate” - below gleams the luminescent tag line: “you can’t reform evil, it must be destroyed”. My face loomed from the image, twisted into a grimace. It was a memory grab: the donated recollection of an ex-boyfriend, at the moment I admitted I had not been entirely faithful. I’m sure I’ve never pulled a face of such exquisite villainy, the memory of course plays tricks. But by this point it didn’t matter. It was fashionable to regard ‘bodily reality’ and ‘experience’ oppressive - memories and dreams had taken precedence: as vessels of the prophetic voice of the ancestors.

As it seemed, the ancestral voices bayed for my blood. My death would lift the curse. So I was to be killed. ‘For my own safety’ I was removed to the Xanthea high security facility where I sit now, on the 5th of January 2201.

This is my testament.

I have turned the problem over and over in my mind, and since my imminent execution is plainly inevitable – populist governments rarely pass up such opportunities - I have taken the decision. As I see it, we are presented with a choice. Preserve our collective identity; preserve our experience; preserve our memory –– or preserve our freedom; identity; our ability to choose.

I had become increasingly aware that the problem with the Nexus which all users’ experiences was not an unintended byproduct. An addiction to curated sensation is not random. It is not human nature. The builders of the Nexus had more motivation than greed to retain their module when I introduced the Locket. Each cell synthesised and replicated, each hormone distributed, each brain pattern translated from person to person, contained other instructions, contained a noxious subtext.

In the early days NeuroNexus had based their behavioural technology on rudimentary animal experiments. A box of rats running in random patterns in a small container could be controlled with alarming accuracy at the touch of a button. With the sophisticated nanobiotech which was now woven into the module, behavioural manipulation was far simpler and far more sophisticated than many could believe. The rats that had been controlled with such ease two centuries ago, were now in a state of utter servitude. The worst of it was that no one could be persuaded that they were unfree. It didn’t even occur to them. The illusion of free will persisted.

The only indication came in the deepest recesses of our dreams. Now broadcast for all to see in aggregate in the cloud, patterns could be discerned. Diviners of the unconscious (universally ridiculed) came to the same startling revelation: dreams aren’t a refuge from the narratives and prejudices. We do not escape the stories we are sold in our dreams. It is in our dreams that we are most deeply subjects of our culture. Thousands of men and women dreamed recurrently of flight. The message was plain: imprisonment.

We are presented with a choice. This is why I am doing what I have to do. To prevent an apocalypse of the mind, I will now permanently obliterate the capacity of every Locket module - and the entire NexusCloud archive of experiences, memories and dreams. I mentioned that the design of the Locket was quixotic, in spite of its shape it was modelled on its ‘natural’ referent - that bloody beating organ that keeps us all alive. The labyrinthine valves and compartments that so plagued the product economy department had a final purpose: when stimulated with the correct impulse they could undergo a process of permanent decay, obliterating everything that had gone before in a traumatic burst of collective amnesia. It would lead to mass mourning, depression, despair – undoubtedly, who said freedom was easy.

I want to be remembered - if nothing else - for my terrifying ambition.

Concealing the Locket with the power to obliterate all the modules installed across the globe was an act of herculean proportions. The only way I found to make the thing work was to ensure that the Locket with this Godlike power was easy and that it was immune to being discovered and manipulated by vengeful hands. The compromise I came up with was, that in order to be used, it had to be installed into my own body. Something I swore never to do, until now. And that whatever the command module inflicted on its billions of users, it did also to the user.

I had the operation yesterday. Now snuggled behind my occipital ridge is the Locket - no Nexus in my case. The hospital staff are as corrupt as the prison guards here, anything for a fee and a condemned man. I dreamt of flying as I went under the knife.

––––Xanthea Security Facility, New London 2201.