Memories

Deep within the secretive caves of Nirvana, within a communal habitat, created and fashioned over decades by the Organics sat a skinny little boy in a stone chiselled-out dome-shaped space labelled ‘learning arena’. The trees surrounded the perimeter with high beamed lights standing, glaring over each one like a protective sentinel, the roots of the trees in large pots as the non-porous stone floor far beneath the surface gave little give to nature. The light from the surrounding periphery flood lights cut a series of shadows around all the children in a series of directions.

Within the room the youngsters had gathered, cross legged on the jagged hard cold floor, some of the older teenagers had make-do cushions; the anticipation circulating amongst them was almost igniting, crackling in the damp stale air.

The children had heard rumours, they were going to see sunlight, breathe fresh air and scavenge: for the future of their people.

Jacob sat silently amongst the excitement and apprehension and just listened. He listened to the girls beside him saying how they couldn’t wait to see outside trees powered by the sun, not motor generated high voltage lamps, and how they were so excited to go and collect necessities as supplies were running short.

The boys to the rear of Jacob’s skinny frail body seemed a little coyer and apprehensive about meeting the original organic humans, the days before the start of transhumanism in the 2020s; like preparing contact with aliens, or indigenous people from another world; a basic, arrogant, naive world at that! And protocols’ had to be followed to a T to avoid disaster and certain death.

Back then, pre transhumanism - before the machine’s code had evaded the surface non organic humans like the tentacles of a digital foreign cancer- when communication involved the voice and the other biological, natural senses – senses that soon the computers could monitor, learn from and target – Life in general no longer was in the hand of God - or random chaos, the elites owned and scripted it all.

That was the only similarity with the humans before transhumans and the now, organic human survivors of modern day Nirvana settlements, the few minorities who had buried away for a century. Non–organics who where gradually amalgamated into the grid no longer used their human senses. It was all fed into them as they had become receptive nodes. Or simply ‘slaves’ as the Nirvanians in the deep down caves call them. It was the senses and consciousness that linked the pre-2025 ancients and the current Nirvanian race of time scavengers as Jacob knew people now. It was the bedrock that helped make time travel possible: Consciousness -and- Element 115 that spanned across space and time.

Humans in 2021 had become controlled by ‘Earth protective algorithms’ – when speech wasn’t monitored and people could speak as freely as they wished, when social media penalties emerged and community guideline laws didn’t dictate just yet, before humans and machine ultimately merged, devolved into a separate species with no soul.

Before the Electromagnetic smog destroyed everything carbon related on the surface.

‘They had the machines back then, why don’t we go back further?’ one boy asked with a worried rise in pitch toward the end of the enquiry.

Another boy, replied to the best of his knowledge ‘apparently we can go back any time pre 2025, yes the quantum AI was in its infancy and that was when it started to trick the people of Nirvana.’

‘Earth it was called by the organics back then’ another little girl corrected the slightly over confident boy.

‘Of course. Yes. It was - you’re right Marianna, but the humans hadn’t connected to the internet of bodies back then. The mass inoculation started in 2021 but didn’t fully connect them to the grid until 2025 after several rounds of doses and the amplification of the telecoms and medicine industries overriding democracy, globally spreading the signals, the transmissions of information direct to the first not-so organic humans’. Transhumanism was born.

The question of how his race dwindled over the previous hundred years had always baffled Jacob, and the legends and hearsay and myths of what once was, half intrigued him: the other half petrifying him in equal measure; yet seemed to dominate his lines of thought.

The passing down through generations of stories about how his people came to survive was one of luck. Immense luck mixed with a hint of foresight (often labelled conspiracy theories at the time). Once the algorithms had been coded into the supercomputers, the order was given and there was no turning back. Ancient humans. Human pre 2021 were set onto a new fate, one out of any one person’s control. It spiralled from there.

They had an objective set in motion, non returnable and they wouldn’t stop until the mission of ridding earth of the majority carbon was completed. It had, at the time been sold to the people as a way to avoid impending disaster know as ‘climate change’; meanwhile, amongst the elders, some had argued that the survival of the Organics; deep into the crevices’ far away from the electromagnetic fields, had actual just prolonged the slavery and fortified the AI’s resolve. It’s coded Divine right to protect the Earth had ultimately meant getting rid of its pollutants: Organic Humans, their food sources, their liberties, their long held way of life. Whatever was left of ‘freedom’ by the end of 2021. ‘Freedom’ was about to be obliterated further – many would not even notice until it was too late.

Everything about everything: behaviour, human weakness- the life cycles of planet Earth. All information eventually, unavoidably, purposefully homed in at a digital pace; through various inputs like rivers to its cold circuitry sea. The humans back then had no idea they were voluntary giving up all the information it needed; something called ‘Google’: A word so synonymous with the Nirvanian Organic people; as the Devil to the ancients. The devil traded, as did Google. Usually secretively; slowly gaining enough power and influence to control opinion, politics, money, and law… then ultimately the peoples’ will. Blunt force became the norm. The code in the machines had no empathy: No heart.

Then; when population reduction and the powerful eugenic programmes were launched and the first rushed global scale mass inoculations:

Opportunely, the Human spirit’s knack of survival had a few advantageous- mainly its stubbornness and ineptitude: meaning the forceful rollouts of the DNA merging vaccines didn’t capture everyone - still the AI spared no expense in trying and trying.

Despite these human faux pas, the Conspiracists’ (as they were known) turned out to be the only saving grace of the Organics.

The answer lies in the past.

Survivals start in the now.

The motto and mantra: engraved in each one of the youngsters’ newly created pendants. The devices of travel forged from Element 115.

The teaching elders who had stewarded the generation had experimented with altering the past leading to this current fate, however, it never worked: the collusion, corruption, cronyism and depth of entanglement was so widespread, no one target was ever effective. They made small alterations to time lines, like sending revealing movie scripts to Hollywood producers, short sci-fi stories to writing competitions, song lyrics to pop stars: nothing ever came of it. People were too set in the programming of the day.

So all efforts had just been to scavenge anything deemed useful to bring goods back to prolong survival on a weekly basis; hope that the cancerous electromagnetic signal would one day magically -disappear. Maybe when the super computers decided earth was safe and they no longer need themselves and their destructive code would just one day turn off.

Jacob did more than his fair share of daydreaming, which for the youngster Organic of Nirvana was difficult with little greenery and nature to help coax the children into far away distant worlds. Jacob’s daydreams seem to fascinate over and over on how 21st century (Humans) let this atrocity happen. Authority? Questioning authority- or lack of questions? Why didn’t people speak up when it became obvious what was starting to unfold. Surely, people must have realised? Or did they just not raise the questions through fear in their economic systems? Why did they not act sooner? Was it a lack of deeper thinking? Why was the compliancy levels so pervasive among masses of people? Numbers of people in billions rather that the thousands of Organics that have survived to this day…

The legend of influences such as TV played a massive roll in obedience, mass propaganda from all directions, spearheaded by a small group of known eugenicist philanthropists, infiltrated across all sectors. At this point; the AI has also subtly swayed peoples thinking away from logic and reason- brainwashing people through coercion and subtle nudge techniques that exploit the vulnerabilities in the human psyche, techniques that hardwire humans into acting a certain way were all taken advantage of to persuade people to openly accept those first injections, those first preventable steps into a uncertain future. A code that would ultimately smash the through population numbers like a juggernaut. Why did they fall so easily? What where they thinking?

Jacob struggled to understand.

He looked at the pendant in his hand, the heart shaped locket forged out of Element 115; felt cold and smooth and etched with fate. Each travellers’ pendant was slightly different shapes: stars, crosses and other recognisable 2020 symbolisms; all engraved with the same motto out of the same reactive E115 and their Time ID numbers within like a locket with the memories of a loved one, a focus to return to; after trauma. ID numbers; a matter of fierce debate amongst the elders and pioneers of time travel: A cause of concern as Digital IDs helped the machines triangulate and target ancient humans and coerce for upgrades in line with quantum AI ‘hive thinking’ and acceptance into self destruction once trans-humanism had been completed. Liberal thought, freedom of thought, privacy of thought had been lost and surrendered… piece by piece.

It was deemed that the pendants that fuse with consciousness in deep meditation, should both be personal and, if lost in the past, they should resemble something that would to an ancient seem like normal jewellery of the time. Element 115 resembled a dull silver. If, on re-entry to the past - from the dark matter void; the travelling Organic would accidentally re-emerge into a solid: the coordinates of the rare material could be retrieved centuries later, although the traveller would die, smashed upon impact, as the flesh synthesized with the clay.

The hardness of the pendant’s element would survive to be excavated centuries later by Nirvanian detection equipment, these recyclables 115s were like a diamond in the rough. To be used again if the population held out… despite the regular procreation all inhabitants had to partake in to boost the Organic human numbers. But even the high electromagnetic waves had prevailed into the human genome, past damage done and the fertility of many was also hindered by the transmissibly of the man-made Gain-of-Function viruses that had modified the human race from generations before. In truth no ‘Organic’ human was fully 100 percent organic. It was more of a spectrum dependant on previous blood lines contamination to the injected transhumans.

Jacob was tired of the sex. It wasn’t what they once called ‘love’ it was a sense of duty. It felt as mundane as the sour fruits that had been salvaged on previous weeks’ missions. Like a merry go round the partners came back around, no one looked in each others eyes. In Nirvanian eugenics: repopulation was the answer, to the ‘eugenics’ depopulation programs of the 2020s.

But the Elders reassured, rightly so, that it was necessary and once in a while a baby defied the odds.

A miracle.