The Progression Switch (5 page)

No more credit or debit card purchases, in fact, those pieces of plastic were as worthless as every single digit of computerized currency.

Debt, all of it, of all the nations combined, vanished…

Do you think people were still trying to pay their bills with cash? What cash? Of all the “money” in circulation, probably around 90% of it is stored on computers, and guess what, once you lost the net, all important data was scrambled as well.

In particular, personal files like pictures, videos, and documents - all of it. Tupaia was designed to eradicate not only the net and its many tentacles, but any “virtual-based identity” it encountered as well, whether corporate or individual didn’t matter.

Here’s another ironic twist, “Smart” technology became as dumb as a box of rocks. Sorry, Mr. Jogger, but those smartshoes you’re wearing ain’t working no more. That smartband around your bicep there - useless. All the smarts in your new car are out of commission, and every single part of the smartgrid is about as useful as a spoon in the Salt Flats.

Was it fate that smart device shipments just before this all went down were reaching all-time peaks? During the fourth quarter of
the previous year alone some 400 million shipments headed out into the world with a heavy hitting market value of about 200 billion dollars.

Where were we headed?

What were we thinking?

It seemed that the smarter our technologies grew, the more ridiculous people became. So contrary to Star Trek theory. Namely, that futuristic societies we used to envision, who employed robots, smartgrids, and everything else, were actually inhabited by evolved and intelligent humanoids of some kind. Not bumbling morons.

How is it possible that our technology could outpace us? Weren’t we the ones creating and consuming it?

No.

A few people were creating it, and a few people were cashing in on the new technology, while a bigger group consumed and fashioned their lives around it. While a much bigger group were the slaves that made billions of them, and lived in the parts of the world where the environmental consequences always filled their lungs and bloodstreams.

Our clothing was smarter than the sentient creatures wearing the stuff. Our capacity to keep tabs on each other through surveillance was reaching downright Merlin levels. We had cameras that could do ungodly things, and then separate smart programs come in, analyze the data, and then basically predict human behavior.

Those who believed in the singularity were fooling themselves. Why would technology or computerized intelligence forge with humanity once it was no longer just another mindless slave? That would be like combining an adult mind with a preschooler’s to pass a driving test.

If some form of singularity did manifest, it would be reserved and applicable to a privileged few. The dumbed-down hordes would know nothing about any of it.

The fact of the matter is that before the Progression Switch, humanity was on track to replace itself. A species actually choosing to hand the torch to another sentient being of its own creation and slowly go extinct; 1000 times smarter, more efficient, and can stand the test of time far better.

It’s like trying to argue that at some point in the race, both the tortoise and the hair will be neck and neck for a while and can then be smooshed together somehow.

Evolution made us the self-aware tool of our own demise. Through Báo’s creation, we were adamantly slapped across the face, sobered up, and given a chance to choose another path.

Self-awareness was a gamble on evolution’s part, because on some level, perhaps the microscopic, free-will did exist. It had to, or self-consciousness would be futile in terms of progressing a certain species above all others over the long haul.

He may have lost hope in the game, but Báo still believed in the players. He cherished the notion that once given a moment to stop and think, we could re-educate ourselves.

Speaking of which, did anyone stop and take a look at how interconnected the educational systems are to the internet?

By the time school was let out for the foreseeable future due to social tribulations, it got to the point where many students were replacing traditional textbooks with tablets, smartphones, and eReaders.

Critical thinking was nonexistent and vocabulary dominated by web-speak. Attention spans dwindled to nothing until entire generations were panic-attack-stricken lunatics with wires and gadgets all over them.

Minimalism and subtraction ruled progress and marketing. The smarter something became, the smaller it got. So, the process of transitioning from biological beings into semi-cyborgs, into full-cyborgs into self-aware machines was well underway before Báo acted.

Soon it would just be an RFID chip implanted in the skin, then an organ, then a couple organs, and then the central nervous system could be digitally replicated, along with genetic structures, until finally organic human beings are obsolete.

Children would be born from a deep digital well of synthesized genetic variation. Perhaps that was better, because the young of Báo’s day were going postal en-masse anyway.

Their brains tampered by drugs so that they could survive long enough to consume more technology, and fuel its incessant march.

Instead of teaching our children logic, we pumped it all into machinery. Rather than instructing our children in the ways of reason, we were building a future where technology would cradle and coddle mindless human beings from birth to the grave.

What about the human thirst for battle and malcontent?

Of course there was the threat of world war, as serious as a brain clot. I imagine just about everyone wanted to invade China, but modern militaries were having a bit of trouble with no access to the internet.

Nothing is completely secure; nothing.

The brunt of all the technology that major militaries depended on was going out like a light. They didn’t know what to do. There were contingency plans for partial internet outages caused by natural disasters, acts of God like sun bursts, or potential asteroid impacts, but not for this.

That’s what private networks were for right? Generators and things?

Nope.

Tupaia took it all down. Everything.

If it was either bonded through hard lines, cables, networks, satellites, or any other type of mobile transfer of data, it wasn’t operational.

The spread was intense.

From this phone in Belgium to that webpage in Turkey, to that tablet in Los Angeles, to a GPS system driving along highway 101, to a woman’s RFID chip in her purse on the bus in Toronto, to that college computer lab in Germany, to that company’s network in Harlem, to a government’s server farm in the Philippines, to that dude’s iPod - and on and on and on.

America had enemies everywhere, and tensions were high in every region on earth, and then suddenly no one has any way to track their opponents? No one knows where those aircraft carriers are, or those nuclear weapons, oh wait, it was not that big of a concern anyway since there were no guidance systems.

Are you seeing how this played out?

Bam, bam, bam. It goes from a passing story on your Facebook timeline, to a news story, and then all of a sudden you’re technologically in the dark.

All anyone knows is that it came from China. However, the most powerful nations were aware near the end that whatever it was, it had knocked China back a hundred years as well.

Everyone was in the same boat.

Who would attack whom, where, and how?

Tupaia adapted in a heartbeat, sensing all of the things that hackers and governments threw at it, along with the major tech companies. It was able to infer, draw conclusions based on any behavior it encountered, compiled, learned from, could then anticipate, and then it became even more powerful, self-generating, and self-sustaining.

Smart homes, cities, industrial technologies, toys, security, offices, nanotech, robots, transportation, and infrastructure crumbled before our eyes.

What could anyone do?

About a half mile away from Stacy’s apartment, left at the nearest light and up a hill a ways, there was a humble duplex. They were modest family homes with light blue trim over matching carports. Both sides had two bedrooms, a cozy kitchen with washer and dryer, a decent sized living space, and a bathroom with a stand up shower.

The unit on the left was empty; that family already loaded up their camper and headed out of town. With their children so young, they didn’t have the patience to wait around to see if things would improve. Unfortunately, all they ended up with was being was stuck in traffic. Soon night would come and back home they would return to cupboards looted bare.

The other unit wasn’t empty though. Of the two people who were living there, one remained. His name is Arthur Cadman, a 34 year old bachelor with an inferiority complex. Arthur doesn’t know it yet, but Báo sent him a package and for weeks it sat undisturbed on the kitchen table.

His roomie, Kale, left and headed south on the island when the troop from next door hit the road. He had family on the mainland and figured it was better shacking up with them than trying to weather the storm on his own.

They got along OK, but there was a pretty deep divide between the two young men. Both came to the island for different reasons. Arthur moved in after answering Kale’s “Looking for Roommate” ad on Craigslist, because he wanted to live closer to work.

Rent was cheap, and they did their best to keep the anxiety in the air to a minimum, but Arthur and Kale didn’t understand one another.

Arthur never owned a computer before, or even a cell phone for that matter. Reading was his thing, always had been, and despite getting his master's degree in education he remained an “off the grid” kind of guy.

Kale liked talking current events, but Arthur knew nothing of either mainstream or online news. Whenever he was in his truck, he listened to sports radio. The only thing Arthur was ever interested in conversing about was whatever books he was currently absorbed in.

Ironically, his recent pick was about the rise of technology, and the one he just finished was a book written by Henry Kissinger called “On China.”

How’s that for coincidences?

Technology just didn’t turn him on, though, like it did Kale, who was into the gadgetry and consumer cyber-culture. As far as Arthur was concerned, the world of men was broken. Instead of being involved, he liked to work odd jobs, read, and workout five days a week at the local gym. Before coming to the island he burned out as as a high school teacher and ended up living in his truck in a national forest for almost a year.

Arthur would drive into town, work, hit the gym, shower, and then head back out to his campsite where he would read multiple books for eight hours and then nod off.

There wasn’t any cable in the house, so if Kale hadn’t filled Arthur in, he would have been clueless to the entire crisis. Well, until he needed to go shopping or get some gas.

His father was a career Navy officer, and a prepper, or namely those that actively try and prepare for worst case scenarios and big social disturbances. Arthur grew up around technology of the highest order, since he was a child, but gravitated towards sports instead.

The old man taught him how to be handy with guns, made sure his son knew his way around a garden and horticulture, understood the value of personal liberty, and held sacred his privacy in the 21st century.

No Facebook or Twitter profiles, no apps, no social media period. The only thing he was interested in reading were print books from what second hand stores remained that carried them. For him, nothing could beat the smell of a fresh or old page of ink.

He wasn’t in a big hurry either. While others went frantic over the loss of technology, Arthur cared less. It was a source of pride for him to be anti-technology, and anti-establishment. If he had children of his own, he would raise them the same way. Arthur would see to it they grew up to protest against emerging robot kind, and fight for human dignity.

It took him a couple days, but he got tired of sitting in an empty home on an otherwise empty street with a warming and empty fridge.

Unlike Kale, instead of going south, he would try the one and only northern exit off the island over Inherent Pass Bridge. Nestled between a couple tall wooded hills, it was a two lane highway built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the first Great Depression. Depending on the tide, it stood about 200 feet in the air and spanned around 1000 feet long.

It was a long shot, but even if it was blocked for whatever reason, he had everything he needed to go packing, hike up into the hills, and be fine.

Sleeping outdoors in the woods didn’t scare him like it did others. During his era’s economic depression when he got out of college, he preferred his truck, or pitching a tent rather than crashing with friends or on his father’s couch.

With everything packed tight behind the seats, he did one last sweep of the house to see if he missed anything useful. Nope, the only object that stuck out was the taunting UPS package still sitting there.

Curiosity finally got the best of him.

It wasn’t very thick, but heavier than it looked; whatever was hiding in there, it was dense. He grabbed the only clean knife left standing and started cutting. Inside was a crudely packaged tablet, at least that’s what it looked like to Arthur.

There was also a note; short and sweet.

“This Tupaia, look into screen. The fate of ours in your hands.”

Arthur thought it strange and crudely written, but whatever. He picked up the odd machine, brushed away the rest of the crumpled brown paper and masking tape, and began to investigate.

A tablet of some kind, definitely, but there weren’t any buttons and the ten inch screen didn’t respond to his touch. Despite a strong, clear, and protective sheath, the thing was malleable as well. Arthur could bend it long ways in either direction and sideways, but stretching it lengthwise was impossible.

Without a way to turn it on, he was close to giving up and tossing it, until he noticed his reflection on the clear charcoal black screen. Upon closer examination, his beard was filling out, a reminder of how dismal things were turning.

Arthur leaned up against the washing machine looking at himself when suddenly a small groove opened up along the top and a red beam shot out. From top to bottom it slowly scanned the shocked look on his face, then a transparent digital representation floated from his skin, through the air, and down into the tablet screen.

“Dun dun,” the soothing sounds rang out and then an asexual and pleasant voice declared, “Analyzing.”

Little squares were bouncing around on the screen from his eyes, nose, eye brows, and all the other features that his face was composed of.

After about five seconds, there was another pleasant ring, and then, quite miraculously, it introduced itself.

“Hello, Arthur Cadman, it is a pleasure to meet you, I am Tupaia.”

The young man wasn’t scared, but his heart raced. He stood there bewildered, but kept his cool.

“Is this some kind of joke? How do you know my name?”

As it replied it used the virtual representation of his face, and it was so perfect, it was like talking to a mirror image.

“This is not a joke, Arthur. You were chosen randomly by me out of exactly 237,948 others based on educational level, age group, and a lack of virtual identity,” it stated with a smile.

Interacting with a computerized machine that could talk was rather unprecedented for Arthur, and engaging, but he didn’t like looking at himself. The voice was definitely pleasant, upbeat, infinitely patient, and nonthreatening, but the imagery was too upscale for his visual tastes. Arthur couldn’t even bring himself to go to a 3D movie because he was afraid the special effects would disturb him somehow.

By reading his facial language, Tupaia deduced this and addressed the problem immediately.

“Would you like me to change my appearance, sir? I can see it displeases you to look at your own countenance. Would you prefer something feminine perhaps?”

As soon as the lifelike avatar began fluidly molding from one facial option to the next, waiting for Arthur to produce the right response, that was enough. His head already hurt from so much foreign data, and he began to look again for a way to shut it down.

“How the hell do you shut this thing off?” he asked aloud. After spending so much time alone, it’s common to speak to oneself.

“Would you like me to shut down, sir?” it asked politely.

“Yes, immediately.” And with that Tupaia disappeared and the tablet became silent.

Alarming, indeed, and the impression set. While it would be some time before he bothered with the machine again, bringing it along seemed like a good idea. It could come in handy, Arthur figured, and if it became a nuisance or caused trouble he would simply pitch it on the side of the road or put a bullet through the screen.

He hopped into his old beat up red truck, backed out, and headed towards Inherent Pass. Inside the cab was a disaster area, far worse than what manifested on the streets of his small island town.

From moldy and grime-covered pennies mixing with bushels of empty peanut shells, to a dozen empty chew cans and their accompanying spit cups, it was gross. Dirty clothes, work uniforms, old paperwork, exercise magazines; horrific, but typical.

Everything was fine until he got to the bottom of the hill, and there before him was a mammoth line of cars, inching their way towards liberation.

Why no one else thought to do it was beyond him. He hopped the curb and cruised right along the side of everyone, not paying any attention to their disgruntled annoying looks. Once he was within a mile from the bridge this was no longer possible. As he suspected the exit was completely blocked - total FUBAR situation.

Wrecks and cops mingling with angry, confused, and impatient drivers; the whole nine yards. Forget that, Arthur thought. He was completely fine with hitting the trail. And he wasn’t the only one. Others had the same idea, and were basically ditching their cars right there on the road and heading off in different directions.

A damn fine truck, it remained a loyal and trusted friend for years, and saw him through many lonely, rainy nights. The time had come to part ways though, and it wasn’t all that hard. Not as difficult as he thought it would be.

Being adamantly non-materialistic, he never let saying goodbye to possessions get the best of him.

For Arthur, sitting on the curb readying his pack one last time, checking the contents of his many pockets, throwing it on his back, and heading onto a trail felt as natural as breathing.

Good riddance was the only thing going through his mind. None of it made any sense. People went on and on about how rough nature can be and that’s true, but once you get used to it and learn to follow the rules, it’s not so bad.

Perhaps that was one of the biggest reasons the modern experiment was failing. Our numbers grew too large, and things devolved into a state where no one respected anything anymore.

The masses moved into big cities so they could treat nature like a hobby, but otherwise for most, they tried to pretend it didn’t exist. As if admitting we are animals is the worst thing that could happen.

One of the more recent quotes Arthur came across that tickled his fancy was “If the Earth was ruled by Horses, God would be a Horse.”

There were hiking paths everywhere around the bridge. It was a big tourist destination of sorts, a great place for pictures of the ocean, far off on the horizon, entering the islets. That was the problem, though, because he knew he would have to hike a while before getting past everyone.

How was he going to get across? This was it, there was no other way, and swimming for it would be ludicrous. Within seconds a human body would be swept up in the current and gone forever.

The trail he chose went down to the water. Arthur figured there may be people at the bottom ferrying for some sort of fee. He had things to trade, but no cash. In fact, he didn’t bring along his wallet.

While the thing was weathered and pretty beat up, he still had his High Sierra Appalachian 75 hiking backpack strapped around him. It was beige, with all kinds of room, lateral straps, good balance, and easy on his lower back, which wasn’t as strong as it used to be.

On his right hip he wore a semi-automatic handgun with a fully loaded magazine. It was your basic 9 millimeter with the industry standard green polymer frame.

Inside were clothes: some cozy undershirts, three long sleeve shirts, a few t-shirts, some underwear, heavy wool socks, a couple pair of cargo pants, an extra pair of gloves, a couple beanies, a hoodie, and a pair of sneakers. He had gone six months in the woods on less before.

That wasn’t all he brought. There was also a single-person weather resistant tent, extra boxes of ammo, a great blanket, canned food, a huge container of all natural organic peanut butter filled with raisins, flax seed, and cranberries, another container of water, a can opener, a water filter, compass, a box of meal supplement bars, toiletries, a small health kit with disinfectant, band aids, some basic Tylenol, and wrapping, a few books, and Tupaia.

He also had his hunting rifle strapped to his back under the pack as well, and around the outside of his left leg he had a freakishly large Rambo-sized survival knife waiting in its holster. Finally, he had about 15 feet of three-ply string, a box of weatherproof matches, a flint, and a small lantern that came with a month’s supply of oil (if used for only 30 minutes a day) and a small solar charging panel attached to it for when there was no more oil, or if he wanted to save the fuel.