The Search for Ball Zero (4 page)

Recorded dreams are just called
Dreams.  They’re hugely popular mainly because of ICs, but
it’s really nothing more than a new television or net show.
 The good ones come and go like any meme; everyone talks about
the latest hot series of dreams until the collective conscious gets
bored and move on to the next.  In this society, just another
revenue stream, another creature for ads to devour, another avenue
for a Megastar Celebrity to “re-invent themselves”, and in the end
of its life cycle, like most popular products, a propaganda tool.
 

Dreams are the ultimate
commodity, the perfect franchise, the ocean front property in
Arizona.  They have an unlimited supply, the best special
effects, they are interactive and unpredictable, they’re cheap to
produce, they’re uncensored and director’s cut, and they’re always
starring you!  For the consumer, there’s an unlimited
selection, a new episode of your favorite dream comes out every
day, sometimes two, or even three new Dreams a day from your
favorite dream artist!  With the network of people’s connected
ICs, you could watch only new dreams every moment of your life and
never see 1% of the dreams out there.  In fact, if you had an
IC, you could watch a set of dreams 100 wide and 100 long, across
your vision and still only see a tiny percent of them.  So, as
you can tell, dreams were a huge market, a huge market that people
had a never ending thirst for.  The government tried their
damnedest, but they could never crack the dream market.  Ads
in dreams, that’s a whole other story.  

ADS

You probably know the word “Ad”
as short for advertisement.  And originally that’s what it
meant, normally a short video or media message about how great a
product is.  But after the wave of “Black Everyday”
consumerism that ICs created, some people would plaster themselves
with advertisements.  Some of them even became a little
famous.  Corporations saw this trend and promoted it.
 They started paying people to wear their logo.  Getting
a tattoo of their logo was even better than wearing a shirt, so you
would get paid more for a tattoo.  Some people actually became
so much like walking advertisements, “Ad” became used to describe
them instead of something as two-dimensional as a television
commercial. Commercials fell by the wayside as it was far easier to
simply hire waves of lazy cretins to display themselves to equally
lazy cretins.

An Ad is easy to spot.
 They usually do a zombie-like shamble instead of walking.
  Their vision is usually obstructed a little bit,
sometimes it’s mostly obstructed so they have a glassed over look
in their eyes, again very much like a zombie. Sometimes their
vision is obstructed by tons of porn, a condition called Porn
Blindness. An Ad walking down the street might run into you.
 If they aren’t Porn Blind, they might also shamble in front
of you, and do a full twirl to display as many of their
advertisements as possible.  They might even look somewhat
normal, and then in a split second have holographic advertisements
explode out from them in every direction. A “Sneak Ad-tack.”

One time an Ad stopped in front
of Tony, his clothes covered in ads for fast food and drinks.
 He dropped his pants, and yes, his body was also covered in
ad tattoos.  Then he turned around, and yes, his butt was
covered in ads for porn.  Then he spread his butt cheeks, and
yes the inside of his butt cheeks were covered in ads for Super
Crack, the new legal drug of choice.  (Get it?  His butt
crack had ads for Super Crack...) And then out of his butt hole
came a holographic projection of a Miley Cyrus clone, with their
trademark tongue sticking out, animated and licking his butt.
 The new Miley Clones “My Pussy Your Face” Tour is coming
soon, the holograph announced with a mouth full of ass.

Before the change, Tony always
thought it was weird that people would buy and wear clothes with a
company name and logo on it.  “Nike” do you really like that
company so much to project their name in the face of anyone you
meet?  That is a crazy thought.  Sure he would wear logos
sometimes, especially for video games or bands he really liked.
 But he had to really like something before plastering himself
with a giant logo.

Normally companies pay money
for their advertisement to be shown.  Commercials, pop-ups,
billboards, placement in movies, etc.  Coke pays a lot of
money so that Katniss drinks Coke in Hunger Games 69.  But for
some when it comes to clothes, most people would pay the company in
order to wear their ads.  Strange.  Maybe it is some way
of showing that they can afford this logo.  But it seemed
backwards.

Once ICs connected the
instantly fast Earth internet with equally fast human brains,
people replaced all advertising media.  And once companies
started paying people to wear their ads, they discovered you could
track how many “hits” people were getting with the logos they wore.
 With ICs, you could track each individual advertisement on
any person.  Companies could tell if Mr Jackass wore a shirt
with their logo on it 7 days in a row, and that 100 people saw that
shirt and exactly how many became paying customers.  Now
wearing that “Nike” shirt could pay off instead of costing
more.

And then there were ads in
dreams.

“
I can get paid to dream?  FUCK
YEA!!  I DO THAT ANYWAYS!” says Mr. Jackass.

When approached by a
corporation willing to ‘sponsor’ Mr. Jackass’ dreams, he replies,
“Wait, you’ll give me a dollar a day, and the only consequence is
that any dream I ever have about drinking, it will be a Red Bull or
Red Bull related product?”

“
Yep.”  Nods the
corporation.

“
FUCK YEA!!  I DON’T GIVE A
FUCK, I’LL DRINK RED BULL IN MY FUCKIN DREAMS WHILE I’M SCREWIN
YOUR MOM’S BUTT WITH YOUR MONEY YOU ASSHOLE!  YEEEEHAW, SIGN
ME UP!!”

So, then thinking he’s smart,
Mr. Jackass goes to the next company in his IC and signs up at
Cheetos.

“
Wait, you’re telling me you’ll give
me .50 cents a day if anytime I dream about chips, you
motherfuckers and your supercomputers will turn those chips into
Cheetos?”

“
Yes sir.”

Mr. Jackass signs on the dotted
line with a look in his eyes like he’s the smartest man alive.

“
FUCK YEAH MOTHERFUCKER!  YEA!!
WOOHOO!  YOU FUCKIN PENGUIN BOY IN A SUIT!  I ALREADY GOT
RED BULL PAYIN ME TOO ASSHOLE!  I’LL MAKE MILLIONS AND ALL I
GOTTA DO IS DRINK RED BULL AND EAT CHEETOS IN MY DREAMS WHILE I
FUCK ALL THE BITCHES AND DRINK BEER THAT YOU ASSHOLES BOUGHT FOR
ME!”

Mr Jackass isn’t done with his
get rich quick scheme yet.  Next he gets a Taco Bell tattoo on
his forehead.  Why not?  He gets more money for it being
on his forehead than anywhere else.  Girls will like his
millions of dollars and will be able to ignore a little company
tattoo on his face advertising a new low price for chalupas.

This process continues until
one day Mr. Jackass wakes up with a holographic logo imprinted on
the backside of his eyelid, a permanent, ever changing ad tattoo
that he will be fined for if he covers, clothes that change to
promote the latest advertising blitz, pop up ads that pop up in the
middle of your vision, no matter which way you look, a 3D
holographic ad that shows a commercial over his head every couple
minutes and dreams of Red Bull oceans, floating on Cheeto rafts to
heaven.  This is every day and night of Mr. Jackasses
life.

In this world, we simply call
these people:  Ads.  They walk around like zombies,
usually because most of their vision is blocked by ads and most of
them are probably on meds. Also, Porn Blindness should be mentioned
again.

Being an Ad is a full time job
and works a lot like a hardcore drug addiction.  At first it’s
fun and doesn’t really interfere too much with your life.  But
soon it’s not fun, you need it and it’s hard to remember why you’re
doing it in the first place.  The hardcore Ads have to get as
many “hits” as possible, and getting seen by someone with an IC is
getting a hit.  It’s hard to imagine, but your brain can
process every single thing you see and with the help of an IC, can
distribute that information to the world, including information
like where you saw the ad, and who was responsible for you seeing
that ad.  So, if you’re an Ad, the best thing you can do is to
be seen by as many people as possible.  Sometimes Ads will
just walk in front of you, hoping you notice at least some of the
1000s of ads they are displaying.  For a short time, this
brought back the phenomenon of trying to be seen behind live news
reporters and streaking at sporting events.  

Soon, being
seen streaking at sporting events just didn’t get enough hits, so
the desperate Ads were forced to find another way to get their
important word out to the people.  The next wave of Ads trying
to be seen was at tragedies like plane crashes, hurricanes and
terrorist attack locations.  When they rebuilt the World Trade
Center and it was destroyed for the 2
nd
time, the most popular videos of
that day were the Johnny Knoxville wannabes doing quadruple
backflips off the roof while projecting 3D holographic ads for
Mountain Dew on the side of the building while it was
collapsing.

Queue up the theme song to the
newest and most daring Jackass-like show out there, this one is
called Fucking Retards.  The theme song is basically a
computer playing three chords as fast as humanly possible, and slap
on top of that quickly cut images of buff, hot teenagers skating
through fireballs, doing hand plants on the roofs of skyscrapers as
the skyscraper explodes, a moron strapped to a rocket blasting off
for space, point blank shotgun blasts to the crotch and guys being
repeatedly run over by cars on the Super Highways and you have
yourself the intro to one of the highest rated (non dream) shows
around.

“
Jackass was a bunch of pussies
dude!” Says the first Fucking Retard.

“
Yea, none of them ever even died on
screen!” Laughs the second.

“
They never even died on screen!”
They laughed together.

“
FAGS!” they both yell together.
 Then they quickly grab each other and begin furiously making
out and licking each other’s faces.

Once people became crazed
walking advertisements, ICs connected everyone and everything, and
a few mega corporations called all the shots, you have a different
planet.  People’s loyalties started to change.  First of
all, to the masses, every other person is a competitor.  They
could be the one who grabs that last item on sale before you do.
 That guy might even be a clone, not even a real person.
 You better be ready to trample them in the stampede, and most
people were.

 For many Ads, it was
their main job, that was how they paid their rent.  If someone
is paying your rent, you form a bond with them, even if they are a
mega corporation that really doesn’t care if you live or die.
 These people, ruling their own little Universe in their IC,
became fiercely loyal to the corporations paying them.  More
loyal than to the government.  People start to think, “What
does the government do besides tax me and take my money?”
 Corporations with unlimited wealth start to think that
also.

FUCK THOSE PUSSIES IN THE
GOVERNMENT

There really isn’t anything
scarier than watching your own nightmares.

Recordable
dreams is another funny way that history repeats itself.  Just
like when audio tapes came out and the record industry thought
everyone was going to just tape songs off the radio and put them
out of business, and just like when mp3s and file sharing got
popular and the big corporations of the day decided to sue 14 year
olds for downloading Deuce Bigalow 10: Horse Gigolo.  The day
when Paris Super Crack Hilton the 4
th’s
dreams became instantly
available to the world, of course the new, bigger corporations of
the day had to sue everyone.  Because since Super Crack 4
(That was what Paris Super Crack Hilton the 4
th
would want you to call her), was
property of the Elohssa Corporation, you shouldn’t be allowed to
watch her dreams.  Unless, of course, you paid them.
 

With the proliferation of ICs,
the world becomes one giant, connected market, about 5-10
corporations control every business out there.  People are
living longer and have learned how to clone themselves. Cloning is
so normal in this world that it’s easy to forget about.  As
you can imagine, cloning has a huge impact on the world when it
finally gets cheap and reliable enough.  We’ve all seen that
scene in Alien 4. There’s about 30 years of that stuff before they
really figured out how to get a clone perfect every time.
 

Anyways, people that live a
long time and can clone themselves tend to, um, live a long time
and create many versions of themselves.  You may not have
thought about it, but once cloning was the norm, many people just
become their own families.  A couple old versions of
themselves, a couple middle aged, some young adults and some kids,
all the exact same person, born in different years living together
as a family.  Needless to say, the world’s population gets out
of control when this happens.  There were over a trillion
people on the planet and only a handful of companies providing
products and services to them.  These companies got rich.
 Trying to describe the money would just sound ridiculous, it
was so much.  As time goes by, corporations come and go, new
products are introduced that spring one ahead of the other,
scandals and innovation knock others down, it’s constantly
evolving, players are coming and going.  At the time, there
are only a couple corporations that need remembering, Telnet, who
perfected cloning before anyone else and Elohssa Corporation, who
invented the IC and created the market for dreams.  These
companies span the globe, you can’t be #1 in the world if you don’t
have a rep in Mongolia.