Dream Shelter
Look, those chips just lit up orange. They're out of their usual area.
Two men are in front of a huge screen, one of them passes the mouse over the orange dots on a map, popping up ID numbers. Now to the patrol in the H38 sector. He clicks and a message appears Message sent. For several years, imperceptibly, a dream of absolute power has replaced the dream of freedom. Artificial Intelligence is everywhere to control citizens in every detail of their lives. Everyone is self-censoring, anticipating the watchman's eye. It is now impossible to escape from this suffocating collective box. Little by little, consciousness is engulfed in a lethargy shaped by fear and the human brain is gradually freezing while machine are getting more power.
The government's big dream is to read thoughts and monitor brain waves with cameras. 5G is now everywhere. No one can exist without the chip containing one’s ID that allows to open the blockchain containing all about one’s skills, emotions and life history. The last Yellow Vests have been neutralized and the government is gradually tightening its grip thanks to its lies.
Authority almost collapsed during the Covid-19 crisis when citizens realized they could act on their own. But the police put quickly everything back to normal, increasing the intimidation pressure on each one.
Sunday, Herri is moping at home, lying on his couch and daydreaming. His mind palpates the walls of the invisible box that contains his life, looking for cracks. How to contact his best friend from the past life, under the radar of surveillance? Dominik is a researcher at the National Institute of Informatics. He is now in charge of small tasks to support the artificial intelligence(AI) he has been assigned to, a new job called AI servant. Underemployed, he is bored out. Herri works for the Ministry of Planning, he has no chief, all his tasks are determined by his AI. They have been friends since high school. As teenagers, they experimented mind games to find a place, an object, a secret. Just teenage games. One dreamed of a spot where he would put a secret object then, the other dreamed in order to go inside his friend’s dream and find the surprise.
Afterwards, they were separated by their respective lives, phoning each other regularly, meeting from time to time. Since the second containment, it has become very complicated to communicate, unless one talks only about the weather.
Herri is still on his couch, drifting between worlds. Then he starts fomenting a strategy. He searches on the internet for the Menhir du Champ-Dolent, downloads the image and sends it to Dominik with a note: “Guess where I want to go on vacation”. Later Dominik replies: In a dream country. Absolutely. When? I'd like to be there Saturday night, adding a little winking emoticon.
OK, you'll tell me about on Sunday with the same emoticon. Herri smiles, the menhir du Champ-Dolent, one of the highest in Brittany, was their favourite dreamtime meeting place. It's been a while since he practiced. Now, they have a week to prepare this expedition. This Saturday, he lies down on his bed and gets himself into condition. It's like riding a bike, you never quite forget and the body slips easily into the marks, traced night after night by their track games. He visualizes the menhir and little by little passes into the dream. Dominik appears soon. They communicate silently. I asked you to come, before the chip decodes our brainwave signature and may prevent our little game. How could we stop these machines? I've managed to hack my chip to make it give false localization, but how long will that work? We have to disable the entire system. Maybe we can overload the networks with false information. It won't be long before they identify the source of the problem. We could create a domino effect, a chain reaction. That's the way the power grid is built. Without electricity, there's no control, no money and total disruption. Now we're in a situation where we can't predict what's going to happen. Dominik, do you prefer the total deprivation of liberty with the fear that new tools with new laws will be put in place to legitimize more abuse and lies? No, Herri, of course not, I'm just thinking out loud. It's possible to go into the system with decoys and seize the opportunity to put a dormant virus into the central system. And how does it wake up? As soon as the demand for electricity rises above a certain threshold. The program saturates the server and creates an overheat that will start fires in the nodes of the power grid. Why not wait for a moment of intense solar storm ? This will mask the virus and the effects will combine. Wow! — They're regaining the excitement of their high school years. In an instant we'll be back to Neanderthal age. You've got a garden, chickens, cash, reserves, make some, buddy, you're gonna need them. Let's meet here in a dream as soon as the disaster happens. They laugh, hug and return, each one, to their ordinary reality for a while.