The Invention of Future-Sketching
An atom awakened from a dream of being a human.
“Is life itself too big for your mind?” the words echoed from a world away to wherever the atom was. Then it saw its neighbouring atoms, consisting of something.
“Is the scope of the world far too massive for you to process and shape to your will?”
The mind’s eye of the atom pictured a pot as a human pictured a body, but where was it? “Well, now you can design your own personally customizable future, and graft it onto your life seamlessly!”
What future can escape this? thought the atom of a pot,
while God, towering beyond his comprehension,
passed him agnostically as a man would pass an ant.
Trent E. Linus awakened from his dream to the closing sequence of the holographic ad: “Your new future is within reach!
Just visit Future-Sketching Endeavors!”
Trent seriously considered making an appointment with the company. Suddenly, he perceived his person as a bigger version of an atom, among a multitude, bouncing around on earth, a cloud of negatively charged electrons, among other celestial objects, grouped together to make universes, molecules, bounding to make matter of something larger than he could imagine.
Maybe his life behaved like an atom
under the laws of higher chemistry.
Trent E. Linus decided he would take a more active role in his destiny, but maybe that decision was part of the higher chemistry dictating his life. Could technology’s hand change the deterministic forces at work? Future-Sketching Endeavors might be the glove for that hand, so he dialled them up.
“FSE customer services. How can I help you?” an operator answered.
“Yes, is your Future-Sketching technology resistant against determinism?” Trent asked.
“Please hold,” and elevator-music ensued.
A moment later another operator with a firmer voice answered.
“Philosophical department. How can I help you?”
“Yeah, I just asked the other person if Future-Sketching can defy determinism?” Trent asked again.
“Oh, I’m sorry. You want paradox logistics,” the man answered.
“How can they help?” Trent inquired.
“You see, Sir, determinism might have led you to defy determinism; Therefore, a paradox. Please hold.”
A click brought up more elevator-music behind a quasi-human voice, saying, “Agents of Paradox logistics are currently busy handling other callers.”
The sentence kept looping until Trent heard, “We’re sorry, the only way to reach paradox logistics is to be connected to them by accident.”
“Forget this,” and Trent hung up.
He called them again and made an appointment for questions. The very next day, the memory technician greeted Trent as he entered the office.
“Welcome to FSE, Mr Trent E. Linus. Have a seat. We’ll begin with a subconscious scan,” he immediately initiated.
“Wait. What’s that?” Trent inquired. “I’m just here to ask questions.”
“Time is precious, Mr Trent E. Linus, so please forgive my haste,” the memory technician explained abrasively. “Subconscious scans search your past and find a hidden catalyst for something desirable in the future. We call these 'Latent catalysts’”
Before he could ask questions on determinism, the issue of the moment landed on the nature of these latent catalysts.
“And what’s that?” Trent asked
“Hidden trigger for encouraging a choice in the present that can change your future for the better. Essentially, without technology, we can recall a moment in our lives and use it to reinforce a choice in the present to affect the future,” the memory technician answered.
“Find a catalyst for something that hasn’t happened yet?” inquired Trent.
“Indeed,” the man responded. “For example, if you walk down a road and step inside a pothole, you know next time to avoid that pothole. To an extent, you know to always look out for potholes. FSE has learned to manipulate this process of learning from the past to change the future, so we can shape that future.”
“So I can have any life I want, doctor?” Trent asked.
“I’m a memory technician, and not exactly,” the other said. “Please understand this doesn’t mean you can have whatever future you wish, Mr Trent E. Linus. Here at Future-Sketching Endeavors, we work with the pool of your experiences and find combinations of things you’ve already done. However, we assure you, these new combinations of your past experiences will be gratifying and unexpected.”
“What if I wanted to experience something completely alien from anything I’ve experienced before?” Trent asked.
The technician laughed. “That’s just not possible, Sir. We at least have an idea of the existence of something before we desire to experience it. Say I want to go to New Orleans. I want to go there after I heard about it from a friend, read about it in brochure, or saw it advertised on TV. Then I go to New Orleans. I don’t dream of New Orleans, and suddenly travel there.”
“Maybe I can,” Trent mused.
“Sir, here at FSE, we’re not concerned with metaphysical flights of fancy. We focus on changing people’s lives directly with what we know. Now, may we continue?” The technician insisted.
“Could we change our lives indirectly with what we don’t know? But sure.”
The memory technician skipped a beat. “Okay, as I was saying, FSE has the technology to guide one’s future in a desirable direction. We find the latent catalyst and build a favourable outcome around it. We use subconscious conditioning, so you make the right choices to bring yourself to the said outcome.”
“That’s incredible! Can you use this technology collectively to bring humanity into a new frontier! If we can shape one person’s future, think what we can do with the whole country united towards one outcome of prosperity!”
The memory technician cackled. “You’re quite the dreamer, Mr Trent E. Linus. That, again, is an impossibility, as we would have to contend with the individual passions of every human being on earth and align them somehow. FSE does not have the resources or the political intent to bring about such a feat. Now Lean back, please.”
The memory technician attached a many-wired apparatus to Trent’s cranium and flicked some switches and pressed a few buttons. Suddenly,
Trent’s consciousness gazed beneath a frozen lake.
There, the water was a memory,
flowing with an afternoon in gym class.
Trent E. Linus jogged after a girl; the time digitized to lines of code on a computer pad that the memory technician held in his hand. He studied the readout as a radiologist would study an x-ray.
He squinted at the raw code appearing like the entanglement of lightning bolts and deduced Trent’s hand reaching out to touch a girl’s back in some sort of game; Trent won, but he hadn’t felt like he did unless he asked her out.
Trent opened his mouth. Then the boys and girls suddenly ran to their designated locker rooms. He closed his mouth and began running with them. Maybe he’d do it tomorrow.
His regretful recollections ice-skated there sometimes.
“Hmm,” the memory technician of Future-Sketching Endeavors said.
“What is it?” Trent asked.
“Do you recall high school in May 2001 on a Tuesday afternoon?” the technician asked.
“Not precisely,” Trent answered.
“There was a girl. There’s always a girl,” The technician laughed.
Long ago, the memory sealed itself inside a realm closed off from him, yet remained dimensionally immediate, now reduced to numbers when he heard the date.
The concept of memory being mere numbers rang strangely to Trent.
“Now that you mention her, yes, I recall. She was assigned as my partner in gym class.” Trent said.
“Great, we’ll begin there with the Future-Sketcher program,” the memory technician said and punched in a sequence of code.
“The what?” Trent asked.
His past ponds of moments, unexamined into stagnancy, flickered on the computer monitor, and the Future-Sketcher tossed in an investigative stone from the present.
The life of Trent rippled to the last day of gym class:
The students gathered around in a circle, each with a string and a bag of beads. The idea was to gift someone special with a bead symbolizing their importance to the gifter, accompanied by a speech, and one would collect beads from people on the string over the course of this ritual.
Trent received none until he heard to his shock, “I choose Trent,” she said and handed him a bead. “It means a lot to me how you always showed me attention and kindness every day.”
Past Trent smiled. “Thank you,” and said nothing else.
[“Can I change this?”] Present Trent asked the memory technician.
[“No, Mr. Linus. Here at FSE, we are not time-travellers. We’re time-visitors, so to speak. These are just projections. Not the actual past.”] answered the memory technician.
[What’s the point of that?”] Trent inquired.
[“Catharsis, Mr Linus.”] The man said simply. [“To better the future. Your subconscious scans showed this moment as a catalyst for something desirable in the future.]
[“So this memory of this girl giving me a little bead holds some significance to my future?”] asked Trent.
[“Correct, Mr Linus. I will now assist you in its investigation. Please proceed.”] said the other.
When Trent thought to investigate this moment, a flicker knocked the image of himself into shivering stillness; His eyes downcast, the younger Trent diverted himself from the moment of being gifted, which provided space to contemplate it.
To Trent then, nothing of the moment needed an extension and he just meditated on the experience’s specialness for memory, which removed him from the very presence of the moment, just as the bell rang, and the gym class scattered for the last time, her form nonexistent when everyone cleared the field.
“Even at the moment, I treated it as something to be cherished, not experienced. I thought that would be enough until time tarnished the memory with regret.”
“That’s my evaluation as well, great. You’re doing great. Now standby as I enter this information and run them through the subconscious conditioning program to fashion your new decision-matrix.”
“Decision-matrix? Kind of like that movie?” asked Trent.
“No Sir, not like that movie at all,” answered the other. “Your decision-matrix will mold how you make every choice in life, guiding you to your favourable future. Now hold still as the program grafts the decision-matrix onto your mind.”
The memory technician flicked a single switch with a sharp snapping noise,
and a river of neon, cascading with Trent’s consciousness,
split into multiple streaks of rainbowing rivulets.
“You see those, Mr Trent E. Linus? They are your…preexisting ghosts of decisions, if you will,” said the memory technician.
“Ghost?” questioned Trent.
“Not as you normally think of ghost, Mr Trent E. Linus. These are ghosts of your decisions that never lived and haven’t died yet. That’s why we call them, ‘preexisting ghosts’. You can see them displayed on the monitor…. now.”
Just before a choice was made, its preexisting ghost floated through surrounding thoughts and dripped ectoplasm on them, contaminating them with predictions on his own decisions, until realized and then actualized.
“Preexisting ghosts haunt all your choices through your life, in a manner of speaking, but, here at Future-Sketching Endeavors, we’ve learned to electronically exorcise them, to a fluidic vessel, if you will, or a saline solution, mixed with your brain fluid and concentrated, so the decisive potency is heightened. At the final stage, we inject Nano-bots into the saline, and improve the efficiency of the chemical reactions made during decision-making.”
As the memory technician finished speaking, a ding sounded with a hiss, and a cylinder device, attached to the computer system, dispensed a syringe.
“Ah, it’s ready. Now I just need to inject this into the area just above your temple, and you’ll have a new decision-matrix. Ready?” said the man.
“No, but whatever,” said Trent.
Positioning the needle near Trent’s temple, the memory technician thumbed the button of the syringe,
and a powerhouse of surety manufactured
unbreakable confidence inside Trent. Suddenly,
he felt a strong solidness in his chest as if he could sense the correct courses of actions without a flicker of hesitation.
He could make a choice as he would blink.
His nervous system extended to encompass the world, which now would obey his commands as he would dress himself. Existence itself was his clothes that fitted onto his life depending on its width, length and height; a style that’s adjustable around a fixed form.
A thread was a choice in the tapestry of his destiny,
stylizing reality with his existence.
“How Do you feel?” asked the memory technician.
“Like I can change the world,” the words involuntarily released from his mouth to Trent’s own shock.
“Confident? Great. Now if we scan your subconscious with your changed brain chemistry, we can glimpse a future which you can attain with your new decision-matrix. Standby.”
A moment later the memory technician squinted at his computer pad.
Spaced out spheres orbited a bundle of spheres,
which the man recognized as a nucleus.
An atom? He thought.
Then the memory technician interpreted mass redness as oppressive heat, applied to the atom, its nucleons, protons and neutrons — raging with rearrangements, until an arm extended, releasing a flaming bottle, shattering against a police car with an explosion.
Cinder blew passed a masked face with sunglasses and a brandless hat, his tattered cloak flapping in the gusting wake. The memory technician assumed the image of the man was Trent, however uncharacteristic.
The Trent stood on a car and raised a fist as a rioting motley of individuals marched the streets.
FUTURE GLIMPSE COMPLETED,
read the computer pad.
“If you’ll excuse me,” said the memory technician, turning the knob abruptly.
The closing door sealed Trent in silence and sensory-deprived isolation.
He waited there until he grew suspicious, finally standing up and checking outside on his own volition; A trio of blue-uniformed men hurried down the hall as a man in a white lab coat pointed in Trent’s direction.
“Mr Trent E. Linus! You’re under arrest!” shouted the police.
A handcuffed Trent sat across two detectives at a long table.
“Are you aware, Mr Trent E. Linus, that you are the future leader of a dangerous movement, not yet in existence,” asked a detective.
“What? That’s absurd! How could I possibly know that?” Trent asked back.
“Under further investigation of your subconscious scans, we know you eventually lead a movement bent on collectively organizing a uniform future for the world to overthrow the government,” said the other detective.
“I never even dreamed of that!” said Trent.
Then a detective said, “Not yet, Mr Trent E. Linus.”
News of Trent’s unlawful incarceration leaked on the internet and began trending across all social media. As police dragged Trent to prison, a video of him went viral:
“Stop the establishment from setting the parameters of our future!” Screamed Trent as police handled him roughly.
“Far too long have they limited our Future-Sketching!”
Among tugs and pulls at his sweatshirt, he continued,
“They say our future is derivative of our past! They say we can’t dream a future as one!”
Police guided him inside the car. Trent’s head out the window, he screamed,
“I say, if we’re just atoms in God’s plan, split ourselves!
Explode beyond His design! Beyond ourselves!
Beyond the establishment’s grasp!
Future-Sketching en masse!”
Despite the police department’s efforts, Future-Sketching En Masse became a movement.
