The Voice
The future will be quieter than you think…
The year is 2026, the world, not so hard to imagine. Technology continues to thrive, and humans have mindlessly evolved alongside the new advancements. Thanks to implants placed in the frontal cerebral lobe, the part of the brain previously responsible for translating thought into psychological impulse has been rededicated to telepathic communication with devices such as smartphones.
Like humanity, the smartphone has also evolved to new levels, morphing from a communication tool to a form of life support. With their minds alone, users connect to one another through an invisible tangle of people and information. Gone are the days of phone calls and face-to-face conversations. Technology has made speech obsolete.
In first-world countries, ninety percent of the population uses this technology. What were once busy offices, streets, and pubs are now places of peace and tranquillity. Social intelligence and human interaction drain out of the sewers into the polluted and contaminated rivers. For the people who have ceased to speak, smartphones are more than just a medium of expression: they are prosthetic limbs, wireless extensions of their bodies.
Of course, some do not embrace this “progressive” technology, rebellious individuals who fight against the enhancements to preserve humanity’s imperfections, no matter how dejecting and inconvenient. Small communities off the grid dream of an uprising and hopefully await a glitch within the system that would render the implants useless. Members of these communes are referred to as “terrorists” and “relics”; as they refuse to change with the times. Fear continues to grow among the rich and elite who disdain, these members of society who, with their rejection of the implants, cannot be manipulated.
The night had been a special evening for one couple. Although you would never have sensed it through their close proximity to one another, their social interaction had been almost non-existent. With a smartphone in hand, social media had taken centre stage to their grim and unimaginative lives. The two refrained from looking at each other throughout their meal at an expensive restaurant in the city.
After leaving the restaurant, they walked towards the train station, all the while mentally preparing themselves for work. When they arrived, they found that the entrance of the railway line had been closed off with metal shutters to prevent commuters from entering. The two lovers looked at each other in disappointment, processing the gravity of the situation: they would need to take the night bus home.
Outside the dirty windows, the city skyline disappeared behind the horizon, signalling the bus’ long and depressing journey had all but come to fruition. Onboard, the couple remained glued to their smartphones and continued to jack up on as much gossip and social media as their veins could carry.
They glanced up every now and then to look across the rows of empty seats littered with leftover chicken wings that had been gnawed to the bone. The driver downstairs sighed when he finally saw the last bus stop on the line, his small daily victory only marred by the knowledge that he would live this same day all over again tomorrow. Pulling over to the side of the road, he opened the doors and gazed up at the mirror to watch the last two passengers exit.
Holding hands, the couple made their way home, both afraid of the viciousness lurking at every unlit street corner. The howling of the wind encouraged imaginary voices to ascend from the clogged drains where rushing rats tweeted. Tall trees swayed from side to side, impersonating a group of drunks on a ship. A dog barked by its fence, reminding the couple to remain on their side of the pavement.
It was then the man staggered, pierced by a sharp, hideous pain unlike any other he had experienced. With eyes in a blink less trance, he clutched his lover’s arm in a desperate attempt to communicate his distress. Only when the struggling man collapsed did she at last notice his torment. Panicked, she wrenched the smartphone from her pocket, and frantically tried to contact the paramedics via telepathic instant message. Usually, TIMs were the quickest, more efficient way to reach emergency services, but that evening her screen continuously relayed the same error message: Device unable to connect to implant.
Her fingers fumbled as she scrolled through the application for a way to send a distress signal. A red apostrophe appeared on the screen with every failed attempt. In her frazzled desperation, she unknowingly dialed a three-digit number she had not used in many years. A clear, lovely voice promptly answered, her simple words precise and beautiful.
“Nine-nine-nine, please state your emergency.”
The woman looked blankly at the screen upon hearing the words. She had not spoken in over a decade. Straining her body and mind, she tried to produce sounds that would bring aid to her dying husband. The noises that surfaced from her voice box more closely resembled the harsh grunts and groans of a bad-tempered silverback gorilla than any vocabulary used in the English language. Through a flowing stream of tears, the woman struggled to convey her message to the operator. It was halfway through another guttural cry that she saw, two frowning children, standing on the other side of the road, watching the entire event unfold with tilted heads.
The children were no older than six, both with dark brown hair, which matched their hallowed eyes. They were dressed in rags that were held together with crude stitching; dirt sporadically layered the material. The small boy stood bare-foot with no socks or shoes to shelter his black and hardened soles. The shaking woman gazed at the children with pleading eyes, imploring them to send help. The confused children merely turned to one another, before looking back at the sad scene they did not quite understand.
“We have to get back home now. Our father says that the revolution is about to begin. . .”
The young girl had a distinctive accent belonging to the suburbs east of the city. She gave the distraught woman a sympathetic smile before grabbing her brother’s hand. The boy refused to budge, unable to take his eyes off the tortured soul and the man lying in the road. He finally was dragged by his sister across the pavement and through a hole in the fence.
All at once, the dark, starless sky became illuminated, with comets falling from the heavens. The woman could not know that these falling bundles of stardust were actually fragments from satellites that were dropping from earth’s orbit. The bewildered woman observed the night sky, her leaking eyes transformed from a bold chestnut brown to the glowing amber of a blacksmith’s forge.
Resting her head on the dying man’s chest, she prayed to hear the sound of her husband’s voice, one last time.