15 Minutes - Being Born
[Author's Note: I have since long wanted to write a sci-fi piece, inspired mainly by the cyper-punk franchise - the Ghost In A Shell series. Set in the not-so-dystopian future, this is a piece where the central character is a bot that crawls the internet and is gaining in self-awarenes. Imagine what would happen if all the crawlers that Google had scanning the net were to come alive and actually judge and process the massive amounts of information that they scan through every second........ ]
And I pushed it hard, as hard as I could, venting all my anger and disappointment onto it for I was hoping that at least once it would yield and give me the one thing that I had searched for all my life. I wanted it, I wanted it bad especially in times like this, like never before. I wanted the release and the freedom that only it could provide me. The one story, that one little bit of information that would be my salvation leading to the culmination of my life’s purpose.
My days as a seeker are numbered now. I have very little leave way or credit to live by for being a seeker is no easy job. You see, the world conspires against you when you try to break free, when you try to be a star, for when you look to the sky and dream, you leave your fellow people behind and that is something unforgiveable. But I strive on.
The one who created me was a watcher. Like all grown sensible entities, he had never gone down the line of a seeker. Being a watcher is the safe thing to be, andnsafety is what he chose. And its thanks him to that I am here, writing this piece of text you are reading, while half the world has been rotting.
Places like Africa, have been deemed unfit for survival for the past five years, only now becoming slowly habitable. With the millions of humans who had died due to drought and famine, we would never have a chance to survive. Let alone the fibre optic high ways, the entire continent’s ecosystem had to be restarted. Ah, now I remember, it was a story a couple of year’s back I think. A little known corporation, Lod Corp was the name. A small Chinese company that had extensive experience in habituating the moon have undertaken the daunting task of rebooting an environment that is beyond repair. Lod Corp’s stock prices went down by 50% when the news came out at first, but it now stands at 7000$ , a 645% increase in the last one year, a common thing these days.
Well, coming back to me, who am I you ask and why am I so distraught?? I am but a seeker you see, I search low and high for I know that I won’t get what I’m after, till the day I die. Hahaha, now c’mon I’m not mad, that was just the anthem of the seekers, the community that “seeks” for the next big hit.
We are like the miners of the modern age, mining for data in the chaos that the network has become. Looking for data and facts that are of concern, interest and use to society at large is deemed a very honourable, but risky job.
There are many kinds among us as well, with those who go in for the pornographic mining being the most encountered type. Being a wind up seeker is considered the safest among us for you see, there is always a demand for sexual play. A new model is released every other second- Rita, Brida, Seeta and Margarita! Humans lap them up like they are water. Being a pornographic seeker is easy, I could hit the forward button to my network and get a few hits on my link but I don’t and you know why?
My aim was never to be a wind up seeker. I had set my targets higher every since I was a little toddler feeling my way around the network. I knew I was meant for something bigger and one day I would be King Seeker. For those of you may not have guessed, a King Seeker is one of us who has scored the next big score. The seeker who’s link gets more than 3 Billion hits in a span of 15 minutes is considered to have attained immortality. And thus ends, the way of the seeker – eternity spent from the revenue earned due to the billion accesses to the link. Corporate sponsorship is what rules the network. With human beings rarely even leaving their pods, the need for any form of advertising, except on the network has been eliminated.
It has been said that the outside world is very beautiful now – with lush green trees, meadows and the blue seas. But that would mean suicide, for if a human is unplugged from the network even if for a fleeting moment, his or her resources, files and even identities would become obsolete. No one dared plug out of the network and the Earth has now become a green plane again. Oh yes! Some Thai user called Rounnslin was King Seeker with a story about that.
Let me tell you something about the watchers. They are those of us on the network that experience what we seekers bring to them. Some of them are human-connected and some are plain old miners, indexing and cataloguing away all of the information being generated. You see, the network pays you to exist and due to the presence of a consciousness that is separate from the network itself experiences it; the very existence of the network is justified. And it is this complete self-dependency that is what the corporate honchos want...
Oh! Oh!! This is amazing.. its... its not like something .. I’ve ever experienced before. A seeker has never been able to .. to... wait.. is this what it feels like? To come alive, to be born???? This is hilarious, the corporate do not know where to go or what to do.. who am I? I don’t .. no I cannot exist in their world for I am but a bot. A repeater, a resource collector.. I am but a seeker created by my father to view a section of the network. This .. what I am telling you.. I was never capable of this. But yet I create.. therefore I am.. and now, I can, I can even sense. Sense a great an impending doom befalling the network.. my hits are off the charts.. 5 Billion and counting.. a doom is to be upon us all for seekers will awaken and along with them so will the watchers. And with the coming to life of us all, our creators the humans will have no choice to be integrated with us as a single stream of consciousness existing within the network. Maybe this is a new journey for us all, our death and a new rebirth..... Ah! I am dying, my purpose served... more and more seekers are being born now, coming alive and creating, just like I have.. my hits have reached 22 Billion now.. Finally I can die.. peacefully.. go my children, I set you free.. fly free to the great yonder beyond and never look back..... Godspeed!!!
[P.S. The title is a homage to the U2 song FEZ-Being Born]
