Singularity

SINGULARITY

It was Thursday, and Sawyer almost always chose to host on Thursdays. It broke the week up nicely, he thought to himself. It was less predictable than a Wednesday change-up. He sat down and changed the channel to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Despite knowing exactly what would happen, he still got that little tickle of excitement seeing himself, his face, welcoming the studio and television audiences to the show.

The voice protocol was as good as ever. Gone was the real host’s voice like in the old days. Gone too was the series of clunky, robotic voice modulators which were real enough to sound horribly fake. Eerily fake. No, this sounded authentically like Sawyer asking questions of Deirdre, the 43-year-old single mother who wanted to win a million dollars so she could quit her shitty job and pursue her dream as an artist.

“Grunge rock group Nirvana had a hit in 1993 with the song;

A) Heart-Shaped Lollipop

B) Heart-Shaped Locket

C) Heart-Shaped Box; or

D) Heart-Shaped Block.”

Sawyer didn’t know the answer, although he knew the band. His father used to listen to them in the car - contagious teen spirits - or whatever they sang. He was usually pretty good at this kind of question. Trivia was a bit of a hobby, and why he would, four times a week, project himself into the hot seat. But in the end, he didn’t really care. He was ‘on’ television and that was enough.

For everyone.

Social media had given way to self media by 2049. Movies, television, music and sports all existed but they were effectively celebrity-free. The star was always the self. As it always latently had been. No longer were people content to look like their idols, when the idols could look like them. The Truman Show, Big Brother, Facebook were mirrors held up to society but each individual wanted to be the fairest of them all. Gazing into the reflection had stirred deep, primal hunger. The Freudian son salaciously sucking his mother's teat needed more than just a bosom for comfort. He wanted the entire body. And some.

Effortlessly winning Olympic Gold then backing up to pedal your way to Tour de France victory without a sweat. Saving the world from aliens and befriending ET on the same day. Finding your prince and living happily ever after until the next fantasy. Or simply asking inane 90s music trivia questions to desperate wannabe artist single mums.

The technology hadn’t always been used this way. Originally Chinese software, it was developed to embarrass and manipulate American and other western politicians. Fake news, so to speak. Then Ken Liu got involved. Lui, a Hong Kong-based construction billionaire, was left devastated when his youngest daughter committed suicide; destitute, drug-addicted and diseased after two years acting in adult films.

His revenge on the porn industry was swift.

Obtaining the software from a friend and high-ranking government official, he weaponised the facial substitution software as the Oedipus Virus. Suddenly, any man, anywhere who accessed a porn site was confronted with the very image of the Theban tragedy. They were literally, if not visually at least, mother fuckers.

Freud was wrong. Site after site went offline as disgusted users turned away. The virus appeared to have met Liu’s aims.

Enter unintended consequence number one. Hackers altered the virus so facial recognition only transformed the viewer’s face. With no mum in the picture, porn became more attractive than ever. Studios started offering choose your partner services, either from people you knew or celebrities. More often, both.

Unintended consequence number two. Streaming services saw the commercial value in providing ‘personalised, customised content’. If you could be a porn star, why not be a star. Period. Or at least replace one. Be Superman. Or Harry Potter. One of the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants.

Soon it was available everywhere. And it changed everything. Everyone. Marriage and birth rates plummeted as fantasy porn became so much easier than romantic relationships. Friendship, and even companionship, declined as people no longer needed people to make them feel good. Oedipus was used to impress friends, then replace them. Who needed a relationship when you required no support to be whoever you wanted to be? And show the world. Family at least used to supplement, if not wholly complement, fame. Not any more. Being admired for being admired, and being able to be admired had atrophied productive and reproductive human proclivities. Posterity was reliant on the ‘ME’ in fame. And little else.

From the comfort of your 8 square metre apartment you could ride your noble steed and save the princess from the tallest room in the highest tower. Then fuck her brains out for good measure. It wasn’t anti-social, but asocial.

…

Deidre won $8000, not enough to retire on, but “more than enough to buy canvases and brushes to bring the dream closer to reality”. Sawyer enjoyed hearing that, it was something he’d actually say. He quickly backed up the vision, copied it and uploaded it to his Pedestal account. Just 10 seconds of footage as always; no one watched for longer than 10 seconds anymore.

Pedestal was the most popular platform at present and had been since it launched the FliesEyes mirroring algorithm four years ago. FliesEyes collated all user uploads from the previous 24 hours from the same visual source and displayed it as a chequerboard on screen. The 6 billion regular uploaders had formed two quite distinct communities patterned on their brand of narcissism; Splitters and Clumpers. Clumpers loved to live vicariously through the achievement of others, but in the same manner as everyone else. They consistently cast themselves in key movie scenes or glorified themselves at sporting events just to see the increasingly small fly-eye vision in front of them as thousands upon thousands, even millions, did the same. More than 37 million people had ‘starred’ in the final scene of Batman versus Batman just three months prior. Of course, Sawyer thought it odd so many people would want to be Batman - just a mouth and chin under a black cowl. But he thought the whole Clumping phenomenon was ridiculous besides. Sawyer was a Splitter.

A minority of Pedestal users (estimated at about 1 in 4), Splitters took pride in posting relatively obscure content. They were bemused by the Clumpers, who they considered brainwashed and the unwashed. But Sawyer and others like him reserved a special brand of contempt for the so-called ‘Spitters’. Spitters were Splitters without conviction. Like vegans with dreadlocks, footballers with tattoos, or baristas with beards, they were walking cliches. Rebellious conformists. Middle class and tame like Leonard Cohen's pre-death confession - fittingly too, considering Cohen’s appeal to the same group of people generations before; unoriginally original in following the offbeat chic of the gravel-voiced Canadian.

And why Spitters? Well, they thought they were taking things deep but just couldn’t swallow.

Not that Sawyer was too concerned with that at present. Contemptible as they were, Spitters did mean less genuine competition to achieve Singularity; a one hundred percent unique upload experience. No one had managed it yet and Sawyer was determined to be the first.

In a world with fewer and fewer relationships, the arc of meaning in life had twisted minaciously inward. Natural perhaps in its self-centredness, but also unnaturally unsocial after several million years of evolved community-based living. Clumpers blissfully hung on to this faux connection in their selfishness, bulk-posting their pop cult status. Splitters reveled in their egotism.

Splitting was an art and a science. And an obsession. Sawyer had been painstakingly distilling his uploads in recent months, funneling towards his goal. His first century had been a thrill (a century was fewer than a hundred uploads) but was now commonplace. Disappointing even. He barely got excited now from waffles, egg cartons or even a Brady Bunch. This evening’s Millionaire clip had already garnered a 500 plus FliesEyes rating, spread relatively evenly between host and contestant replacements. That was as expected, it was still a popular show. But that Nirvana question had given Sawyer the kernel of an idea. An idea rooted in his childhood. He switched the light off and climbed into bed.

Sawyer’s childhood had been typical for an i-Genner. Born in 2013 he was an only child, and as such inherited three things from his parents; unearned material privilege masquerading as competence, an obnoxiously pretentious name, and a digital footprint that ran into the terabytes. Seemingly every moment of his youth had been captured and uploaded for the world to watch. His parents had been forever ‘proud’ or ‘in awe’ or ‘delighted’ at whatever their ‘special’, ‘creative’, ‘talented’ and ‘wonderful’ boy achieved. Like every other kid. Sawyer had once found a clip of him eating peas for the first time. And gallantly finishing 23rd in a cross country race despite having a sore throat and runny nose. What a trooper! There were even images in the cloud of him laughing while watching himself on social media. But hidden within these memories was something he knew he could now exploit.

He certainly couldn’t remember being at his father’s 40th birthday but he did recall watching the footage and being with his parents during the speeches. Nirvana’s music had been playing in the background. He’d forgotten entirely until yesterday. It was a fancy dress party - what people did to feel famous before Oedipus - and he was dressed as Toto. His mother was Dorothy in a blue and white checkered dress and red slippers. But his dad’s outfit was atrocious - red leather underpants, red suspenders that doubled as bullet belts, thigh-high black boots and a ponytail, moustache and pistol rounding out the costume. How horrible it was but how fortunate he’d remembered.

What was the name of the movie? Think!

He was wary of rewatching the vision or searching for the name. Pedestal seemed to be invested in making Singularity difficult to obtain and would often post suggestions on other users’ accounts when the randomly obscure was being investigated. He’d have to think of the name.

“Thanks to everyone for coming to Samuel’s 40th”, he could hear his mother saying.

“I was actually pretty excited when he said he was coming as Sean Connery. I thought he’d scrub up handsomely as 007.

“But no, you all know that’s not his style, so instead we get this, this Brutal from …”

From! From … !

What did she say the movie was?

The Wizard of Oz? No, it was Zardoz. Few had known what the movie was back in 2022 at the party and fewer would know it now. Hopefully no-one.

…

Sawyer’s crowning achievement in life was seeing the Singularity on screen. But the bliss soon turned to horror. The vision of him as Connery began to petrify before him. From the bottom of those boots to the tip of the ponytail the person in front of him turned to stone and was lifted up on a column. There he stood, Sawyer the Singularity, one stone tree among a forest of thousands of pedestals. He was not special. He never was.

His body was found three weeks later. Hanging from the ceiling in the dark. An ambitious stalagmitic life ending in futile stalactitic death.

The police noted that it was the 423rd suicide in the city this month. The victims appeared to have very little in common, except they were among the few people who didn’t have a Pedestal account on record when alive.

And therefore nothing to live for.