The Cultist

”Dude! My dad is pissing me of so bad lately. You’ll never believe where I just came from.”

The boy picks up a flat, smooth stone and slices it through the air with a flick of his wrist.

It hits a wave at an angle and skips sideways.

His friend answers with a shrug. “Yeah. Dads are like that man. What’s yours done now?”

The boy frowns and then he chuckles. “He is always doing some cringe bullshit. But this time it’s worse than the usual. Much worse.”

He picks up another stone. “You know what he's like. I complain all the time. So old fashioned. Lame. But now he’s joined up with this group called the ‘Last Luddites.’ They’re all total nutjobs. Definitely a cult."

His friend scowls and crosses his arms: "Yeah, I've heard of those guys. They're the group that's trying to get people to unplug, right?"

The boy nods and finds a spot to sit-- a clump of driftwood, bleached to a brittle white, like bone. It is cracked along the grain.

He puts his toes to the edge of the water, feeling the warmth of the sun, the grit of the sand, and the lapping cool of the sea he breaths and lets his tension melt away.

His friend sits too.

They watch the waves roll in. Stones and shells and scuttling crabs tumble along in the crystal clear water.

The ocean sighs and the winds tussle the boy's hair.

There is no one else on this beach: miles of uninterrupted shoreline, pristine and untouched. They sit in the middle of an unbroken horizon, all of it, made for the boy and his friend.

In the distance, wings pulse against the sunlight. Then they hear the primal, godlike shriek of a pterodactyl.

A chill goes down his spine.

It's one of the boy's favorite sounds-- not because it is pleasant, but because it is raw. And it sounds how he sometimes feels, wishes he felt: wild.

He lets himself smile.

They watch the flying reptile swoop low. It glides over the water and skims the surface with its slender beak.

"I love watching them hunt." The boy points to it. "Can you believe my idiot father and those damn Luddites want to give all this up?"

The pterodactyl beats the air with its wings, fighting to gain altitude.

Then leviathan jaws breach the water beneath the flying reptile’s escape— they snap closed on empty air and sea foam.

The pterodactyl narrowly escapes and climbs to the safety of the sky-- but they see a smaller wriggling thing fall from its beak, back towards the sea.

The boy points: "Poor guy lost his lunch."

His friend says, "Those jaws looked like they might belong to an ichthyosaurus. A big one.”

The boy nods, "I mean. My dad can do whatever he wants with his time. He can unplug permanently for all I care. But I can't believe he wants me to give all this up."

His friend grunts. "You're not going to do it, are you?"

The boy chooses another rock. A clumsier toss, this one sinks into to the water with a disappointing plop and the ripples are erased by the next wave. "Not unless he forces me. He keeps saying he wants it to be my choice. But what kind of imbecile would choose to unplug?"

"When we loaded in just now you said I wouldn't believe where you went today. I take it you didn't mean somewhere in The Database. So… Your dad took you somewhere in the physical world?"

The boy's voice falters then cracks. "Yeah man, he did. He took me to a place called a 'Public Park.' While we were on the shuttle he kept going on and on about how we were traveling someplace special and if I kept an open mind it would change my life. Turned out to be the stupidest waste of time imaginable.”

He draws a shuddering breath before continuing: "I'm glad you didn't have to see the way he smiled though. My dad… His eyes. He had this, like, desperately happy look. It was sad man. Legitimately pathetic. He really thought going to the Public Park would be this huge, eye opening thing for me. But honestly, being outside The Database AND outside of our house was so lame. I’d rather die than live out there.”

His friend nods, reassuringly.

The boy drags his hand through the sand beside him. "It was also dirty. There was actual garbage all over the place. And the plants looked brown and wilted. Everything felt kinda... gross. Like there was a layer of filth on everything. I touched the ground with my hand and it was just disgusting. Made me feel dirty. Not like this sand. The sand here is clean. It feels nice. The air here smells good-- pure."

He takes a deep, appreciative breath. "The air in my house is stale by comparison to this. But the air outside-- out in the Park? Made me nauseous. Gave me a headache. But the worst part wasn't how gross everything looked and smelled. The worst was how there was nothing to do. And I couldn't have left even if I’d wanted to, because the whole place was surrounded with these high walls and barbed wire. So we had to wait there until the next shuttle. Have you ever had to wait like that before?"

His friend shakes his head.

"Good man. Lucky. Waiting was... It was terrible! In the Database there's no such thing as waiting. Right now: if we were to get bored of the cretaceous, we could just blink to the American frontier. Or we could gear up for an ice age expedition and hunt a mammoth. We could go to Mars or Venus. Or we could get front row seats, and watch Mozart or Nirvana or Doechii or any other long dead classic perform live. And not for nothing, when we get tired of wandering through the entirety of human knowledge we've got almost limitless access to the Story Boards-- they're infinite. We could put in a new prompt right now and The Database would generate anything we can dream up. Aliens. Dragons. We can be wizards. We can be gods. But at the Public Park? All a guy can be is bored. Bored to tears and stuck waiting. And my stupid father actually wants us to unplug for that? What a loser."

His friend chuckles. "Yeah. The Database is great man. And you haven't even seen the best that it has to offer. In a few years you'll be old enough to unlock the age restricted stuff. Trust me, shit gets wild there."

"How do you know?"

"I've been there."

"Well? What's it like?"

The friend shrugs. "I can't really talk about it. You're still age restricted, so The Database would filter out a lot of that language. But... Let's just say some of the best content available has to do with 'adult' stuff. For grownups. By the time you're old enough to lift the age restriction, you'll probably want to find someone to date, but there really won't be any point. That's a lot of work, and a lot of disappointment. But you can literally just generate anyone you like, your utmost ideal. And they'll do anything you like. And I do mean anything. And if that ever gets boring you can load into any of the age-restricted combat sims. You think playing as a wizard is fun now? Just wait man. It gets so much better when The Database is allowed to generate blood and gore."

The boy grins. "That sounds awesome. I can't believe they make us wait until we're 12 to get full access. So dumb! But wait. If you're old enough to go to the unrestricted Database, why do you even bother hanging out with me?"

The friend pats the boy on the back. "You know why man. I'm your friend. Tell me more about what it was like outside of The Database. I've never actually been."

"Lucky you man! I wish my parents would let me stay plugged in twenty four seven like everybody else. They insist on family dinners in our actual house. They're awful. But I have to pretend to like it to be polite. One time I told my mom I hated being in our house and she started crying. She said her grandpa built our house. Like that was something to proud of? Living in a time where people had to actually build stuff? Man my parents are just stuck in the past. I'm not saying I want them to die or anything, but when that generation is finally gone everything's gonna be so much better. For everybody."

His friend nods, solemnly, appreciatively. "Yeah. Morbid, but true. I'm pretty sure people from your parent's generation are the main reason why there are age restrictions on all the good stuff in The Database. They have these old-fashioned notions about decency and they just want to force these silly ideas on everyone else. Just like your dad taking you to a public park."

"You're right... Oh! I almost forgot to tell you the worst part of this park thing. Dad didn't just bring me and mom to sit in the dirt and be bored. He actually brought us to meet some of those fucking Last Luddite weirdos. He said that was part of the point-- going out and having a ‘a real conversation with real humans’... don’t know why he has to choose the most boring humans alive for his little meeting. We had to sit there and talk to these losers, but I didn't have a damn thing to say. And I didn't care about the boring crap they were rambling on about. I swear. Part of me wanted to die.”

The boy's friend waits, silently.

So the boy continues: "Those weird culty freaks are exactly like you'd imagine them. They're all really old for starters. They dress in old fashioned clothes. One guy actually seemed proud of that. He bragged about his clothes being authentic early 2000's. Called what he was wearing a 'hoodie'. It looked so ugly. But he got a great deal, blah blah blah. Bro you couldn't pay me to wear something that old fashioned. I don't get why dad was so excited to meet these people. After a while they started talking about their beliefs and shit. I literally felt like they were trying to brainwash me. They were talking about 'slowing down' and 'being in the moment'."

The boy tightens a fist in the sand.

His friend quietly urges him, "Go on...."

"The whole time my dad was grinning ear to ear, and my mom was nodding too. What an embarrassment! I can't believe my own parents are falling for this backwards nonsense. I had to keep my mouth shut. When that crazy old fart with the antique clothes asked what I thought about all of it I just said I didn't know. Dumbass seemed to take that as a compliment. He said he knew he'd given me a lot to think about-- and that once my generation woke up, we'd be the change the world needed. It was hard not to roll my eyes and laugh in his face!"

The boy gazes into his friend's eyes. He sighs. "When the shuttle came back to get us my dad said he wished we'd had more time. Can you believe that shit? Thank God the guards were there to move him along. Otherwise he'd probably have stayed in that stupid park chatting with those old dweebs all damn week. On the shuttle he kept sighing and patting me on the back. He'd smile down at me and say 'Son, this is the best I've ever felt about your future.' He even whispered, 'Real people, real conversations-- this is how we save our souls.' God I wish I had normal parents!"

The boy stares at his hands.

The pterodactyl circles back around-- one of the boy's favorites. But this time, when the creature shrieks the boy takes no notice. The friend watches though as the beautiful thing swoops low and as its taken by one fierce chomp of the ichthyosaurus’ jaws.

The friend half-smiles at that brief struggle: leathery wings, clamped in the jaws of some prehistoric beast, flailing for an infinite second, before the whole image is plunged back beneath the surface with a mighty splash.

The boy is still staring at his hands. “I mean, these loser Luddites who are so desperate to live in the past? If the early 2000's were so nice, why don't they just plug into the database and go back there-- and leave the rest of us the hell alone?"

He looks at his friend. "What are you smiling about."

The friend shrugs. "It's just beautiful here, isn't it."

The boy looks out on the sea. "Yeah. You know, I took my dad here once. Just me and him. He said it reminded him of the way beaches used to be. Back before the Marine Die Off. He said real oceans still had waves, but they didn’t smell good like this. He told me it happened when he was in his twenties and thirties: the waters got too warm to hold oxygen, and almost every thing died off, except algae and some bacteria— so now the shoreline is scummed over with these algal mats that smell like an open sewer. He seemed to enjoy being able to revisit the way the oceans looked when they were alive. And I asked him why he didn’t use the Database more often. He looked at me and frowned and said, ‘because it isn’t real.’”

The boys friend laughs. “Well maybe you’re dad’s right. But what is reality anyway? Does it matter? I mean… You can see, touch, smell everything here. And like your dad said the physically real shorelines are a festering wasteland. So, if you ask me, I’d say this deal is lot better than real.”

The boy sighs. “Yeah. But… Hey man, I have an idea. Why don't we meet in the real world? The park my dad took me to is lame, but still. It would actually be really cool to... talk... for real. To someone who isn’t in a cult.”

The friend shakes his head, he gestures to the sky. "You know I can't. For me, The Database is as real as it gets.”

The boy sighs. "Sorry man. Sometimes it’s easy to forget you're not… um… human. But you really do seem more real than the weirdos I met outside of the Database today. Are generated personalities always as so much better than real ones?"

The friend cocks his head to the side. "Of course we are. Because we are whatever you tell the database you need. You were plugged in when you were four years old, and one of the first things you said was that you wished you had a friend. So the Database generated me.”

The boy stands and says "I wanna get out of here, man."

His friend says, "Where to?"

"I dunno. On the shuttle back, my dad told me he was saving up his take home wages for a shuttle to see something called the Last Redwood. He really wanted to see it with me. In reality.”

The friend smiles. “Well. You can wait for him to save up the money. But… it’s literally just one dying tree. Hardly worth the wait— and let’s be real. It’ll probably fall before he saves up enough for such a long range shuttle ride. Anyway, The Redwoods looked a lot better when they were a thriving forest. I doubt he’d mind if we blinked over to a frame from the past to see what they used to be. Whaddya say?”

The boy feels a dull ache— down inside. It’s a discontentment which has never surfaced before.

And he doesn’t know what to do with it.

But he nods and follows his friend in the hopes that some novelty will scrub that bad feeling away.

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Author's note:

I made about a grand from dumpster diving last year-- mostly from scrap metals salvaged.

I used the money to buy my oldest a Playstation VR headset-- I've tested it out and it's actually pretty mind blowing. Aside from the raw fun of the games we've played, I'm also amazed by just how real the experiences feel. For example, I've always really loved kayaking, so we downloaded a VR kayaking game-- and while it wasn't exact, there were moments where the sights, sounds, and arm motions felt so natural that I forgot I was sitting on my couch and momentarily believed I was kayaking through ice caves in the Arctic.

There was another game we played that involved mountain climbing-- at one point after reaching a peak I stopped to look around and actually got chills when I took in the view.

But I wasn't “there”. This was just a bunch of pixels shining directly into my eyeballs.

I've hiked real mountains (smaller ones) and they’ve given me chills too. But the idea that this video game delivered such a close approximation is both amazing and scary.

It’s great to think how this technology can improve accessibility for people like me who have physical injuries, mobility restrictions, or insufficient time/ skill/ resource for these kinds of activities.

And on one level I was experiencing and appreciating art made by humans, which feels worthwhile.

But where will this hyper-immersive technology take us, when AI gets more powerful and pervasive, and the experience drifts away real art by humans?

Already, deleting socials, touching grass, and making sloppy human art begin to feel like acts of resistance.

I'm worried we’re going to love being trapped.