Within Our Reach

The data wars have become so absurd that data itself has literally taken physical form. It evolved from the airwaves, and eventually became a permanent atmosphere around our planet, and it leaves a dark red glow around everything. Every company wanted to own it, but it was solely owned by ArcTech... 'Happiness is within your reach'

We stopped caring about trivial things such as time years ago… or was it days ago? That's the point. The only thing that's important is the consumption of products and data. They knew humanity... down to the molecule. I should know. I’m the last one in existence.

The last natural human, that is. Everyone else is made of at least 75% synthetic parts. Oddly, I don't know much about myself, other than my given name.. D. I don’t have any recoverable memories due to the Data Wars. All my memories, history, and past are only on my social media now.

You see, humans evolved to the point where they didn’t need memories in their brain anymore, since they were all stored on their personal social media. So you see, I am technically incapable of remembering anything longer than 24 hours prior. I also have an insatiable craving for consuming everything I see. Food, buying fast flying cars, even medication. If I don't see it on my feed, that means I haven't done it yet.

Everyone alive (and sometimes dead) are under constant bombardment of advertisements for products to consume. I have to constantly check my social media feed to see if I had already eaten today, or done anything else. It sucks, but that’s how life is in... whatever year this happens to be.

But something crazy is about to happen.

I live in... wait let me check... in Prime City, and its always dark. I woke up this morning, and did the usual: check my social media to see if I had already ate. I didn't see a picture of me with breakfast, so I went to the nearest CoffeeCo™ caffeine distributor. It's basically a form of control that will keep you motivated to consume everything you can on this planet…. Wait let me check my social media…. Oh yeah, I'm on Earth.

Before I walk into the small privacy cubicle to order a coffee and sit by myself, I see an ad on a billboard above it saying “At ArcTech, we do it all, and if you don't like it, we can erase it… Like it never happened." While I was looking at this foreboding sign, A Trashbot bumped into me going full speed, knocking trash and spare parts from former lifeforms everywhere.

The poor Trashbot was definitely on its last legs. It was rusted, ran on 2 wheels, one which was definitely not the right size for that unit and it seemed be malfunctioning. It kept repeating the phrase "Within your reach" I dust myself off, and it leaves all the trash on the ground and haphazardly speeds off.

While I was sipping my coffee taking a picture of myself to remember this for all eternity in the privacy cubicle, I turn to see a weird red heart-shaped locket on ground where the Trashbot crashed into me. It had an ArcTech logo on it. There was a neon, pulsating red glow emanating from it, with a key already in the lock.

My life isn't that interesting, at least from what I can remember, so I decided to do what I thought any normal last human being on earth would do: I walked up to the locket, and twisted the key. As soon as I made this genius decision, the locket then shined so brightly in my hands, it temporally blinded me, then vanished. Immediately, the entire sprawling metropolis of Prime City went dark, then citywide alarms went off everywhere with a robotic voice droning the phrase “Data error.”

I look up to see all the flying cars falling out of the sky, and the cyborgs all over the streets running in panic. It’s pure chaos. I jump into the privacy cube so I can turn on my contact lenses, initiating my HUD program inside them, only to see that it was offline…. EVERYTHING was offline. This isn’t possible!

During the Data Wars, ArcTech did a backdoor deal to give out free unlimited data to whoever won the war, and since technically no one won, ArchTech won the rights to global data trafficking. They essentially owned the planet. It only took 5 years for all the world’s data to reach such an apex that it became a physical atmosphere and block out the sun. After that, ArchTech created a miniaturized artificial star that mirrored our sun, but within our atmosphere, so we can have sunlight again. But it has been dimming more every day ever since launch.

There was a catch though: ArchTech figured out how to have unlimited energy, by turning data into pure energy.. And that is how the mini-star was powered. It needed a constant data stream, otherwise it would shut down, or worse... supernova. This is why we were removed of memories in our brain, and why we constantly needed to to be updating social media. Our lives literally depended on it having a constant flow of useless filler data.

I start running towards a ExoSkin™ Boutique. While everyone was panicking and tearing their processors out of their vision holes, I jumped into one of these exo-mech suit for safety. It's fitted for combat, with wings, a rocket pack, and even air conditioning. It drilled a cable into my spinal column to link up to my brain. The pain was unbearable for a solid second, then I felt a power surge unlike anything I've ever felt, but then again, how could I even remember?

Electronic billboards all over the city were blinking in black and red saying “Within Your Reach.” over and over while cyborgs were malfunctioning and attacking each other. I use the exo’s HUD to look at the ArcTech mini-star, already getting smaller and fading faster than ever. Just to the right of it though, I zoom in to see an ArcTech zeppelin in the sky with the same blinking billboard sign on it, and I get an idea.

I hit the rocket pack on the suit to max, and I start barreling towards the zeppelin’s underbelly. I crash through the bottom of the control deck, only to see that all the cyborgs controlling it had already short circuited, and jumped off the ship. I immediately zoom to the controls and change its path to go directly to the ArcTech mini-star.

These ArcTech zeppelins are made to farm the data atmosphere circling the Earth. I figured if I can crash this thing into the mini-star, it will suck all the data from this zeppelin, at least giving ArcTech a little more time to fix this.

As I’m about to jump off the zeppelin and fly to safety, it starts to dive directly towards the city. The controls are unresponsive. I must've entered the star's dead zone. It an EMP force field around the star, made to keep rival data collectors away. This stupid blimp must've had protocols to steer clear from it, and disable once it was too close to the star.

I think fast, and I fly underneath the blimp and push it towards the mini-star myself. I randomly start to wonder if I was always this heroic, or was this a fluke. As I’m pushing through the dead zone, my suit is giving me blaring alarms telling me that I have seconds before I vaporize. This needs to happen now.

I ignite the rockets to full thrust, and with all the power of the exosuit, throw this zeppelin like a rock directly at the star. A flash of light pierces through everything, briefly blinding everyone... I’ve done it. I’ve torn a hole through ArcTech’s data plan. My eyes recalibrate, and I see something no human has seen for years... or was it weeks. I don’t have the brain capacity to know the answer to that.

I see a blue sky, and the real sun behind it. I can feel the warmth of it from here. Oh wait, that’s not the sun. I’m on fire! I look down and see that a squad of ArcTech death squad robots are flying up from Prime City to attack me, and one of them had already shot a laser through my torso. Why are they attacking me?

The exo-suit anticipated the attack and auto injected me with pain sustainer to dull the pain before I even got shot. I initialize combat mode on my suit and I easily destroy the robot squad with a military grade self-defense module.

While I being attacked, something was happening above me with the mini-star. It was reshaping itself, taking the shape of the giant heart shaped-locket... but it was going dark. It was going to supernova.

I try to escape its gravity, but I was too close. I was stuck in it’s event horizon. No matter how hard I try, how hard I fight, there was no escaping it. So I gave up. I accepted my fate. While was being sucked into the star, I wondered if it was actually me who did this by opening the locket. The fate of the entire world couldn’t have hinged on me releasing the locket, could it?

I feel my body tearing apart as I am being pulled to its core. I can see it forming a keyhole in the center. Is this coincidence? It can't be. There has to be a way to stop it. I turn around and dive straight for it. Right before I enter the keyhole, while gravity is tearing every fiber of my being, right before it was within my reach... everything goes black.

I wake up in my bed, totally unharmed and even well rested.

For the first time, I remember something. Every single detail of that anomaly was in my mind. I start to laugh, and realize that I must be cured from my short memory loss.

Until I see that I am locked inside my own home with that same heart shaped lockets on every exit of my house. I look to the social media data stream to see that my face has been plastered on every single account saying that I tried to overthrow the planet. ArcTech changed the narrative, and made me the enemy in the eyes of every being that occupied Prime City.

My TV sputters to life and a faceless cyborg tells me my sentence. They implanted all my memories back into me, and I am to rot until my natural human body deteriorates, then my body will be converted to data to be consumed by the rest of the planet. The cherry on top? A zeppelin will always be flying above, with a billboard advertising “Happiness is within your reach”.