• Sometimes I like to go outside to enjoy the calm breeze of the day or to feel the brisk cold on my skin. When I go out the village often looks abandoned almost like a ghost town; the wind howls as it blows through the empty streets.There are hardly any buildings left standing. most of the them had expanded into the earth instead of away from it. The massive skyscrapers that had once dominated the horizon now crumbling relics that would be safely collapsed and recycled for spare materials. It is not frightening because I know that people are still inside of their homes sitting in the darkness but they are doing so much more than that. Sometimes when I walk by the doors I can hear the gentle hum of machines and the whisper of cooling vents as they work tirelessly around the clock. They are enjoying a world far beyond the basic realm that we first existed in, man had reached the ultimate height in technological revolution. They made for themselves a new world. The single singularity event that propelled technology and man into a golden age. A limitless world ruled only by the laws set in place by ones own imagination. Data had replaced atoms and molecules; death had been replaced by artificial life support that could prolong the human lifespan into the centuries. Life had ceased to be a arduous task that culminated in dying alone.

    Life was now simple for humans but complex for the machines that kept the system running. Sometimes when I walk outside I can see them roaming the streets keeping the massive servers running or harvesting the crops needed to make the nutrient solution that we imagined to be the five star meals we are consuming. I wondered sometimes what they would do without us or what we would without them. Would they still continue on with their program regardless of the lack of life around it. Would our bodies starve while our mind kept going preserved by a digital back up ingrained into the system itself. I could not imagine that they would understand the sudden loss of their meaning or that we would notice. They were not designed to be that intelligent sometimes I don’t know if I am talking about us or the machines. I wondered if they had someone controlling them monitoring it all there were still secrets kept from the general public. Knowledge that could cause the balance of harmony to spill into chaos.

    Sometimes I stay outside all day when the skies are blue and I can see sun; they are more beautiful than what can be rendered by machine. There are some who have never seen the real sun they have only read about it. Read the propaganda about the horror it can wreak on the human body about what it will do when it dies. Long ago in a desperate gambit the governments of the world before; they had united into a single entity had all collaborated on a massive ship. It was the pride of humanity the first ship capable of traveling near the speed of light. It would take those chosen in the dark depths of space to a planet that scientists thought could sustain life. A new earth a brand new planet for us to cultivate. There are still videos of the launch as the crowd cheered and the scientists looked on in solemn respect. It was nearly a century before they ever received anything from them the world had already forgotten about them, about the excitement caused in colonizing a new world. When the ship had arrived all they had found was a barren wasteland incapable of sustaining the simplest life. A sandstorm had destroyed one of the engines. The ship along with the five thousand lives it carried were stuck. To die alone in the darkness of space. No further attempts were made to colonize. No memorial was built for the lives lost it had barely been recorded into history and even then the details of it all were ambiguous at best.

    Sometimes I look up at the stars and wonder if the ship did not arrive to a barren wasteland. Perhaps it had arrived to exactly what the scientists had wanted and somewhere deep in space there was another planet with life on it. A thriving civilization not locked in a reality of their own making but living their lives in the one they were born into. Though when it gets late and the blue skies turn black I retreat back into the shelter of my home. It is deep underground only accessible through the use of an elevator that is covered in dust. Slowly it descends deep into the earth. I turn off the alarms that alert of a broken seal. My room is small and empty except for the virtual chair that sits in the middle of the room and the simple wooden sitting across from it. I call it a chair but really it is more of a sphere with a seat inside of it. It shines and hums with the glittering marvel that is technology. Tubes run from the top of it into the ceiling they are what sustains me what sustains as us all.

    I climb inside of it and plug the cables into the correct sockets on my body. They are wired directly into my nervous system. I cannot remember if I was born with them it seems like we all were. The machine does most of the work a dozen tiny robotic hands connect the wires and send the spark into my body. For a moment my nervous system shuts down and sometimes I can see oblivion. I do know we die or simply cross through the threshold between lives but in that briefest of moments I can see a white light. Shadows walk across they are humanoid but they sport wings that are massive and beautiful. Sometimes I wish these moments would last only a little bit longer. It does not matter for I can feel myself slipping away. Elapsing into a deep hibernation and entering the system again. It will be many years before I go back to the surface but it does not seem that long.