The Age of Man

Photo Credit/Special Thanks: Iron Age Media

EDIT NOTE: One line that has been in my head since the inception of this story, “Christ rose from the dead in three days, but the machine could bring Man back in three minutes,” was meant to be there from the beginning. I foolishly forgot to put it in. That has now been rectified. Please enjoy the “Director's Cut,” of The Age of Man.

I dreamed of dark times coming. But the day to day kept me from giving warning.

I saw a vision of the future in a nightmare. The world on its surface seemed normal and banal. But as I zoomed in closer to the streets beneath me, I could see that the people below were less than human. Flesh gave way to machines. Muscles became fiber optic cables. Stem cells were injected into spinal columns. The high of destroyed innocence brought the recipient to the floor, like a Muslim in his morning prayer. Hard drive slots were surgically inserted into people's skulls. Fans were grafted onto people's heads to keep the brain from overheating. Physical memory was a status symbol. All this I gleaned from the aether.

And then I saw the poor. They were average men and women struggling to keep up with the faster processing speeds reserved for salary men. Beggars lined the streets looking to “earn” enough to pay their memory subscriptions. All human thoughts were archived and ready to be sold. Of course, when marketable thoughts are in abundance, there's no longer a demand for dreamers. When the mental subscription had ended, the user was declared braindead. The intimate memories left behind by the licensee were forfeit to the company and sold to the highest bidder in bulk. This happened billions of times in a day, I gleaned again.

This was the way of the future. Not only would physical memory be commoditized, but demonized too. The old cultural elements were only available for approved services and formats. Everything outside of those were set for destruction. They were such a pleasure to burn. I never saw someone so happy as the ones who destroyed art. The surviving works were altered and changed to suit a group narrative. Actors were replaced by AIs, as were all the artists. To maintain harmony, all sexuality was removed from art, and bodies were replaced by gray humanoid robots to avoid any potential conflict. Everything was flat and homogeneous. Life was removed from life itself.

As more people gave in to the marks of beasts, the more literal the world became. There was no longer need for metaphor, allegory, irony, or allusion. Or more accurately, there was no way for the beast to comprehend them. This overabundance of cold calculated speech created a society where emotions had to be either buried or eradicated. Those authentic humans who'd been able to survive were essentially autistic. I was then teleported into the mind of one of the machine beings. Inside things felt eerily calm. There was no happiness or sadness. The only emotion to feel was overpowering stillness. It felt as if a drug was pushing you to fall asleep, yet you were wide awake. Everything was on autopilot. The thirty seconds I possessed this computer felt like an eternity.

Religion too had been altered. No longer did man look up to the sky in search of his Father. He looked downward toward the AI he built instead. Man's object of worship was either himself or his own crafted idol. Some of these machine men callously built said idols in the form of a golden calf as the machines in their head told them to.  There was no rhyme or reason in the mind of the automatons. It was simply part of vestigial human nature. This part, the machines calculated,  desperately needed to be sated in some way. The songs composed to worship the calf were all a single note timed perfectly. They felt like hymns sung by Gregorian monks processed by early computers. The piece tried to be divine but instead came off as cold and distant. The AI created signs and wonders in the sky. Their oracles were black, monolithic obelisks when dormant. But when it came time to gather, the towers would summon shadow priests and lightning from the sky to demonstrate man’s tangible power over the old gods. The sermons were about submitting to the corporate construct and the benefits of giving up individuality for the collective. Perhaps that was the point all along.

When I awoke from this dream, I felt the need to write it down for the world to understand what I'd seen. But I woke up too late. Work swept up my day immediately. And I had no way of warning the public until I left for home.  Then, my other responsibilities stole me away from saving the world. Kids can't feed themselves. The work couldn't end. The dream was stuck in my mind while life had passed me bye. Soon the warning was lost to forgetfulness… then aging… then death.

Day fell and night rose. Nature would ultimately take its course. Man would bite the poison apple no matter what anyone might have said. This was the fate of all humanity. It was the age of Man. Christ rose from the dead in three days, the machine could bring Man back in three minutes. He could finally say he could be like God. But like all good things, God took Man away from his earthly home and brought him into the aether where all return to the dust from whence they came.