What if…

We took cancel culture to its ultimate conclusion???

ALL memorials destroyed. ALL streets changed to numbers or letters, ALL names changed to alphanumerics, all books burned, all paintings destroyed, all artwork destroyed. The only approved colors are black, white, and gray. One TV channel, no more smart phones, everything recorded everywhere. No privacy. No LEOs, no military. Everything controlled by AIs that are on precise timetables. Everyone is chipped with a chip in the brain controlled by the AIs…

Jan 1, 2050 dawned clear and cold. WEF23419 quickly stepped into the bathroom for his alloted five minute shower as PTW25342 cleaned up the bedroom and laid out the approved clothes on the black coverlet. “Two, we’re about out of bath soap number thirty-two.”

“Nine, we can’t get anymore until next one day. We’ll have to stretch it.”  She heard the shower quit and said, “My turn. We’ve got…eleven minutes until the kitchen power comes on.” He stepped out of the way as she got in the shower, then rehung his towel, making sure the edges were even on the approved rack. Dressing quickly in the loose drab gray utilitarian pants and shirt, and the black slip on shoes, he walked quickly to the kitchenette, checking to make sure nothing was out of order.

Two joined him shortly before the fridge unlocked and he opened it quickly. “You want a breakfast four or a six?”

“Either is fine. I…” She looked up at the camera mounted in the corner of the kitchenette and clamped her mouth shut before she said something that might be considered a crime. They ate quickly and cleaned up after themselves, then picked up their soft-sided bags and walked out the front door.

The autonomous bus was coming down the street and they hustled to the bus stop, glancing at their identically dressed neighbors all doing the same thing. They nodded to the others, but didn’t say anything for fear of offending someone. A half hour later, Nine was dropped off at the planning office #1 where his ten hour shift took place, while Two had another ten minute ride to hospital #2 where she did chip implants in newborns.

The white office was filled with others, all dressed identically, each sitting at their assigned desks as the PA came on. “ZF48932 will have completed its obligation to service as of end of shift today. You will be allotted an extra five minutes at the lunch to congratulate it on forty years of service to the community.” Nine looked at his work schedule and sighed as he started adding streets, mumbling, “Let me see. South expansion so that will be…one twenty-fifth, one twenty-sixth, and one twenty-seventh. East expansion for manufacturing…ZZ, AAA, and AAB streets.

After the shift, Nine saw ZF48932 walking slowly to the bus stop and caught up with him. “Congratulations on your service!”

ZF48932 looked over with a sad expression and said, “I used to have a name. I used to live in a blue house with paintings on the wall. I used to be able to watch five hundred channels of cable television and read any book I wanted. I used to root for the Packers…”

ZF48932 collapsed in a heap and Nine heard the bus stop speaker come on. “ZF48932 has committed a criminal act by alluding to micro aggressions in his previous life. He has been cancelled.”

Nine couldn’t help but wonder what channels on cable were, and books. There was only one channel, expressly diversified by both ethnicity and gender for both the news segments and the one approved show that ran continuously. The Book was required reading, again completely diversified with a plot that had been approved by a diversity committee. He’d read it once and never touched it again.

Packers? What were they? Were they a sports team? Why had ZF48932 rooted for them? All cities had sports teams, perfectly diversified, with every ethnicity and gender getting exactly the same amount of playing time. And the score always played to a tie. He got on the bus and sat next to Two. “How was your day?”

“Sixty-three chip implants. We’re now up into the ABESWR’s on names.”

“Wow! That must have been busy!” As the bus went through a roundabout, Nine noticed a pedestal poking through the sparse vegetation. “I wonder what used to be there?”

His last thought was that he’d made the mistake of saying that outloud…

Comments

What if… — 29 Comments

  1. Sadly, I think the intended view of the future is little different from now. Those of us capable of working will be expected to continue working to support the lifestyles of the unwilling, the incapable and the too damn lazy. Minority groups will have excessive influence and the majority will be expected to abide by the rules. I see it being like Bob Pooles story ‘Last plane out’ in Calexit but without the option of catching that last plane.

    Certainly that’s how it feels here in the UK where anyone who objects to rule by the mob is instantly labelled as ‘far-Right’ by the media and the police are scared of upsetting the ‘protestors’, protesting about something that happened in a far-away country and does not impact their lives.

    • I’ve suspected for a bit now that if media (or those pretending to it) claim ‘far right’ that the correct translation is ‘sane’.

      • Being sane in an insane world is not an asset, it is a liability.

        And sanity is being cancelled.

      • Far Right is probably a better approximation of my politics than most terms.

        In my case, it definitely would not translate to sane. I’m some degree of nuts, otherwise I would not have a certain issue of policy preference. I’ve been wrestling with it for years, and not been happy or healthy enough to give it up. The tradeoffs of implementation would not be consistent with the rest of my values/policy preferences.

        I’m most likely either ‘nuts, but correct’, or ‘nuts, and wrong’. There is a slight chance that at some point I was actually the only really sane one, but then was driven mad by certain realizations. Pretty sure I was always a little bit on the crazy side.

        Other hand, some of these activists would make me look sane to a panel of left leaning conservatives. Maybe even sane in comparison to the eyes of a panel of left inclined moderates.

  2. See also Zenna Henderson’s J-Line to Nowhere. I sometimes wonder if we — and possibly our grandchildren — are the last of the line. Kinda sad.

  3. Well written. I saw a movie that felt like that, where the protagonist executed people that still had feelings and all media was torched. Can’t remember the name.

    As for the situation right now? I’ve always like the Claire Wolff ism:

    “America is at that awkward stage; it’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards”

    Didn’t honestly think we’d get to the second part in my lifetime but I’m starting to re evaluate it.

    • I think you’re thinking of “Equilibrium.” Starring Christian Bale, hero carried a pair of customized full-auto Berettas, chopped off Taye Diggs’ face with a katana at the end?

  4. Bad- It’s sad to hear that it’s not just here…

    Ian- I wish I knew.

    Heath- I think a LOT of folks are reevaluating things about now… sigh

  5. He and she? Gonna have to go.

    32 kinds of bath soap? What kind of decadent wasteful society are you imagining here?

    I have had serious conversations (with unintelligent people) about eliminating parts of the language because they “don’t add anything and could offend”. Never mind that the language will be boring. It is a juvenile attitude that basically start with “I don’t know those words and I get along just fine, therefore those words aren’t necessary and we should get rid of them”. It’s a short trip from doing it for lazy and uninformed reasons to doing it for “good” reasons.

    • I think we’re dumbing-down language on our own quite nicely, seeing as how we’ve gone from teaching Latin in jr. high to offering (but not requiring) Remedial English in college.

  6. Not exactly the spriritually uplifting piece I expected to read on a Sunday morning, but sometimes one must be faced with dark evil to ever see the light of good.

    In other words… you scared the fewmets out of me. Chilling, and all too possible.

    The remake of “Outer Limits” had an episode where the main character had acted ‘socially irresponsible’ and was thus sentenced to a year of being ignored, by everyone in society. So he went and had fun, did all the things he wasn’t allowed to do, but nobody would interact with him, he was ignored, and the only interaction he ever got was being savagely beaten for fun by those socially correct.

    At the end of the year, two officials show up to release him from being shunned. And then they expected him to properly thank him, with gifts.

    The second time he was shunned for a year, he spent it helping other shunned people.

    That episode still sticks to me today, and it seems to be coming more relevant every day.

    And.. the bastiges cancelled “Live PD.” Showed what cops saw every day, which was an endless litany of “These aren’t my pants,” “Weed is legal, right?”, “Nah, that ain’t my gun” (found in the perp’s waistband / under his/her seat / in perp’s bag etc,) and the inevitable “They’re going to run” (followed by a carload of people bailing (once was 7 people)(once was 4 teenagers drunk and driving in a stolen car.)

    Guess what racial makeup was involved in most incidents? If you said ‘African-American’ you’d be right.

    Guess what was the major base issue in almost all incidents? If you said ‘illegal drugs and alcohol’ you’d be right.

    And you’d see the cops giving people breaks right and left, yet the idiots would talk themselves into getting arrested.

    The bastiges cancelled the show. Bastiges. Not because it showed a false or skewed look at police work and minority relations, but because it gave a true look at cops and minorities. So truth dies in order to push an agenda.

    • Of course they cancelled it – you can’t speak the truth. If you look at the lead story in the Daily Mail, it’s a BLM supporter carrying a white guy in the middle of a ‘demonstration’. Only later does it become clear the guy being carried had been beaten by seven ‘joggers’, part of the demonstration.

      For comparison, the number of black people here in the UK is within 10,000 of the entire population of Northern Ireland. Guess which group is in every TV program, every advert? If you picked someone with an Ulster accent, have another go.

  7. Helo- I guess… sigh

    Hereso- But where does it end? This reminds me so much of Ian’s Gun Rights Cake post… We give and give and get NOTHING back.

    WSF- I do too, but I’m glad I’m old… too…

    Beans- Yep, can’t have ‘truth’ upsetting their agenda. Grrr

    • Be not afraid.

      The media is publicizing the activist voices now, because that is how their head game works. What matters in the long run is that some of these activists get arrested and sent to jail for arson conspiracy. The right convictions, maybe including hate crimes charges, will cool ardor for a repeat.

      Slow drumbeat of justice over the flashy stuff the left cares about.

      As for the statue cancelling… Rules for Radicals, hold them to their own rules, and show that they are hypocrites. Demonstrate that by their own rules, JFK, Obama, or the Mexican flag must be canceled.

      They all have symbols that they are not yet willing to cast aside for the sake of expedience.

      Trust that their shoot-the-wounded approach to the culture war will drive neutrals in your favor as long as you are at least a little bit more decent. And you personally are much more than a little more decent than those sorts.

      As someone inclined to trolling, we can’t do it with trolling alone, and we really do need the decent sorts if we are going to achieve any measure of lasting peace.

  8. For affirmative action check out Kurt Vonnegt’s “Harrison Bergeron”.
    They used to teach this type of cautionary tale in high school.

    • They use to them cautionary tales.
      Now they’re Training Manuals.

  9. All- Thanks for the comments. I just wonder if we’ve finally reached the tipping point… sigh

    Posted from my iPhone.

  10. Hey Old NFO;

    Now that story would be a god story for someone trying to get away from from that conforming system, there was a glitch in the chip and it didn’t quite “take” and he got out and escaped. Thought for another genre….?

    • If you wrote it, Amazon and the book stores would have to file it under “Non-fiction”.

  11. Egads! 1984 again!
    Still possible! Still scary! Still…close. Possibly scary close.
    (Well done!)

  12. A few years ago some Saudi guy tried to get a patent on a brain implant chip that would release a poison in response to a radio signal.