All appears hopeful after the mysterious cessation of the authoritarian interconnect supercomputer in 2051. Genocidal warfare, inspired by algorithmic stimulation of human grievance via chip implants, has mercifully ended. Citizens have undergone re-education to lessen destructive computer addictions. And when interconnect re-emerges in 2058, it has mutated and inserts in citizens a seemingly benign program of ReForm.
Yet, this mutation is not what it seems. Instead, it has implanted in its unaware recipients numbing and fabricated senses of hope and reformation that conceal the continuance of manipulated reality.
Investigator Jared Rohde, incapacitated by split-brain seizures, is rescued from an asylum by a colorful band of rebels who seek to combat interconnectâs mental entrapment. While living off-grid, Jared struggles between re-gaining organic thinking and addictive longing for computer stimuli. Although the rebels view him as essential, Jared faces vexing challenges in finding dependable truth.
ReForm presents a near future when independent human thinking is dissolving and a small dissident group constitutes the sole challenge to the machineâs ever-mutating control. When Jared faces the ultimate test, how he reacts will determine the future of interconnectâs domination of human free will. He ends up in a place he could never have imagined.
All appears hopeful after the mysterious cessation of the authoritarian interconnect supercomputer in 2051. Genocidal warfare, inspired by algorithmic stimulation of human grievance via chip implants, has mercifully ended. Citizens have undergone re-education to lessen destructive computer addictions. And when interconnect re-emerges in 2058, it has mutated and inserts in citizens a seemingly benign program of ReForm.
Yet, this mutation is not what it seems. Instead, it has implanted in its unaware recipients numbing and fabricated senses of hope and reformation that conceal the continuance of manipulated reality.
Investigator Jared Rohde, incapacitated by split-brain seizures, is rescued from an asylum by a colorful band of rebels who seek to combat interconnectâs mental entrapment. While living off-grid, Jared struggles between re-gaining organic thinking and addictive longing for computer stimuli. Although the rebels view him as essential, Jared faces vexing challenges in finding dependable truth.
ReForm presents a near future when independent human thinking is dissolving and a small dissident group constitutes the sole challenge to the machineâs ever-mutating control. When Jared faces the ultimate test, how he reacts will determine the future of interconnectâs domination of human free will. He ends up in a place he could never have imagined.
Third quarter, 2059
I am dragged by three men down a brightly lit corridor. I am so
used to constant chemical dosing that the difference between
reality and dreams has dissolved. One part of my battered
brain registers that I could be strapped down and medicated
in bed in the room I share with another wacko. Yet the pain
of my knees as I am hauled helplessly down the hallway feels
real.
I look at a warm sensation dripping down my shirt and see
a clam-chowder-looking flow glistening in the hyper-illumination.
I experience a worthless sense of self-consciousness at
what I guess I have regurgitated.
My mind seizes and splits due to sudden, overwhelming
anxiety. Black-and-white noir thought-images battle with a
mélange of chaotic and overlapping watercolor prints in my
head. My brain wants to escape what now appears to be reality.
I hear loud alarm bells.
A folly of gunfire as my three escorts stop and box me in.
We continue onward.
My mind goes blank for some unknown duration.
When I regain consciousness, my mind-images are flush
with robust coloring as I smell the first offerings of fresh air. I
canât remember the last time I smelled such a fragrance.
I am manhandled into a van-fin already running. There
are more individuals in this fin. I hear a womanâs voice that
is vaguely familiar from a time when I believed myself to be
sane.
The van-fin loudly accelerates.
More gunfire.
A rattling sound of metal blasting against metal.
The ride smooths out.
Final gunfire but now more distant.
For the first time in a long while, I believe I am now outside
some type of facility that has been my forced home. The
problem is, I have no idea who my new guardians are who
have provided me this freedom.
The ReStart period (third quarter, 2052âfirst quarter,
2058) was an embarrassingly short period when we
thought we were developing the ability to exercise human
thinking independently.
The Shellsoll Mountains, between the old regions of Acalato
and Tulpan, provide ample opportunities to hide from
the laser-loaded mercenaries of the militias aligned with the
ReFormer government, aka Unity. We have discarded the vanfin,
too obvious a target, and have set forth hiking along a
rugged ridgeline. The trails are numerous and meandering; at
other times, near illegible if existing at all. Rocky outcroppings
and sheer, chaotic geology hide us well from government
militia drones. When geology is insufficient, my guardiansâ
drone-jamming devices fill in.
Plenty of anarchist roamers during ReStart lost their lives
to nasty weather and equally hostile gangs of native coy-wolves
along these routes. Some of their skeletons remain visible on
rock scree slopes and on inaccessible ledges of precipices. Lots
of caverns, wayward passes, and other nooks and crannies
provide the rag-tag group of jailbreakers that I am with the
ability to shelter in place for sufficiently long periods for the
frequent militia flybys to exhaust themselves.
On one of the first days on the trail, I blunder along in
a semi-conscious state. It sure beats being strapped down to
a bed. I feel both present and absent as I walk slowly along
the mountain ridgeline. My vision is dizzyingly blurred, everything
smudged together in whispery shadows. I stumble on
a rocky overlook. There is a broad indistinct valley below. On
the other side, there is lush green. On this side, it is rocky and
dotted with trees. Distant in the direction we are trekking is a
large, broad peak topped with a spine of rough-black rock, its
slopes barren of vegetation. Further along in the horizon are
brooding, villainous-looking mountains.
The only person I know in this group is Ellis. I do a double-
take when I figure out itâs her. Canât believe she is here.
Not changed much since the last time I saw her. Sheâs the sole
person who seems to be aware that I am here.
That afternoon, a disorienting but familiar sensation arises.
Blinding and searing heat bears down as I trek ahead. A
migraine-type headache and visual aura have been building
during the morning trek, and I stumble clumsily over a rock
pile. Sharp stabbing pains in the back of my head follow, and
I involuntarily kneel down on the ground. A couple of group
members trudge by without concern. Ellis is there to hold my
head and force me to drink some water.
A searing, gnawing sense of separation centers at the back
of my head and is traveling slowly to right behind my eyes.
Parts of my brain retracting, other parts extending to new
space.
Losing track of time.
Body immobilized.
Darkness.
I vomit the near-indigestible freeze-dried breakfast of eggs
and bacon on a nearby gnarled tree stump.
Images compete with each other. I focus on the inviting
one in grainy black-and-white, and it stabilizes me. It provides
an anchor in the dizzying rush of thought-images. Within this
noir image, I feel resolute, absolutely right, and in control.
I canât hold this comforting image and shift to a watercolor
image of indistinct patterns. Its vividness brings me considerable
dizziness, my mind muddies, and my heart palpitates
unnervingly.
I am sweating profusely, and I gaze down at my vomit and
the swirl of insects landing on it. I grab ahold of Ellis more
firmly and flip back to stabilizing noir.
Back-and-forth.
In-between.
Feels like forever.
As I gain some tolerance of this personal caving in, I am
able to guide myself to the protection of the black-white world
of stable righteousness.
I recall living in this mental space during my time as a Re-
Start field researcher. There is a comforting, addictive quality
to it. The noir image provides a greater logic, and although
pixelated in appearance, it is at the same time clearer in its effect
and stronger than its competing thought-image. The watercolor
lens, in contrast, provides little resolution despite its
inviting vividness. It also feels less constructed, more thrown
together, and lacking in overall message.
Noir feels like the product of a master designer; watercolor,
a trial-and-error amateur.
As Ellis helps me slowly to my feet, I stay within the stabilizing
noir life.
A type of letting go.
Surrendering to an outside force.
Yet, it provides me with the perception that I am in control.
The algorithmic mega-machine interconnect was not
off-line as experts thought after its disappearance in
â51. Instead, it was learning and adapting, developing a
new schema by which it could manipulate, and control,
our countryâs denizens. The machine, ingenious during
its masked absence, was busy manufacturing our perceptions
as newly independent thinkers with the ability
to reform what the computer had torn apart. Mutating
messages by interconnect inscribed in most of the
seventy-eight percent of the countryâs denizens who
undertook âre-cognitionâ training the sense that we
were engaging in a country-wide endeavor to improve
life in our fractured country. Many denizens referred
to themselves as âReFormersâ with the ability, they
thought, to contemplate the general public interest and
move our country forward based on human reasoning
free of algorithmic entrapment. How wrong we were!
I am with paragons. I am not a paragon believer, I donât
think, but apparently, I have some value to this group. This
may explain why they forcibly abducted me one rainy night
from my assigned mental institution.
I donât understand my value to them because I unwittingly
became, during ReStart, their sworn enemy.
I have been brainwashed by computer electronic stimuli
(or cairns) for extended periods in my life. First, as a hateand
grievance-filled person during the madness of Turmoil
(2032-2051). I have the nagging feeling that I killed numerous
enemies during this period. Second, as a pretentious ReFormer
through re-cognition training during ReStart. My intake of
chemicals to enhance the brainwashing was likely the only
choice I had.
ReForm: Combating the Algorithmic Mutation is a science fiction novel by Scott Bollens. Bollens, an Urbanism professor at UC Irvine, relied on his 25 years of research into city-based political conflict and his knowledge of the Pacific Crest Trail to write ReForm. You can find more about Bollens and his writing on his website, City Divided, or his Reedsy Profile.
If 1984âs lack of individuality, Fahrenheit 451âs media censorship, and Robopocalypseâs AI over-leader had an urban, futuristic, dystopian baby.
ReForm is an exploration of the importance of individuality and self-thinking. Using the futuristic, dystopian setting allows Bollens to display the harm of excessive use of false media and the dangers of a society divided by classist and elitist culture. From his prequel story, Bollens explores what remains after the destruction of war and the consequences of losing the âurban environment.â ReForm is the second book of the series, following ReStart: Stories of the Cairn Age, the prequel.
Using his character Jared Rohde, Bollens builds his story world through a persuasive debate. Jared tries to convince the reader that he fell for an interconnects ploy due to the world being âbetter.â Written from an unreliable first-person point of view, the story has a fractured structure â descriptions of the world and the âpastâ are woven into the brief âpresentâ with gaps, seizure-induced confusion, and panic attacks. Unlike most AI-villain stories that are man vs. machine, ReForm goes beyond that. ReForm is man vs. machine vs. man vs. self. Itâs a take on how easily the human mind can be manipulated through technology â pushed in the right direction toward already existing prejudices â and how difficult it is to reclaim oneself and individuality.
Iâm not one for unreliable narrators, but I think Jared Rohde is a relatable character. His struggle to break out of what he knows to what is the truth is a struggle many can relate to. I also find the way Bollens described Jaredâs terrors and panic attacks to be familiar. His development through the story â coming into contact with different thoughts, ideals, and others and him genuinely thinking about them was an excellent way to watch him develop. His journey to disconnecting and healing was gritty, raw, and open.
Many instances resonated with me throughout the story. There were moments when conversations highlighted how independence is slowly stripped away âFalse hope and righteous hatred are equally corrosive of independent human willâŠâ and âWhen you lead your life guided by only hope, you leave yourself open to manipulation.â There were instances where what was happening in the story could be related to real life as well âWords seem to no longer have meaning but have become tools for sedation and maintaining a comfortable delusionâŠâ and âEach side blew out of proportion technical advances that supported their cause and distorted those that opposed you.â Bollens highlighted how humans are easy targets and how we create our own demise â âIn many ways, humans were easy prey for the machine because we were exhausted by the constant emotional drama of being human.â
A slow to medium-paced story, Bollens uses expert storytelling methods to heighten the sense of urgency through his characters and worldbuilding. Bollensâ writing style is a break from the mold and an experiment in highly unreliable narration with an almost non-linear structure.
A captivating, thought-provoking work to make you question the path of humankind and their constant obsession with technology and progress today. ReForm: Combating the Algorithmic Mutation is a near-future exploration into the consequences of an all-powerful AI, paralleling current events in reality to historical events in fiction. Bollens highlights how media and the controlled input of algorithmic media influence independent thought and play on the prejudices and underlying nature of the human mindâa must-read for those interested in the consequences of artificial intelligence and the implications of human individuality.