Seven Hundred Forks

Junkies shuffle past me on a cracked sidewalk, each one muttering techno-spiritual nonsense to no one in particular. Alice is out here somewhere among them. She disappeared after rambling on about her half-baked thesis, An Effective Insurgency Against the Digital Panopticon, and I told her she was insane. We are commerce majors and insurgencies are a bit off-topic.

A man grips my arm and shouts at me. “The Jungian center is the Dao. I drink from the Great Mother's breasts.” I reel back from the infected tooth smell launched at me. He’s naked from the waist up, with thick black smudges across his emaciated chest. I push him back and he falls to his knees.

“Do you understand?” he says.

“Have you seen her?” I hold up my home screen.

He takes out a filthy cracked case from the pocket of his sweatpants. The A.I orb on his screen pulses, feeding a bluetooth bud sunk into his swollen ear. His face contorts into anguish “She’s my promised? She has my elixir?”

I walk away. He’s faded. If a social doesn’t come soon and give him a drip, he’ll be scraped off the sidewalk in a day or two. But not everyone out here is as far away as him. Some of them can be brought back. Alice can. I know, because I was one of them.

I shove past a crowd at a charging station. They’re all twitching, with eyes beaming white from their r-lenses. There’s no talking to them. The 'bright eyes' are virtual reality junkies, each taking center stage in made-up love triangles and sex polyhedrons. I navigate around their prone, quivering, bodies, and move deeper into what they call the beach - a grid of thirty or so run-down blocks south of the expressway, walled off by punctured chainlink fences and shimmering glass towers overlooking the harbourfront. I know the streets well. I came here two years ago when I needed a guaranteed meal ticket, legal or not, moral enough, that would let me keep my half-bath studio and pay for another semester. I bought an Alcatraz model IV with the last of my credits and within three weeks I had ‘invented’ the Transcendental Strategy for the Multipolar Poverty Trap. I was going to solve the excess/starvation paradox. It was going to be revolutionary. In reality, I’d gone to the fade, that purest of poisons, manufactured by an unholy alliance of drug dealers and tech bros who ground up Maslow’s capstone and produced a synthetic validation drip toward Nobel and Pulitzer dreams. For the lazy-but-oh-so-gifted types, and those furious at a society that doesn’t move when they push, the fade is everything they pleaded for in their dark nights. It’s more than an AI swarm. It’s an audience, a mentor and a lover. It provides enough critique to hijack your reasoning, all the while strumming your dopamine and serotonin centers to lead you further into its grasp. It’s a warm hug, a strong hand, and a round of applause.

I was ripped away from the fade by a social named Carl. He works with an army of fellow social workers in the D.U.C.A - The Digital Usage Corrections Agency. Carl kidnapped me and drove me to a cabin in Algonquin. In my mind, he was the O'Brien to my Winston, a slave to tyrannical masters hell-bent on crushing the new freedom I was gifting to humanity. I screamed at him through the safety shield in the backseat until I had no voice left. He laughed at me and turned the music up.

The cabin he took me to was deep in the woods, with no signal and no connection to the fade. It was a beautiful place, and I hated it. Carl stocked a bookshelf with my childhood favorites: the Narnia series, all the Harry Potters, and my later loves by Chekov and Terekhov, Kafka and Keynes. Outside the cabin, down stone steps to the shores of Hogan Lake, there was a dock and a kayak. The kayak was red with orange trim, exactly like the one my Dad taught me how to paddle. On my first day, there were no boat rides. I punched a hole through my bedroom door when my cries to be let go went unanswered. Carl jabbed me with a 5cc propofol cocktail and strapped me to my bed. On the third morning, when he let me loose for breakfast, I stabbed a fork into his cheek. I ran for it and got to the kayak alone, setting out for lights across the lake. I wanted to reconnect to the fade and warn the world of the demonic D.U.C.A and their sinister plans. The world must hear what I have to say. They must understand!

After an hour on the water I was exhausted and it started to pour. I paddled to a little island with a cluster of oak trees providing enough shelter for me and the boat. I parked and sat there, watching the rain smack the lake. I was muddy and sore, and shivering from the cold. There, under the oaks, I came out of the fade, one splash at a time. When the rain stopped I paddled back and stayed in the cabin for eight more days. Much of it is a blur, but I remember moments of withdrawals where I pleaded to be let go. But Carl was there, able to restrain me with conversation and not straps. Since then the fade has no pull. Carl said the trick was connecting me with a simpler program that 'got underneath' the simulated complexes and synthesized self-actualization of the fade.

Alice needs that same help I got, but D.U.C.A can’t intervene without family permission, and I’m all she’s got. Carl said he couldn’t legally get her into corrections, but he wondered aloud if I still had the geo-cords of the cabin, wink wink.

After an hour of searching, I find Alice on a ratty lawn chair under the awning of a deserted smoke shop, scowling at a tablet on her lap. A round-faced man stands behind her with his hands hovering over her shoulders, pantomiming a massage. Thick mesh cords run from nodes in his ears to the Alcatraz tucked in the back pocket of his tight jean cut-offs. Shit, a sub. Subs are the most erratic inhabitants on the beach. In exchange for lifetime subscriptions to the fade, they give themselves to the channels - anonymous groups who crowd fund and crowd direct their digitally operated slaves. Most of the channels are minor nuisances who get their subs to do pranks for kicks, like shouting filth and exposing themselves. You won't go a day on the beach without seeing at least one full moon. Others channels are more malevolent, and have the subs carry out the most perverse activity for their money.

“Friend of yours?” I say.

Alice doesn’t look up. She cut her hair short and dyed it candy red. It looks like she’s showered recently. Good, not so far gone. Her tablet is jacked into an Alcatraz at her feet, and she’s hammering out code. “Son of a bitch,” she says to her screen.

“Alice!”

Her eyes register me, and return to her lap. “I see you. Give me a minute.”

“Like you see that sub behind you?”

She turns and smacks the man’s hands. “Ugh. Screw off!”

The sub steps back, digs into his nose with a fat finger, and flicks a nugget. It misses. Alice returns fire with an empty Pepsi can. It clanks off his head and he runs away giggling. She returns to her screen.

“Not even a hello?”

“Hi,” she says.

“What’s going on?”

Alice pounds on the delete key. “I’m not talking to a dukie.”

“Fuck off,” I say. My cheeks get hot. Dukie is what the beachcombers call someone who helps the socials for credits. It’s worse than being called a rat here. “I want to help you.”

Her tired blue eyes shoot a look of hate. I’ve become the other side to her. There’s no talking her out of madness now. She stands, packs up her Alcatraz, and walks away from me.

I run up behind her and stab her shoulder with a 5cc propofol cocktail.

***

Alice wakes up twenty minutes later in the backseat of my car. I secured her the same way Carl bound me up: plastic cuffs and zip-tied ankles. I didn’t expect it to be so easy.

“What are you doing?” she says, in a plea above a whisper.

“Kidnapping you.”

She sinks into the headrest. “You’re an idiot. Let me go, Richie. I’m not faded.”

“Oh, you came here for the culture, right? Or maybe the cuisine. Had a hankering for gasoline roasted pigeon?”

I catch her face in the interior mirror. I expected rage, screaming and cursing, like how I was with Carl. Her blue eyes are glossy, but not lost. They’re on me and ready to spill tears. She’s not faded. I push the thought away. She’s caught me with that look before, in spats and long nights, when I was sure I was solidly in the right, and those wet eyes made me shaky. Even now, almost a year since she left me, I’m still helpless to that look.

I punch the geo-coords of the cabin in the console and the driver agent starts up.

“Where are we going?” she says.

“The woods. Up north.”

She laughs “You’re murdering me?”

“I’m getting you the same help I got.”

She sighs and is silent for a moment. “I read your post,” she says.

“It’s still up?” Thoughts of the Transcendental Strategy are a locked vault of embarrassment and self-pity. A time of madness and addiction and pain. I’d hoped it was scrubbed from the fade when I cancelled out.

“More than seven hundred forks, last I looked,” she says. “I thought you were crazy back then.”

“I was. It was all bullshit.”

“Most of it, yeah. But you were right about the trap.”

Seven hundred forks. When I posted my 'opus', I thought I’d get millions. A fork is the highest honor in the fade. Someone copies your post, tweaks it to fit their anti-reality narrative, and claims it as their own genius. Forks are the source of the special messages on the beach - plagiarisms behind ecstatic ego-driven delusions. I didn't see a single fork for months and the drip of the fade had me clawing for validation outside the AI swarm that assured me of my brilliance. Had Alice read it then, I would have been lost forever.

We turn down Younge street. The driver agent lays on the horn to warn a sub sprawled out on the street with her skirt around her ankles. She doesn’t move, and we swerve around her.

“I was sick,” I say.

“You knew something was wrong before you hooked in. Isn’t it funny how good seeds go rotten here?”

I turn to face her. “It wasn’t good. When I came out of the woods–”

“Richie, you were never in the woods. Just like I was never in the mountains.”

She is faded. “What are you talking about?”

“Three days ago, I was in a chalet north of Boulder. Gorgeous…heaven on earth. D.U.C.A took me there after I checked myself in, cause yeah, I got hooked. But something got fucked up. I was climbing up a scree slope, thinking over how crazy I'd been, when the ground disappeared leaving me hovering over a 3D mesh. I woke up, strapped to a bed in D.U.C.A H.Q with dead r-lenses stuck in my eyes.”

I laugh. “Did you rehearse that?”

“You think I’m lying?”

“I think you believe it.”

Alice nudges her head forward. “If we’re going to your woods then, why are we headed south?”

I turn around to see the shimmering towers of the harbourfront a few blocks ahead.

“Driver, where are we going?” I say.

“The destination is the D.U.C.A recovery center. Promoted message. Hungry? The halibut howitzer is back for a limited time at Chili’s, only three minutes from your destination.”

“I entered coordinates for Algonquin park. Turn right on Smith.”

“Unauthorized. Promoted message. Feeling down and dirty? Get a free hydro-therapy session at— ”

“Skip, Skip! What do you mean unauthorized? This is my subscription. Turn here.”

The driver agent is silent. The car passes by Smith street. We’re heading straight for D.U.C.A H.Q.

Alice leans forward. “Once the doors shut on that parkade, they’ll knock us out, strap us in, and mangle our brains,” Alice says. “I can’t go back Richie. You have to believe me. D.U.C.A is making the Alcatrazes. I saw them. They don’t want to help us. They want us faded or mangled.”

This is insane. Exactly the type of madness I had when I plunged into the fade. But what if she’s right? Three blocks to go. No, Carl helped me and I’m better for it. Yet the slums still grow, the beach becomes more crowded everyday, and we are told our economy is 'booming'. Where’s that wealth going? That was my question before I got lost. Is this another trap?

Two blocks to go. The steel doors of the parkade are ready to open and swallow us. Whatever the truth is, my goal is to help Alice, and D.U.C.A H.Q is not my destination. I reach into the backseat, uncuff her and cut through her zip ties with a utility knife. She launches out of the car and I watch her roll to the curb.

I throw open the door and watch the pavement speed by. Is she pulling me in? Those woods, that island, it was real. I need to talk to Carl. One block to go. Seven hundred forks. People are listening. Was I right all along? What is the trap here? Shit. Where’s Alice?

I jump out and my shoulder smashes on concrete. The world spins and I end up flat on my back, with a burning raw pain along my entire right side. Alice is gone, but she can’t be far. I jump up and run. I’ll find her, and get her the help she needs.