I am going to start a new story in this post and as always
it will go its own meandering way until completion. A different twist about
this story; I haven’t decided what the protagonist is going to do. I have a
decision to make about which direction he will head in. I know the premise, the
ending, and the setting. I need to work out his direction quickly to move the
story along. So, since I post these stories in random installments I must leave
open some flexibility to decide. And as always there is a purpose and a point
to the story. I promise this will be interesting and if you happened to like “That
Damn Lottery Ticket” story you might like this one for completely different
reasons. There is more of a message in this story than the lottery ticket story.
That was mainly for fun with attempts at how corruption can be a precursor to
trouble. First though a couple of
comments.
I know most of the national and local media seems to
disagree with me about the Mavericks first round draft pick. Everyone is ecstatic
he was chosen. I still believe we should have put our most pressing need first.
He may be better than I believe, yet we need a center even if we have to draft
a project and develop him. I would have preferred Jackson, but Memphis got him.
I read a story that says even with Doncic it is one piece at a time which is my
point, we have a super need and that piece should be first. And with the Doncic
pick we lost getting another piece next year in the draft since we traded away
our first-round pick. (up through #5 protected and if we are that high up sheesh
there will be a Mavs fandom rebellion).
Everyone wants to be a scorer so finding someone to share the ball with
DSJ is a bit easier than finding a modern center prototype such as Jackson. Well
what is done is done and I am not looking forward to free agency. I have looked
over a chart someone published of available centers and the pickings are not
that exciting. If Cousins didn’t get injured, well that would be different,
however, I do not think he would have chosen Dallas anyway. I will come back to the Mavericks next week.
I haven’t seen much on the Stars draft pick, but I will try and do some
research and get back to you with the Mavericks update. And it was fun watching
the Rangers win some games, still not enough, but fun.
On the National front, I’m just tired of it all. Why is it that
people who are supposed to be leaders spend so much energy trying to be popular
with their side by coming up with the most demeaning post about the other side?
This is not governing. This is madness and extremely sad our leaders have
fallen to such lows. As always, we need
new parties to bring us new leadership. The current batch on both sides prefers
to posture than lead, govern, and create public policy for the people. The
bunch needs to retire.
And now for the story:
Sometime in the somewhat near future:
Mr. Samson sat at the head of the boardroom table chairing
the quarterly meeting. He seemed bored to the others. And quite frankly they
all needed something new. Their company was one of the largest on the planet.
Competition was virtually nil in their industry. Mr. Samson had led them well
and consumed all the other companies. Their stock value continued upward with
acquisition after acquisition. Yet something was missing. All of them felt it.
The reports were read. The numbers were applauded. They sat on top of the
world, literally actually. Their corporate boardroom now stood almost a mile
above the surface of Earth. All the prominent corporations had buildings that reached
this high up.
Each person left the boardroom knowing their individual
wealth still reached new heights. Each person knew exactly where they stood in
the pecking order. Most were happy, a few still felt like trying to usurp the
person ahead of them. Occasionally someone tried, sometimes they were successful,
sometimes they weren’t. No one held anything against the person for trying and
they only fell a few rungs down the ladder in the pecking order. Everyone’s
place in society was now assured at birth. If you were born to the world of the
upper echelon, you lived, worked, were educated, at the top. Others lived in
the layers as you worked your way back to the surface. Each layer in the
buildings and foundations of the buildings separated the next group of people from
the top.
Once born into an economic situation, you lived it, breathed
it, drank from it. The closer to the top, the better quality of air, food,
water, healthcare, education you consumed. At the bottom or the surface no one
really knew how bad it was, well except those that lived there. It was where
all the trash went, where the scraps of society and humanity collected. The
surface was covered in pollution and the people covered in disease.
Mr. Samson knew how bad the surface had become. He observed.
He didn’t care, he just kept track. A morbid curiosity on his part at best. He
kept track on all the levels. It was about the only thing interesting going on
anymore. All his executive peers didn’t have any life. They came to work,
managed what was left to manage. The world was on automatic pilot except for a
few people. Artificial intelligence did all the work. Vacations were virtual
reality of forgotten landscapes of the surface. The higher up in society the
more vacation time you achieved. Vacations were living in a fantasy world based
on a world no one actually participated. Robots did the work, simulations gave
people something to do.
The more stature you had, the more depraved you became until
you even became bored with depravity. Wars were fought by soldiers on computer
programs. Once a side won a battle, the results were tabulated by computers and
an appropriate number of humans from certain lower levels were killed. This was
one way the population was controlled, and people kept in check. One day a
person could be going to their assigned work, which wasn’t work it was just a
title with some prescribed duties they did to achieve their weekly allotment of
pay, then poof they would hear about a war. A few weeks later they or their friends
would be sent to the war platform and all would be executed. No one fought it,
they didn’t have anything else to do, nor did they think any better of it.
Most days everyone below the upper tier had a certain amount
of hours they were assigned to work based on formulas created generations ago.
Workers near the bottom were required to 40 hours a week, with promises of
overtime for more money. The overtime never came because the top tier wasn’t
going to pay, and the actual work was done by robots who could work 24/7 365
days a year and were only down for maintenance and repairs. The workers slid
into their jobs and performed menial tasks to help the robots. Their work wasn’t
really needed, but the upper tier knew they needed to keep the workers somewhat
busy and distracted just in case someone might figure out they didn’t like
their station. So, they worked, went home and lived in virtual reality dream
worlds the rest of the time. The quality of the dream world was way behind what
the upper tier had, but they had something. There were no more relationships,
marriages, interactions with other people except when they bumped into each
other to and fro from work or the occasional moment when they would step out
and have drinks or games with a few people that were designated friends and
matched coworkers. They had team building activities. No one knew why, they
just did something with co workers once a month. It was required. More
interactive games were played during these times.
As you went up in society, you had jobs that technically
required more education or training. They really didn’t, it was still the same,
you sat in a work station for more hours per week, received more pay, yet
computers and robots did all the work. They had better virtual reality games
and the living quarters were a tad bit better than the ones right below them in
the structures. This continued upwards till you reached the top and the likes
of Mr. Samson and his peers. Mr. Samson’s group had the newest of everything,
their virtual worlds were more involved than could be imagined. They lived in
fantasy worlds completely foreign to the rest of humanity.
Humans, from the poorest to the wealthiest were made by robot
doctors that removed eggs and sperms from humans while they were in their depraved
games completely oblivious to their own existence. The embryos were placed in
hospitals till they reached a certain age, then they would appear in their level
of status and complete growing up with some schooling and indoctrination into
their position in society.
Actually, the true bottom dwellers did not have technology. They
still lived a primitive life. There were no virtual games or environments, only
the reality of scraping by with what they could find discarded from the levels
above. And there was much discarded. Scraps of the processed food piled up everywhere
and they feasted on these scraps. Many were very obese and would die of
horrible afflictions. The food most of humanity ate was processed. The
nutrients necessary for life were incorporated in the food and other pills
people ate, but people only saw what was in the past real food, food from the
ground, that grew they saw in the virtual reality games and environments. Taste
buds were non-existent now. There was no need for them. The bottom dwellers had taste buds, they even
ran across real food on occasion in the remote areas away from the cities.
There wasn’t too much land undeveloped anymore. Occasionally a break would
appear between the cities that grew to the sky. Strange, but they enjoyed this
food and when someone would run across some it was truly fought over, more like
the wars of old. They did not enjoy the health of the people above though. The
scraps of the processed food were old, and the nutrients had diminished. And
the real food was few and far between. Many of the women died in childbirth, impregnated
more by rape and prostitution than by relationships. Few children survived so
the population of the bottom dwellers never became a problem for people like
Mr. Samson to worry about. The artificial intelligence that managed the affairs
of the planet also knew of the bottom dwellers and would keep track of the
population just to be safe, but it never grew to worrisome levels. One thing to
note, the bottom dwellers saw things no one else saw. It did not mean anything
to them, but the artificial intelligence managers or people like Mr. Samson never
saw it or thought about it. It was a different world looking up at the rest of
the world.
Yet in all this structure every now and then a person would
be different from the rest. These people did the work, they created new
technology with the robots. Most worked with the robots to create the scenarios
for the virtual games and realities. Some aspects of culture still came through
with these people. They were very few and far between, however, the artificial intelligence
valued these people because their creations helped to keep the population as a
whole safe, basically meaning distracted so they would not upset the structure,
or the tiers people lived. The artificial intelligence that controlled the
environment of the planet and did the bidding of people like Mr. Samson could
not replicate the creations of these people so they were treated a bit
different from the rest of the world. Mr. Samson and his peers made sure though
it was only a bit different and they were segregated from everyone else. Many
board members did not know they existed, their existence was that segregated.
And very rarely one person would come about that could interact
with the artificial intelligence to create new levels of technology to move
artificial intelligence forward. And one such person was Dave.
To be continued.
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