Dystopia Codes

What will the future be like? We are always in the future when we ask that, and also in the past. You can’t reach hacker zen without understanding all the big paradoxes. My favorite was Armstrong’s Perpetual Present. If everything is experienced from the present, then how can history exist? History is simply the present that was, viewed from the present that is. Similarly, the future is the present to come, viewed from the present that is. Nothing can exist without existing now.

My room smelled like stim packs and spent hydrogen cells. The laser bike was in one corner, and my node was in the other. The bed took up the rest of the room. Wires and cables snaked from the node to the window, attaching to some slim and discrete antennae arrays that lined the inside of the window frame. From the outside, I looked like a junkie slob. From the inside, I still looked like a junkie slob, but a much more connected one.

I sat back from the node’s screenset and grinned. Armstrong’s work had been deemed illegal thinking for decades. Finding it on the node-net was a rare joy. Nothing riled the mods as much as sharing contraband philosophy. I happily keyed in several commands and sent copies racing across the numerous fora that would be open to such overtly counter-logical ideas. I strolled over to my bed, pulled off my shirt, and flopped. I lay there, eyes closed, feeling the cool air of my poorly-sealed window drift over my skin.

I woke up to flashing lights and breaking glass. The window was a sucking, gaping hole of wind, and I was covered in tiny cuts. Blood was all over the bed. I saw the bladecraft hovering around the city outside. I dashed over to the node, slapping at the keyboard, then ran to the window. I leapt out without pausing.

///Suspect not apprehended. Suicide.

///Immediate surveillance of room. One message pending from node.

///Read; “Defenestration of Progress.” Message deletion unsuccessful.