Cyberdoom: Chapter 2

“Frontier Industries! Your future is today! Why be limited by the norm, when you can enhance yourself! Call today for your consultation and see what you can really be.......” The TV chatted to itself along in the corner of the room at over breakfast time. Blearing out infomercials all about the better you! “Get and upgrade!” “Remove your limits”! “Why settle for ordinary?” It was a perfect world it seemed. Children were no longer born, they were designed. With a chip implant you could enhance your mental edge, “be what you want to be” as they keep saying.  “Sure, if your parents weren’t poor and boring,” Joe thought quietly to himself whilst he poked around at his cereal as it went to mush in the bowl. His dad gave him stares above his newspaper as he flipped through the pages, occasionally shaking his head as he came across an article.

“There are protests in the city again!” Dad said loudly to a bustling mom in the kitchen who struggled to get Aiden sorted for school. “If things keep going the way they are, who knows where this will lead us,” he continued but she didn’t respond. Mom never really was the high political type, every now and then she would nod in agreement at dad’s displeasure at the situation. It wasn’t uncommon for him to treat every story as if it affected him directly. “You should pay attention to this son!” Dad said, looking over his paper at Joe, who was still stabbing his cereal with a spoon, “this is your future we’re fighting for!” Never had truer words be spoken than by Joe’s father that morning. As he rustled the paper, the headline on the front caught his eye. “EARTH SAYS NO TO FORCEOLUTION”

The battle of the corporations and this ‘playing god thing’ that he had heard about so much, had been going on long before Joe was born. Frontier Industries aimed to make the better human. They had become a global power on their own. They started out big, but small compared to what they become. They had eventually (along with many other corporations) become part of the Frontier Project on the Mars colony, to help advancement of the population of the Red Planet.  They gave families the affordable chance to improve from everything from designer babies to implants that would greatly increase everything; from memory, to hearing, to eyesight, to all possibilities. In this day and age you can basically order a child, choose the sex, attributes, race, nothing needed to be by chance or natural selection anymore. The child wasn’t even born; it was grown.¬¬¬ Joe felt that unfortunately for him; he wasn’t designed. Maybe if he was he wouldn’t be stuck in the house today with allergies while the other kids were immune since creation. Even though possibility of not going to school was welcomed by him; He wished he didn’t feel like such an outsider just for being natural. He was a smart kid, he tried hard in school and he did everything in his power to stay on top but was left behind by the Frontier families. Those were middle class, ideal families who upgraded their children to make them smarter, cleverer, better.       

“I’m going to walk on Mars one day. At least there are no allergies there. At least I won’t be sick all the time,” he thought, lying on his bed looking at the ceiling, his toy space ships rocking back and forth above him on invisible string. He vowed to himself that one day he would make it and counted the change in his jar every month for that ‘one day’ trip. The posters on his wall showed the giant colonies of Mars, huge cities and empires where anything was possible, anything at all.

Joe laid there in a dreamland, whisked away by his own imagination for who knows how long. The sun was starting to dip outside; casting shadows along the street. He could hear the other kids playing their games in the yards. Their joy and fun was like a tease to him as he sat lonely in his room. It wasn’t only the allergies that kept him away from school, although it was a good excuse to feed his mother to escape the taunts and cruelties of his classmates. He moved himself to the window, sliding it up just a crack and the warm breeze slid in. There was the smell of evening dinners cooking and lights flickering on around town as people busied themselves back from school and work. He watched as one by one the kids were called in by their parents from the street and slowly they dispersed until there were just a few drifters finishing off their games. He see his brother amongst the stragglers, shuffling his feet as he walked, head hung low as if he tried not to be seen.  Aiden was also not a big fan of school either, but he didn’t have allergies for an escape plan. He just tried to become invisible, not stand out and blend in. It was hard when you couldn’t do your class work as well as others because you couldn’t download the book straight to your memory chip. It was even harder when you were almost knocked out by a fastball because your eyes weren’t upgraded to respond to it quick enough. It was even worse when you had to wear glasses as a further insult to tell how downgraded you really was. He gave Joe a quick glance and he walked closer to the house, and then back at his feet as he kicked stones along the path until he was out of view on the porch. It was apparent by the stare that his day hadn’t gone well.

As Joe sat there on his chair, arms folded on the window sill, staring out still into the now darkened neighborhood, he see a figure coming his way. Jimmy was lucky enough to have everything; he had all the highest upgrades and a daddy who worked for the Frontier Corporation. Even though Joe envied him and his good fortune, Jimmy luckily enough didn’t have an ego upgrade to match like every other kid on the block. He was a good kid, and had been a best friend to Joe since Jimmy almost knocked Joe out with one of them famous fastballs at the start of school. There was obviously banter between them. Jimmy would always say how Joe was an antique and Joe would laugh jokingly at how Jimmy was technically not even human anymore he was upgraded so much. But deep down it was true that Jimmy’s heart was very much human, even though it was made of alloys from Redman Pharmaceuticals. 

They both locked stares with a smile as Jimmy came closer to the house. He always seemed to go out of his way to visit Joe when he was away from school. Joe always laughed how Jimmy fumbled with his oversized back pack and seemed to slap his feet on the ground when he walked. With all the upgrades and refined technology built in, it didn’t seem to make Jimmy any less awkward than a normal geeky ten year old. As he came closer Joe waved him in which caused Jimmy to trot over to the front door below and tap wildly on the knocker; much to the despair of Joe’s parents who were quietly watching the news and still discussing earlier affairs. Joe heard his heavy footsteps get louder as he reached the top of the stairs. He counted quietly in his head until the moment that Jimmy burst loudly into his room with so much enthusiasm, before performing a giant leap from the door way, on to Joe’s bed.

“Hey Joe! Want a candy? How was your day? I got this new song, want to hear it?”

Jimmy was the sort of kid who had a million questions all at once, like he had so much excitement he needed to know everything about your day in one go. Joe on the other hand was renowned for being very opposite. He took the candy from amongst the screwed up bits of everything in Jimmy’s outreached hand. Before he could answer the first set, Jimmy started again, “I got this week’s class work on disc for you. I uploaded it from my memory chip to my computer. Seeing as you don’t have a memory chip I thought I would put it on disc for you.”

Joe smiled as Jimmy placed the disk on Joe’s table. Jimmy was always making ways of including Joe into the new world, even if it meant further work on his part. “Here listen to this,” he continued.

He handed Joe his headphones and Joe placed them snugly in his ears. From them came a buzzing noise with a hint of a tune somewhere buried amongst the fuzz and random tones. He pulled the buds out of his ears, “what’s that?” He said confusingly as he handed back the buds to Jimmy.

“It’s the new song I been telling you about. Can’t you hear it?

Joe shook his head, “just sounds like fuzz to me,”

“Oh I guess you need 5.0 Hearing for it. Sorry I forgot” Jimmy said regretfully.

Knowing that he had just possibly hurt this friend, Jimmy coyly wrapped his headphones around the player and shoved them back into his pocket quietly. He was only silent for merely a moment and it didn’t take long before his enthusiasm came back to life, “anyway I have something to tell you,” he said beaming with excitement.

“What’s that?” Joe asked enthusiastically, sharing the moment of joy in the room.

“Well I don’t know if you’ve been hearing on the news about all this stuff happening with the Frontier Project and stuff?” He paused for a moment, but not long enough for Joe to respond. “We might be moving to Mars!”

Joe sat stunned for a while as Jimmy continued to beam his excitement. On one hand he felt his jealously sink in, but also the sadness of losing a friend and the confusion of where this all come from.

“What? How? When...?” Joe stuttered in confusion.

“I don’t know” Jimmy answered, “But my dad has been saying that we might have to go. He said something about his plant being threatened or something. I don’t know. He didn’t say when either, he just said if things keep going the way they are, whatever that means, then the corporation is going to move us to Mars. That’s going to be so cool! Maybe you could come visit one day, how cool would that be...”

Joe nodded repeatedly as Jimmy went on about his possible future on the red planet. At a point he let go of his own envies and grabbed on for the ride in Jimmy’s dream. He knew deep down that if it was true; he would never see Jimmy again. But until then, they both did what friends do. They sat there on the bed for the rest of the night; surrounded by toy space ships, talking space walks and future adventures, in the way only child innocence knows......