Our ancestors once used to say, home is where the heart is. I learned that it is a lie. For all I can remember, money, or credits as we call them now, define our home. Credits define where we work, eat, sleep. They define how or when we get old. History books speak of a time that our kind used to trade with things that are tangible. We gathered what we needed to survive, traded them for others commodities that we wanted to have. We shared what we had. Then we came up something called “currency”. We have attached value to the things we have, we need, we want or may want in the future. We evolved that idea. Attached value to more abstract concepts like labor. We had vast amount of land. We consumed it, capitalized on it and the people living on it. We fetishized the attachment of value. We produced so much, but consumed even more. Our planet begged for help, its resources were finite. We did not listen, so our planet has given up on our race. We have pushed our technology to its limits to survive. Knowing that there are other planets out there, we did not stop consuming. We couldn’t have been more mistaken. We went to the Moon, Mars, even tried venturing outside Milky Way. There was nothing out there.
We are living in the 6th ice age now. They say this is the one that will be the end of us. So we, or I, did what we knew best, use the force of technology to overcome our challenges. Earth surface is unlivable, cold and toxic, barren. Nothing is left on surface to care for. We do not have resources to keep ourselves warm, safe. There is still heat inside Earth’s core. So that’s exactly where we went. We have built a new home. This was our last chance. We created a machine that will lead people to work together, understand the value of sharing, using the same resources. We knew the mistakes we made, we cannot be expanding for the rest of our lives. We had to be efficient as we have never been before. So we embraced the machine as hard as we could. We have created a house to fit us all. We have limited ourselves to a huge contraption. The few who were lucky enough to still live on the surface made it in. The algorithm that maintained the machine was devised so that, everyone started the with an equal amount of enclosed space. Only way for someone to expand its space was to have more credits than average. Only and most valuable commodity in the machine was the space, so everything people earned was for it. The more credits a person had, the more the machine expanded. But with fixed confines, that meant it shrunk for somebody else. The spaces were everchanging, shifting, there was no sense of scale, and no need for it. A living organism of space confined in a prism thousands of kilometers deep under Earth’s surface. Every space that a person occupied was her own space only. The path the person circulates, the place she sleeps, works, eats. The machine flexes to every person’s activity, as much as the person can pay for it.
The machine ultimately would open back to surface again only when the machine returns to equilibrium, when all people have equal space and when all credits are spent for the machine. It meant, we had to find the balance again living equally and bury away our desire for currency. All had jobs here as they had up on surface, but everyone worked in their own confines of space. All effort was planned to support the sustenance of the machine. With this machine, we would elevate our race, ultimately find a cure to all our problems and fix our planet. Future generations depended on our success, and the future of the Earth depended on the machine. As a great giant carrying the burden of humanity, people called it the Atlas. I now call it the Ant Farm.
I am m-1183. I am a builder, and I tried to change things for the better because no one was willing to.
I am the master builder of the machine. And I helped maintain it. The machine runs by an algorithm but it needed maintenance, some one to make sure it worked properly and justly. I designed how the algorithm operates and knew how it builds itself, how it flexes. Therefore, my space was outside the machine and outside the algorithm. I was merely an observer. I was sure the algorithm would serve its purpose. I knew we destructed ourselves in the past but when we realize all our lives were at stake I knew people would realize what was important.
The first few years were peaceful. People were working to sustain the machine and spending their credits for the machine, keeping equilibrium, but the ones that had power on surface wanted power here too. They craved for more, of everything. Cybermarkets of credit trading, space prostitution was at large, people did anything to get more space, even for a while. People dying meant more space for other people. Space was the new opium. There was a mega corporation ruling the economy. Its name was tradespace.now. It created the space trading market. tradespace.now bought and sold other people’s spaces. The result was chaos. After 2 decades, people were living miserably, after a crisis in the system, the corporation declared bankruptcy, its customers were never paid back but the owner got away with it. People were living in cell like corridors, trying to make ends meet, trying to earn more than their neighbor, accumulate credits so they could have bit more space. The CEO of tradespace.now announced he no longer needed to be part of the machine. He was revolting against it, offering people his personal space if they worked for him to create a device that would hack through my machine, “Codex” he called it. It consisted of three pillars he believed would save everyone. One would produce, other distribute and the last consume. With these, no one would need to suffer again and the machine would open. People fell for it. They worked until exhaustion. Earning and giving all they can to the “boss-man”. It was not enough. He needed vast amount of credits and area for building the Codex. As people spent their last credits for it, the machine left them no space. A sacrifice for the ultimate goal, the CEO said. One by one people gave their souls to the machine never seeing the Codex get completed. Years later, with CEO’s work still incomplete, he was the only one left in the machine. He spent a decade to spend rest of his fortune to finish it. He had almost no money left for his masterpiece or to feed himself, but he was close. At last, with his last credits spent and the Codex complete, he stood in his grand space in silence. He gave a big sigh of relief. Sound echoed for almost a minute. The machine stopped flexing years ago. As he walked towards to turn on the Codex, he heard a rumbling. Gears clanked, rusty metals screamed. The machine was in equilibrium. There was equal space for everyone inside the machine, and no credits left. He looked through the way out, opening above him. Light cut through the machine like the dagger, he felt the cold and acidic air coming in. I watched him for 5 days as he stood there without moving. He did not make the 6th day.
I have forgotten what it was that made us human. I thought a machine could teach people to live together. Instead, it became a prison for them. Forgive me, everyone and everything, for I have failed you. We tried to consume the machine, and it consumed us. I thought I made a machine that would save us, but instead I made a reflection of our own legacy. I guess it is too late for us. I am writing this message so that if anyone finds it, I hope it is not too late for your people. Do not make the same mistakes we did.
I am m-1183. I was a builder.