“First, remember that no two people find meaning in the same way. What you dismiss every day as meaningless may actually mean quite a lot to someone else who is navigating the emptiness. You never know where and when meaning will strike. Also, remember that most people don’t know they’re traveling through the emptiness. They have mistaken the collective delusion for something meaningful. So tread lightly. Providing meaning is a gift; don’t expect anything in return from anyone. Your reward is finding your own purpose. You don’t need anything else.
“Start by being kind. Open doors. One smile can change someone’s entire day. Or it may not. Doesn’t matter. And remember, it’s none of your business what other people think of you.
“You’ve been given this gift of seeing the reality of our emptiness. So use your knowledge wisely. You might decide to shatter people’s illusions, and that would be quite painful for them. Alternatively, you could choose to let them live as they have been. And that’s okay, too.
“Because here is my point, and the only one you should pay attention to: nobody can make your choices for you, and they shouldn’t, because creating your own path and meaning in the meaninglessness of life is the only freedom you or anyone else has. We are condemned to freedom.”
Sartre the 57th patted Elliot on the shoulder. They sat there for some time. When Elliot looked up, night had fallen. Stars dotted the skyscape. There was nothing between the stars, he noticed, nothing at all.
The realization came on slowly and then all at once. And suddenly he saw his own meaning of Meaning, which was to be like a star in the vast emptiness of space. From his light, and the lights of others like him, people might draw their own maps and locate themselves in time and space. There was no single Meaning, no one way; there were only constellations. There was no way to know what others would see. The most he could do was shine and hope for the best.
When he felt it was time to go, he looked up to thank Sartre the 57th. But he found himself alone, and that was okay, because that’s the way these things are supposed to be.
Head Shows
The crawlers, with tires the height of booted men, were ripping apart the earth.
Alicia watched them from the thirty-third story of the high-rise in South San Francisco. Work was slow today. Idly, she picked at a hangnail as she copied and pasted text from one computer application to another. Three weeks were left on her contract; pretty soon her position would be automated, and she’d be back in the pool of candidates in the ever-dwindling job pile that still existed in and around Silicon Valley.
She hid behind her cubicle wall and checked her account on the Forum. So-and-so was getting married, her childhood friend was raising money for medical bills, and her cousin had posted another meme about how stupid the president had been about that thing that happened a few days ago.
Outside, the machines continued to plunder.
When six o’clock came, Alicia left work and rode the train home. She stuck in her earbuds and listened to Arthur DeSantos rail against conservatives, unionization, and anti-abortionists. She agreed with him on all fronts and wondered who among the hundred people around her was as knowledgeable as she.
When she finished DeSantos’s talk, she rated it ten out of ten on the Forum, posted it so everyone could see she was doing her part to spread his message, then stepped off the train and walked home.
She entered her apartment, keeping her head down as she passed Lucas’s room—which consisted of makeshift walls of sheets in the living room—walked down the hallway past Micah and Mikaela’s shared room, and Rashida and Violet’s shared room, and into her own at the end of the hall where she plopped onto her bed.
Outside, the machines raged on. She felt a slight rumble as one tore down a building half a block away. She heard glass and concrete falling like heavy blankets on the streets and sidewalks. A haze of dust would consume everything in a two-block radius. The machines never stopped.
At 7 p.m., her tablet beeped. Time for their house meeting. Alicia had been dreading this all week. Not only had Rashida not done her dishes again, but they’d had an argument on the Forum for all to see about a meme Rashida had posted that ridiculed Angela Hart, the newscaster at the One-State News Network. Alicia had fired back that ONN’s journalists were defenders of One-State surveillance, and how dare they embolden the unionized separatists. The whole thing had turned nasty; they hadn’t spoken since, not even when they’d bumped into each other in the hallway the night before.
So the residents of the 900-square-foot Unit 42A at the One-State Housing Building #279Q gathered for their meeting. It was Micah’s turn to lead. “Lucas, the pathway to the kitchen has been cleared for the past month. Thank you for that. Namaste.”
Everyone put their hands together and placed them over their heart. “Namaste.”
“Now, the bad news. They’re raising the rent again. This time by twelve percent.”
“But that’s the third time this year,” Mikaela said. “They can’t do that.”
Rashida shook her head. “I already pay 75% of my income in rent. How can they expect more?”
“We don’t have any rights,” Alicia said. “They can do whatever they want.”
“Well, we need to organize, tell them no. Someone has to tell them no. They’re probably doing this to everyone on the block.”
Boom. Outside, the thirty-foot crawlers leveled another building, the collapsing debris triggering a car alarm.
“Look,” Micah said. “Either we pay them, or the Development Team is gonna bulldoze the building, just like every other place. They have no reason to keep it up. The Company will always want to pay them to tear it down. They can get more money that way.”
“Let’s throw ourselves in front of the tractors,” Rashida declared, standing. The place erupted in argument.
Alicia stayed silent. She’d lost all respect for Rashida. How could she protest next to her, with all her horrible opinions? Rashida rode a hydrogen scooter, for God’s sake.
Alicia glanced from one face to the next. She had a set of principles to live by, and how could she possibly trust Lucas when he still listened to conservative radio shows on the Forum?
Then there was Violet, who was so far to the left as to be impractical. Micah had no larger goals except to have children, which made Alicia gag. Mikaela, well—just, no.
The meeting adjourned on Rashida’s advice to reconvene the next day and figure out a plan to convince the electronic landlords of One-State to change their minds.
Alicia’s favorite head show was called “Imagine the Space.” It aired once a week on the Forum. She liked to listen in complete silence. When something disturbed her listening, she became highly agitated, so she often booked a meeting room at work where she could be alone. If that wasn’t available, she would rush home and savor it on her bed.
The morning after the house meeting, she resumed her normal routine: wake up, turn on the Forum on her earbuds to hear what she’d missed while sleeping, and get ready for work. It was especially helpful then, because it blocked out Lucas’s snoring and Mikaela’s occasional singing in the shower.
From there, Alicia would walk to the train station while browsing head shows chosen by the Forum specifically for her and programmed for times of day most appropriate for her mood. Like most people, Alicia had synchronized her head shows with her mood tracker, which also integrated data like blood pressure and heart rate and could even predict serotonin levels.
She left the apartment this morning, sidestepping the unfortunate people who slept on the sidewalk. A homeless man held out his hand, which she successfully ignored by putting her sunglasses on at just the right moment and turning up the volume on her show.
“The One-State Council is recommending all unionization efforts be squashed immediately, and I couldn’t agree more,” said the host. “These workers are sick. Their leader just called Congresswoman Williams a sellout and refused to back her plan on trade. Let the unions fall, why should we help t
hem anyway . . .”
Alicia felt a new, steely attitude spring up inside her. Yes, this was a new line in the sand. She made a mental note. The workers’ bad attitude was a good argument against unionization. She must not forget it.
What does Neal think about that? she wondered. She’d have to remember to ask him later during their lunch date at work. She hoped he was on the right side of the issue. She liked him; they seemed to vibe on other topics.
Dating had been tough for her since she’d moved from Illinois to San Francisco. She couldn’t seem to find anyone who shared her values. Every time she’d removed her earbuds for a couple hours to meet up with some new man for tacos or a movie, she’d been disappointed.
The first order of business in dating, she’d soon decided, was always to establish the zone of politics. In fact, it was the main way the Forum’s Dating Algorithm matched people up. It had successfully led to the marriages of over half a million people.
Alicia stepped through the turnstile at the train station, the credits subtracting and syncing from her implant to the station’s computers. She boarded her train and stomached the cramped conditions.
Outside her destination, a fifty-foot crawler was busily ripping apart windows and brick and plaster, snarling like a mechanical beast, digging its way inside the building where it could pinch and grab and rip at its guts. To raze what was standing was its only aim. Once the crawlers were given a duty, they carried it out. It was all in the programming.
The sensor beeped and the door to the office opened. Alicia sat at her station, suddenly feeling very old and small, as if all the energy had been sucked out of her on the way in. (In fact, it had. The city was designed to sap the population’s vitality.)
Alicia copied and pasted until noon, watching the crawlers as they chomped and cleared the structures. Past them, she could see other buildings being rebuilt. After demolition, new construction always went up. In this way, the economy of creation and destruction was extended indefinitely.
Sitting at the table alone, Alicia nervously checked her watch. She was supposed to meet Neal for sushi during her lunch break. It wasn’t like him to be late, and now they only had forty-seven minutes to spend together. Every minute she was late for work she would be docked pay, and with the imminent rent increase she needed all the income she could get.
Neal arrived with thirty-three minutes to spare. He apologized and wiped the sweat off his face with a handkerchief he kept in the breast pocket of his blazer. Alicia was hungry, and she ordered, tight-lipped. Neal apologized again, to no response.
The mechanical arm reached out of the floor and dropped a plate onto their table. Alicia stifled her sobs. They’d received nigiri, not sashimi. The credits had already been deducted from her account, so she had to open a Help Desk message with the restaurant’s Forum page, but with no one to speak to she had to wait online for fifteen minutes, only to discover that they had no sashimi today and she’d have to eat the nigiri—though they did give her half off her next purchase. She gave the credits to Neal and watched him eat. With only a few minutes to spare, she abruptly asked him what he thought about the unionization issue.
He swallowed his fish and told her.
A few minutes later, she returned to work alone.
The company-wide meeting was at 1 p.m. Alicia arrived at the office at 12:58 p.m., which gave her just enough time to use the bathroom. They’d know if she was late to the meeting, too, because her implant with the small GPS inside would tell them.
The CEO’s face appeared big and bloated on the screen that acted as a head for the robotic body underneath. The CEO was in Florida. He controlled the humanoid body from there.
Behind him, outside, a crawler tore down another building.
“Lastly,” the CEO said, “I want to bring our attention to an important issue that affects us all. As you all know, the debates over miner unionization have reached a fever pitch. We’ve decided to join our sister company, Geneva Corp, who is standing with their efforts. We’re going to be donating two hundred thousand credits. I hope you’re proud to be working at a company that . . .”
When he was finished, the place erupted in cheers.
Alicia quit that afternoon.
She returned home to find her five roommates suiting up for battle. They had covered themselves in black garb from head to toe. Rashida said nothing to Alicia as she zipped up her hoodie and threw her backpack on.
Outside, the crawler tore into another building.
“You coming?” Lucas asked. “The Forum’s Help Desk says there’s nothing we can do. None of us can afford the rent increase. We think they’re gonna tear this place down in the next few weeks. We’re going out to protest. You in?”
Alicia looked at her roommates with contempt. These were not her people. She’d find others.
She shook her head no and went to her room. She listened to head shows, ate dinner, and went to bed, baffled and saddened after seeing her father’s post on the Forum about his support of the unionization effort. When he called her that night, she declined to answer and went to sleep.
Micah and Mikaela were the first to move out. At first they tried to find replacement tenants, but no applicants had income sufficient for the Forum’s rent algorithm.
Violet moved back to New Seattle, and a few days later Lucas decided to return home to his folks. So it was just Alicia and Rashida.
Alicia spent her time trying to find another job. She was able to patch together some income as a part-time elder care specialist, a job that automation had not yet touched. Joining that line of work was easier than it had been in the past—many elders had dementia and Alzheimer’s, and with so many patients, the qualifications for caretakers were a mere formality. They consisted of a simple test of being able to lift forty-five pounds over one’s head, as well as a written exam and sworn testimony that you wouldn’t steal from the patients. All medications were doled out into cups by machines. Shifts were only three hours long, and workers could come and go as they pleased.
The job paid almost enough to cover her groceries.
She had no luck finding another apartment in the city. And she wasn’t the only one. Reports on the housing crisis flooded the Forum. Experts deduced that the algorithm had determined it was more profitable to tear down most of the apartments in the city and build new housing facilities that could each sleep hundreds of people. Other buildings would be used for storing military weapons. The western seaboard had become increasingly important to the defense industry since One-State had declared war on Two-State.
Alicia peeked through the living room curtains and saw the crawler walking toward her like an alien in a horror film. She’d received a warning from the Forum alarm system that her building would be demolished today.
She pressed her head against the window and peered down the street. A crowd had gathered nearby; some people waved signs, and others wielded long ropes they tried to wrap around the crawlers’ legs to trip them up and bring them down. They were Leftists. Alicia could see that from the signs they carried.
She saw Rashida down there too, and felt something like pity and sorrow, not for them but for herself.
The crawler reached her building. Its claw broke through her window, clamped down, and pulled away most of the living room floor. Alicia sat and waited for the crawler to take her with the rest of her home.
For what was the point of living if not to be right?
See You In Theaters
Chapter One
We’d been in the house six months or so when I discovered the two-foot-high door hidden behind the dresser in my bedroom. It’s naturally very dark in there—there’s only one small window—so you’d never see it unless you got lucky like I did banging into it on accident. It’s one of those false doors with no handle and only opens when you push in the right place.
I stuck my head in and shined my flashlight around. It was hot and dark inside. Ahead of me stretched a tunnel a few feet long, and then it dr
opped off toward the earth. The sides of the tunnel were made of metal, maybe aluminum. I started crawling.
I live in a neighborhood called Los Feliz, in Los Angeles. It’s nice here. We’re on the east side, which means that I’m not near the ocean, but the traffic isn’t so bad, and there are concerts and films and all kinds of fun things to do. I’m only seventeen, but I can sneak some drinks from the bars, depending on the night.
My father works at a large corporation. I won’t say which one specifically, but just think animated movies. Yeah, that one. He’s a major film director.
We’d been living out in Atlanta. He was doing commercial work, but then he got offered this huge job and we left and came here. It’ll be one of the world’s largest movies. It’ll be in all the theaters. You’ll see posters for it at bus stops and ads before online videos. Your parents will encourage you to watch it. It will seem totally innocuous. But it will be more dangerous than any R-rated film.
We’ll get to that in a bit.
If you’re into old places, you’d squeal if you saw my neighborhood. Many of the homes were built in the 1930s, about a decade after the company my father works for started. Let’s call it The Company. Anyway, these homes were built for many of the animators, so they could live close to the studios and zip on up to work every day without having to endure the total chaos that is Los Angeles traffic.
Which, by the way, occupies your mind and your life. Traffic, I mean. Like, your whole day can get completely ruined because you turned right instead of left. It could make you thirty minutes late, which will bump all your meetings, which will bump dinner, which will bump relaxing time, which will cause people like my dad to storm in, throw their things down at eleven at night, and drink themselves to sleep.
Basically, everyone here is pretty stressed out. Those who work at The Company, anyway. It makes me feel pretty isolated sometimes. Mom’s not around much either. She works in real estate, and the market here is booming.
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