Recorded dreams are just called Dreams. They’re hugely popular mainly because of ICs, but it’s really nothing more than a new television or net show. The good ones come and go like any meme; everyone talks about the latest hot series of dreams until the collective conscious gets bored and move on to the next. In this society, just another revenue stream, another creature for ads to devour, another avenue for a Megastar Celebrity to “re-invent themselves”, and in the end of its life cycle, like most popular products, a propaganda tool.
Dreams are the ultimate commodity, the perfect franchise, the ocean front property in Arizona. They have an unlimited supply, the best special effects, they are interactive and unpredictable, they’re cheap to produce, they’re uncensored and director’s cut, and they’re always starring you! For the consumer, there’s an unlimited selection, a new episode of your favorite dream comes out every day, sometimes two, or even three new Dreams a day from your favorite dream artist! With the network of people’s connected ICs, you could watch only new dreams every moment of your life and never see 1% of the dreams out there. In fact, if you had an IC, you could watch a set of dreams 100 wide and 100 long, across your vision and still only see a tiny percent of them. So, as you can tell, dreams were a huge market, a huge market that people had a never ending thirst for. The government tried their damnedest, but they could never crack the dream market. Ads in dreams, that’s a whole other story.
5
ADS
You probably know the word “Ad” as short for advertisement. And originally that’s what it meant, normally a short video or media message about how great a product is. But after the wave of “Black Everyday” consumerism that ICs created, some people would plaster themselves with advertisements. Some of them even became a little famous. Corporations saw this trend and promoted it. They started paying people to wear their logo. Getting a tattoo of their logo was even better than wearing a shirt, so you would get paid more for a tattoo. Some people actually became so much like walking advertisements, “Ad” became used to describe them instead of something as two-dimensional as a television commercial. Commercials fell by the wayside as it was far easier to simply hire waves of lazy cretins to display themselves to equally lazy cretins.
An Ad is easy to spot. They usually do a zombie-like shamble instead of walking. Their vision is usually obstructed a little bit, sometimes it’s mostly obstructed so they have a glassed over look in their eyes, again very much like a zombie. Sometimes their vision is obstructed by tons of porn, a condition called Porn Blindness. An Ad walking down the street might run into you. If they aren’t Porn Blind, they might also shamble in front of you, and do a full twirl to display as many of their advertisements as possible. They might even look somewhat normal, and then in a split second have holographic advertisements explode out from them in every direction. A “Sneak Ad-tack.”
One time an Ad stopped in front of Tony, his clothes covered in ads for fast food and drinks. He dropped his pants, and yes, his body was also covered in ad tattoos. Then he turned around, and yes, his butt was covered in ads for porn. Then he spread his butt cheeks, and yes the inside of his butt cheeks were covered in ads for Super Crack, the new legal drug of choice. (Get it? His butt crack had ads for Super Crack...) And then out of his butt hole came a holographic projection of a Miley Cyrus clone, with their trademark tongue sticking out, animated and licking his butt. The new Miley Clones “My Pussy Your Face” Tour is coming soon, the holograph announced with a mouth full of ass.
Before the change, Tony always thought it was weird that people would buy and wear clothes with a company name and logo on it. “Nike” do you really like that company so much to project their name in the face of anyone you meet? That is a crazy thought. Sure he would wear logos sometimes, especially for video games or bands he really liked. But he had to really like something before plastering himself with a giant logo.
Normally companies pay money for their advertisement to be shown. Commercials, pop-ups, billboards, placement in movies, etc. Coke pays a lot of money so that Katniss drinks Coke in Hunger Games 69. But for some when it comes to clothes, most people would pay the company in order to wear their ads. Strange. Maybe it is some way of showing that they can afford this logo. But it seemed backwards.
Once ICs connected the instantly fast Earth internet with equally fast human brains, people replaced all advertising media. And once companies started paying people to wear their ads, they discovered you could track how many “hits” people were getting with the logos they wore. With ICs, you could track each individual advertisement on any person. Companies could tell if Mr Jackass wore a shirt with their logo on it 7 days in a row, and that 100 people saw that shirt and exactly how many became paying customers. Now wearing that “Nike” shirt could pay off instead of costing more.
And then there were ads in dreams.
“I can get paid to dream? FUCK YEA!! I DO THAT ANYWAYS!” says Mr. Jackass.
When approached by a corporation willing to ‘sponsor’ Mr. Jackass’ dreams, he replies, “Wait, you’ll give me a dollar a day, and the only consequence is that any dream I ever have about drinking, it will be a Red Bull or Red Bull related product?”
“Yep.” Nods the corporation.
“FUCK YEA!! I DON’T GIVE A FUCK, I’LL DRINK RED BULL IN MY FUCKIN DREAMS WHILE I’M SCREWIN YOUR MOM’S BUTT WITH YOUR MONEY YOU ASSHOLE! YEEEEHAW, SIGN ME UP!!”
So, then thinking he’s smart, Mr. Jackass goes to the next company in his IC and signs up at Cheetos.
“Wait, you’re telling me you’ll give me .50 cents a day if anytime I dream about chips, you motherfuckers and your supercomputers will turn those chips into Cheetos?”
“Yes sir.”
Mr. Jackass signs on the dotted line with a look in his eyes like he’s the smartest man alive.
“FUCK YEAH MOTHERFUCKER! YEA!! WOOHOO! YOU FUCKIN PENGUIN BOY IN A SUIT! I ALREADY GOT RED BULL PAYIN ME TOO ASSHOLE! I’LL MAKE MILLIONS AND ALL I GOTTA DO IS DRINK RED BULL AND EAT CHEETOS IN MY DREAMS WHILE I FUCK ALL THE BITCHES AND DRINK BEER THAT YOU ASSHOLES BOUGHT FOR ME!”
Mr Jackass isn’t done with his get rich quick scheme yet. Next he gets a Taco Bell tattoo on his forehead. Why not? He gets more money for it being on his forehead than anywhere else. Girls will like his millions of dollars and will be able to ignore a little company tattoo on his face advertising a new low price for chalupas.
This process continues until one day Mr. Jackass wakes up with a holographic logo imprinted on the backside of his eyelid, a permanent, ever changing ad tattoo that he will be fined for if he covers, clothes that change to promote the latest advertising blitz, pop up ads that pop up in the middle of your vision, no matter which way you look, a 3D holographic ad that shows a commercial over his head every couple minutes and dreams of Red Bull oceans, floating on Cheeto rafts to heaven. This is every day and night of Mr. Jackasses life.
In this world, we simply call these people: Ads. They walk around like zombies, usually because most of their vision is blocked by ads and most of them are probably on meds. Also, Porn Blindness should be mentioned again.
Being an Ad is a full time job and works a lot like a hardcore drug addiction. At first it’s fun and doesn’t really interfere too much with your life. But soon it’s not fun, you need it and it’s hard to remember why you’re doing it in the first place. The hardcore Ads have to get as many “hits” as possible, and getting seen by someone with an IC is getting a hit. It’s hard to imagine, but your brain can process every single thing you see and with the help of an IC, can distribute that information to the world, including information like where you saw the ad, and who was responsible for you seeing that ad. So, if you’re an Ad, the best thing you can do is to be seen by as many people as possible. Sometimes Ads will just walk in front of you, hoping you notice at least some of the 1000s of ads they are displaying. For a short time, this brought back the phenomenon of trying to be seen behind live news reporters and streaking at spor
ting events.
Soon, being seen streaking at sporting events just didn’t get enough hits, so the desperate Ads were forced to find another way to get their important word out to the people. The next wave of Ads trying to be seen was at tragedies like plane crashes, hurricanes and terrorist attack locations. When they rebuilt the World Trade Center and it was destroyed for the 2nd time, the most popular videos of that day were the Johnny Knoxville wannabes doing quadruple backflips off the roof while projecting 3D holographic ads for Mountain Dew on the side of the building while it was collapsing.
Queue up the theme song to the newest and most daring Jackass-like show out there, this one is called Fucking Retards. The theme song is basically a computer playing three chords as fast as humanly possible, and slap on top of that quickly cut images of buff, hot teenagers skating through fireballs, doing hand plants on the roofs of skyscrapers as the skyscraper explodes, a moron strapped to a rocket blasting off for space, point blank shotgun blasts to the crotch and guys being repeatedly run over by cars on the Super Highways and you have yourself the intro to one of the highest rated (non dream) shows around.
“Jackass was a bunch of pussies dude!” Says the first Fucking Retard.
“Yea, none of them ever even died on screen!” Laughs the second.
“They never even died on screen!” They laughed together.
“FAGS!” they both yell together. Then they quickly grab each other and begin furiously making out and licking each other’s faces.
Once people became crazed walking advertisements, ICs connected everyone and everything, and a few mega corporations called all the shots, you have a different planet. People’s loyalties started to change. First of all, to the masses, every other person is a competitor. They could be the one who grabs that last item on sale before you do. That guy might even be a clone, not even a real person. You better be ready to trample them in the stampede, and most people were.
For many Ads, it was their main job, that was how they paid their rent. If someone is paying your rent, you form a bond with them, even if they are a mega corporation that really doesn’t care if you live or die. These people, ruling their own little Universe in their IC, became fiercely loyal to the corporations paying them. More loyal than to the government. People start to think, “What does the government do besides tax me and take my money?” Corporations with unlimited wealth start to think that also.
6
FUCK THOSE PUSSIES IN THE GOVERNMENT
There really isn’t anything scarier than watching your own nightmares.
Recordable dreams is another funny way that history repeats itself. Just like when audio tapes came out and the record industry thought everyone was going to just tape songs off the radio and put them out of business, and just like when mp3s and file sharing got popular and the big corporations of the day decided to sue 14 year olds for downloading Deuce Bigalow 10: Horse Gigolo. The day when Paris Super Crack Hilton the 4th’s dreams became instantly available to the world, of course the new, bigger corporations of the day had to sue everyone. Because since Super Crack 4 (That was what Paris Super Crack Hilton the 4th would want you to call her), was property of the Elohssa Corporation, you shouldn’t be allowed to watch her dreams. Unless, of course, you paid them.
With the proliferation of ICs, the world becomes one giant, connected market, about 5-10 corporations control every business out there. People are living longer and have learned how to clone themselves. Cloning is so normal in this world that it’s easy to forget about. As you can imagine, cloning has a huge impact on the world when it finally gets cheap and reliable enough. We’ve all seen that scene in Alien 4. There’s about 30 years of that stuff before they really figured out how to get a clone perfect every time.
Anyways, people that live a long time and can clone themselves tend to, um, live a long time and create many versions of themselves. You may not have thought about it, but once cloning was the norm, many people just become their own families. A couple old versions of themselves, a couple middle aged, some young adults and some kids, all the exact same person, born in different years living together as a family. Needless to say, the world’s population gets out of control when this happens. There were over a trillion people on the planet and only a handful of companies providing products and services to them. These companies got rich. Trying to describe the money would just sound ridiculous, it was so much. As time goes by, corporations come and go, new products are introduced that spring one ahead of the other, scandals and innovation knock others down, it’s constantly evolving, players are coming and going. At the time, there are only a couple corporations that need remembering, Telnet, who perfected cloning before anyone else and Elohssa Corporation, who invented the IC and created the market for dreams. These companies span the globe, you can’t be #1 in the world if you don’t have a rep in Mongolia.
In the quest to span the globe, you have to deal with the world’s problems. First, you just have rent-a-cop security, then you need a rent-a-cop who speaks Mongolian. Then there’s rent-a-cops in downtown LA who need tasers, then they need more than tasers. That’s when you get the Corporate Police (called CP), which leads to cloned Corporate Police, which, is basically a clone army.
A cloned corporate army, kind of cheesy, I bet you can imagine what it looks like. All of them in their spiffy ad covered fatigues, standing in perfect lines as far back as you can see, marching in unison. All created from the perfect rent-a-cop DNA. Are they all eunuchs you may ask? Yes, of course they are. They are cloned ball-less. Two albino twins who played offensive line at USC were the progenitors of these hybrids.
So there you go, you have an army of brainwashed eunuch clones whose DNA donor is the corpse of the perfect, power hungry rent-a-cop, which is owned by a corporation that has globe spanning security needs. End of story you say? Not quite.
One day in a very important meeting between the heads of Elohssa Corp. it was brought up that Michael Jackson’s dreams were 5% less popular today than they were yesterday. Although Elohssa Corporation was the number 1, big boy corporation in the world with an army of cloned eunuchs at its disposal, this news was devastating. They were going to go bankrupt if Michael Jackson’s dreams became 1% less popular, and the executives of Elohssa were meeting to solve this problem once and for all.
“How about we lay off everyone in the video game division?”
The room grumbled like all boardrooms filled with old rich men do. Grumble, grumble, shake, shake. They all pondered this solution half aloud, though some were sleeping.
“Are you fucking crazy?” one grizzled old geezer yelled out suddenly, “In Real Life 5, I’m on the verge of taking over Japan, and those guys are working on the weekly updates, I hear next week is the big alien invasion. You want us to fire them!? I can’t miss that! I’m about to make those Japs my bitches!” At end of this tirade, the old man quickly stood up and flashed some gaming clan hand signals and movements, which kind of looks like an old white dude flashing gang symbols and then leaning side to side and kicking his feet out. Then he plopped back into his seat.
The grumble came back, this time a little louder and more negative.
After a long silence that was easily the product of all of them paying attention to other things, a Bill and Ted-like, “Fucking taxes man!” sprung out from somewhere.
Silence, no grumbles.
“Yea! Fuck taxes!”, came from somewhere in the room.
The robot vice-president of marketing agreed in a robot voice, “Yes. Fuck taxes with my robot penis in its vagina and/or asshole.”
“Taxes are why we’re losing money. Why do we need to pay those fags in the government anyways?”
“Yea, if we don’t pay taxes, we’ll be making money! Right?”
“Yea, like, totally dude!”, the Bill and Ted guy said.
“What are they gonna do if we don’t? Make a ‘law’ against us? Or maybe they’ll attack us with their ‘army’!” This particular executive liked to use air q
uotes when talking and laughed louder at his own jokes than anyone else.
They all looked around at each and burst into laughter.
After the laughter subsided slightly, the man at the head of the table stood up, “So it’s decided. Fuck those pussies in the government! We will refuse to pay taxes and if those homos in the US government have a problem with it, they can talk to our warstores when they launch next week!”
Then quickly, everyone disappeared. (Well, what really happened was all the 3D holograms of each executive turned off. Did you think all of these important executive-types would have the time to attend a meeting in person? That’s so 21st century.)
7
WARSTORES
In the quiet forest on the outskirts of a normal sized town, a small family of deer
graze peacefully. The ground begins to vibrate slightly and each deer stops to look. The vibrations become a rumbling and the deer take off in all directions just as massive tank treads rip through the trees and forest around them. The treads are so huge that only a couple deer escape and the rest are crushed into a red wake of forest soup. The treads smash roads, trees, giant rocks and reach near the tops of trees; whatever is riding on them must be gigantic.
At the same time in a nearby city, people are excitedly forming lines along a main street. Many more are coming and it’s crowded, like a parade is about to come down the street. All the people are wearing outrageous clothing with prominent ads, some streaming live video ads, some with 3D holographic ads projecting from them. Among the pixelation of ads protruding from the crowd, many are showing a countdown; all with a little less than five minutes remaining. Surveying the chaotic crowd, it can be seen they are here for the opening of the first warstore.
The Search for Ball Zero Page 3