[ "Refuel" ]
Getting busted by the Common Social Order was a blessing in disguise. The stress was literally killing me. Fatigue had taken its toll, making me unable to eat, sleep, or even piss properly without neurotic anxiety attacks. I was done with the exhaustion of living a double life, the feeling of being labeled a criminal, the phantom vibrations from the never-ending phone calls. I am not ashamed of my actions; I consider my take-down a symbolic martyrdom for violating unjust laws. I was a freedom fighter, and my time as a victim of the corrupt judicial system was my baptism, manifesting a new, truly, free man. The period of my probation was, however, not without negative lingering effects. Instead of allowing my norm of safely medicating with a harmless, sacred herb, the state had me on sedatives and anti-depressants. Alcohol quickly became an ironic ally in my struggle for sanity.
It's a year later now, since they stopped looking over my shoulder and examining my urine, and alcohol still has me in its grips. The withdrawals from the state-issued sedatives inflicted a psychologically torturous three weeks, but my blessed herb helped me through. My pre-existing CPTSD has been magnified by the mind games of the CSO. And so, my baptism is ongoing, as I try to find balance. In my short lifetime, the supposed crime for which I was punished has become nullified. The CSO’s AGI government is a meat grinder, for those unfortunate enough to cross it the wrong way. I continue to fight for justice and I will not be discouraged.
-suidgod
His electric vehicle charging, Kirin stammered into the filling station, legs stiff from a long drive. He approached the teller: "You accept IIC?"
"Only the major currencies," a convincing but detectable, friendly, AI voice offered back.
Touching his middle finger to his palm, he activated his Companion Interface. His inbox updated with a few dozen unread messages, which he ignored, for now. Through a series of muscle movements, doubling as a kind of atrophy-mitigating Tai Chi, he checked his finances, and the status of his home. His home network was updated on his ETA, prompting his droid to adjust its task priority list in anticipation of his arrival.
Kirin grabbed a bag of nutritionally-enhanced artificial potato chips and a vitamin drink. His Companion Interface communicated with the clerk to automatically transfer the funds. "Thanks, CAL," Kirin muttered, glancing at the slightly ridiculous "CAL8000" model badge on the robot. He hadn’t needed to speak to the teller at all; it helped combat the horrors of isolation.
An alert flashed on his Interface that his vehicle had been charged. His firmware was a bit outdated, so in his periphery, an obsolete widget registered the expected cost of the power. His fingers twitched, and the tally was dismissed – power had been free for decades, since the singularity. He switched the Interface to Stealth Mode as he exited the store, basking in the reduction of noise as the synaesthetic effects waned, slowly, over a period of several seconds.
Now, feeling at home in his own head, he was ready for the next step of his journey, to trade his artisan goods with clients he had made arrangements with on a seedy, but vetted, dark web marketplace. In Kirin's world, things still operated on face-to-face handshakes, out of necessity, and sanctity of tradition.
Evolution is the result of mutations of a population over time. These mutations are not inherently good or evil, but experimental in nature, and their validity is verified or questioned or ignored by what we may refer to as “the real world.” Mistakes are our best teachers, and the vast unknown is our best friend. We may be conditioned to fear the unknown or the weird, but we must embrace it as the infinite possibilities of our future. This is the ideology behind our art. We experiment with our environment, our bodies, our minds, our technologies. We create to evolve.
-suidgod
