Waste Not...
Our headlong head strong embrace of the new revolution left the majority behind. But then again the future has always been the present for the rich, and the poor have always been consigned to the past. Once quantum computing had been unleashed by an accelerated intelligent 6 year old girl, nothing was the same again. The artificially modified version of Aspergers had been introduced to a batch of embryos the surviving few went on to make great strides bringing the promised singularity ever closer.
Once the breakthroughs had occurred the subsequent emergence of A.I assistants made the accelerated intelligent children obsolete. So they were celebrated before having the honour of having their organs and tissue harvested for the cellular regeneration therapies which were becoming increasingly popular. You see once the understanding that injecting younger cells into the elderly rejuvenated their cells the human testing began in earnest.
Enhanced humans tended to be older and a lot wealthier, and as more could afford to join the club enhanced humans became the norm, both aesthetically and intellectually. Everybody else became less than humans simply by standing still. The poor masses were largely redundant due to automation in the job market, so as they were no longer human, they became expendable.
The poor masses were there to serve the new species of humanity. A lucrative trade emerged where the poor younger masses were the donors of the rich elderly elite. Donors maybe a over enthusiastic term. Desperate families were only too willing to have the credit bonanza which a donated child would led too. But the speed of innovation had unexpected consequences. For example since the discovery of the sleep gene and its subsequent deactivation, an epidemic of temporary and permanent blindness swept the world. Eyes were not adjusting quickly enough to being in operation 24 hours a day.
This story will document how the new science of inner-sight developed. But first we meet three examples of the latest application of the brain augmentation. The three young gamers were cosy on the sofa. Well several sofas, it was their avatars in the virtual room which were sat on one sofa. The sweaty, pock faced, less finessed versions of themselves were oceans apart in the offline world. Truth is it sounded like the beginning of a joke, a Russian wrestler, an American cheerleader, and a Chinese chess champion, namely Boris, Melinda, and Ling were members of a multiplayer experiment of an international alliance of gamers engaging in operation capital cities. The current session was focused on a simulation of London. This sponsored event was the first of its kind. The spectators who had logged on using basic VR googles could both turn to observe the avatars of the three on a sofa, and then turn to switch view seeing a digital representation of London. The familiar skyline and city in a digitised form. Whereas our grandparents generation had grown up on virtual arcade classics like Grand Theft Auto and Gran Turismo, our parents generation had stopped at VR headsets feeling they were immersed in the game. These three were the vanguard of the new wave of the inner sight program.
A couple of years earlier an unexpected breakthrough happened which had led to this proud day. Blindness caused by the deactivated sleep gene was cured for some. It wasn't cured straight away and there had been some collateral damage. And there always is, but the implications of this discovery would transform the gaming world and beyond.
The scientific community for the elites was fixated on solving the problem of visual impairment of their members. The inner sight theory was that visual systems could be repaired by a synthetic generative healthy tissue injected into the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. Nano bots would deliver the implant directly repairing damage and allowing the blind to see via glasses with fitted with cameras, hence sight restored.
Some unenhanced human fodder was tested first, as was the way. It was a big pay day for their families whatever the outcome so the poor rightly sacrificed for the rich and found some purpose for their otherwise empty existences. The first batch of failed experiments occurred where overheating in the chips and circuitry led to irreparable brain tissue damage leading to psychotic episodes amongst a large number of the test subjects. Those who became a danger to themselves and society were harvested for living organ and tissue which could be used the cellular regeneration therapies which proved so popular amongst the over 90's. Waste not want not.
After around 2000 such sacrifices the breakthrough occurred. It was a 12 year old boy from Bombay, he was skinny and sickly, it was feared he wouldn't survive the anaesthetic let alone the procedure. But he did and after receiving the implants he remained stable, he then applied the glasses and the fact his brain didn't burst several hundred capillaries and rupture was deemed a step on the road to success. He couldn't see, but he hadn't died, nor had he lost his mind. A researcher thought it funny to offer the boy the glasses instead of payment. He happily choose the glasses and once his bioprint was offered in consent he left the lab, and he was forgotten about.
The automated Uber delivered him home and when his parents learnt about him taking the glasses not the credits they beat him and threw the glasses out of the apartment window as the credits were worth much more than the glasses. The discarded tech landed on an open driverless garbage truck and like the ancient tale of Jack and the Beanstalk something happened in the night.
The boy woke up and he promptly vomited, waking the house. He felt the volatility of the landscape he was seeing. Although the glasses were over 50 miles away, the implants were working, they simply needed an embedding time and his visual cortex was activated for the first time. He was witnessing the journey of the glasses across rough terrain, as if he were there, even though he was half laying in warm sick in his bed. After telling his mother, she told the peoples press, then the science team were informed and they tracked and returned the glasses to this miracle boy. He was brought back in for testing and his family were paid handsomely for donating him to research. It turned out he was one of about 5% of the growling blind population for whom this technology was instantly compatible. The fact that he didn't need to be anywhere near the glasses to access the cameras was unanticipated. Eventually scientists for the elite performed a controlled lobotomy to model the boys brain in the desire to unlock its secrets. He had some anomaly a cluster of cells at the base of his brain which was the only difference they could find. The rest of his body was harvested for cellular regeneration therapy. Waste not, want not.
Other blind agents were tested and those with the same anomaly were operated on. This small inner sight tribe found they could access the cameras of the others wearing the glasses by the power of thought alone. The concept was developed over the coming years, one of the puzzling things being all of the successful receivers of this gift had all been low status, but this enhancement had lifted their value as the brightest minds and A.I assistants realised they needed to keep the subjects alive in order to have a chance to decode the particular genetic distinction which enabled this group to so effectively run the technology.
Our three gamers, the ones on the sofa were the next phase of the inner sight program. They were all between 15 and 17 years old. They had all lost their sight in the last year and had prior to their vision loss had large followings for their success in video games especially the transport ones. Now they had inner sight their followings had quadrupled and millions were observing this session. Fans were delighted watching them wreak havoc in the operation capital cities programme. The three avatars representing Boris, Melinda, and Ling enjoyed the rush of battle as the inner sight enhancement had evolved to them being able to access multiple cameras. They could flip between the dashboard of the cars they were racing down the mall, or ascend to get the birds eye view of the overhead drones. They could witness the cabs of trains they were pushing to capacity. They laughed as vehicles collided and bystanders were mowed down. When a train derailed, or a low orbit turbo flight exploded they would see their points rack up and their fans offering praise, tips, and comment. Boris, Melinda ,and Ling finished their session, the comment boards fell silent, and the live feeds the fans were watching dimmed to the sponsors logos. The three young inner sight operatives left the virtual world to spend their credits in the real one. Once the game was over in facility far from sight a command was issued to replay game in 60 minutes, 59, 58, 57, 56, 55, 54,53...
An hour later the city of London fell into confusion then utter hell, as the automated transport system stopped responding, commuters complained, and began checking to discover what the fault was. Then all of a sudden as if under the control of a horde of demons cars, trains, and planes lost control. Cars crashed, trains increased in speed ignoring red lights before fatal collisions, pedestrians were mowed down. An hour later London was still engulfed in flames, building alarms, manual emergency vehicles sirens, and dying human screams were clashing and merging. The death toll rapidly escalating from the 100's to the 1000's as twisted metal coffins were strewn in every direction. Low orbit jet engines had fallen from the sky crushing and maiming. The horror of the morning commute was sinking in. The people's press were describing this as the largest automated transport hack. But no one had taken responsibility for this unprecedented attack.
Robot paramedics collected bodies showing life signs, if the injured could be transported in time these victims could find new lives fuelling the cellular regeneration therapies of the wealthy. America, Russia, and China in particular were always clamouring for more donors, and no doubt would be grateful for the clear upside of this atrocity. Waste not want not.
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