Deceptive and Dystopian
Humankind has been through more than three major wars with itself. Now we are on the path of becoming a Type II civilization… Only, to increase the magnitude of our self-destruction.
Rebecca revealed his thoughts to HypeSis, his long-time friend, while they were inside a spaceship orbiting the Earth.
He was in the dome of the ship, staring out into the vacuum of space with melancholy: its cold dark color and its lack of smell. The feeling of looking at something so vast, so immense, and at every second having your certainty of life presence diminished. But he had long grown accustomed to this kind of feeling, it was like being accustomed to depression, feeling depression like an old friend and just learn how to deal with the inevitable, just learn how to deal…
“Is it really inevitable?” HypeSis asked him. “Today, the Universe is bigger than yesterday. Aren’t you being too holed?” She added.
Rebecca looked at her. She still used the slang some tech guys popularized when they gave a lecture on new ways to safely perform the Superradiant Scattering process: an ingenious method of obtaining energy by surrounding a black hole with mirrors, ‘If it goes wrong, you’ll get yourself holed’, they used to say. It was the zenith of falling into any kind of abyss, the ultimate adjectivation coined by some mockers from engineering.
He also noticed that HypeSis used her mind-reading ability again, despite him explicitly telling her not to. But she always told him that it was useless, that someone would eventually read his mind, and that this was just the new Zeitgeist, ‘Get used or get sideralized’. she had once told him once, leaving Rebecca somewhat surprised to see HypeSis using words of such high-level language like that, since she woke up from the cryogenic sleep.
“Are you still bothered ’bout that? C’mon, we have a mission to do. Mouth out”, She told him.
Rebecca had asked her to accompany him on a mission, but he hadn’t told her what it was yet. He was trying to fulfill something, and HypeSis was the only person who could help him do that. Literally, she was the only one. Not only because she had special abilities, but with the advancement of science and technology, terrorists were gradually acquiring the means to harm entire continents by acting alone, and human intelligence had increased significantly.
The scientific communities of various countries joined forces to form the Earth Scientific Community. This name represented the fulfilled hope humanity had of colonizing other planets. The ESC was subdivided into different departments, each dealing with an entire scientific discipline.
While scientists were increasingly coming together to solve sometimes daily problems, politicians were gradually curtailing the rights and freedoms of populations. Many realized this and protested, but what was mind-boggling was that what they used to deprive and control was what they could use to patrol and protect, so they used it as an excuse. Terrorists appeared when people insisted on disabling those systems.
Everyone knew they were the ones financing the terrorists, and hardly anyone demanded proof. A few called it a conspiracy theory, because time and progress taught humanity that their steps were being efficiently covered up and that proof, in some cases, became chemical impossibilities. Plus, many historical events proved that those conspiracy theories were actually correct: the ones that made enough sense, didn’t break any lines of scientific thinking and had enough political correlations.
That was why everyone got used to taking a step back. Things were calm, humankind was evolving, but everyone knew, everyone learned that in adolescence, that just one misstep was enough to turn this deceptive and utopian paradise into a dreadful and dystopian hell.
