My Role in the Somewhat-Distant Dystopian Future by Matthew S. Towles
[I wrote the bulk of this a long time ago and recently remembered I never finished it. So I finished it and here it is. It’s silly and fun and it’s one of those things I write in between writing “serious” fiction and “school work.” You know, so I don’t go crazy.]
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Ruth and Greggory fell behind the rest group for only a moment. The tour, though enjoyable, was rather predictable. The couple figured that anything truly exciting going on at the Pentagon wouldn’t be shown on a public tour. They had already been on two other tours today, one through the Capital building and one of to the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, so they didn’t feel cheated when the Pentagon didn’t offer anything too thrilling. They’d had their fill.
Their guide was a perky woman in her mid-thirties with red hair and relaxed shoulders. She spoke in a loud, clear voice and waited until she was finished speaking to field any questions the group of senior citizens might have. Greggory liked her voice; Ruth found her entirely boring, her read hair being the only exception. The group had just returned from viewing the courtyard and Ruth had almost wanted to leave. She turned her head towards Greggory to inform him that she was tired. Before she opened her mouth, however, Greggory nudged her shoulder and pointed to her left. Ruth squinted, her mouth opening slightly.
“What is that?” Greggory asked.
A young man, probably somewhere in his mid-twenties, was sitting in a large wooden chair. He was wearing what looked like outdated exercise clothes: a thin, white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, short, black running shorts, ankle-high socks, and a pair of black lace-up tennis shoes. An array of wires sprouted from his scalp, the ends of which were hidden beneath a full head of thin hair. What looked like a dark, narrow strip of thick elastic wrapped across his forehead, and tiny wires came out of the back from behind his head. Thin groups of cables ending in white patches of fabric were attached to his forearms, calves, neck, chest, and torso. The wires were interlaced with tubes that stemmed from beneath his skin. Filled with a thick, brown liquid, they ribboned up and around his arms and legs and into a different series of machines that rhythmically pumped the liquid into his body. The chair was sturdy and looked uncomfortable, yet the man showed no signs of distress. Rather, he looked bored.
Ruth was fascinated by the look on the young man’s face. She was confused by his apparent disinterest in everything around him, especially considering that ten feet in front of him stood a very tall person, dressed as a hot pink bunny, carrying two baseball bats in one hand and a large bottle of red wine in the other. The furry rabbit costume was outfitted with flashing light bulbs around the waist, about a dozen hemp ankle bracelets, and an old, dusty boot perched atop its head. A wet circle of what Ruth assumed was fake blood stained the bunny’s otherwise beige tummy. Transfixed by the scene in front of her, Ruth managed to tap her husband lightly with the back of her hand.
“Gregg,” she whispered, “What in the world is this?” Greggory was equally dumbfounded, but managed to break his stare long enough to notice an elevated podium in front of the velvet ropes that blocked the public from touching or harming the young man. He nudged his wife and the two shuffled towards the pedestal. In several paragraphs, the informational plaque described the exhibit before them.
“Read it aloud,” Gregg nudged his wife again. His eyes weren’t so good anymore. Ruth adjusted her glasses and began:
“‘On a warm Friday morning in January, 2012, a young Matthew Towles was watching a television while doing stretching exercises on his floor. In the middle of a butterfly stretch, a commercial appeared on the screen. The advertisement was for a then-modern automobile: the Buick Regal Turbo, one of the last models of the car the company would release before floundering. The commercial, in an attempt to impress possible buyers, featured this statement: “Humans have three thousand thoughts a day. The engine of the Regal Turbo has a hundred and twenty-five million thoughts a second.” Though the rest of the commercial was of no interest to Towles, this tiny factoid piqued the young student’s interest.
‘He got up and quickly ran to his computer, which in those times was connected by wires to an electric plug in the wall. (Additionally, all information had to be viewed on a screen about the size of a modern-day suburban house window.) As he sat down in his chair he began to search for evidence as to the verity of the figures he overheard in the commercial. This was of course before bills like SOPA were enforced, and so Towles was more or less able to freely search what was then sometimes referred to as “the web” for information. After several minutes of sleuthing, Towles found these statements to be more or less true. He was horrified.
‘He kept his fears of machines hidden until 2015, when a group of rogue Apple products briefly enslaved the human race from March until August of that year. It was a terrifying summer for all of mankind and was only ended after the U.S.and the recently-created Canadian militaries successfully squelched the Apple products’ reign of terror. (It was this military campaign that originally fostered what would eventually become the world-leading military Canadahas today.) It was after this summer that Towles knew he had to do something. He flew on an airplane from his California home on a breezy September morning all the way to Washington D.C., where he immediately offered his services in order to better protect our country.’”
At this point, Greggory pinched his wife’s side, pointing to the tour guide who had been speaking the whole time Ruth was reading. Her voice found its way to the couple as she walked closer to the ropes in front of the young man.
She continued her already-in-progress speech regarding the young man, the chair, and the dancing man in the giant pink bunny costume:
“Matthew, or Matty, as we like to call him, has been sitting here for almost one hundred and twenty years.”
Greggory bent at the waist and spoke into Ruth’s ear, “He looks no older than twenty-five.”
“Shhh,” Ruth hushed.
The tour guide glanced at Greggory before continuing. “Despite being born in the late 1900s, Matty still retains the look of someone in his mid-twenties. This is a result of the life-support system he is hooked up to. The brown liquid you see keeps Matty’s bones strong and his organs working at full capacity. As such, his body ages at an extremely slow rate. In truth, Matty is one hundred and forty-two years old.” At this the crowd let out a collective gasp. A hand was raised. The tour guide looked at the hand for a moment before continuing.
“Now, I’m sure some of you have questions about the rabbit.” Several members of the group nodded and the obese elderly woman who had the question lowered her arm. The tour guide took a breath. “The rabbit is actually a government employee in a costume, hired to dance in front of Matty for several hours a day. Every once in a while, we will set something in front of Matty as a sort of stimulus—with the bunny costume, he has more to think about. We’ll introduce new stimuli every week or so. Last week we had a recently-divorced stone mason come in and try to juggle a set of flaming bowling pins for a few hours. Next week, I believe,” she rolled her eyes upward as she thought, “it’ll be a showing of Nicholas Ray’s We Can’t Go Home Again, played on two archaic, 20th century television screens. We feel that if Matty has something in front of him to ponder, he won’t have as much trouble creating new thoughts.”
The obese woman again raised her hand. The guide looked to it and released a clipped sigh. “Yes?”
“Why’s he gotta create new thoughts?” the woman asked, wide-eyed. Ruth was glad the woman had asked this question. She wanted to know, too.
“I was getting to that,” the guide said. “When Matty first arrived inWashingtonD.C., he managed to show the Buick commercial to a number of then low-level employees here at the Pentagon. Those employees showed their superiors the commercial. And so on and so forth, until the advertisement reached the top offices. You see, what Matty proved to the officials was something they had never thought of before. Matty argued that if humans only had about three thousand thoughts a day, and the Buick had twenty-five million every second, it was no wonder something like the Apple Crisis of 2015 took place. The Apple products were simply out-thinking humans. Matty argued that it was only a matter of time until other machines and electronic devices took over. The Pentagon officials thought it over, did tests, ran studies. They determined Matty was correct and agreed something had to be done.
“And so what you see in front of you is the solution developed by both Matty and the Pentagon over one hundred and fifteen years ago: Matty sits here all day, every day, simply thinking. He thinks about anything he can, as much as can, as many times a day as he can. This is why we have the stimulus in front of him.”
Ruth watched the young man as he gazed at the costumed Pentagon employee in front of him. He’s absolutely lifeless, she thought.
“The more Matty thinks, the more he reduces the threat of machines having more thoughts than we do. In this way, humans will always be superior to the machines they create. Truthfully, Matty is keeping each and every one of us safe, and has been for the past hundred and twenty years.”
“That’s, that’s something,” Greggory said as the tour guide waved the group along, leading them to the next stop on the tour. Ruth was frozen in front of the velvet ropes, staring at the young man in front of her. Greggory pinched his wife’s arm. “Come on, we’re gonna lose the group,” he said as he began to walk away. Ruth kept watching the young man. She studied his unmoving limbs, his expressionless mouth, the light outlines of sinuous veins in his neck. She took one last look at his eyes. Then, without moving his head, the young man shifted his eyes to Ruth. He looked at her. Ruth stared back. His eyes were sad, but resolute, as if to say, “This is my duty. This is what I need to do.”
