Augmented Earth

Augmented Earth - Chapter 21 - The Awakening

It happened. Slowly at first. The signal silently left the antenna, and was transmitted outwards, across the subdistrict.

Less than a block away, a man was in the middle of talking to his wife. He rubbed his eyes as she continued to speak. Her clothes were beginning to disappear, being replaced with some kind of simple grey tunic, and her breasts were actually shrinking. Her makeup slowly disappeared, her hair became shorter and less blonde, and the sound of her voice changed from her usual smooth tones to something that sounded much scratchier and more annoying.

Two buildings away from that, a group of people were sitting in their rooftop spa, sipping champagne, enjoying each other's company, and enjoying the bubbles in both the spa and the drinks. The conversations petered out as they gradually realised that they were not in a spa at all, but sitting on the ground in a circle, gently sipping dirty looking water from plastic cups.

Down on the street, some 'rich people' driving around showing off their flash cars suddenly realised that they were being transported around in generic transport pods, exactly the same as all of the other ones around them.

Everyone suddenly found out that they are equal, equally fucked in fact. The System created the castes that everyone was comfortable with, but in reality, it was the fairest system, spreading out the actual resources of the planet evenly between all humans. The people who were happy thinking they were special, found out that they weren't. The people who were quite happy not being special, found out that they still weren't.

Some people were having conversations and the person they were talking to actually faded away and disappeared, because they were somewhere else entirely. From the other person's point of view, their friend suddenly disappeared too, but the Devices were still active there. After a moment of confusion, the Device protected itself, perhaps by showing a vision of their friend being called away by a waiter for a phone call and leaving. Most of them just think, 'well, that was a bit rude' and then continue with their colourful lives.

Meanwhile, Prince, Izzy and the Great Leader had been running down the stairs from the rooftop and now emerged out onto the street. They headed towards their pre-arranged position in a public square near the centre of the sub district.

They ran past a man beating up another man while shouting, "what have you done with my car?"

There were now numerous people emerging from their houses, looking around themselves and at their neighbours in stunned amazement. Lots of people were crying, men, women and children alike. Prince saw one woman clawing at her own face shouting, "no, it's not my face, not my face, I need to wake up!"

The Great Leader went to her and lifted her to her feet. "You are awake, for the first time ever, you are truly awake." She clung to him and burst into tears.

The Great Leader started shouting. "Come with us if you want answers. Follow us, we will explain everything." The people started to follow.

They came around a corner and found a group of people gathered around something on the ground. The Great Leader got there first and pushed his way to the front. Prince got there just behind him. Face down on the ground was a naked, skinny man. His body was crushed to the ground, and there was a pool of blood below him. He had clearly leapt to his death from the rooftop. They looked up and saw a group of people looking down from there too.

"What happened here," said the Great Leader.

One crying woman answered, "Oh, he is our yoga instructor. He was giving us a class on the rooftop. When, whatever this is," she gestured all around her, "happened, he saw his muscular body disappear before his eyes. We were all in shock from seeing it happen, and then we saw that we had changed too, and so had everything around us, but he lost his mind, he started shouting 'no, no, I'm dreaming again' and then he just ran and jumped off the roof before any of us could stop him." She turned to Prince and shrunk back from his masked face. She turned to the much more welcoming figure of the Great Leader.