prologue
Officially, our planet was still called Earth. Unofficially, it was the Planet of Triumphant Idiocy. But we, its inhabitants, used a shorter and more fitting name: "Planet of the Fuckwits."
The irony was that each of us was a genius. An absolute one. We had conquered hunger, disease, aging, and death itself. We had harnessed the quantum foam of the vacuum and made the void dance to our tune. From nothing, we learned to make everything. Absolutely everything. Gold? Here. Diamonds? Sure. A fried mammoth steak with truffles? Five seconds – and your "Quantum Kitchen Cube" (model "Self-Setting Tablecloth 3000") would be emitting a divine aroma.
We had become gods. And, as befits gods, we immediately started squabbling.
Not over resources – there was enough for everyone. Not over territory – everyone sat in their own perfect, eternal bunker. We fought over ideas, grudges, old hatreds, and simply because we were bored. Why enjoy eternal life in the fresh air when you could enjoy eternal life watching your enemy's micro-drones turn your neighbor's micro-drones into quantum dust?
The military industry, which no longer needed to churn out tanks and bombs, had moved into the micro-world. Nano-drones. The size of a mosquito. Whole swarms, clouds, mists of these little killers, carrying not explosives, but cocktails of neurotoxins and psychedelics, capable of trapping an immortal body in a ten-year catatonia or forcing it to incinerate itself.
Going outside? Suicide. Your immortal organism would heal the bites faster than they were inflicted, and your consciousness would go insane from the pain and poisons in seconds. Nature, that very same pure and beautiful nature we had saved, had become a battlefield where no human foot had trodden for ages. We sat in our burrows and watched it through the cameras of our own and others' drones, waging an eternal, pointless war.
My name is Archie. I am immortal, I have everything, I live in paradise. I sit in my bunker and watch as an alarming message from the neighbors crawls across the screen: THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG. WILL YOUR QUANTUM SYNAPSES SHORT-CIRCUIT FROM THIS ANALOG INSULT?
I took a bite of the perfect croissant my replicator had just created and pondered. What if they were right? What if all our genius was just an invitation to an eternal dick-measuring contest of fuckwits?
chapter 1. the itch you can't scratch
The message vanished from the screen. Attack repelled. Our "bees" had destroyed the last of the "wasps" with their psychedelic itch. Silence. Boredom. The perfect croissant on the plate seemed like a silent reproach.
"Home, log the entire incident under log number 734-B, category 'Minor Misunderstanding,'" I commanded. "Logged,Archie," replied the pleasant baritone of the ArtInt (Artificial Intelligence) that managed my personal paradise. "Threat level: zero. Suggest resuming the 4D pod of 'Pacific Orca Pod Roaming' or continuing the virtual tour of the restored ruins of Paris." "Turn it all off,"I grumbled.
The screens went dark. Silence fell in the bunker, broken only by the barely audible hum of the "Singularity-Core" on my belt – the very thing that granted me immortality and endless energy. I walked over to the main wall, which in transparency mode was supposed to show the landscape. Now it was matte, impenetrable. Behind it, just meters away through concrete and titanium alloys, teemed that very "fresh air" we had supposedly done all this for.
"Home, show me the outside world. The real view."
The wall obediently became transparent. Or rather, it launched a live feed from the external cameras at maximum resolution. The picture was flawless. Lush greenery, dewdrops on blades of grass, a forest rustling somewhere in the distance. The Garden of Eden. Completely untouched. And utterly inaccessible.
