Envision his or her day.
Waking up. Alarm? Automatic consciousness? First things he sees. First thing he thinks about. Something left over from yesterday? Last week? A regret? Looking forward? Positive attitude or dread? A plan?
Getting ready. What does the futureperson do to get prepared for the day? Is it just as trite and routine as today? How can the future be different from now? We are the same meat. Mirror? Cameras everywhere. Select wardrobe using computer screen and camera-projected augmented reality. Shower is the same, just with preset temperatures. Person looks at himself in the mirror. We are the same meat. What about body augmentation? Integration with technology. The average corpo probably has just a minor implant or two, using wearables like the average human. Maybe he wonders whether the investment in a more "Integrated Solution™" would improve himself. He starts to envy or wonder about the other people around him in the office. I bet they're modified. I bet the only reason she got the promotion was because of her synaptic device. Is it worth the gamble? Is it encouraged in media or in the corporate culture? What does he feel about the need to modify in order to get ahead. Does he reminisce about what he perceives the past to be? "little does he know" about the past. Everyone's retrospective is poor when it comes to generational opinion.
Leaving the house. Neighbors? Observations about the neighbors? Does he have a conversation? Where does he dwell? What does the hallway say about the state of affairs. Something on the ground? What about the carpet, the static electricity that builds with every step. Colors of the hallway light. Future tech. LED/incandescent mixture bulbs. They automatically turn on as he walks, and turn off as he passes. Part energy savings, part safety feature. Attunement to his own body's feelings. We are the same meat. Is he hungry? Thinking about work still? Wishing he were back in bed? Thoughts about the weekend… what day is it anyways? Probably a Wednesday somewhere a long ways away from a three-day. Do they even have weekends in the future? Jobs of this caliber are so rare that individuals are strongly encouraged to put in the overtime. For what? So initech can ship a few more units? The ennui is palpable. He wants to get above this slog. He wants to overcome the limitations of his position because he believes that being higher on the ladder is less work, less time-consuming. He wants to explore freedom of action -- something he doesn't know -- and only believes must be a certain way. Again, the misunderstanding of reality -- rose-colored glasses. The expectation is that being higher on the chain means less work, but perhaps the reality is more work with more subordinates. Sounds of the doors. Sounds of the shoes. Sounds of the pants swish. What materials are these things? Is there organic cotton? Yoga pants for men? Disposable clothing? Is he on the edge of fashion, trying to look the part? Is he one step behind the fashion due to its ever-shifting nature and his lack of funds to stay on the edge. What makes fashion? Cut of the fabric? Colors? Maybe the ability to "pull off" a color combination in a world of brands and images. Pepsi colors are in due to quarterly profits being up. His company is yellow and red. Reminds him of Spain, but what is Spain? Is there such a thing anymore?
Into the garage/transport. Not likely any personal transport in the future. What about Uber-type transport? Monorail lines.. Mostly maglev trains that never stop and only slow at the pickup/drop locations. If capacity is too high, they never stop. People just walk along the lines until a lowcap maglev approaches. Personal device (PD = phone = smartphone = logical progression) can be programmed to "hail" a maglev. Can also commission a ride. Old subways have been converted to high-capacity trains and are free. Maglev require funds and are too expensive for plebs. What about the weather? Does he even care? Is this sort of thing still important to the future people. Maybe even moreso. Maybe that's all that people talk about. Maybe the greeting has changed from "what's up" to "nice weather". It's more of a wish than a statement of fact. No more "you too" canned response to "have a good day" or perhaps it's "enjoy the weather" and people still get to mumble their "you too"s. The future of exchange must be affected by the brevity and anonymity that internet life has instilled. Maybe no greeting? Maybe it's considered rude to talk to someone because it would pull them away from whatever is on their little PD screens? Kids have never been reconditioned to look at whomever is speaking to them. If they have a PD, you don't talk to them. Simple rules for a less social, more faux-social future. Maybe our protagonist laments the loss of this. Maybe he's conflicted. Some days he enjoys being quiet. Maybe this will change as he finds more interesting things in the future. He wants to share with people. I mean, really share … not just click the button to send the link. The word has lost its meaning. There is no idea of sharing property, sharing experiences; it's diluted and converted to something faster, thinner. You share your vacation pictures so that you can gain from the sharing. It's not a selfless act. You used to share food, at the expense of your own portion. Now you share so that you can feel better from the audience. You can get more feedback, more likes, more tags, more whateverthefucks. This goes hand-in-hand with the entitlement of youth [of today] and future generations from that crew. They don't teach their kids to share. Kids are expectant of things. Therefore, the only "share" they know means to rub the polaroid in their "friends'" faces. That sort of sharing. Look at this, you fuck, look how great I am. Lavish your praise and/or sympathy upon me. The protagonist spits onto the street.
Riding on the maglev. Does he sit or stand? I bet there's only ever sitting room, that's how the AI of the train knows whether to slow or stop. Maybe it just marks who arrives and who leaves by means of cameras at the entrance/exit doors. The prevalence of cameras should be in every scene. Not the clunky 1990s security camera looking things, but rather the back of your cellphone camera. Lenses. Just little black circles. You know they're cameras. They're placed in discrete locations, but they can be found. The protagonist notices one in the eye of the lady on the advertisement banner along the upper portion of the maglev. He knows this is just there to track whether you're noticing the ad. Facial recognition is compiled and compared with corporate-controlled and shared databases. That's the only true sense of share. Shared information of customers. ONLY shared within the corporate umbrella. Some ads are better than others because Coke also owns Gap and also owns AMC movie theaters, and so they can really figure you out because they're watching you. The big brother has become the big uncle… that guy who is kinda weird and inappropriate, but is always invited back because he's family. You always feel a little dirty and awkward about how familiar he is with you, of course because he talks to one of your parents and takes an interest in your life; yet, you never volunteered that information and so his knowledge is creepy, foreboding, but not incorrect. Yeah, how'd you guess? Is a common sentiment. So anyway, our protagonist views himself being viewed, contemplates whether this is a better life because you can buy more things closer to what your desires are. What are my desires? How do I even know what I want? How is it that I've been taught to want THINGS and want feelings expressed in visual media, in short snippets of human behaviors. Asynchronous snippets of beer-drinking beautiful people: I must drink this to become like this -- that's the message, but how do we even conclude that? Our species tries to link things. We want to believe what we observe. We strive to fill in the blank; in fact, we are programmed to do this via DNA. Our ability to learn from experience and to formulate generalities makes us genius beasts, but it also makes us stupid beasts by the same stroke. At this point, protagonist checks his watch or augmented reality glasses HUD for the time. A subtle reminder that as much as we think about the problems with our situation, we are knee deep in hypocrisy. He arrives at the destination. What does the maglev do or say? There's no "stop here" pull tab… too unsanitary. Touch what someone else touched? Gross. I will pull up the maglev controls on my PD and alert it that I want to stop soon. Maybe his commute is already programmed into his PD and he wants to make an adjustment.
Getting off the maglev. He navigates the menu, chooses the next stop, flicks away ads about free whipped cream on synthetic coffee mocha for a limited time only at the nearby drink shop. They know where you are. They are selling to you based on your location. He should murmur about the enticement. Wow real cream. Haven't had that in a while. He's tempted but ultimately has somewhere else to be -- or does he? Why again is he getting off early? He wants to walk passed something that appeals to him in a human way. It's the slums? Street food? He's not in corpo controlled regions. It would be one of those decisions that he has to keep from the other office staff. One of those stories where the listener would go "eww really? What for? Why would you do that?" and their face scrunched up in scrutiny of your sanity. I thought you were a normal guy, but you walked to the slums? Gross. Unsanitary. He never understood why they still called them "stops" because the train just slows down in its approach and you step off like the old cable cars. This keeps the flow going. There are no disabled considerations. If you can't take the maglev, you don't take the maglev. So what? You can get discounted personal transport or Ubercar or whatever for being disabled. Sounds fair to him. Not everything is available to everyone, that's just the way it works in the real world. His PD puts out a notification that the maglev sent to it: train is slowing, prepare for disembarkation. He stands and gets to the exit region. Acceleration is controlled so perfectly there's no falling back and stumbling, no remnant of what we conceptualize as necessary during public transportation. That means there's nowhere to hang on to. Sleek. Before he can exit, the visual display at the doors prompts "did you enjoy your ride?" and there's either a smiley face or unhappy face, or a thumbs up or thumbs down. He has to push one to leave. He's never pushed unhappy. He vaguely wonders what would happen if he did. It's hard for him to think of what situation would have to transpire to make him unhappy about this mode of travel. His PD actually customizes the output. He prefers happy face to the thumbs up. He stops the daydreaming and steps onto the padded landing region. He knows that 3M corporation makes these high-grip, low impact landing pads. They have a layer of metal beneath which, when energized, offers a substantial but gentle electromagnetic field. His PD is coordinated with the leaving of the maglev, and his shoes also have a similar design. The PD will command the shoes to energize momentarily and secure his footing for some number of tens of microseconds. Some engineer figured out how to stabilize the people when leaving the maglev train and reduce trip hazards. You wouldn't even know this system was in place because it just makes sure your feet land flat and firmly after stepping.
On the street. It's not his stop, but it's familiar enough. He'll sometimes take this walk rather than the direct maglev line to his office building. Technically it's not within corporate control, but it's close enough to feel safe enough. He can see the corporate security men on the beat across the street. See? Not too scary. Maybe it makes him feel confident and individual to stand on this side of the line… the corporate block demarcation line. Like a dog who knows he shouldn't be inside the house, but leaves one paw over the threshold and watches, mouth closed, sidelong eyes, checking to see if his master is going to care enough to say something. He wonders if the corpo security guys care enough to say "hey what are you doing over there" since he obviously looks like an office man. It's probably not their job, but then again it is their job to ensure no risk to assets -- maybe they figure someone who looks like an office man probably is an office man and isn't a threat. What kind of office man would risk his job on the other side of the line, anyways? That's just stupid. He looks up and around, seeing the largesse of the buildings, feeling the cold of the shadows cast by tall buildings that block the sun. It always seems colder than the weather app says it is. He looks at his PD, which shows time and ambient temperature on the main screen. 55F. Feels colder than that. He taps the screen, asks the unit what the feels like temperature is. The PD reports it feels like 50F because of wind and humidity. The information seems believable but he can't help to think how useless it was. Someone overhears him talk to his PD, and because it was about weather, is socially allowed to give their input: "feels colder than it says, doesn't it?" he looked at her expectant eyes and gave an affirmative. With a forced half smile, he nodded his dismissal and the stranger finally moved on. What makes weather such a social starter? I guess we have it all in common and can't really give too much opinion on it. It's inoffensive, but affects life-as-we-know-it and so seems to be an okay thing to discuss. He thought we had more things in common as a species than weather but didn't really know what he meant by that exactly and let the thought die on the vine. Probably food. You can't go around talking to people about food anyways, that's just weird. What if they're not eating anything? Actually, what if they were eating and you talked to them? Waiters do that and all you can do is look at your plate while mumbling "yeah good fine thanks" and try not to bite your cheek talking around a full mouth. And plus, people have opinions on food so nevermind he thought, maybe food isn't such a good topic for conversation after all.
On the street still. Thinking of food and being encouraged by his nose, he looked down the nearest pedestrian-only side street where much of the space was occupied by vendors of food, and some with less obvious wares. Think flea market stalls, random objects on the ground, random things hanging on walls. What sort of thing would you see at a future flea market? Right now you see shoes, durable tools like wrenches, outdated technologies like VHS, cassettes, vinyls -- so maybe future people would see CDROM, x86 laptops, flat-screen TVs rather than the new holographic projectors. Old clothes. Old sporting goods stuff. Future sport stuff? Do the masses still slaver over football? Think of future footballers with hightech pneumatic shock-absorbers about the head and neck. What sort of food would there be? Would there be a dominant ethnic food? Probably mexican and/or Chinese foods? Probably Indian too. Lots of mystery meats. Probably not even meat. We have to 3D print our animal meats from protein slurry, fat-nutrient mixture sold online. That's how future cooking works for most people. They download a file that has the sequencing for such-and-such a food. They install the necessary nutrient packs/bags into their coffee-machine looking device which prints out a side of beef. There is no store with refrigerated meats and the potential for spoilage and waste. This future cannot allow for waste. Foodnetwork.com sells 5-star recipes for 0.99$ like iTunes greatest hits. Download chicken parmesan to your iPad. Cuisinart makes an easier to clean food printer than Calphalon. You get what you pay for. People who know how to cook are eccentrics like people who know how to hunt [in our day]. No future person knows how to hunt wild animals because there really isn't such a thing. Squirrels, rats, cats, dogs, and similar scavengers are the wild game. But whatever is cooking smells legitimate. That's one thing that the future cannot hide, is our ability to grill meat. It's primal and impossible to replicate in any other way. Like sex. Computers can't take cooking or fucking away from us.
Shopping. What's a corporate shill doing slumming at the flea market? Is he looking for something in particular? A lost memento that he hawked en route to white collar glory? A gift from a wife or friend since betrayed and left in the wake of forever upward career mobility. A physical memory of simpler times? Maybe he's just looking for something illicit. Many vendors have that watching, gauging look to them. They know the type of person who isn't looking for their on-display crap -- those people are looking to ask what's behind the curtain. Drugs? Weaponry? Archaic weapons that are less effective than modern guns, but don't carry the traceable bullets or fingerprint-activated trigger technologies. Drugs are pretty easy to come by, and not so illegal as to require such subterfuge. It's probably something he thinks about: getting an unmarked gun so he can kill off his immediate managers, take their positions, become one rung closer to the invisible top of the ladder. Maybe he's just hungry. Noodles. Dumplings. Skewers. Curries. Sandwich-looking creations. He should look at his briefcase and realize he brought lunch. He can't eat these foods at his lunch break or else be at risk of being noticed. That should be an ever-present consideration for office men. If he gets noticed, he may stand out as a liability and miss promotion. Corporate culture should always revolve around cattiness, back-stabbing, one-upmanship, selling out your neighbor to get ahead. If his clothes were individualistic, or his lunch for that matter, someone would notice and the unwanted attention could cost him. One little slip up is three steps back. Each year with the company is one-half step forward. It's a slow crawl that can be undone almost immediately. Think of what would happen when Fair Isaac credit score type metrics dominate the workplace. In place of credit score, you have corporate score. They're looking for one mistake to hold against your promotion for the next 7 years. You can check your corporate rap sheet once per year. It's your responsibility to fix the errors. There is no interpersonal communication between you and your bosses. The review period occurs once per year; you're denied your promotion and then you have to figure out from the corporate report that your score is 630 because 3 years ago Janet from human resources mistook you from another John in marketing and flagged the wrong account for stapler theft. The dispute goes into your file, and will be reviewed. Hopefully it falls off in 7 years so you could be eligible for promotion then. Probably not
Still shopping. Looking around at the brick-and-mortar stores. What sort of economy exists for local businesses? Where most things are bought online, what do you still need from a physical store location? It has to involve another human. Tattoo shops, haircutters, nail / fashion shops, repair facilities for gadgets, illicit materials, medical, ad-hoc demands like toilets, liquor shops, tobacconist. It should basically resemble an urban street; let's just say SF Market around Civic Center BART. No cars though. So he's here to get a tattoo it turns out
In the tattoo parlor. It should be immediately apparent that they don't just sell body art any longer. In fact, there should be two distinct flavors in the tattoo shops along the street: typical body art like we'd expect now; but a new, clinical-looking location. The latter shops are well-lit, modern, sleek, expensive looking, like an Apple store [in our time]. These shops sell circuit tattoos, so their owners are more like engineer-artists. Programmers and hackers and makers. Our protagonist cannot afford full augmentation, but he wants to design a circuit and print it into his skin. What could these sorts of things do? What sort of color are they? They should be skin-toned tattoo colors, so a white person gets white ink and you can sorta see the design but not really unless you're looking. Almost looks like a scar by comparison to the rest of their complexion. We have to think about what he's actually getting and why. These surface tattoos can do things like communicate between two augmentations, that's their usual purpose: linking a hand with the central nervous system by means of a long drawn line. The process should be decidedly similar to traditional tattoos. Sanitary ambiguity at the cheap spots. Pain and concentration, time spent… call it the catharsis of the machine. You cannot expect to do this without acknowledging the pain. However, expensive procedures are typically done under anesthesia. Except on the black market. Think back to the chirurgeon opening sequence of Payback. Only the strong survive the infection and blasé approach to augmentation installation.
Off to work. Rolling his sleeve back down, over the bandage, he leaves the parlor. Do they even call them parlors? He's running late to work, but these types of shops open early to accommodate the corporate crowds who do under-the-counter work with them. Being late to work weighs 15% toward the corporate identity score, much like a hard inquiry might. One in a while doesn't have much impact, but two or more brings your score down. It's best not to be late. So at this point he should pass through the remaining blocks of corporate-controlled city where his office building is the capital of. Let's conceptualize neighborhoods in terms of their primary corporate headquarters. So first of all, social aggregation has required that cities reconceptualize away from the work-locus and commuter. People don't live in the 'burbs and commute to work because that process is literally impossible to maintain. Therefore arcologies are closer to what people live in. More like corporate parks. The most lucrative corporations retained the most desirable land. So, if you worked for big names like Raytheon and Microsoft, you would work and live near their headquarters which took fine coastal regions or previous big cities like San Francisco. Many square miles were cordoned-off to allow for company-specific individuals and utilities to exist. Power was often generated by the company for the express usage of that company. They could then broker sale of excess power or purchase more using the government's power lines. That's all the government did was facilitate corporate exchanges. That meant that major cities were built around the major companies of that region, and any non-corporate individuals had to move or live within "non-affiliated" ghettos. Less useful locations like all of Wyoming were basically uninhabited and ungoverned. People lived there, but the infrastructure of America has deteriorated so much that they're simple enclaves of backwards lifestyles, often subjected to harsher anarchic laws like "gun takes all" or "that's my bike, punk."
At work. His PD chirped a specific tone to indicate approved arrival to his company's controlled region. It made another noise to indicate successful credential check at the main door to his building. Every building in every corporate controlled region uses near-field communication tech to verify credentials before unlocking a door. Most credentials are stored under the wrist of the dominant hand for each worker. This is part of the benefit package, this one augmentation, and it functions only in conjunction with the user's biorhythmics. Savvy hackers can still break into buildings, of course, but it prevents the non-affiliated bums from coming inside and begging, for example. The chip below the wrist will communicate with the door handles in a similar way to most Smart Keys for cars, and therefore opening the door is as simple as pulling the handle. Each building still has a retinue of security features, mainly to ensure the non-affiliated do not loiter, piss or shit in the doorways, or attempt to overpower an office man and get inside. Similar to spikes on the ledge of a building to discourage pigeons, the exterior doorways have non-lethal pistons on the floor that will raise and vibrate, bruise, and eventually hurt a homeless who might seek succor from rains. Enhanced security features in the event of forceful attack through hostile takeover exist to harden the façade. Shatterproof safety glass, steel window protectors, automated turrets, and everything else that is useful in killing unwanted solicitors. No disclosure of who he works for at this time. Grandiose vestibule. Let's make it Deco: large columns of ubermensch seeking the heavens; trapezoidal shaped wall lamps emitting sepia tones; high ceilings above, and deep colored carpeting beneath; gold, brass, bronze, copper, and similar earth metal accents trim the visible furniture and walls. A single, real (REAL!) giant bird of paradise in an enormous urn (think Hagia Sofia marble thing) sitting on a raised dais, surrounded by a circular bench of plush 1930s opulence. It is the obvious display of wealth befitting a corporate headquarters. There is a door nearby that has a brass title: Groundskeeper. A full time position for this plant.
Elevator. Since the building is old, there would normally be 8-10 elevators facing each other in a corridor beyond the concierges. The renovation has kept one, for nostalgia's sake, with its arrow permanently pointed to the CEOs floor 43. The elevator doors are three-quarters open, finished of polished brass, and the interior carpet is a blood red that should normally be faded from constant foot traffic. He can see the antiquated control buttons, again with floor 43 illuminated, but only because of the reflection in the smudge-free mirrors of the elevator. It seems too small to be shared with other people, he thinks as he walks to one of the 20 or so individual tube lifts. As he walks up, available lifts respond to the presence of his always-broadcasting PD and illuminate the tube entrance GREEN. Green means go. He walks in without adjusting his PD to request a different floor, and it remembers his preference: floor six -- his department. Once inside the tube, which seems to be about half as wide as a port-a-potty, the tube turns yellow to indicate ready status. He pushes the holographic smiley face, again the icon he chose personally from his PD, to indicate that he is prepared. Only the floor moves upward using the same maglev propulsion so commonplace these days. It's hard to tell how fast it is, honestly. Probably faster than the elevator must have been. Definitely faster than taking the stairs. He considered how the disabled might get to the higher levels and remembered that this building was classified as not handicapped accessible, so they didn't need to have extra-wide lifts for chairs. Nobody in this entire building was disabled, by corporate restructuring. They had devised special disabled-friendly campuses that those people could manage. It didn't really affect him, so he didn't really think too much about it. What were they going to do anyways, sue the company? He laughed out loud inside the tube at his own mind's joke, saw his smiling face appear and disappear in the reflection that was illuminated by the passing lights. Floor six; the tube turned yellow to indicate it was time to prepare to leave, and when the smiley face popped up, he pressed it and left the lift.
On the job. What exactly do people do in the future? Of course they still work in buildings and stare at screens and sit on their asses, so he walks toward his dedicated workspace. They did still call them cubes, but they weren't cubicles like we would conceptualize. Plastic partitions reached upward, the bottom four feet smoked so as not to show anything other than the head of the individual in captivity. Each cube had a door, again programmed only to operate based on NFC credential check. To the side of each door was a collection area, somewhat like a check cashing place used to have. People could stand at the window, pass objects or information, speak through the speaker, and interact in simple enough ways while still disallowing entrance. Many studies showed that productivity lagged when individuals could communicate near enough to one another to avoid observation by the auditory glands of the managers. That is, people used to gossip and waste time out of earshot of the managers. Now, the managers are Productivity and Activity Managing Systems. PAMS exist on each floor as a simple computer program, essentially a time clock as we used to conceptualize, but each member of the company has to check in with PAMS. This is achieved by just doing your job, but what it amounts to is a microphone in every room, camera at every corner, and production checklist on every client computer. PAMS determines how much work should be possible to complete by the worker, produces a task list accordingly, and requires document submittal by end of day on each assignment. The microphone verifies that the noise level in each cube is consistent with official phone calls. According to the company, this does not violate privacy because it does not record the conversation, only verifies the decibels created while talking on the phone -- it's compared to the call logs generated by the VOIP system. Therefore the only potential for gossip is up to 10 minutes per day of talk-decibels not associated to a call log; or, in other words, talking through the window with another person. This is company policy to protect company secrets. Furthermore, it would require a hacker to infiltrate the building locks in order to collude with someone on the inside, and that person will incriminate themselves if they discuss at work for too long: PAMS would flag excessive gossip and mark the worker for review. Workers are capable of leaving their cube at any time to use the bathroom, take scheduled breaks, and use common facilities. These breaks are observed by PAMS cameras on the hallways. Grouping outside of group regions is against company policy. PAMS can verify what workers are currently in or out of their cubes, and therefore determine who is grouping outside of group regions, or confirm what employees are expected in what conference rooms. It can also verify whether someone is abusing bathroom policy and exploiting the company pay scheme.
Doing work. So what does he even do? Sits there. Types. Shuffles. Hours of this? What does he hope to accomplish? What is the path currently laid out for him? This is the idea of corporate score or similar. Used in hiring/firing, promotions, and basically everything. Workers compare scores. Our guy is responsible for making travel plans and arrangements of the higher-ups. He gets to see who is going where, how often, when they depart and return, but never why. This sort of glimpse of the world of the higher-ups sets him to daydreaming. What if he were the one flying low-orbit to Japan? What would that be like? What would he be doing that required him to take a trip to New York, then to Malaysia, then to Dubai in the same week like this executive? He just dreamed his little dreams, and all the while made the travel arrangements as efficiently as possible. This efficiency is how he contributes to, or rather facilitates the higher-ups' atrocious plans of doing bad stuff. In fact, the reader should empathize with the guy as he toils away, making sure to find the fairest fares to save the company dime. In so doing, he is really part of the evil machine.
The crux. Then again, he isn't solely responsible for mundane, daily travel plans as though he were an assistant to these higher-ups, but rather he coordinated their visiting areas that might raise an eyebrow. Specifically, his company is involved in creating and setting up the psych donor wards, where volunteers and "volunteers" lie in a strange comatose stasis, jacked into equipment that another -- THE other, largest, most enviable and profitable corporation in the world uses to harvest human brain processing power. Whatever. The whole concept seemed incredible and so on the bleeding edge that it couldn't possibly be real. We failed to create true artificial intelligence, so too we have failed to completely grasp our human consciousness. How could we turn people into computers? Despite great efforts to bottle up Consciousness and somehow sell it, or preserve the dying rich people who wanted to live in a computer forever. Regardless, his company created these wards… or what they called clinics to avoid scrutiny or regulation. Since his company didn't belong to the other company, there was no issue. Except that it was allegedly illegal to support a psych ward, and more importantly reflected badly on the stock to associate with such exploitative practices. His department laundered the wards for the GCC, and without him, no new wards would ever exist from their efforts.
So let's break away from narration to collect our thoughts
Narrative style should likely be done in the John Dos Passos style: story chapters; "non-fiction" chapters; headlines and stream of consciousness
We have a man who works for a corporation; his colloquial title is "office man" to the street denizens and similar. He's middle management. We see into his living arrangement, commute to work, relationship with the non-Affiliated (non-affs) businesses nearby, personal struggle to rise up the ranks.
What is missing from the above narrative? Inter-corporate competition. Some sort of fascist brand loyalty? Heil Coke! Or is that too obvious? Maybe discuss what is referred to as corporate culture. Discuss maybe what a big name corporate culture might be like versus his middle-man style company. His business just makes it possible for a bigger business to do things. Discuss the obfuscation of action. Companies still try to avoid the law, but cannot flagrantly break it.
Why can't companies flagrantly break the law? They have armed security forces. We can redefine "private property" to allow for even more personal/company control over the actions that occur on company grounds. Government property exists, but what about shared property? Parks? Police forces? Talk about how in a certain corporate area, they have privatized these things. Privatization of EVERYTHING. Do the companies own ghettos for non-affs? What about streets? There's got to be some sort of new terminology that separates major corporations from our concept of a company now. In the future, these mega corps are hands-off from the government while on their private property. What they do there is based on a member terms of service agreement. In other words, you relinquish state rights for company culture. What is an exempt-status corporation called? This is a logical extension of the supreme court ruling that companies are people. An individual owns the land, he can choose who comes and goes based on his personal preference. He is a person, after all. Companies decide who belongs to their culture.
OK so why would a nearly all-powerful company still need to play by the rules? One is branding. If the brand is tarnished, people may seek out alternative product. Murder on the hands of Coke employees looks bad, I'm sure. Among mega corps there is definitely another group waiting to take refugees or exploit the weakness of the offending corpo. It's like a neighborhood; there should be a kind of desire to get into the corporate culture. To be living within the Coke company area means to have been hired by Coke or interviewed to live within the non-aff regions owned by Coke. If you're representing the company and do "bad things" you will be asked to leave the town or region because, again, it's private property and Coke can just boot you off. If the company itself does something wrong, then it will affect hiring and other human outlook considerations. Fines, breakdown of transit, etc. must all be preserved as well. If the company does bad stuff, then their fines may be per-border percentages, which means using the rest of the country for transport becomes expensive. Loss of money may be a good enough reason not to do shitty business -- that is, as long as it's losing ENOUGH money.
Future world should be conceptualized as though the republicans had "won" -- most things are privately owned. Anything public is going to be isolated -- in the rockies, or in middle america, or basically wherever doesn't matter. Companies own the lakes, parks, etc. because we destroyed the EPA and decided that companies could better protect the environment. Private solutions wherever possible have been implemented. Roads are privatized within the company-owned regions. Interstate travel is still government regulation. What does the government look like? Nothing at all except military and geography. Military spending always up. Social programs -- federal programs -- dissolved. Social security gone; argument that employer-provided retirement packages will keep people alive. There is still state welfare, which is disbursed to non-aff people once per month. Things like food stamps are branded! Only valid at affiliated Pepsi-owned KenTacoHut stores. Are non-aff given any cash at all? Maybe things like stock options for the supporting company of the state. California subsidized welfare includes $200 tacobellcash and 100 shares of pepsi. Builds loyalty?
How did the republicans win? I think they need to figure out that the millenial generation, while liberal at heart, is more narcissistic than politically left. So they adjust the platform to appeal to this narcissistic tendency. How does this look? How does a political group appeal to this character quality? Does it not already? The people in politics are likely already quite narcissistic, therefore it's not much of a stretch that that generation flocks to be heard or seen. Ironically, the GOP party starts to take on a more true-to-origin ethos (research this) where individuality, fewer social programs, less government oversight are again popular ideas. As the old geezers die off, so do their outdated Christian anti-gay, anti-women ideals. The rising republican youth is socially progressive vis a vis LGBT, race minority considerations, etc.; yet their policies are all about me here-and-now. They think less in terms of sweeping strokes that are best for everyone, but rather specific things that many like-minded narcissists can get behind: must have toilet seat down, omg I hate that when it's up! Freedom of internet access! Freedom of selfie-stick! Bla bla.
Fake nails on fat fingers
No, but that's just it. There is no such thing as one side versus the other. America morphed into a one-party system, representing the only important citizens there are: corporations. The idea of corporate personhood extends beyond party lines because there is no populist party. The jazz hands distractions of the corporate-controlled media, political talking heads, and emotional flash-point "political" issues keeps the general public happy to consume. We can discuss the death knell of the populist movement… death by distraction. Think Huxley morphing with Orwell.
What about the destruction / decline of government-supplied social welfare, and instead supplant brand packages. People within a community are so brand-loyal, they are supported by the companies in some way. This becomes self-fulfilling as a new baby is born, it is given aid through Coke Family Fund, which means that the child growing up learns to love the brand. The parents appreciate it because they get the food/medical support. Coke owns Pedialac or whatever, but it also owns MacDonald's or they're somehow tied together, and therefore all meals are provided. Likewise, schools are branded, so there's desire to go to a Coke Education Foundation school and compete against the Pepsi Youth Organization teams in soccer.
Headline: The fluffer Union is suing Viagra
The major players in government-supported corporate powers are not as much military in nature as pharmacological. More and more funds are channeled away from "defense" against foreign entities and into "placation" of the population. We can see headlines of "America fears ____ the most" starting with terrorist attack around "now" and moving toward "unhappiness" or some other metric
SIGNS: PROPERTY CRIMES ENFORCED ON PREMISES
RL TRENDS TO INVESTIGATE FOR STORY NARRATIVE
- Words and phrases that future people may adopt, or their superceded counterparts
- Persian gulf not inhabitable by end of century due to heat (http://gizmodo.com/the-middle-east-could-become-too-hot-for-human-life-wit-1738801004)
- Artificial light (pollution) preventing sky view
- Privatization / corporatization of "public" schooling leads to changes in the student base. They become more like consumers, expecting consumer-style perks and entitlements normally provided by a company to a customer. How does this shape the future generations?
- Surveillance as a mode of life
- Pharmaca "shadow regulations" -- can't figure out a way to ban imports of generic drugs, so they figure out other ways to obfuscate the acquisition: (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/09/how-big-pharmas-shadow-regulation-censors-internet)
Believable future tech
Graphene
Flexible electronics
Charging / signal boosting wear
Short length projection
HUD
Printable circuits, "faxable" solids
Drawable circuits
Exoskeleton / boosted movement apparatus
SSPS = space solar power systems
Smoke stick brands like Apple... Project hologram of smoke liquid brand.
EV + "powerwall" type device means that the car can be portable power plant for large-scale locations
Permafrost thawed ancient viruses, etc
"datasec" data security is going to be a huge subset of future corp
Darpa is beginning work on "wetware" interface brain-computer
The future is in graphene, wearables, augmented reality on a lightweight scale
Makeup against facial recognition
http://weburbanist.com/2016/11/28/how-to-be-invisible-15-anti-surveillance-designs-installations/
Bijels =
can direct two different non-mixing liquids into a variety of exotic architectures. This finding could lead to soft robotics, liquid circuitry, shape-shifting fluids, and a host of new materials that use soft, rather than solid, substances.
From <http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/25/nanoparticle-surfactant-bijel/>
http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/09/25/nanoparticle-surfactant-bijel/
Found on her resume: Samples of my creative writing are featured on Yelp.
TENANTS OF THE DESIGN FOR USE IN A GAME
- The purpose of the main quest line is to end the game quickly and provide an ending that seems strange and out of place because the player did not know the full story.
- This design will reward people who branch out to learn more about the world. Like in reality, following without thinking for oneself is a good way to cause bad things to happen -- banality of evil
- Players will NOT be punished indirectly by declining "quests" -- lots of RPGs require a player to follow every directive because it's the best way to level up or power up.
In the future, the global warming has turned american landscape into something different. The center heartland has dried up, and turned to desert. The coastal regions are suffering from flooding, and many coastal cities have been swallowed up, or moved inland. Modern established cities have been built on huge concrete and metal platforms. In the base, before the water comes, there are the denizens of the gutters. Since the tides come in and leave, all the refuse in those bottom areas are essentially living tidepools. There is an organic teeming associated with the mechanical abandonment of human excess. Wrecked cars are host to barnacles, etc.
The MAIN STORY should feel just like any other games "main quest" -- completely devoid of any personal investment. You are just following the prompts and completing the tasks set forth.
METAPHORICAL ideas
the idea of the the game's virtual world is really akin to comparing how people are not paying attention in the real world. In the "real world" the "virtual world" is the obsession with Kanye and the Kardashians, American idol, and other forms of important considerations. Whether to buy apple products, and other banalities, are the true stuff of our real world virtual world.
The dialogue design should include ways to basically intimate that there is more going on than what meets the eye, and that if the individual were interested in exploring the world, this is a possibility.
Using the NSA etc as an example… private company access to information gathered by public groups is troubling
Operating systems for the in-game HUD / controls
kissOS - the simplest user interface
adminUI - the default UI, point click kill. Minimal interactivity. Lots of make-game-easy data like maps, threat information, etc.
NixOS - most extensible UI but most obscure / fractional. Never gives benefits but always allows any script to run? Greatest arrangement of different abilities. Requires knowing more about the game to be effective. Power user concept
Aluminum - apple-style sleek OS. Runs well, but only runs its native applications and is therefore limited in its choices
commonOS - windows equivalent. Does many different things, no real specialization. Should be considered "normal" user OS