Before today’s story, I’d like to say that in my recommendations last week, I think I was too cavalier in recommending “The Last Duel” without qualification. I mostly talked about Ben Affleck’s silly goatee, which is indeed quite silly but not a good reason not to see this masterpiece. However: The film itself is harrowing, incredibly so. The comparison to Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” was apt, tonally. It is brutal and there is horrifying sexual violence in it. Indeed, it is a poignant reminder of just how capricious and brutal our human past was.
I think those sorts of films are worth making and worth watching. But I should have said what it was at some point, and I apologize if anyone watched it thinking it was a light-hearted movie about facial hair.
So:
For this week’s story, I set myself a challenge: To write a story in one hour, that was exactly five hundred words long, and written in the second person. Here is that story.
The Service
There is a Service that can fix your life. It will not tell you what to do, or where to go, or what to care about. But when you do, and go, and care, it will smooth your way. Problems which would have stopped you will not exist.
Other people around you begin using The Service, and their lives improve in obvious though unexplainable ways. Their plans work out. They are chosen. They move forward and do not slump back. Studies are done and there is scientific proof that people who use The Service reach their goals more frequently than those who do not.
Here’s how it works:
You give it money you do not possess, and describe yourself in ways inadequate to full understanding.
A computer you did not invent does things you cannot understand, to algorithms of which you are not aware, in liminal spaces to which you cannot travel.
The things that this computer does change things of whose existence you are ignorant. There are secondary consequences which even the computer does not control, and tertiary consequences which are far beyond any ken at all.
The benefits you receive are enormous, but they are mostly negative, in the sense of things that are not happening. You are not losing contact. You are not being denied. You are not pulled away by necessity. You are not ensnared by bureaucracy.
At first, you wonder often if a situation that arises has been arranged by The Service. In time, you come to accept that this is not a question you are equipped to answer. Soon after, you forget that The Service exists, and the life inside your mind goes on exactly as before.
Your children consider The Service a birthright and cannot imagine a time before The Service when things were more difficult. You realize that you would fight to defend The Service. You would pay more if more was charged and you would sacrifice other priorities to ensure its continuation.
The amount of improvement in your life due to The Service remains impossible to measure. The moment the thought to do so occurs to you is the moment that it becomes impossible to relate to the person you were without The Service.
Because of this lack of relation, you find you cannot explain your relationship to The Service to anyone who is not also using it. You find yourself mouthing platitudes. You find yourself reaching for analogies. You do not wish to admit your own lack of understanding. You have forgotten your lack of understanding.
You still experience unhappiness. You still encounter obstacles. You feel worse about the obstacles you cannot surmount. You feel less responsible for your accomplishments. Because you have forgotten The Service, you cannot identify these feelings.
You still do not know what The Service does. You do not know if it only refers to one thing, or many. You do not know if you have signed up for The Service. You finish reading the story.
END
I hope you enjoyed! As always, you can help me out by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends. Have a great week!
In making our lives easier, technology has also made our lives more dystopian.
Interesting observation: Replace “the Service” with “A parent” and the story still makes sense. Hmmmmm…..