Re-awakening The Awake Chronicles: Connected

Finding freedom in disconnection. Is it possible? From my own experience it is and I tend to welcome it more than most people. A friend of mine now agrees. Ever have your mobile phone break? Well, I had my mobile phone break once, actually more than once and that experience inspired something I hadn't expected, THIS. Anyhow, THIS from a series that I was so excited to create, although I haven't shared its entirety here. And I will not. Enjoy if you've never read. kisses. m.

Connected
(6-6-10) 

Connected. From the moment that you’re born. Not even ten minutes into this world before someone else is calling the shots. Right as the nurses have wiped away the remains of after birth and just before you meet your mother, it happens. A doctor with a long wire needle attached to a sinewy device. The imagery they feed you is of a moment that resembles a humming bird gently tipping into a flower. It’s nothing like that at all. Down the needle plunges into the depths of the head via the ear canal. On the tip of that needle, there it rests. 54 times smaller than the head of pin.  Invisible to the naked eye. Further and further the needle dives into the aural canal until making contact with the cochlea. Implanted.

Tagged. Released. Monitored.

Implantation. The integration of humanity is what they called it in the beginning. If you’re like 99.9% of the population this won’t mean a single thing to you. Part of the HIVE. Unknown to life without it. A life that I once lived obliviously. Walking through the same shadows as everyone else.

Connections. Calls come in at all hours of the day and night. There are no set parameters for connecting to someone. Reach out and touch someone. Literally.

Picking up the line is no more difficult than blinking your eye. It’s a reflex. A drop-kick sent to a cochlear implant. A microscopic computer; A device making it possible for you to integrate with the world at a constant rate.

Mail. Gaming. Radio. Talking. Setting up a connection to the Far East for a post-lunch business wrap up seminar.  All things impossible are now inside your head.

AWAKE!

The day it happened I wasn’t prepared for the silence. The disconnect was powerful, but not unpleasant. I knew instantly I was breaking the law. And there wasn’t a way to reverse the situation without reporting the error.

Three calls dropped simultaneously while I was walking to the grocer’s. Walking down the street among the connected with their conversations. Loud ones. Silent ones.  Watching as they moved forward, never making eye contact, able to disconnect from anything outside of their own head. Waiting for my link to re-establish itself.

Silence in my head at the checkout line. Unlike my shopping counterparts, I’m actually stopping to read a magazine. Well the paper slip advertisement for a new web service that filters your connections and wired network through an external device. Resembling the once thought extinct mobile phone devices of the 20^th century.

Sitting at home alone that fateful evening in the quiet of the room with the full realization of disconnection. Freedom. Brain recalling slowly the familiarity of noises. Mailboxes are overloaded with sound without release.  After taking another glance at the paper slip ad, I ordered the archaic looking device and then take an old pair of speakers down from the closet. The impending repercussions of my release are catastrophic, yet I chose to move ahead.

Obsolete devices are now my only salvation in this world gone mad.

A world driven to interact at a constant rate.

A world connected by laws and systems that serve the purpose of mass control through a form of programmed hypnosis.

Three years ago, an ordinance passed, mandating any living man, woman, and child be implanted. Any unreported violations of the law would require immediate reclassification of status to criminal. Disconnections are seen as aberrations, removed and relocated for gentle reconditioning.

Abandoning of mobile listening units came and went with a swift movement of progression. The last of the technologically advanced units were seen nearly two years ago. The real and wireless worlds are now only connected with words and mere images.

Silence filters out from the speakers of any device.

With a thought you’re already plugged into any streaming programming in the vicinity. Changing channels with an impulse.

JACK IN became the official motto of the FOX network before taking a belly dive in the ratings for airing the first reality based SNUFF broadcast of the 21^st century. Others followed with clever witty slogans to brand their patented version of streaming sound. None of which quite captured the concept in the same way.

Jacking into your head was the best analogy to describe the experience.

A handful of researchers discovered the efficiency of a radical new auditory implant. The technology was devised to send and receive sounds through a direct link with the brain. It’s implications in the world of communication were revolutionary.

Good ol Big Brother sees the possibility in military applications. Forward moves the funding and research for bigger purposes. Functions set into motion by the demand for a next gen combat infantry that will save us all.

The precedent was set into motion nearly 15 years ago. However, most people don’t realize we’ve only been wired to each other for about 5 years. Codes were created to establish a comfort subroutine into the hardware. Voices in the head streaming at a continuous rate. It’s all they’ve ever known. As familiar as dear old Mom’s apple pie. People needed to assimilate to the change in order to move forward with a global network.

Like the brainwashed masses, I didn’t know more about this life until I wasn’t a part of it anymore.

Gentle conditioning for those who have disconnected. It’s a lie. Try torture. There’s a failure on the government’s part to accept that an implant disconnecting from the HIVE is involuntary. Treating any victim of disconnection as a terrorist. Conditioned brainwashing followed by a radically invasive surgery to extract the broken implant. Re-implantation.

Most of the time the new implantation is successful and the candidate never remembers the break. There’s nearly a 20% fail rate and 5% fatality rate for those re-implanted. Failed candidates prove to be prime guinea pigs for experimental procedures that allow the HIVE team to learn and extrapolate data from.

Some live. Some die. Most will never know they were somebody before they were disconnected.

Disconnections. Putting down the line is more difficult than it seems. Stopping the reflex. Unplugging. Keeping the listening device out of your head and participating with the world in a flesh and blood capacity.

Calls come in at all hours of the day and night. There aren’t always people there to answer them. I’m one of those people. My days are now spent silently co-existing within a system that chains billions into a passive form of slavery, while looking for other disconnects.

Disconnects don’t realize they have an option. I’m here to show them, that they do.