Prologue 6, Disturbance
The underground journey between the towers is a few kilometres long and passes quickly. While most of his fellow passengers are talking among themselves, Alexander is instead focusing on the virtual adverts that flit across his vision.
One in particular catches his attention, not due to his inherent interest but for its persistent attempts to gain notice. The bright advert featured a large building and a group of generic smiling teenagers; truthfully, it looked about as normal an advert as he had ever seen.
But as he looked at the ad closer, his sight glitched; suddenly, the person who was in the front and centre of the ad looked disturbingly familiar. Alexander blinks at the abrupt change in his thoughts, causing him to frown at the strange dichotomy that looking at the person now invokes.
He was certain that he didn’t recognise anyone in that ad, so why does it now feel familiar?
Just before he could search his memory properly and attempt to discover who the person was, the advert's demeanour suddenly changed. Instead of merely floating around the bus trying to catch people's attention, as virtual adverts usually do, it instead started to ram itself straight into Alexander's vision.
Alexander grimaced in annoyance as he immediately began to suspect that the image was less an advert and more some type of malware.
His eyes lose focus as he concentrates on his virtual presence, intent on trying to remove whatever is affecting him, but he quickly gets distracted by the persistent advert as it begins to actively shove itself in his face, bypassing completely his virtual filters that absolutely should have handled it.
Alexander's response is immediate; he blacklists the annoying advert. But to his surprise it remains aggravatingly visible.
Alexander directs a frown at the strange advert; he had been capable of seeing virtual adverts for over a decade and had never seen one that acted like this or, more importantly, one that could ignore a blacklisting.
Before he could investigate the abnormality further, the advert unexpectedly switched focus, and he watched as it began to collide with all the other occupants of the transportation pod, behaving like a hyperactive attention-seeking dog.
To his confusion none of them seemed to notice at all; it didn’t seem possible, but did they have even better filters than he did? Strictly speaking, that wasn’t impossible; the tower he lives in is marketed for people in the middle class. They could no doubt afford things that are not free due to his scholarship, such as advanced cybernetics or resources that enhance their virtual filtering capabilities.
Or maybe they had a filter patch that he was unaware of; he had been spending all of his time on his lessons. Maybe he had missed something?
‘Why aren’t they reacting to it? Have my filters been compromised?' Alexander asks himself in dismay.
The advert quickly seems to get tired of being ignored by the pod's other occupants, who appear to still be completely unaware of it, and it instead charges back to Alexander, smashing itself into his face again. He instinctively flinches as the advert completely covers his vision.
'OK, fine! What is this thing? Will you go away if I read you?!’ Alexander responds unnaturally.
With his frustration mounting, Alexander made a mistake—didn’t he?
He knew it was a mistake the moment he’d made it, but the damned advert had simply annoyed him into action… It was his action, wasn’t it?
‘I did decide to interact with the advert… didn’t I?’ Alexander thought to himself, increasingly unsure.
Certain that he had decided on his course of action, he of course accepted the insistent pinging of the advert and allowed it to message him directly.
“On Life Learning: This non-profit organisation wishes to advise you! Yes, you young man! Is your future in doubt? Do you not know what career is best for you? Well, look no further, because On Life Learning has the best future lined up just for you! Go to intriguing new locations that nobody has seen before! Invent amazing new techniques, the envy of the worlds! Find love! All things are possible with On Life Learning. Visit today.”
‘What the hell is this? I’m clearly tagged as a scholarship university student; my future is quite literally spoken for. I couldn’t deviate from it even if I wanted to. Why is this thing aggravating me at all? Is it bothering current university students about the course of their already decided education?'
Alexander frowns in disbelief and then considers the advert again.
‘Could this thing sound any more generic or shady? I’m sure that there’s an Iranian prince in desperate need of a few thousand credits, and only I can help him.' He thinks to himself, eyes rolling, ‘What the hell is that basic typo? “Envy of the worlds”, please. As if the bootstrap colonies in the solar system could be called “worlds”.’
Alexander lets out a disdainful snort. With access to modern AI, how does someone make a basic spelling mistake like that anyway? Moments before moving on, he has a brief flash of memory, recalling the advert's image and the strangely familiar figure on it.
‘…Wait a minute. Haven’t I heard of this group from class somewhere? Who mentioned receiving advice from this non-profit? I don't remember.'
Alexander briefly tries to remember where he had heard of this non-profit, but the memory simply didn’t come to him; it must have been incredibly brief or obscure if he couldn’t pull it from active memory. He considers for a moment digging into his long-term memory to find out more but cannot bring himself to care enough to try.
And then the advert is once again right in his face, filling his vision; this time, however, it is terrifyingly different. To his mounting horror, he finds that the advert now seems to have a genuinely physical presence; every time it rams itself into his face, he finds himself flinching as if physically struck.
He feels – he isn’t certain what he feels – terror as it repeatedly rams into him; a strange presence begins to linger in the back of his eyes. As Alexander feels his eyes becoming heavy, he forces himself to focus, biting heavily into his tongue and cheeks, the pain giving him a moment of increasingly rare clarity.
With his frustration and terror at the situation he’s found himself in mounting, Alexander focuses on his virtual filters, hoping to find a way to get the apparently military-grade advert to leave him alone. Bafflingly, he finds that they seem fully intact and working as intended, not even having registered the advert at all. His virtual filters seem to have ignored even the fact that he had foolishly accepted it.
But then what is going on with the advert? How could Alexander's cyberware not have registered that he had accepted the advert at all?
He had already blocked it; hell, he had even already accepted its pitch, and yet it was still pinging him. Apparently, the advert was not satisfied with giving its completely generic message only once.
From what he had read, even military-grade malware shouldn’t be able to physically batter him like this. Not without nearby support systems.
“You alright there, mate?” came a voice from beside him, pulling his attention away from his descent into horror.
The voice directed at him seemingly banishes the advert, leaving Alexander blinking in confusion. He finds himself turning to see a look of concern directed at him. Could he not see the advert being so aggressive?
“… just an annoying advert.” Alexander answers, as if it were obvious. But then he frowned at what he had said. Had his voice just echoed?
“Really? You need to update your filters; I don’t see any.” The man confirms what Alexander had already suspected; he really couldn’t see it.
“Ah… Yeah, it looks like someone slipped a backdoor passed me. Guess I’ve been too busy with school lately.” Alexander concedes.
He is almost certain that there is no backdoor, but what other explanation could there be? Adverts just don’t act like this in his experience; he can’t help but feel something else is going on.
Alexander twitches in surprise. Did his voice just echo again?
“Better get that looked at then; you're lucky this is one of the safer cities, you know.” The man smiles as he speaks, and Alexander admits that he is right. Although gang violence and active gangs are rare in Birmingham, this isn't always the case elsewhere. It is indeed fortunate that he’s not living somewhere more dangerous.
“I’m on my way to the clinic anyway; I guess I’ll ask them.”
Alexander blinks, noticing that the strange echo in his voice is gone. Was it just his mind playing tricks on him after that strange advert had tormented him?
The man nods in acceptance and turns away to continue his conversation.
Alexander reflects on the advert in concern. It really wouldn’t hurt to ask for a quick scan at the clinic, would it? They’ll be doing a full body and cyber scan anyway; what’s a bit of extra maintenance just in case?
Before he can follow that thought any further, the darkness of the tunnel disappears as the pod enters the transport hub of Tower 5.
The pod's network chimes the arrival, and everyone gets up to leave.
Mercifully, the advert stays in the pod and doesn’t follow him. Alexander was half worried that the damned thing would bug him for the rest of his day.
Alexander looks to the centre of the hub, knowing that they are all arranged in exactly the same way, and moves to the elevator.
Soon, he is on the ground floor of Tower 5.
Tower 5, Alexander reflects, is one of the wealthiest towers in the city. No greater proof of its affluence can be found than on the ground floor. The ground floor of all mega-towers is some sort of shopping and services district, and while the inhabitants of the tower have essentially purchased right of way by renting an apartment, people like him from outside of the tower can use those services.
Like all of the ‘rich’ towers, the available shops and services are of much higher quality and cost. Alexander had looked once in this tower's food shop and found the costs to be truly eye-watering; they had sold exclusively real food, and he had flinched away, not daring to try any.
Although he has heard from Mike that real food instead of synthetics is absolutely worth the price increase.
Alexander shifts his gaze away from the market; maybe once he has a high-paying job in genetics, he can buy real food from places like it and instead looks at the gene clinic that he had come here for.
Brightly lit and with a tremendous virtual presence, it is perhaps the most expensive part of the entire tower. Under normal circumstances there would be no way he could afford the high-end treatments that this gene clinic offers, but being a scholarship student at one of the world's foremost universities has some truly mind-blowing benefits, such as access to exclusive medical services and financial support for advanced healthcare options.
For instance, some of the best gene treatments in the world are available for free.
Although he had essentially sold a decade of his life to the universities' whims in exchange for benefits like that, he reflects on his life choices and realises he doesn’t regret doing so; his theoretical lifespan is already doubled compared to what it would otherwise be.
‘Yes… a decade out of two centuries is a truly easy choice.’ he thinks to himself firmly.
And he will certainly live long enough for even more sophisticated gerotherapeutics to be made available; if his career plans go forward, then Alexander might even be one of the people that creates them!
‘Yes, it’s worth it. I will make it worth it.’ Alexander thinks to himself with a smile.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Alexander walks through the gene clinic's door.