76) Symbolic Computers

Having been preoccupied with the stresses of AP coursework with little time for fun, it's hard to take time out of the day for mind exercises. Exercises like imagining worst case scenarios.

Sometimes it's slight, just you missing the bus and having to walk five miles home. Other times, it's finding out your dog has died or that you didn't hit save when the power cut out in the middle of typing up your English final. It's nice to think about these situations to prepare for them, so you'll know what to do if it happens.

My worst case scenario was having my shiny new computer break down on me. It was the infamous Blue Screen of Death, they call it, indication of the failed processes of an economic giant that has so thoroughly embraced capitalism. It's my firm belief that Microsoft and it's new Windows 7 is just a placeholder for the next product that comes out and soaks up billions of dollars. That next product will become another placeholder, and so on.

The important thing to understand about any company is that with size comes responsibility. Whatever service, whatever product you're trying to sell, is not necessarily purposed to help your customers; it's purposed to help you gain wealth. But I'm not here to speculate on the psychological and sociological reasons for starting a business. I'm here to tell you how such a business can explode into something so helplessly loathed by many.

When a company gets big enough, it hits what I call the "care factor". Basically, at this point, the company is perverted from it's original purpose, regardless of what it was, to serve no other interests but it's own through any means necessary. Most of the time, it just means that they sacrifice quality over quantity to gain the most profit. Other times, it's them buying out competitors and laying off people.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think this happens to every large company that exists, but the evidence is there to prove how products have degraded over time due to this care factor. It affects almost every American sector out there: electronics, food, clothing, etc.

So when I flipped through the motherboard manual for my computer to troubleshoot the problem, it wasn't a surprise to see how Microsoft products would cause such a disaster, since it outsources technical support for "cost", builds crappy and buggy operating systems for "cost", just so that by the time you get around to fixing it, you're already being forced to buy the next product down the line.

It's why I think Apple products are so popular. People are just so fed up with Microsoft, a company that seems to go out of its way to exploit customers by forcing them to buy products that they can't seem to avoid. And that's the cold, hard fact: you can't avoid Microsoft Windows. It constitutes a very large majority of the computer industry, and at least one computer you use in this lifetime will contain Windows. You know it, and Microsoft knows it, so they can use whatever tactics they want to earn money at your expense. It's almost a sick form of control that they know you can't break.

Apple, after they exploded with their fanbase, has also crossed the care factor. They come out with newer products in the same line every single year, setting the stage for consumerism peer pressure. If you don't get the new one, you're not up to date and are part of the old breed. It doesn't matter if you only use this new product for only six months, because by then you'll be holding the next product down the line.

And so, my friends, this is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Everyone has the insinuation that American capitalism is the best thing in the world. It's fair, orderly, and allows the basic person to live and survive for the effort they put in.

And yet, the income brackets are highly polarized, your background and race quantify where you get hired, and there will always be homeless wandering the streets a few blocks from the city center.

American capitalism is idolized like it's some holy messiah that can't be brought down by anything. Maybe it can't. But most people never consider that other countries have children begging for food while your neighbor complains that the line at Starbucks is too damned long. Not everyone has your type of capitalism.

Can you blame anyone? Maybe not. But the quantified greed that exists makes the entire concept of capitalism a horrid oxymoron. Americans are indoctrinated to ignore this, treading down a preconceived road that has only the illusion of free will. You are born, your are taught, you work, and you die. Nothing more, nothing less. Every once in a while they'll let a select group break out of this path, and even then they only exist to embody the next generation of workers.

If this is the society that we are treading downward, then it is in fact a very bleak future. Americans can hardly believe that money isn't everything. It's what makes a film like Fight Club a cult classic; it's an indication that we believe everything is meaningless and trivial, that we have to hurt ourselves to feel something, anything.

All the while, I'm still trying to fix my stupid computer, wondering what I'm supposed to tell future generations about how to live in America. Maybe I'll save the old computer to show them one day, just so I can tell them: "This is the embodiment of everything you will do. You will work and then you will die. If you falter off course, you will be forgotten and discarded."

"You will obey the master system. You will be controlled. You are soulless automatons. Your conceptions of free will are illusions. You have no say over your own destiny."

75) The War Incarnate

The following is my speech in favor of a bill that would reduce military spending in the U.S. budget for my school's mock congress. One minute is not alot of time to preach.

Speech Text – Pro H.R. 278 (Reduce Military Spending)

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a general who helped the United States win World War 2. He was not only renowned for his ability to work with famous leaders such as de Gaulle and Churchill, but also for his ability to see the United States for what it is in relation to the world.

When he left office as the 34^th president of the United States, he warned us of the growing U.S. military and the looming threat of the Cold War. He believed that the United States, composed of competent and intelligent individuals, would eventually put a stop to both. We won the Cold War, but we did not stop growing the military.

If we are to be sure of anything, it’s that brute force will not win us wars. It won’t defend us. Having the best funded military in the world did not help America win Vietnam, and it is not helping us win the war in the Middle East now. H.R. 278 not only works to correct wasteful spending, but also helps us understand an important concept: that having the most expensive military is not the best thing in the world. We are wasting taxpayer dollars to buy new planes to replace ones that haven’t even lived for five years. We spend more money on the military than China, France, Russia, the UK, and the next ten countries down combined.

I started with Eisenhower, so I’ll end with a quote from him: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. War solves nothing.”

74) Damn Robots

>>TO: UEF ULTRABAND (C-34928S)
>>FROM: CORPORAL FALL H. VALKYIR (UHF-98U-9ITY-78)
>>SUBJECT: BURN LETTER
>>READCON: READ UPON DEATH/MIA
>MESSAGE START<

This is one of those mandatory letters they make you write in restCON to make you think about the perspectives you have in life and make you more "human". God knows we need enough of that these days. Goddamn cams are watching me right now, so I guess I'll start from the top.

I was born in New San Diego, UEF. January 22, 2278. Blasted through school as one of those students in the back that never raised a hand. Hell, do they even do classrooms anymore? I don't know. Everything's a bit fuzzy since the last memory wipe.

Can't remember those days. Pushed it down further than I thought, specifically when I came out to my parents that I was gay. That was a nuclear firestorm to set me in the military anyway. Screw my parents. I was just being honest. Was that so wrong? I remembered a time when it wasn't illegal to be who you were. They proved the gay gene existed, and it still wasn't enough. Hell, I don't even know what I'm angry about anymore.

While we're being honest, I was scared shitless, bouncing around the streets. Stories and adventures not worth telling. Then the war. I was 22 then.

Everyone loves to praise technological advances, and then one day they gain sentience and decide to wipe out humanity. It's difficult to feel safe when every street corner has a microchip tracking you 24/7. They had to pull the plug on the entire grid. The chaos was incredible, humans so reliant on tech that they couldn't handle a blackout. Heard a couple thousand committed suicide because they lost access to the net.

But, back to honesty. That's all the rage these days. Ask the robots and they'll tell you the only truth is for humanity's extinction. Your coms always need you to be honest short of just reading your brain. No reason not to, but it's hard to tell the truth when you're fighting invincible machines that feel nothing. Find one guy who tells you he's not scared, and I promise you he's a lying sack of shit.

It's ironic really, that humans need to feel more robotic to fight them. You can trade your memories for rank promotions, replacing them with indoc materials. Suddenly you wake up and you can't remember where you were born, who your parents were, or how you got into this mess. Funny I can't remember what I chose to forget. That irony's overrated nowadays.

We're treated like them too, eating, sleeping, and fighting like we're machines. If you die, they throw your dog file into the heap, where it gets sent to whoever in the family still remembers you. My parents are probably dead, but I don't really care. Most of my family died when they took San Antonio. Maybe they turned into machines. I'd like to shoot through their metal skulls.

Yet here we are, part of the bullshit "Humanization Program" to emphasize our human qualities. We're amazing little people that went to the moon, cured cancer, and solved world hunger, all on our own, without the help of AI's. They make us have sex whenever possible to try and bring out those "emotions". Weird thing is, I think the machines wanna kill us because they don't understand human emotion. Maybe they're jealous? I wouldn't mind giving a robot a blowie.

Not to mention how hard it is for me to try. They make me pair up with a girl in the company, some beautiful little thing whose name I can't remember right now, mostly because I wish it was a guy and they don't allow that. I should be thankful they haven't taken me out back and shot me already, but I think it's because they need every last man. Breed kids for the war. Become sex crazed breeding robots so you can create more robots to fight robots.

Maybe the best part of this war is you're not actually killing other humans. Feel thankful that we're not like our grandfathers that used to fight each other, back when countries still existed. All we are is just a good little line of toy soldiers popping laser aimed shots into robot head plates like it was some sort of perverse fetish. The armor injects you with a combat high when you do it, like some sort of valtrix drug that gives you a euphoric burst. You get a high every time a robot gets phazed in the head.

That's the military for you. The protector of humanity. UEF goes a long way in a society that embraces violence and savagery. Take a guy like me off the street, and transform that rage into something you can't recognize.

The military for the savior. A soulless automatic construct that takes you and shapes you into what it wants. Humans are infinitely malleable, and they made me believe my commanders and bunkmates are the best thing in the world. Fighting for a common cause, dying for what's right, that's the good stuff. Can't complain, though. Get free meals, play with big guns, play with girls, and then play with the robots. It's all relative. Heaven if I ever saw one.

I think I finally remember what I told them to erase. Not that it matters. What was his name? Jacob? I don't know. Not worth digging back into.

I don't know that anyone's going to read this. Probably not. They don't tell you which burn letter they save. Anyways, I've passed the minimum word limit, so here's me signing off.

Any future people that read this, don't put blind faith in machines. They'll end up sucking you into death. Give human emotions some credit. We're not meant to be goddamn calculators.

Try being who you are. Or don't. They'll wipe your memory anyway.

>MESSAGE END<
>>ARCHIVED SU-897O