Everywhere In a Flash
He watched as his investments went up.
“Just as expected.”
Stocks for the biggest agricultural biotech company turned global pharmaceutical company are also up.
“Pattern recognition”, he continued, as he absorbed the light emanating from the screen. The title of an article reads “Wall Street falls after tepid earnings” but the title is meaningless. The live stream of numbers, percentages, quotes, graphs, lines, and symbols fill the screen. Each one a dot of black and white as if taken from a monochromatic pointillist painting. He sits back in his chair, analyzing the dots, waiting for behaviors and patterns to emerge from the screen. It only takes seconds, but they were enough. His hand reaches out and he places another bet.
Enter.
Confirm.
He gets up from his desk and walks toward the kitchen. Everything happens in seconds now. Time and Space collapsing upon itself everywhere around him. Hyper self awareness becomes a neurosis. At first, it was sought after, even killed for. Efficiency and intelligence became interchangeable. One ad read, “Classifications are just straitjackets, preventing people from seeing all the overlaps and intersections.” The day he realized he can analyze his own psychological state with a clear and objective viewpoint, words like
life, happiness, sadness, agony, pain,
and death
failed him. These are words that describe only one facet of emotions. Their meaning became binary. But now, his feelings become more complex as his own self awareness increases. They amplify exponentially through interactions with others and being aware of their awareness. He can’t help but be aware of others. Everything is a pattern.
He dreams but they’re not the same dreams that he had as a child, back when when people lived linearly, before they were given the ability to process vast amounts of information at once.
His emotions are multi-faceted.
His sub conscious no longer exists.
He stands in his kitchen, and thinks to himself, “I have no regrets.”