Online Revolution Part 2

Online Revolution Part 2
By Ian Benke
         When the revolution started my parents were quick to jump on board. They had the money to buy the computers and pods right at the start, it was all so seamless.
I couldn’t do it.
I tried, I lived there for awhile.
Now here I am in the woods. Dirty and hungry most of the time but that’s alright. There’s a flash of light in the dark, a crack of a gun. Panic fills the air and people are shouting. It’s dark out but suddenly the whole camp is flooded with white light.
They’ve come and we all know why.
Davey made his virus and we knew this could happen.
That this would probably happen.
But it’s alright, I’ll be just fine.
         My feet fly over dead leafs and twigs. The moon is hiding above the canopy of trees blocking out the sky. The vehicles are making a ruckus and something is being shouted out of a loud speaker. Some nonsense about being under arrest.
I run away from the light.
Away from the vehicles and their loudspeakers.
Away from the camp and my friends.
We know what to do, where to run. It’s lucky I wasn’t sleeping when they showed up. I couldn’t sleep and was sitting outside when I heard it start. The engines roaring into the camp and the first shots being fired. Warning rounds jettisoned into the night sky. The bad news is they got here quicker than we expected. We weren’t going to leave camp for another two days. We knew they would find us because of the virus, but this is fast. The virus probably didn’t have much time.
Not even a blip.
All that effort for nothing.
         After running for what feels like hours I break through the trees. My lungs burn and my legs are cramped but I made it. A big rock that sits on a cliff staring towards the dark ocean. I sit down and look at my worn out shoes.
I don’t even want to know how old they are. Clothes and shoes are hard to come by these days. Feeding tubes and catheters aren’t. I’m alone but I’m sure the others will be here soon. Staring out at the ocean I take a deep breathe in. Before the revolution I used to go hiking with my grandfather out here. It was so long ago, I was just little girl then. He would carry everything and we’d hike along the coast. Now the trails we used to follow are overgrown and forgotten about. The forest has grown over everything here erasing any sign that people were ever here.That people came here to hike and camp, to get away from the cities. Now no one hikes, no one camps. At least not in the real world. I hear something crashing through the trees and my heart quickens.
         Davey crashes through the trees. Taking in heavy breaths he is hunched over, arms on his knees. We look at each other.
“Anyone else come?” He asks.
I shake my head.
“Fuck. This is just great.” He stands up and stares at the ocean. His face unshaven and his hair is coarsely cut. When the revolution started Davey was on the front lines. He was a programmer.
“We’ll wait an hour then we need to get moving, if any snakes saw us we’ll have even less time.” His voice is commanding, Davey is the planner of the group. In another life Davey wrote some of the programs that are being used to pursue us now. He knows all the ins and outs of these programs.
Or at least he did. Lately he seems to be coming undone, things aren’t going to plan anymore.
Davey is an outdated model.
         No one else shows up so me and Davey start marching south, down the coast. We can’t go back for any of our things so we’ll need to loot somewhere. Davey finds a town on the map and hopes that their security is old and outdated, not like the security in the cities. After we’re walking for a few hours Davey starts to tell me a story.
He tells me about the revolution.
About when he was a young man.
About a time when the world splintered.
He says at the start it was obvious what would happen. In the pre-revolution world he talks about how people would become addicted to video games, a crude precursor to the revolution. He tells me that when they learned to tap into conscience the results were disastrous. People starving to death, bed sores consuming bodies. The computers work by blocking the sensory feed in the brain stem and replacing it with a mimicked feed.
Ones and zeros turning into electricity and tricking the brain.
It doesn’t matter what’s happening to you in the real world, you’re brain never gets the message. Right from the start Davey said he knew what was going to happen, medical science would turn it’s eye to keeping the body alive and functional while the mind went out to play. As the prices for the technology went down, every country on the world was facing the greatest addiction in history.
The revolution, Davey tells me, was inevitable.
         The sun starts to rise from the east. Morning fog rolls through the tall and ancient tress. I’m cold so Davey gives me his coat. He’s older than my father and his hair and beard are grey. He reminds me of my grandfather, to stubborn to listen to his own body. Davey won’t survive much longer living like this, but he won’t stop. We stop and eat some food he managed to swipe while all the commotion was happening. With a mouthful of canned corn I ask Davey a question.
“What’s going to happen to the rest of them?” I’m dreading hearing the answer.
“Well, they will go online. They control everything that way. My guess would be an isolation program for god knows how long. They’ll go crazy.”
“What are the isolation programs like?”
“The beauty of going online was that we could create heaven. We could act like gods and create millions of worlds in whatever image we wanted. If we can create heaven, we can create hell. The isolation programs are clever. They manipulate time so minutes feel like years. Most people that get released forget they’re online. They forget the whole concept of going online, they go insane.”
I think of all the people that just got caught and feel sick to my stomach.
         When we arrive at the town we see two remote vehicles patrolling the street. No birds in the air, and no signs of snakes.
Davey was right.
Their security is low, as long as we keep out of sight the online operators will never find us. The town is overgrown.
Deer eat the unkept grass outside of city hall.
Houses are refitted with metal covering the windows and doors. 
Everyone is online doing their jobs.
The smoke coming from the factory in the distance lets us know that this is food town. Farming equipment combs fields, the drivers plugged in somewhere doing everything through video feed.
Low line work.
They take the raw food and process it until it’s nothing but nutrition in a grey sludge.
         As we loot an old store that’s been boarded up I ask Davey why they came up with online cities. Places that look like ideal versions of their real world counter parts, only everything is different. There are cars but you don’t need them. You can fly or teleport, run or walk, whatever form of transportation you prefer.
“They came up with it to keep people online. People are used to having away of life. Of having towns and cities, having a home and a place you work. It’s how we socialize, it’s how we live. As the governments were dissolving programmers were busy coming up with a central hub. A place where people had to go to, they had to have houses and cities. Entertainment programs run secondary like entertainment used to. By moving everything online the software companies claimed that we would save the world. It was a gift and a sacrifice all at the same time.”
“What do you mean save the world?”
“You know the stories, the ones about people draining the world of resources. All we really had to do was stabilize the population instead of letting it climb. No one would say that though so we looked for other solutions. At one time it was gas so we switched to biofuel. Then there wasn’t another farmland for all the corn we needed to grow to produce it. It was a big mess. The software companies said we could live a better life and not have to worry anymore. We would use only a fraction of what we once did. We’d be allowing the planet to survive by locking ourselves away. “
“Did it work?”
Davey laughs and tells to me to look around. He points out the window. The forest is consuming the town. It doesn’t look like towns used to, it looks like a clearing in a forest with buildings in it.
“So why do you want people to go offline I ask?”
He asks me the same question so I answer first.
         I tell him about my parents. Rich people obsessed with technology. When the pods came out they demanded I join them online so they could keep an eye on me. I went to school online but everyday I’d logged off instead of sleeping online like most people do. It was because we had a cat, Molly, I couldn’t leave her behind. My parents told me the cat would get fed and have it’s litter changed remotely from online until it died. They said the age of pets was over and to embrace the change.
Hardcore revolutionaries.
Sink or swim.
I couldn’t do it though. No matter how amazing the programs were I couldn’t bear the thought of Molly having no company all of the time. It was awful. Molly kept me out of the online world, and even after she died I realized I just couldn’t do it. I liked the world too much, I never thought it needed to be better.
         We get all that we need, camping gear and canned food, and sneak out of town. We march south until it gets dark. We set up camp and then Davey lights a lantern and examines a map. He’s making plans again. He wants to find more people. He never told me why he isn’t online anymore so I ask again.
“I don’t agree with the security firms.” He says stiffly and takes a sip of tea that we made over the fire.
“What do you mean?”
“When the revolution started we fought with the naturalists because they were extremists. The original naturalists were typically fundamental religious groups saying the new internet was an abomination. That we were spitting in the face of God. Ironically these were the same people having massive families, producing far too many kids and putting additional strain on society. They didn’t want to hear our argument at all. They threw the first stone. They started bombing homes and servers. They came up with the god virus that set the network back by years. They were against the revolution so we were against them. We hunted them down, threw them in isolation programs and went on a witch hunt. Now though it’s all different.”
The fire crackles and smells dirty and smokey. It smells good. Davey looks lost so I ask him what’s different.
“Those naturalists are all gone. It’s as simple as that. They didn’t survive the revolution and now naturalists are just weirdos like you and me. I don’t care if they go online or not, I just don’t want to. They see that as a threat. They know until everyone person is buried in a cement bunker underground and plugged in that they are vulnerable. That they lose control over how we all should live. I’m against that, not having a choice.” Davey takes a big sip of tea and leans back. I look at the stars shining overhead.
Bright and clear.
A sky that is ageless .
A sky that is clear.
A sky that just decades ago was polluted and hidden.
“I don’t want to run anymore Davey.” I say, “I’m tired and broken.”
“Then go online. There really isn’t any other option. Run or log on.”