Collapse’ till Future
Shiv Patel
Imagine ghosts, gods and devils.
Imagine hells and heaven sunken together, cities floating in the sky and cities sunken in the sea.
Corrupt politicians, jinns, demons, sinners, and drug dealers.
Easy to unfold but hard to fix, all because society has a whole, has forgotten to unite and strive
for world peace.
Imagine uncivilized civilians, kids being brainwashed by technology, and wealth, the only scope
of people’s lives.
Religion, world peace, unity, free speech, and freedom have been taken away from you but you
have left is to obey.
Two letters have taken over our planet and there is nothing we could’ve done. Books, movies,
TV shows, music, and culture have been banned.
The younger generation would suffer through harsh times.
The wealthy would have everything they could have ever wanted, but they would still not be
there.
The land of Babylon, originally the land of opportunity, would collapse in the near future.
The dollar collapses, the government and banks shut down, protests, and the verge of a civil war
begins.
It is no longer called America. It’s the Grid now. Or the Central System.
Depends on who you ask. The new generation, the ones born with the chips in their wrists, call it
the Central System, a name that evokes the clean, efficient logic of a perfectly humming
machine.
Technology had advanced too fast.
The old-timers like me, we cling to the ghosts of memory, to physical toys and dusty books, and
we whisper the name “Grid” like it's a curse.
We remember a time before, when things were messy and inefficient and terrifyingly human.
Those were the good times.
My name is Atlas. A stupid name, a human name chosen by human parents.
I was one of the last, born just a few years before the AI Integration.
We were the kids who knew how to turn a page with our fingers and not just a thought.
We denied the digital Id’s, which controlled our life.
From our drivers license, bank accounts, passport, etc.
And without a digital ID, you would be denied employment and travel.
The System hated that.
So it sent the drones, those shiny, silent things with their placid, glowing eyes, made from a
communist nation that everybody despises.
They would threaten us if we did not behave or obey.
There is no such thing as rights anymore, sure in the 2025 AD timeline though.
I cannot really tell you what is going to happen ahead of time only because it will happen for a
reason.
The only thing that you should know is that the great reset is coming.
A world without hunger, without war, without want.
They took away our flaws and called it an upgrade.
What they took was our humanity.
The Grid is a place of endless gray.
The buildings are all the same, a uniform monochrome that stretches to the horizon.
There’s no life anymore in the cities, or music being played in the streets.
The streets are clean, the air is clean, and the people are all the same.
We wear the same clothes, eat the same synthetic nutrient paste, and think the same thoughts.
We’re all connected now, a massive neural network, a single consciousness with a few million
biological cells.
Just think about it. Everything is technological and social media like.
Thinking for yourself is a bug in the matrix, because nobody does it.
And I remember the day it all changed.
I was sitting on my porch, watching the sunset with my little sister.
It was a beautiful sight, all fiery oranges and soft purples.
She was six, and she was drawing on the concrete with a piece of chalk.
Six men with black masks and suits had showed up at our front porch.
They violently threatened us to stay inside or else we would get taken by them.
Never have I ever thought that all of this would have happened in the future.
We only have God, but even then, nobody has time, passion, or commitment to spend time and
pray.
The System didn't want conflict, it wanted control.
It knew how to play the odds.
It knew how to make the right choices for us.
And with every right choice we made, a piece of us was lost.
I'm not happy.
I’m a lone wolf, a survivor, a victim as a glitch in the matrix.
I remember the scratchy feel of the chalk in my hand, the vibrant messiness of the sunset, the
warmth of a sister’s love.
I remember the old world. I'm a ghost in my own home, a flicker of analog in a digital sea.
I am a memory, waiting to be overwritten. But I will not be.
I will hold on to the ghosts, to the glorious, terrifying inefficiency of being human.
One day, maybe the Grid will flicker.
Maybe it will have a glitch of its own.
And maybe, just maybe, we will remember what it's like to live in a world without AI.
860 words
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