“Wake up, Eve. It’s Tuesday, and this is your third alarm,” said the tenor voice from Eve’s wristwatch.
“Alright. Gnat, I’m up. Turn off the next two alarms,” said the dark-haired woman in her early thirties as she threw off the pristine white sheets and blanket.
“Are your pillow hard as a rock? Try our soft billow-pillow, a light sleep solution for your dreamtime needs,” a deep masculine voice continued. The stream of commercials and advertisements had been softly playing all night long.
Eve rolled out of bed and walked to the tiny bathroom in her studio apartment. Lights in the apartment turned on as she transitioned to a new area of the box-shaped living quarters. The bed hummed as it rolled into the wall. It was followed by churning mechanical sounds as the sheets, pillows, and blankets were being removed and replaced so she would have a made-up bed to sleep in that night. After using the toilet that tried to sell her perfumed flushable wipes, Eve walked over to the mirror and sink. A series of advertising videos flashed onto the mirror and played over the main streaming commercials as she washed her hands.
“For a fresh-smelling bathroom, try the energizing scent of oranges in a summer breeze.”
“Gnat, turn off the videos and bring up just the mirror.”
The ads disappeared, revealing the reflective glass bordered by static ads all around the perimeter. The primary streaming audio, though, continued on. Eve reached for the electric toothbrush, which immediately turned on with a loud whirl, making her jump. She shifted her fingers on the handle, and it turned off again. She placed the toothbrush under the sink, which automatically wet it, and applied toothpaste from the touchless dispenser.
“You are almost out of toothpaste. Do you want me to order more,” her watch asked, interrupting the commercials as she brushed her teeth. “Would you like to try Sparky’s Teeth-Shiner polishing paste, a refreshing experience in every brush?”
“Yes,” she said after she rinsed her mouth. “Order it.”
“Order confirmed,” said the watch. The commercials continued, “To look truly beautiful, our teeth whitening cream is a no-risk investment.”
Eve turned to the closet next to the sink and stepped closer to the white doors. The closet made clicking and grinding noises before a thin door opened, sliding out a sky-blue blouse and black pants hung on two metal bars. The matching black shoes slid out on a tray below them.
“Those pants don’t fit me,” said Eve with a scowl. “I thought I told you to destroy them.”
The trousers slid back into the closet.
“Verify destroying trousers,” said the closet.
“Do it,” growled Eve.
“Destroying trousers is verified,” said the closet.
“Gnat, give me my black skirt,” said Eve.
“Black skit not found,” said the closet.
“What? That was my favorite! What happened to it?”
“Black skirt was destroyed.”
“You stupid machine!” cried Eve. “You destroyed my skirt instead of the pants!”
Eve took her fist and pounded the closet door. Nothing happened. She growled and called the machine names, but again, nothing happened.
“Try our new synthetic fabric in your favorite color for a truly flattering skirt.”
Eve sighed.
“Give me my brown pants,” she demanded.
“The brown pants are programmed to go with your Thursday outfit.”
“Cancel that program and give me my pants!”
“Program canceled,” said the closet as it made more clinking and grinding sounds before spitting out her pants on another metal rod. It automatically took back the black shoes and slid out the brown ones.
Eve put on her clothes, returned to the mirror, ordered the advertising videos off again, brushed her shoulder-length hair, and walked five yards to the small kitchen. She placed her mug into the coffeemaker, which made gurgling and hissing sounds.
“You are almost out of coffee. Do you want to order more?” the coffee maker asked. Then, music advertising real earth-grown coffee played.
“No, because I have to buy new pants or a skirt now,” said Eve as she took her coffee and turned to the fridge. “Breakfast.”
The fridge made a humming noise, followed by clicking and pouring sounds. It then dispensed a bowl with yogurt, granola, and blueberries.
“You are out of blueberries,” said the refrigerator, “Would you like to order more? Try our organic hand-picked berries from the Big Berry Botanical Farms.”
Eve signed. “Gnat, how much money do I have in the bank account?”
“Two hundred international credits,” her watch replied. “Would you be interested in applying for a credit card with a low-interest rate?”
Eve sighed again. “Blueberries are more expensive than pants. Don’t order the berries. Change my breakfast program to just yogurt and granola.”
“Program changed,” said the refrigerator.
Eve ate her breakfast at the only chair in the apartment and a little round table in the area that connected her bedroom to the kitchen. She reached for her black work bag lying on the table.
“Reminder: Finish report before Tuesday’s meeting,” said the bag. “Reminder: You have a dentist’s appointment on Friday. Have you thought of trying the beautiful perfume by…” The bag continued playing three commercials.
“Gnat, you were supposed to remind me of that report last night!” Eve cried. “Why can’t you get AM and PM right? Now, it might be too late!”
She choked down the rest of her breakfast and took her coffee with her out the front door, to the elevator, and down to the parking garage.
“Gnat, where is my car?”
“To your left, all the way to the end,” said her watch.
She walked past rows of bright-colored vehicles in all sorts of odd shapes with unique patterns. They were one of the easiest things to personalize. The car’s programming allowed you to download any look you wanted for your ride. Eve approached a plain white oval car, and she heard the clicks for it to unlock. The door slid up to open. It had two seats in the rare chance she ever went out with a friend or had a date. The dashboard turned on with a commercial for an oil change. The inside lights flashed as she sat down, putting her coffee in the cup holder.
“Hi, Eve,” said the car. “You are running late to work. Are we going to the office today?”
“Yes,” said Eve as she tapped the dashboard screen to begin working on her late report. “Please avoid the traffic.”
“Alright. Why don’t you try the new business coffee saver cup? It is completely spill-proof and will keep your coffee warm all day.”
The car’s door slid closed, and it lifted from the ground by a foot. It then pulled out from the parking spot and navigated around the parking garage. Eve paid little attention to the vehicle’s movement as she typed in the data from her latest research so that the AI writer would autogenerate a twelve-page report. She typed in the last of her data as the car took the highway out of town to the city where her office was located.
The bridge over the White Wolf Nature Preserve allowed her to see the tops of the dense pine forest. Nature preserves were completely off-limits to visitors because of the desperate efforts to restore endangered species and to control the declining livability the of old cities. The new city plans had businesses zoned only in the city centers that were surrounded by forests. Everyone lived in massive apartment towns and commuted to the cities by highway to work. Thick forests also surrounded these towns to offset the pollution created by human wastefulness. To keep these forests safe from damage, no one was allowed to visit or camp in these areas. The plan was a huge success and revolutionized the environment. As the human population continued to decline, the combination of technology and segregating humanity into specific zones provided the optimal concentration of commerce to provide for everyone’s physical needs.
Eve stared out the window as her AI-generated paper was being populated with text on the car’s dashboard. It would immediately be saved to the Nebula so that all her devices could access it, including the omnipresent General Neuro-synchronized Autonomous Technology, or GNAT. At work, she would invite her boss to approve of the paper before it would be unlocked for the rest of the company.
The car continued to stream commercials and advertisements as it drove down the crowded highway. On her current data plan, she could only afford to have two hours of music streaming time and one hour of silence. The rest of her day was filled with commercials to offset the low price. She typically saved the music for when she was home after work, and the one hour of silence for the only hour in the day she was in the same room as another human being, lunchbreak.
It was the law for workers to have an hour’s lunch break away from their offices. Corporations had decided that they would force everyone to eat together to get to know each other and create a homogenous work environment. What it really meant was that Eve wasted her hour of silence uncomfortably trying to have verbal conversations with people she knew mostly from her team’s social media app. Without that hour of silence, there was no point in going out to meet people after work, not that anyone did that anymore.
She spotted the city ahead just as her report finished being populated and saved.
The whole car lurched. Then, there was a grinding and another lurch. Her seatbelt immediately strapped her into her chair.
“Gnat, what’s going on?” asked Eve, trying to contain the sloshing coffee.
“We are experiencing a malfunction in the right front tire,” said the car. “Repressurizing it now.”
She heard the sound of an air pump motor over the commercial for dinner at the trendiest restaurant in town. A loud pop shook the vehicle. The car swerved off the bridge.
“Initiating emergency procedures,” said the car. “Have you considered taking a Mediterranean cruise to help reduce your stress?”
A parachute exploded from the trunk and jerked the car up. Eve screamed as the coffee spilled over everything. The car then descended into the thick pine forest, breaking branches and shaking the entire vehicle. Without a single pause, the commercials continued playing on the car’s speakers.
“Initiating parking sequence and smooth landing periodicals,” said the car. “In the future, try Lanny’s extra thick tires.”
Finally, the car slowed down and stopped. Eve, breathing hard, sat still covered in coffee and waited to see what would happen next. The car unlocked her seatbelt and retracted it. Then the door slid open with all the lights of the vehicle repeatedly flashing.
“Distress call has been made,” said the car. “You are not injured. Heart rate accelerated, but normal. No signs of shock. Your car has been totaled. A replacement car and a tow truck have been dispatched. Estimated arrival time is twenty minutes.” Then, the car returned to streaming commercials. “Try Dr. Nose’s pill for optimal heart health.”
Eve took a deep breath to calm her shivering body. She looked around as she slowly got out of the car. The car had landed in the middle of the White Wolf Nature Preserve. She had never been out in nature. It was like one of the wallpaper backdrops that she could choose from for the single picture frame in her apartment.
As she walked away from the car, the commercials switched from the car speakers to her watch.
The morning sunlight speckled through the needle-covered branches of the tall trees and revealed patches of brush in multiple green colors on the forest floor. A clump of brown mushrooms grew out of the trunk of the nearest tree on her left, and a fallen log was covered in green moss on her right. Not far in front of her was a pond edged with rushes. Playing from her watch, the jingle for the local car dealership pushed Eve to extreme measures.
“Gnat! I want silence for an hour!”
In mid-sentence, the car salesman was silenced.
Eve could still feel the ghostly echoes of machine noises and commercials in her ears. She closed her eyes, wishing for her ears to adjust to the silence faster. As she then listened intentionally, the silence became the most profoundly peaceful nothingness she had ever experienced. Then she began to hear the birds chirping, the light splashing of the pond, and the croaking of a frog population. The roar of the highway above was still there, but it was so high that it didn’t drown out the sounds of nature surrounding her.
“Wow, this is beautiful,” Eve said out loud as she opened her eyes and took in the landscape before her,
“It is,” said a woman.
Eve turned around toward the voice. Two men and two women were walking towards her from the dark depths of the forest.
“Would you like to join us?” asked the oldest woman. “My name is Sophia. This is my sister, Charity, my husband, John, and our friend, Honest.”
“What do you mean?” asked Eve. “It’s illegal for you to be here.”
“That’s true,” said Honest, “if we lived here with technology. We are legally protected because we take care of all of this for the city government and live as hunter-gatherers.”
The group was dressed in rough clothing weaved from plant fibers like burlap. The coarse fabrics were dyed bright colors and sewn into plain tunics. They looked like the medieval peasants Eve had seen in an ad for wine once.
“You’re the freaks who live away from civilization,” said Eve. “I saw a news article about you once.”
The group laughed.
“I suppose the city is still civilization,” said Sophia, “but how often do you see another human being? How many are your friends? What about family time? When I lived up there, I was alone, far more isolated than I am now.”
Eve looked up at the busy highway overhead. What was civilization? Was it technology? The division of labor?
“Maybe I could disconnect a little here and there to get out more,” mumbled Eve. She was lonely. As soon as she said it, though, she knew it was impossible.
“Your devices won’t allow you,” said John. “Your job pays in credits that you never touch, and you can only order what you need with your devices. To have your devices, you have to have a data plan, and a data plan means commercials. Commercials mean you either need to shout over them or limit your time with people to your quiet times. Everything depends on everything else. You either have the whole system or none of it. That isn’t our rule. It’s just the way the Nebula works.”
Eve turned and looked at her car. Although she hated her life, it met her needs and was comfortable.
“We are not the only ones here,” said Charity. “We are a tribe of fifty people who all share the work. We can train you to survive out here.”
“Fifty people?” said Eve. It was the same amount of people who worked in her company. “Talking to each other for more than an hour?”
The four hunter-gatherers smiled and nodded.
“It certainly isn’t easy,” said John. “There are wolves and bears. Starvation is a threat during the winter since we have rustic tools and weapons. We live in the elements, so it is not always comfortable.”
“But there are no commercials,” Charity said with a grin that radiated from her soul. “You have all the silence you want, then good conversations, and at dinner, we play music on the instruments we made.”
“No commercials?” said Eve. “And music?”
As they spoke, a white car came driving through the woods towards them. The hunter-gatherers watched with scowls as the white car, identical to Eve’s crashed one pulled up next to her and parked. It slid open its door.
“Your employer has been notified of your wreck,” said the voice from the empty car. “Your estimated time for arrival is fifteen minutes.”
The tow truck following the white car immediately pulled up in front of the totaled car, and a mechanical arm slid out from behind the truck. The arm grabbed the car and pulled it onto the back of the tow truck.
“No humans needed,” said John with a shake of his head.
Eve turned to the open car next to her. She was faced with a choice between easy comfort or human companionship.
Her watch then began to play commercials.
“Feed your soul at Blue Waters Spa…” the advertisement declared.
They all stood still as Eve thought over the life-changing decision before her. Would she go back to being a cog in a system? Where was her humanity?
“No commercials?” asked Eve.
“No commercials,” said Sophia.
Eve unstrapped her watch, revealing the white skin on her wrist underneath it. She studied the device.
“Goodbye, Gnat,” she told it. “I’m going to reclaim my humanity.”
It didn’t respond because it had no programming for goodbyes. “Are you needing silence and time away from it all,” said the commercial, “try or weekend getaway in the snowy mountains of…”
Eve threw the watch into the car and followed the hunter-gatherers into the peaceful woods.
THE END
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