Madison

Madison fit the last letter snuggly into place and stood back with a rare smile as she took in her succinct message, driven by people’s limited attention span, as much as running out of letters. The sweet aroma of printer’s ink filled the room and to Madison that smelled like freedom. “Only missing three vowels,” she said as she tapped the wooden block with the ink-stained mallet, but her smile faded when she thought about what she had to do next.    

Her iPAL vibrated and a smiling mermaid HOLO shimmered to life, and with a flick of her tail sent pixelated drops of seawater into the air. Madison nodded to the HOLO and her friend’s face appeared, even more enthusiastic than her mermaid HOLO, if that was possible.

“This isn’t a good time, Poppy.” She took a slow step to her right and then another, while maintaining eye contact with Poppy. She had forgotten to put her iPAL on do-not-disturb.  

“Madison, it really does it all! I’ve already,” she locked on to Madison’s eyes, “you haven’t downloaded it, have you?” Madison’s stomach tightened and she looked away long enough to give Poppy her answer.

Madison was certain the answer to whatever Poppy was asking was no, but she couldn’t afford a drawn-out conversation. But Poppy didn’t understand “no” in the best of times and certainly wouldn’t understand it today.

“Poppy, you know I depend on you to guide me through these things.”

“I can come over,” she hesitated and her Holo image spun around taking in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the room. “Where are you, anyway?”

“This isn’t a good time,” Madison stammered. She collected herself, “What say we meet tonight for a bite and catch up? You can show me everything.”

Poppy had a level of pouting for every occasion, but none exceeded her look when Madison didn’t share her excitement. They had grown up together: Poppy the popular and Madison the… well nothing exciting rhymed with Madison, so they called her Madly. She pretended it was about a boy, but it was more about books. There were boys, but never the right one. With Poppy, they were all the right one. Poppy kept score, Madison’s score resembled a soccer match, Poppy’s a basketball game. 

“Where’s Gutenberg?”

“What?”

For a woman who didn’t notice anything that wasn’t a man or on an iPAL, she picked a bad time to become an investigative reporter. 

“It’s a city in Germany.”

“You’re in Germany?”

“I’ll see you at dinner.”

* * *

Madison arrived early and took a table in a corner where she could discreetly people watch, and maybe catch the latest buzz before Poppy showed. The restaurant was scattered with islands of huddled tribes – at least that is what Madison called them - their faces lit with a HOLO-glow like kids telling ghost stories around a campfire. It was the latest thing in group dating. Madison didn’t get it, if she was going to stare into somebody’s eyes, it wouldn’t be through a HOLO.     

Her eyes wandered across the room and landed on an unfaded rectangular patch high on the wall, a vestige from a time not so long ago, a fossilized footprint in the rock. She pictured these same people, staring at that space and celebrating touchdowns or goals or whatever people watched to escape their dreary lives before HOLO’s took over. 

Her iPAL glowed with a welcoming HOLO spinning into a dramatic entrance. She refused to make eye contact with the cheerful bearded-man HOLO who raised the stakes with a glimmer in his eye, tilted his head, and flashed a crooked encouraging smile. The smile morphed into disappointment and the HOLO faded.  

Her iPAL chimed and Madison knew Poppy was running late before her HOLO had a chance to soften the news with Poppy’s pleading face asking for forgiveness. 

“POPPY,” Madison said trying to match Poppy’s enthusiasm for tonight’s lecture.  

“I’m almost there… order me a pomegranate martini,” she said, Madison envied her. Poppy drank to be seen drinking. Tonight, Madison expected to drink for effect. 

The bearded one arose once more and asked, “One pomegranate martini, and your usual?” Madison didn’t have a usual and if she did, she didn’t need some damn machine telling her what she wanted.

An eyebrow raised in encouragement and then a wink, “Okay hold on! I’ll have a Tito’s and lime.” He nodded his approval. “Wait.” A humble nod. “Bring me a shot of Patronne.” A broad smile rose from the dishevelled beard. “Wait! First, bring me the shot. Quickly. Then bring the drinks.” He flashed a conspiratorial smile and spun into the iPAL like a genie into a bottle.  

A flash of movement from her periphery caught her attention and she turned to see her tequila on the table and the server turning away. She emptied it smoothly and handed the glass back to the server as he glanced back, like a baton in a relay race. She was ready for the next leg of the race.

A rush of tequila-warmth flowed from the middle of her being to the tips of her toes. 

The server startled her with round two, or at least round two for her. Maybe a little vodka would help her prepare for the Poppy onslaught. Poppy-slaught, she let out a little tequila snicker.   

Poppy appeared at her side, like a HOLO friend, she reached down and gave her a smooch on her cheek. Poppy rubbed the smudge with her thumb. 

“You ordered?”

“I’m capable.”

She giggled, “I don’t doubt you. I just didn’t think that clay tablet of yours talked to anyone else.”

“I…”

“The only voice you hear is the one bouncing around in here,” she knocked Madison on the head hard enough to make her wonder if she wasn’t kidding.

Poppy picked up her martini and pressed the rim of the glass to her lips, looking over the glass allowing the vodka to well up against her mouth; Madison assumed some passed across her lips.

HOLO’s across the restaurant flashed to the synchronized hum of, “Fanfare For The Common Man”, the well-known theme song for HoLoCo. The room buzzed like a bumped beehive. The company logo rotated above Poppy’s iPAL with their pilfered slogan flashing: E PLURIBUS UNUM. The room brightened with HOLO light - with the lone exception of the iPAL in front of Madison. Poppy was staring at it with a look of horror. At least Madison hoped that it was horror and not disdain.   

“Good evening, my friends.” The renowned HoLoCo President appeared, and his gaze met Poppy’s eyes and Madison risked a glance around the room - each HOLO was focused intensely on the person in front of it. There was a dramatic pause as the HOLOs established eye contact. 

“Tonight, we have reached a revolutionary milestone in our mutual efforts to unite our people and move on from the caustic and divisive world of the media, and worse, social media. 

Madison looked across the room and shuddered at the rapt attention of the i-zombies, she rested a hand on her lowered head; everyone knew that zombies didn’t pay attention to you if you looked like a zombie. 

The President continued, “E PLURBUS UNUM… Out of many, one. Over ten years ago, the convergence of cryptocurrency and A. I. gave birth to the HOLO platform. We open-sourced it so that everyone could contribute to its ascendency as the platform that would unite the people of the world.” Madison thought she still had that original model.

“Tonight, I am pleased to announce that HoLoCo has finalized our one platform out of many, and, AND, we are turning over the source code to you: the people.” 

“The iPAL platform can now become your one view to the world. I call it TAO.” The letters rotated above each iPal. He turned to a camera to his right and the people watching shifted like a breeze ruffling leaves through aspens, “Trust. Authorization. Ownership. No single person, no corporate giant and no government can provide this. Only the people can!”       

Madison went cold as the room erupted; if F-bombs exploded, all of them would be dead. 

The President hesitated, went off script, as if he could feel the unease of the room, “Now, I want to make this perfectly clear: this is your platform, for your life, and there will be no government or corporate interference in the organic growth of the iPAL. There will be no governance of the iPAL, no mandatory compliance; the people will monitor the platform and determine its future.” He paused, “No, this is YOUR personal assistant for YOUR Life, to help you manage your life, your health, your relationships, your finances, your daily activities and much more.” His eyes shifted subtly to the right and Madison thought she saw a glimmer of a smile, or maybe relief. 

The President droned on, but Madison was watching the mesmerized faces absorbed into the light of the President’s HOLO. Her body sagged under the weight of an unbearable sadness as she turned to see Poppy leaning into her HOLO, as if proximity would enhance her absorption of the message like a tanning lamp. Sitting next to her best friend in a room full of people, she had never felt so alone.

Or exposed. She forced herself to sit back and ease the kinetic energy-fuelled instinct to bolt. 

The bearded man rose from her iPAL and pointed to her glass. She flashed two fingers and he saluted briskly, “See, I know how to use these things. At least for what is important in life,” she said softly.

From the corner of her eye, Madison saw a man fall backward in his chair. There was a wide-eyed man standing over him, face twisted in satisfaction, holding an empty beer glass. Others stood, assessing the situation without commitment. 

Then the HOLO’s sprung up like a clan of meerkats sensing an approaching jackal. Angry HOLO’s. Inciting HOLO’s. All organizing a counterattack.     

“What’s going on,” Madison looked at Poppy’s iPAL. 

“What?” Poppy was locked on to her HOLO.   

“Poppy?”

“Uh, sorry,” she said, her reaching towards the light, desperately seeking clarity from the HOLO. She looked up, a faraway look, “I don’t understand.”

Poppy looked at Madison, her eyes focused on the horizon. “Wildfire…”

“Poppy, wha…”

“Wildfire. The new upgrade is supposed to prevent it,” Poppy looked around and then back to Madison.  

Their drinks arrived amongst the cacophony of voices, a human and HOLO mix; Madison couldn’t differentiate one from another. 

Madison tried to follow it on Poppy’s iPal but it was moving too fast. One victim’s punishment gave rise to attacks on the punishers. It was like an old west bar fight scene without beer mugs crashing skulls or people being thrown over tables. Social Mobs. All of it conducted by HOLO’s whispering to their masters like a futuristic board game. But who was whispering to the HOLO’s?    

A calm came over the room, like the eye of the storm, and Madison waited for what might come next. 

HOLO’s dimmed and retreated to the safety of their iPal homes. The genies returning to their bottles. Confusion reigned as social warriors looked from their table to others, searching for a battleground, but they only found blank gazes staring back. 

A hum vibrated throughout the room as HOLO’s returned. HOLO’s checked for drink orders. Some patrons agreed to another round despite having a drink in front of them, like it was more than a request. Conversation returned. One table erupted in laughter. Madison thought she saw somebody shopping online. 

Madison looked to Poppy. Poppy smiled at her behind the rim of her martini glass.  

* * *

Privacy came at a high cost, and her knew “basement apartment” felt like banishment, the air weighed on her, heavy with a musky smell of, well basement. 

She had christened her machine, audaciously: “Gutenberg”. It was simple, mechanical, with a quaint limited capacity for content. Maybe that was good.  

The lack of ambience aside, the room was Madly, at least to her.  Books lined a cold cement wall, stacked on an old board across cinder blocks. Her one addition to the mood was a framed painting of Mark Twain regaling a campfire audience of Franklin laughing, Madison contemplating, Hamilton ready with a witty retort and Hemmingway shaking his head, in awe or disagreement. Maybe both. The books, the painting…and the machine, all bought at offline flea markets. They were the modern equivalent of a prohibition era speakeasy.

It was time. 

The type-galley was set, wedged in with her hand made quoins, and wrenched tightly together. What she couldn’t find at flea markets, she fabricated. What she couldn’t find in third hand, dog-eared user manuals, she made up. She smiled: this was all fabricated and made-up. 

It was rustic, held together with hope and duct tape, and even though the block letters looked like she was reading it in a mirror, it looked like tangible truth to her. Not cheap electronic words that were typed without thought of true meaning or consequences and launched with a consequence free keystroke.  She stepped back for one last look:   

WE THE PEOPLE

It’s hard to imagine the social structure that brought forth those words, but I imagine that in some way, it was not unlike our world today. A government struggling to define its role. A people divided. Factions fighting against each other, fuelling tribalism, fomenting hate of anyone unlike themselves and their worldview.   

Today, We The People, is the only thing standing between freedom and our corrupt and vicious media, and more importantly, social media, that is paving the way for our new masters. 

The iPAL platform claims to reflect the will of the people, so our actions must change to help educate the machine. The machine has learned from us. If it can learn from us, will it learn to judge us? If so, it is up to us to set a better example. Today, we are in a wretched situation. Only y_u can chang_ th_t.   

“I go on this great republican principle: that the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and intelligence… If… not, we are in a wretched situation.” (James Madison)

 It was a start. She planned on starting simple as she gained an audience, she would become bolder. She didn’t know how posters got likes.

Madison pushed down on the safety cap and twisted it open. The pungent odour was a perfumed offering, an incense that carried her prayers and sent a chill through her. She was doing this. 

Her iPAL vibrated and Poppy’s HOLO appeared. Hands clasped in front of her, a pleading look, or a warning, before her HOLO scattered into pixels and her face dissolved into the air. Her iPal went dark and became part of a small group living outside of the upgraded iPal HOLO’s.      

There was a pop, somewhere outside, and the lights went out, leaving a dust-illuminating shaft of light from the small basement window. The beam of light too high to reach, like a medieval cell, where the sole source of light, warmth and hope was purposefully just beyond reach.

She lifted press, removed the sheet, and set it aside. Reflexively, she placed another sheet of paper in the feeder and looked up at the square of light that stretched across her new home.