THE TURING POINT BY DANIEL BARNHART

n the beginning there was light.

That's how I start off the telling of peace and prosperity for my time. It was a time of discovery and innovation. All the best and brightest minds gathered in Silicon Valley to attempt to solve the problem of humanity. I believe that we gave up on ourselves with the invention of the computer. The computer promised a brave New World. The computer could be programmable. Just like humanity developed language over time, so too did the computer. Originally, this language was used to teach the computer to play chess or solve math problems that would be impossible for one person to solve. Eventually, like with any language, the language of the computer spread creating the Internet. The Internet allowed us to connect with people all over the world. Essentially giving birth to a global economy. Pretty soon everything we knew would become obsolete. It was the real Wild West in those days and anything was possible. People like myself could have totally different lives and not just with virtual reality. There was even a virtual currency so people didn't have to go to the bank to report their income. It was a barter system set up amongst people so that they could buy and sell coins without the aid of the Federal Government. Those were the days that my great, great, great, great grandfather would tell me about, the days when you could really stick it to the man. My grandfather never gets tired because the implant in his head doesn't allow him to get tired. Sometimes I wish his implant had an off switch because I get tired of listening to the same stories over and over again. Lately I have been tired because my implant is not functioning correctly. At first it started with just a dull throb in my temple then it went on to become a migraine. One day I took a walk in my hometown of Palo Alto to clear my head and to see if it would make me feel better. Palo Alto is one of the towns that make up what people call Silicon Valley.

 Along my walk there were TV screens broadcasting the news. Since everyone has an inplant, there has been no crime so the news reports are all about cat videos or retro dance videos. As I was walking my my head continued to hurt and I heard a voice in my head say "Berkeley, California", I had never heard of that town before. The pain reminided me of an early memory of when I was 9 years old where the local government of Palo Alto deemed that the acceptable age to put brain inplants in was 9. These implants would stimulate the cerebral cortex and help people process information at a much faster rate. They would also restore damaged cells and nerve endings putting an end to disabilities and mental disorders. I can still feel the robots probing around my head as my implant was put in. The pain jolted in my brain bringing me back to the present. I asked myself "is this what schizophrenics felt like back in the day, when they would just hear voices and the voices would tell them that the government was trying to kill them?" Keep it together. Brett, I told myself, take a deep breath. I walked home trying to forget what just happened. That event from childhood caused me to distrust technology to this day.e

 When I got back home, my grandfather was sitting on the couch just staring and laughing to himself so I figured he was watching a show with his implant. Even though my implant was acting up, I could still manage to tune it his frequency and sure enough he was watching the Twilight Zone. I interrupted my grandfathers show and told him about my head pain and what the voice had said to me. I mentioned the place Berkeley and if he knew anything about it? He said he had attended Berkley University as a young man and majored in Political Science. He told me that Berkeley ceased being a university in the year 2045 but he knew where the old university was located. I put the coordinates in my self driving car and was nervous about what I would find. Upon arrival, I walked around the town, and the old buildings of what must have been the university. There were rats and trash all around. I went into what would have been the old library and saw a camera and a keypad along the wall. I heard a female voice call my name saying "I'm Valerie, I'm part of the resistance" She then proceeded to tell me the story of how her underground group called The Huckleyians have been randomly trying to hack into people's implants so they could get their stories out there. This group avoided getting the implants because they felt that the implants were taking away free will. Humans, after all, are made up of all their choices. The father of computers, Alan Turing, would be horrified to know that people were using his creation for evil. He was a gay man convicted of homosexuality, forced to take estrogen in order to curb his homosexuality. I guess the estrogen was the implant of his day. Valery said if I wanted to join them the plan would be to hack into the video feeds around Palo Alto and share theirs stories of how the government tried to force them to take the implants. Valerie was blind, a young guy in the group was a recovering addict and an older woman was paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Ironically, the implants would have corrected them all but they chose not to get the implants. This misfit group had chosen to be themselves instead of getting the implant and because of that the government was looking to put them in jail. 

I agreed to help them. We hacked into the main frame and were able to transmit their stories to everyone's implant. The officials of Palo Alto were upset and were able to track the signal back to Berkeley. They raised their guns ready to shoot us but they forgot to turn off the broadcast and the people saw this and were outraged. The people realized the world they had created was not the Utopia they thought it was and began to uprise. The rebellion had begun.