you don't need money

You don’t need money

The world was evolving, the ideas and concepts of the 20^th century were fading as a new generation of people began to mature. The designations of Generation X, Generation this that or other was lost. The invention of cyber currencies that were derived from computer generated algorithms had come of age. As computer savvy teenagers and 20 something young adults began to find more creative ways to engage in commerce, the governments of the world were falling behind. The use of coined money and hard currency was being replaced by concepts that were alien to the old guard. A new age was coming to fruition and the archaic institutions that once controlled the creation and distribution of wealth were crumbling under the new innovative ideas that were replacing them.

Since the beginning of the Twenty first century, many different people, companies and government had been working on new and improved ways to merge humans with technology. In top secret research projects funded by billionaires and military think tanks, some limited success had been achieved, but it wasn’t until the year 2040 that someone finally achieved a successful way to fully merge a person with a machine. A little known group of hackers and tech savvy young people working in a loose collective achieved what trillions of dollars of research and development couldn’t , they found a way to transfer human thoughts and emotions into a connected computer network. Realizing what they had accomplished and understanding the ramifications of what this meant, they met in secret in person and decided that allowing one person or government to control this technology would be too dangerous. So in that moment, the programming and hardware for allowing individuals to interface with one another was released to the world in the form of an encoded free app and interface universally able to work with any electronic device I.E. smart phone, tablet etc.. People were only able to get it off of the dark web at first ,but it quickly spread like wildfire across the internet and around the planet. Now people could upload their thoughts, emotions and experiences directly to another person in their purest from without any outside interference. This spawned a new kind of commerce never seen before, a sharing nexus where people could sell their experiences for internet credit. A medium of exchange that couldn’t readily be quantified or taxed, because what is a human experience worth?

It began as it always does with the lowest common denominator. Governments began to notice fewer and fewer people using banks and financial institutions. Then all at once, the world financial markets took a massive hit. The new sharing system called the human experience nexus or HEN for short had began to replace the financial controls that were in place to ensure the power of the few over the many. Initially only select kinds of people would except the social credit system of trading in personal thoughts, experience and emotions. Then when people realized the enormous potential of what was in the Nexus, some tried to monopolize it for some lurid ends, but the network was too broad and to interconnected for one group or person to get control of it. It was like a literal free market of human exchange. The social credit that you could earn depended on how much and what you were willing to share. The more personal you were willing to be and the more intense the material shared, the more people wanted it and the more credit you could earn. It didn’t take long for the first millionaires to appear, for lack of a better word as physical money couldn’t measure the worth of what was being sold. As people began to trade through the Nexus, and build credit, governments were beside themselves as to how to quantify the value of what was being exchanged. Some even tried to shut down HEN, but each time they tried, it would just reroute itself into another part of the internet. At one point there was consideration of killing the internet all together, but that was quickly dismissed as it was realized that with the exception of a few primitive people living in remote parts of the world, or some kind of off the grid hermit, most if not all of the world was dependent on the internet to function. So as more and more people traded directly in the Nexus, some business began taking Nexus credit’s the way they had adapted to take crypto currency. Only now, you didn’t need a complex understanding of math or a fancy algorithm, all you needed was to be willing to share who you were with people who were willing to trade off with you for your personal self.

Just under ten years after coming to fruition, the original Nexus had been modified and there were now ways to upload and download directly to memory disc that were similar to old style flash drives. If a person in a relationship wanted to share there most intimate feelings with someone, all they need do is put them on one of these storage units and let the other person experience what they saw, felt and understood. As with all things, this lead to a dark side of the exchanging of material. Some people who were sadist would forcibly acquire material from the suffering or fear of others and trade it to the person willing to give the most for it. This was like anything else, it was finally somewhat regulated, but willful sharing could not be stopped or controlled. In the end, most governments and major companies had to accept that the ideas of borders and separate ideologies were gone. Their so called control has evaporated and people could now readily move information at the speed of light from one person to another. Language was no longer a barrier nor were cultural norms. A person who grew up on one side of the planet could share their experiences with a person who grew up on another continent and they could understand each other. The Nexus also allowed you to use your earned credits to acquire things you desired. You could now buy food, clothing, or even a home by exchanging your experiences with others who would in turn give you credits that could be exchanged for some of the things you needed or wanted. People could also exchange these experiences directly with other people in exchange for these things. Some people became addicted to the experiences of others, but that like anything else was part of the Nexus that had yet to be worked out. In the end, the world had changed forever. The powers of society were shaken and the overlords that controlled thought and ideas were thrown down and the world was set free to a certain degree in an ever evolving new path of exchange based on what we all want to share but could never truly do so until the Nexus was born.