Project Panoptes

Harold gasped when he saw the ads on his phone. Suzi peeked at his screen to see various things meant to be used during role-playing behind locked doors.

Her wide eyes and exaggerated frown lines told the tale. “Is there something you’re not telling me?

Harold smirked before returning his gaze to the advertisement. Everything existed. From lubes to gels to fuzzy handcuffs and even a leather paddle with a large crimson heart. It amazed him to see things that made the perverse seem normal.

He smiled while he continued to scroll through the different screens.

“I would never search for this stuff. Don’t you remember that wild dream I told you about? I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep.” 

Suzi glanced at him over her tea and smiled. “After we talked about it, I couldn’t go back to sleep either,” she quipped.

“Did that dream interest you?”

She set her tea down and peered at him. “We’ve been married for 40 years. You must have watched or read something that caused that strange dream. Imagine us in some resort wearing crazy things, pretending I am a horse. What in the devil do you look at when you’re in your office?”

Pursing his lips, he stared at her. “Numbers, ledger sheets, and pivot tables. I don’t have time to look at the news, much less strange things like this.”

Suzi chuckled, “Sorry, after this many years of not being noticed, I should have guessed that you wouldn’t be interested in sexy stuff. Maybe you should.”

“Oh, come on, we did our bit. What do you want from me?”

She sipped her tea, thoughtfully considering her reply.

“What happened to the Harold that took me skinny dipping at our secret love nest? You used to love to run around pretending they lost us on a desert island. What happened?”

He glanced at her for a moment. Time rewound itself as his expression softened. “We had kids. I focused on building the company, and you focused on your career at the DOD. We lead by example.”

“We established one, alright. We should have never left the farm.”

“What does that mean?”

A piercing whistle from the teakettle momentarily interrupted her. Harold set his phone down while watching her as the morning sun cut through her gown. The years had been kind. Images of a younger version of them on the family farm, beating the summer heat in the pond, invaded his thoughts.

“Tina told me that Steve doesn’t even look at her. At thirty-one, those two should be happier. Steve is taking on after you.”

Harold sat back in his chair, glaring into her eyes. “Steve doesn’t know what we do behind closed doors!”

“He’s not stupid. You can see what people do outside and guess what’s happening in the bedroom.”

“Is that where all that gossip comes from, guessing what people are doing?”

Suzi shrugged. “Can’t say. You can tell if people are happy or not.”

“Hey, we still have my place in the woods. Do you want to play in the woods and live off the land like we did when we were young?”

Suzi thought back to their little solar-powered cabin in the mountains. “I wouldn’t mind. At least there, you might pay more attention to me. I would want a travel trailer vs. your cabin.”

“Why?”

“We’re not spring chickens, creature comforts, darling.”

Harold chuckled, glanced at the clock, and then back at her. “I got to go.”

Early the following day, Harold shot up in bed as the clock read 4:44, just like the previous night. What the hell?

Suzi didn’t stir as he tried to dismiss the dream of reliving his time in the Navy. He had dreamed that all of his crewmates were naked. Tattoos were used to denote rank. That’s dumb. Those things are permanent. What about promotions? Rubbing his face as if to wash the dream away, he slid across the DMZ to her side of the bed. Her warmth and soft skin reminded him of days before kids, job stress, and health issues. Dreams of special dinners, including her mother’s banana bread, filled his thoughts.

***

Suzi scrolled through social media when she noticed ads for travel trailers and RVs were everywhere.

While researching products for his business, advertisements for timeshares and cruises appeared alongside tractors, seeds, and irrigation supplies. It took him aback when timeshares were at naturist resorts.

Harold didn’t believe in consequences. I think someone’s listening to us. He thought.

The latest generation of smart speakers had entertained them for weeks. Suzi brought one home from her work to evaluate for a project she would be part of.

Driven by heuristic algorithms and the latest AI technology, the thing was almost a family member.

Glancing at the device. It displayed the date and time against the colorful background. Harold noted they switched the camera and mic off.

After hours of accounting work, he looked at the news. An ad for the Navy popped up. Join the Navy and see the world!

Harold stopped scrolling. He peered at the smart speaker. The time was 4:44 PM. That’s just too weird.

***

That night, he noticed Suzi was less talkative than usual. “Is everything okay?”

She nodded while stirring the honey into her tea. “But?”

“Last night. What was that about?”

“What?”

She glanced into his face. “You don’t remember?”

Harold smiled. “Are you talking about me holding you?”

She nodded while smiling at him.

“You got me thinking about stuff. We should spend more time with each other.”

Suzi smiled as she showed him a catalog of travel trailers.

“Look at these while I get the bread out of the oven.”

Harold furrowed his brow while taking his reading glasses from his pocket. A brochure for Winnebago travel trailers pulled from a magazine lay before him. Flipping through the pages, the aroma of banana bread filled the kitchen.

“Wow, you haven’t made this in years. What gives?”

“A recipe for banana bread popped up on the smart speaker this morning.”

Steam left the bread as she sliced a few pieces from the loaf. Butter melted off the knife with each stroke. Harold was lost in the moment until this little nagging thought invaded his memory.

He dreamed about banana bread after the nightmare of the naked admiral. What the hell?

“What, don’t you like it?” She asked.

His face softened as he glanced at her. “It’s wonderful. Thanks for making it.”

He rewarded Suzi in ways that brought her memories back in time, back to the farm and even the mountain getaway.

Harold had his own dreams.

The honking horns, long traffic lines, and stuffy board meetings gave way to sitting in the cab of a tractor. Programming the GPS to control the machine was only a tiny part of the vision. Having his kids join him on the family farm became an obsession. The chase of Suzi through a corn maze, which led to a pond, was interrupted. The clock beside the bed clicked 4:44. You’re kidding!

Puff-puff-puff were the sounds that greeted Suzie. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the house.

“You’re up before the roosters,” she said.

Harold scratched his head before speaking. “I was chasing you through a maze in the cornfield,” he admitted.

She turned to look at him. “That’s the nicest thing to say. I picked up bacon at the market. Would you like a breakfast fit for a rancher?”

His smile lit up the kitchen. Suzi dug out the old frying pan with the clattering of several pans on top of it. He put the tablet away and admired his wife making biscuits, gravy, bacon, and eggs.

“Why are you up so early?” She asked.

He breathed a huff before responding. “I think I'm on the wrong path. This toxic life spending hours on the highway to breathe the fumes and exhaust from thousands of cars isn’t working for me.”

She spun around and smiled.

“I was looking at farm equipment to figure out what we would need to get the family farm working again.”

Harold sat straight in his chair. “For real?”

She nodded while sliding two eggs out of the pan onto his plate.

***

‘File Not Found’

Harold was about to have a fit when his yearly report was missing. The IT people were included in the hunt. While they searched the backup tapes and virtual machines, he sat there thinking about the last few days. He persuaded himself it would be crazy to give up this job to spend his life on a farm.

They went to bed after he convinced Suzi to stop thinking about an agrarian life at their age.

That night his dreams were tempest-tossed, full-blown nightmares of city life, nasty bosses, and neighbors who didn’t give a damn if you were trying to sleep in on the weekend.

Suzi dreamed of a torrential downpour, which swept away her house in the flood.

***

Deep underground in a secret facility in DC, a skunkworks project was unfolding.

They put Lieutenant Colonel Floyd Tutt in charge of Project Panoptes. He sat in the center of a large conference table, peering at the different leads.

“We have given you all tasks that wouldn’t make sense individually. Today, I will put the puzzle together for you. It is a fact that the world will not have enough food to feed the masses if things don’t change. Thinktanks have decided that changing the behavior of people around the world is part of the answer.”

“Sir, you can lead a horse to water…”

Tutt held up his hand as if to silence the person.

“Here is what we know. AI will take over almost every white-collar job in the world. We are using AI to discover the best way to nudge people into professions where we need them.”

“AI, that chatty software?”

He nodded while bringing up a PowerPoint.

“For years, we have monitored millions of people. First, it was surveys, then ratings on what they watched on TV, and now, through implementing smart devices, computers, phones, etc. Hell, we even monitor the use of their smart vacuums. We have input all the conversations into enormous databases and analyzed the temperature of the people in different areas of the country.”

“That’s a lot of data, sir. How do you manage it?”

Tutt shuffled paperwork, searching for a classified report.

“AI never sleeps or calls in sick. AI sorts through yottabytes of data and spits out recommendations. Distraction is the key. The masses are worried about climate change. We scare the devil out of them at every turn, deflecting them from our actions. We control them by having less energy at their disposal. If we can take away their freedoms, we can get them to focus on things that are important to us. We need to save the world; anarchy, through freewill, won’t cut it. We need them to fall in line and ask us to save them.”

“People will revolt, sir. There will be wars in the streets.”

“They won’t react with hostility toward us if it is their idea to change. We allow bloodshed through protests, anarchists, and wars to keep them in flux. The media are the sheepdogs, keeping the masses corralled until we save them from themselves. They will beg us to take their freedoms away to keep them safe.”

One of the project managers got his attention. “That sounds like a concentration camp. What kinds of things do you want them to do?”

Tutt scowled at the lead, making a note of who he was. “They are not concentration camps. They are re-education centers to instill proper thinking.”

“How do they work, sir?”

“Simple, really. There are several classes of people. Young, healthy people will continue to be encouraged to play video games that simulate combat. AI watches them to see who is proficient and who is not.”

“And those that are not proficient?”

“The lazy, not coordinated, or those individuals bent on self-destruction, we will facilitate their demise with the promise of a high. Our partners in different countries provide the lethal ‘high’ through poisonous laced drugs. The world will have fewer people to feed and house.”

“Sir, that’s inhumane.”

“No, not really. A person who does not benefit mankind by their life does so by their death. They are performing a civic duty by providing an end to the means.”

Gasps reverberated throughout the conference room.

“What’s the bottom line, sir?”

He cleared his throat. “Remember, this is top secret. The last meeting of The New World Order called for a thirty percent reduction in the total population by 2034.”

Despite their awareness, his statement still appalled them.

“Excuse me, that’s over two and a half billion people, probably three billion by 2034. Are you just going to shoot them?”

“Na, it will be less. We promote selfish values that will cause many to stay unhindered by kids.”

“How do you promote this ideology?”

“Pfft… easy. Movies, advertisements, universities, abolishing or controlling religion and using our secret weapon.”

“It sounds as if you are monsters,” a lead said.

Tutt shook his head. “We’re not monsters; we’ve figured this out. The old and sick may perish of seemingly natural causes. Their death will undoubtedly be part of the virus designed to infiltrate and destroy healthy cells that regulate the autonomic systems. The spike protein works like a scud missile on those types of cells. They usually rule their deaths as heart attacks.”

“And there’s no way to determine that the virus impaired their health?”

He looked at him and shook his head. “People’s diet and cravings for junk food make heart attacks a way of life. Remember, we know what they eat from what they buy. Pure crap.”

“Excuse me, shouldn’t we warn them that this stuff is bad for them?”

Tutt glanced at the woman and laughed. “Look at the warning labels on cigarettes. How many of you in this room still smoke? No, ma’am, let the stupid people leave the gene pool. We need intelligent folks, not idiots.”

The silence was deafening. Many in that room had used tobacco right before the meeting.

“This is a nightmare, sir.”

He glanced across the table. “It’s a nightmare, and it is up to us to fix it. Those hell-bent on self-destruction may self-destruct. They will fight noble wars to eliminate those who don’t contribute to society. People with skills will have been identified and nudged into a vocation that benefits the world’s needs.”

“Nudged. How is that possible?”

Tutt reached into his briefcase and put a smart speaker on the table for all to see.

Suzi, who was part of the team, recognized the speaker as her eyes widened.

“Our good friends have developed these things not only to listen and analyze conversations, but these versions also listen to, and transmit, Alpha waves.”

“Brain waves!?”

Harold’s urges and waking before the alarm clock went off became clear. Suzi swallowed hard as beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

Tutt nodded, “Primarily alpha waves. Those waves are responsible when individuals solve a problem at night when they are sleeping. Our machines monitor these waves, and when they are most active, we transmit or nudge them to think things they would otherwise reject during heavy gamma wave activity.”

Suzi spoke up. “Are you telling us that even if they switch off the microphone and the camera, this thing is still spying on them?”

Tutt stared at her and laughed. “You’re new to this group, yes?”

She nodded as those around her chuckled.

“Nowadays, the only way to be assured of privacy is to be in a box under the ground. Everything is spying on you. From the simplest of ways, like how much electricity you use and when you use it, to what you purchase at the store. There is a record of everything that you do in some form or another. When we go into a cashless culture, we will ultimately control society. When we eliminate all other forms of energy, we will have complete control over the masses.”

“Since I am new, please explain why they need control of the energy.”

He glanced around the room and then back at Suzi. “If a person or group of people misbehave, we turn off their electricity. Eliminating all other forms of energy under the guise of climate change, we can control them.”

***

Suzi understood why Harold had images of perverse toys on his phone. The plan was diabolical. From medical to food to energy, the New World Order had it covered.

***

It shocked Harold that the smart speaker didn’t respond to his request. Searching his home office, it was missing. Once in the bedroom, he noticed a packed suitcase.

“Suzi,” he yelled.

She appeared from the garage. “Surprise! Turn off the lights and set the alarm. I have a reservation for our anniversary.”

Harold knew their anniversary was months away. He also knew Suzi, and he knew not to question her. It shocked him when she grabbed his phone and left it on the counter. She shredded the credit cards and smiled.

Buying supplies and gas with cash, Harold and Suzi left the matrix. Her last known communication was via the postman to their children. She referenced a song about a girl, a mountain, and an old man with a gun.

The kids knew the song’s genesis, and that was enough.