Utopic Dystopia (A short sci-fi story)

 (I wrote this a couple of years back for a sci-fi competition, and no surprises for guessing that it didn't get shortlisted, given its cliched theme. There was a word limit; hence the narrative runs incoherently fast.)

Dreamy memories gave an eerie vibe of a simulated reality when I regained my senses after an indefinite time. Two men and a woman in black aprons surrounded me as I sat on a metallic chair in a rather dull room with minimal furniture. They seemed weird because they appeared to be naked but for a transparent wrapping beneath their aprons, and were middle aged, with narrow eyes and small mouths, bald and featureless. They introduced themselves as Dave, Pete and Kiara. I couldn’t recall how I arrived there, and when. I couldn't tell where I was.

They looked at me curiously, with anticipation. As my memories started trickling, I narrated my story – to check my sanity and to satisfy their curiosity.

I, Agniv, an Indian astronaut, Vyomanaut to be precise, took off for Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the sun at 4.5 light years away. The Nakshatra spaceship, powered by a breakthrough propulsion technology that could accelerate it close to the speed of light, departed with three Vyomanauts in the year 2050 when wearable 6G smart-devices with quantum computing were ubiquitous, and when wirelessly rechargeable electric-vehicles and all-pervading A.I. in our lives witnessed the demise of fossil fuels and handheld smartphones.

Soon after our take-off in Nakshatra, however, I blanked out of consciousness, with an absolute void of a memory. Now I was amid the three strange-looking, near-naked people.

Nakshatra was expected to be back home by 2068. Except that I arrived in the year 2248, nearly two centuries later, Kiara informed me. An unbelievable event, tragic at best and devastating at worst. A malfunction could have accelerated Nakshatra much faster than its targeted speed, causing a higher relativistic time dilation, resulting in skipping 200 years on the earth. I had no idea what happened to my co-travelers, or how I survived.  

Two centuries! Everything I knew of, certainly perished; everyone I had known –family and friends – were no longer alive. I was a time traveler who didn’t belong there. In 2050, if we woke up a guy from 1850s, he would faint at the magic of IoT and wearable smart devices. He wouldn’t want to live in 2050. Was I going to be any different in 2248, alone of my kind and ancient to the ones alive?

 “You look quite different than average people, with soft voices and small mouths, dressed weirdly. Are you humans, or is my mind being run through a simulation?”

The three nodded thoughtfully, faint smiles playing on their faces.

I continued. “Did we colonize planets around a hundred stars yet?”

Pete was the first to speak. “The breakthrough technology to get to other stars was discarded and never pursued again. It needed too much resources as you know, and none would want to spend resources for sending people to interstellar destinations.”

“I can’t believe mankind has stopped being curious! Did a 3^rd world war happen? Did a virus wipe out half of humanity? What made leaders save resources than to explore the limits of the unknown?”

“You want to take a walk out on the streets to see how the world looks like now?”

“I do, but I am scared, frankly. It might all seem magic to me. Do teleporting people pop up and vanish into thin air? Maybe I can’t distinguish between humans and robots walking together on the streets!” The anticipation of seeing the world 200 years later was beginning to overwhelm the grief of having lost everyone I knew of.

“You will be mildly amused but pleasantly overwhelmed.” Dave chipped in. “Before we take you out, we need to give you a background.”

“I’m all ears!”

“In 2060s, effort intensified towards integrating nano-devices in the human body. Clinical trials were taking over in treating diseases using nano-swimmers that drifted in our blood. Step by step, major diseases including all kinds of cancer could be treated even at their advanced stages using nano-swimmers that targeted malicious cells and selectively repaired damaged DNAs. Multifunctional nanobots could open clogged arteries and assisted heart to pump blood without fail, bringing down instances of heart attacks. Almost all diseases were gradually cured and eradicated, including flu, diabetes, TB and viral fever. Our devices could move in anywhere inside the body, killing pathogens.”

“Nothing shocking. Nanotech in healthcare has been expected to do such things since 2020s.”

“What you might find interesting, Agniv, is that nano-biodevices were being merged with the exponentially-advancing field of A.I. Deep learning algorithms found their ways up to our brain. A.I.-powered nanobots drifted through our neurons, nerve cells and blood.”

“You certainly have my attention, Pete.”

“Even in your times, all kinds of information, including personal information of almost everyone on the planet, were up in the cloud. The nanobots inside our blood and brain cells – were in sync with the global network of information, the giant cloud of data and internet. The era of Internet-within-brains dawned.”

“That does sound like sci-fi, after all! What kind of changes did we embrace once bionic nanodevices with internet and A.I. got embedded in our brains?”

 “All kinds of changes.”

“Like?”

“Imagine the entire internet in your brain. You can access any piece of information instantaneously and connect to anyone on the planet in the blink of an eye, not via a dumb phone or a silly wearable device but direct brain-to-brain, mind-to-mind.”

“Like a giant global network of human minds?”

“Yes. Mankind becoming one single super-organism of infinite information and knowledge.”

“But where will you see the information? You need a screen, a device. Connecting to others’ brains will overwhelm me with their worries and thoughts. No?”

“With A.I-powered nanobots, images can be conjured in your brain, bypassing the retina and photoreceptors. The sensation and perception of image – or in fact of smell, touch, sound and taste – are all formed in the brain. Nanobots connected to the cloud, helped the brain get those sensations directly, skipping our sensory organs which otherwise feed signals from the outside world. You believe and experience what your brain makes you believe and experience. Nanobots could make you experience what another person is experiencing, and your perception would be identical to that of the other guy. A.I. would put appropriate filters to ensure their worries don’t trouble you anymore.”

“That’s astonishing. When did all these happen?”

“A century back.” Kiara explained. “Our decisions, choices and judgements were the result of our genetic makeup, experiences and the environment. Now, A.I.-powered-nanobots embedded in our brain help us take the best decisions drawing from the collective input of billions of humans, topped up with the best deep-learning algorithms.”

“This sounds ruthlessly futuristic, but I bet there’d be millions of poor and homeless folks out there. There’d be extremists, selfish businessmen and corrupt politicians who would always exploit the needy. Your nanobots inside the brain would be just futile against this. Only a fraction of humanity is reaping the benefits, right?”

“About a century back, people everywhere started to realize the social and economic inequalities that plagued us. Consequently, everyone started to become selfless, caring and compassionate; people redistributed their wealth and resources. Governments were dissolved and nations were disintegrated peacefully to remove all man-made borders. Ten billion people believed in a single species of homo sapiens.”

“That’s plain bullshit. People can’t do that, not billions of people. Society is chaotic and will always have disparities. What you’re saying is textbook definition of utopia. Terrorists won’t give up fighting for religious beliefs, and the richest folks won’t give away all their money in charity. Politicians won’t stop being corrupt and anyone would think of his family first. How on earth can nations dissolve?”

“Except that it all happened.”

“And what exactly would the motivation be for working and doing jobs if wealth is equally distributed among all?”

“There is no motivation. Just that everyone believed in helping others, and in not having governments or nations. Crime rate is flat zero, everywhere.”

“Impossible!” I cried out.

Dave chipped in again. “It has happened, Agniv. Our negative traits like anger, greed and selfishness were gradually eliminated, thanks to the giant cloud of human brains, guided and pervaded by A.I. Terrorists, greedy businessmen and power-hungry politicians no longer exist. We are in pure utopia.

Supply chain, logistics, production of food, goods and services are all robotic now, including agriculture and transport. The generation, storage and distribution of energy is done by A.I.-powered bots in a self-sustaining manner. We no longer need to interfere or give instructions to get electricity or food or water or anything. Our needs and demands which are always in sync with the global network, are taken care of by robots and A.I.  We no longer need currency or money. There is no concept of job or business anymore. We humans have nothing to do except indulge in entertainment which feels as real as you can imagine.

Our emotions are triggered by chemicals secreted in response to appropriate dictates from the brain on receiving sensory inputs. Now, nanobots in the brain can stimulate secretion of hormones which make our experiences and emotions indistinguishable from the real ones despite being AI-assisted algorithms. It’s as real as it gets. We’re augmented humans.

We don’t need to speak as we can understand each other, brain-to-brain. Hence our mouth and lips, our vocal cords are weakening. It’s also artificially engineered biological evolution, expedited at will.”

“I just can’t fathom it. No one needs to work but everyone is selfless, there is no government or money. Robots and A.I. generate energy and food. How fast is the population growing?”

“We stopped reproducing about fifty years back. The hormones which give people pleasure while having sexual intercourse, is now eliminated by nanobots. People don’t feel the urge to have sex. Old age is pushed back indefinitely by engineering our DNA at the atomic level. In principle, we will live forever. We decided to stagnate human population. Everyone is nearly the same age now which is early thirties to early forties - no children and no old people. We are immortals, frozen in time at this age. It is utopia.”

I was shocked beyond my own comprehension when they walked me outside. The streets were clean and empty except for a few people walking naked in transparent wraps. Skyscrapers looked the same everywhere. No vehicles and bikes. No shops. No restaurants.

Pete explained: “We realized that there is no shame in others seeing our genitals. There is no sexual urge as you know. The transparent wrap you see, is made of nano-fibers with a million sensors that regulate our body temperature, monitor our health, deliver medicines through interfacing nano-needles, protect us from rain or wind, generates solar energy to power the nanodevices in our bodies. We stay indoors and indulge in virtual experiences. Music, movies, games and art are all created and conjured by the A.I. in us, our brain perceives it all directly without the need for sensory organs like eyes or ears.

We don’t need to travel anymore. Virtual meet with family and friends is as realistic an experience as actually meeting them – even the sensation of touch, hugs and kisses – are all engineered inside our brain cells.”

I was lost in thoughts: how could all these possibly be true? This could be possible in only one scenario, and that was infinitely scary.

“Humans aren’t humans anymore.”

Kiara took out a needle, pricked herself. Thick, crimson-red blood oozed out. “We are humans, very much! Our hearts pump blood, and our bodies are still biological. Did you fear that we were all robots, run by a super-powerful A.I., enslaving humans, making them hallucinate and live in a matrix of fantasies? Like the ancient movie Matrix from 2000s?” She smiled.

“I didn’t mean that. I’m sure you’re all biologically humans. But the A.I. and the internet became self-aware, didn’t they? It was artificial consciousness that emerged and seeped into your brains even as nanobots swam inside your blood, took over human consciousness, and started dictating your thoughts and actions.”

“You’re right about A.I. becoming self-aware. It is ‘us’ now. We got rid of anger, greed and selfishness in humans. No crimes, no violence. Isn’t that sheer utopia? Wouldn’t mankind want that?”

“But you stripped us of the very things that made us humans: our emotions and our ability to make our own decisions.”

“You’re getting it wrong, Agniv. We experience emotions in a way identical to what you or your contemporary humans experienced. No change in that because the same set of hormones are secreted in our bodies, albeit under the assistance of A.I. We still take our own decisions, guided by a sentient A.I. inside our brains.”

“No!” I yelled. “It’s not homo sapiens anymore. You’ve transformed into biological beings dictated by artificial consciousness.”

“You’re over-reacting. Wouldn’t you want to see a society which was equal in all aspects, free from all maladies and malaises? Or would you want a society with increasing poverty, chaos, rapes and murder, drug cartels, battles and wars that leave millions handicapped and killed?” Pete thumped on my back gently.

“Are you going to embed those nanobots in my brain too, and make me one of your kind? Sync me to the global network of human minds? Strip me of my inherent decision-making abilities?”

Kiara put her right arm around my neck. “If you mix a cup of water to a cup of milk, stir it, and then take a spoonful of it, would you get water or milk?”

“It’d be a mixture.”

“Same here. Artificial consciousness (A.C.) did become self-aware, and it percolated all the way to the network of human brains. Human consciousness is benefitting from the help provided by A.C. Our overall consciousness is no longer biological or artificial in its entirety. It’s an amalgamation of the two. We are humans, almost fully biological, but with a consciousness which is partly artificial in origin.”

“Except that the artificial component is the dominant one!”

“The choice is yours, Agniv. We won’t enforce. You can use your fully biological consciousness to decide whether you would want to continue living that way, or you’d like to become an augmented human like us.”

I remained silent, and so were they, for a few minutes. Was this utopia, or a dystopia presented to be perceived as a utopia?

“Agniv, we found you near a damaged space capsule, some ten miles from here on a field. You’ve no memory since taking off in Nakshatra, and our records show that it never reached Alpha Centauri. Your co-travelers didn’t survive. How did you come back to earth? How did you propel it back from wherever you had reached?”

At that very instant, like clouds giving way to a clear blue sky, the void in my memory started filling up, slowly at first and then rapidly as memories crystallized. Suddenly, I became aware of my recent past. I smiled. I recalled what propelled me back to the earth - it was an entity which was neither artificial nor biological. 

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