I am a hermit.
But I wasn't always one. In fact, I can pinpoint the day I became a hermit, seeking no pleasure but my own company. It was a fairly normal day and I was in a vacuum-sealed office space watching the artifical weather screen flash bright and happy images of the Sun and other imaginary things.
Very few people actually ever stepped out into 'the Fog', as anything outside of the vacuum sealed office spaces, the vacuum sealed living pods and the vacuum sealed government controlled entertainment lounges, was commonly called. I was one of those few people. Always excusing myself to use the restroom - because while I fancied myself a renegade going out into the Fog everyday, I still couldn't bring myself to advertise the fact to my colleagues. Pressing a scary looking bright red button, I watched the imposing ten metre door creak open outwards, letting in tainted Fog air into the 'airlock' that separated the soulless inside from the untamed outside.
That's all the Fog was. The outside. But an outside that was a smog-filled, ash-strewn vision of hell that the world had become in my time. It still wasn't poisonous or anything though - medical science had fixed that long ago - it's just that most people preferred to remain blissfully ignorant watching long forgotten images of blue skies and sunny summer mornings on their weather screens.
I watched the capricious breeze pick up pieces of rubbish and fling them this way and that. It was peaceful and relaxing. Presently though, two things happened that were somewhat out of the ordinary. One: it began to rain. Hot, acid drops the size of table tennis balls smashed against my face, stinging, and dissolved into a fine mist. Two: a man appeared in the distance.
This man, unlike me, was dressed for the weather. Not only was he wrapped up in a bright red poncho, but he also held a cavernous red umbrella over his head, hanging on to it against the suddenly gusting wind, with grim resolution.
He continued to walk in my direction, seemingly oblivious to my presence. Considering the momentousness of the events of that day, I find it curious that I don't remember the man's face at all. What I do remember is what I did next: I took a step towards the man and made an innocuous observation.
"It's raining."
You have to realize one thing. The workplace I worked in was very, very finely tuned for my and my colleagues sensibilities, as established by a government sanctioned pairing program. But the Fog was a scary place where anybody could talk to anybody else. It was very rare to actually find someone to talk to, and even rarer to chat them up, but the theoretical possibility existed. My trite observation actually bordered on recklessness.
The man with the umbrella looked up with evident consternation and without a word pulled out his handheld communicator and snapped a picture of me, turned and walked away. I looked at him neutrally as he made his way to the Verification Booth that was mandated by law to be installed on every street wider than twenty metres. The Booth on our street was only a few metres away from we were, and blinked blue and white in the grey air.
I knew just exactly what was going to happen, but something in me was different that day, and I stayed to watch the process play out. The umbrella man stepped into the glass cocoon of the Verification Booth and a helpful screen slithered out from under his feet. He pressed a button, and a flat, emotionless voice intoned that it recognized the man as affiliated to the Conservative Party.
The man pressed another button and my mug shot of exactly two minutes ago popped up on the screen listing my affiliation as a Green. Even from a short distance, I could see the man start. He would need the full spectrum of verification given that we lay on diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum. He pressed yet another button, and the familiar tring-tring of a handheld communicator being contacted filled the air.
The trings seemed to go on forever until it was silent. The man with the umbrella tried again because there was no way he could let an unverified Green's statement go. I smirked at his back, unnoticed. Something was different with me that day. This time, the sound cut-off mid-tring and the same toneless, colourless voice of the Verification Booth came back. Except it wasn't. It was just the government's anonymizer program smoothing the receiver's voice into a demographic-controlled neutral voice. The receiver would have been randomly selected by the Verification Booth, and the penalties for not responding to a Verification Call were fairly harsh.
"Is it raining?" The man with the umbrella asked. His voice too would have been neutrified for the receiver.
"Yes."
A number flashed on the screen. 60%. The Verification Booth was telling the man that there was a 60% chance that my truth would correspond to a coherent psychological state in his mind that would be his truth. This meant, of course, that there was a 40% chance his brain would explode from a cognitive break for believing a Green's statement. A bead of sweat appeared on his furrowed brow as the man, now looking mildly annoyed, pondered the odds. Maybe he had somewhere to be, something to do. I continued to smirk because I could see the gears in his head turn at glacial pace, making their way to the inevitable conclusion that was clear as day to me.
He pressed another button.
"Do you wish to begin the double blind test?" the voice of the Booth droned.
Now, here's the thing. While the first callee was randomly chosen, everything about the callee wasn't random. He or she had to be a Conservative, like the caller, and equally importantly, he or she had to be in a physical position to actually verify the statement in question. With the double blind test, a person of unknown political affiliation would instead be contacted, and the same question posed to that person. That person would of course not know anything about the caller.
"Is it raining?"
"Hold on. Let me check." The double blind callee was free to make a politically aligned verification call to hit a high probability post-truth. This particular callee was being meticulous.
"Yes," after a momentary pause.
The screen now flashed 87%. The man with the umbrella, while not quite jumping for joy, visibly relaxed and stepped out of the booth. His mind at ease, and in a psychologically coherent state suited to his political affiliation, he nodded and said -
"It is raining." And turned to offer me a spare umbrella. But I wasn't there anymore.
The same day, I quit my job, abandoned my government-allotted living space, and walked out into the Fog in search of conversation, and objectivity. I had had enough of the post-post-truth world and became a hermit.
But I wasn't always one. In fact, I can pinpoint the day I became a hermit, seeking no pleasure but my own company. It was a fairly normal day and I was in a vacuum-sealed office space watching the artifical weather screen flash bright and happy images of the Sun and other imaginary things.
Very few people actually ever stepped out into 'the Fog', as anything outside of the vacuum sealed office spaces, the vacuum sealed living pods and the vacuum sealed government controlled entertainment lounges, was commonly called. I was one of those few people. Always excusing myself to use the restroom - because while I fancied myself a renegade going out into the Fog everyday, I still couldn't bring myself to advertise the fact to my colleagues. Pressing a scary looking bright red button, I watched the imposing ten metre door creak open outwards, letting in tainted Fog air into the 'airlock' that separated the soulless inside from the untamed outside.
That's all the Fog was. The outside. But an outside that was a smog-filled, ash-strewn vision of hell that the world had become in my time. It still wasn't poisonous or anything though - medical science had fixed that long ago - it's just that most people preferred to remain blissfully ignorant watching long forgotten images of blue skies and sunny summer mornings on their weather screens.
I watched the capricious breeze pick up pieces of rubbish and fling them this way and that. It was peaceful and relaxing. Presently though, two things happened that were somewhat out of the ordinary. One: it began to rain. Hot, acid drops the size of table tennis balls smashed against my face, stinging, and dissolved into a fine mist. Two: a man appeared in the distance.
This man, unlike me, was dressed for the weather. Not only was he wrapped up in a bright red poncho, but he also held a cavernous red umbrella over his head, hanging on to it against the suddenly gusting wind, with grim resolution.
He continued to walk in my direction, seemingly oblivious to my presence. Considering the momentousness of the events of that day, I find it curious that I don't remember the man's face at all. What I do remember is what I did next: I took a step towards the man and made an innocuous observation.
"It's raining."
You have to realize one thing. The workplace I worked in was very, very finely tuned for my and my colleagues sensibilities, as established by a government sanctioned pairing program. But the Fog was a scary place where anybody could talk to anybody else. It was very rare to actually find someone to talk to, and even rarer to chat them up, but the theoretical possibility existed. My trite observation actually bordered on recklessness.
The man with the umbrella looked up with evident consternation and without a word pulled out his handheld communicator and snapped a picture of me, turned and walked away. I looked at him neutrally as he made his way to the Verification Booth that was mandated by law to be installed on every street wider than twenty metres. The Booth on our street was only a few metres away from we were, and blinked blue and white in the grey air.
I knew just exactly what was going to happen, but something in me was different that day, and I stayed to watch the process play out. The umbrella man stepped into the glass cocoon of the Verification Booth and a helpful screen slithered out from under his feet. He pressed a button, and a flat, emotionless voice intoned that it recognized the man as affiliated to the Conservative Party.
The man pressed another button and my mug shot of exactly two minutes ago popped up on the screen listing my affiliation as a Green. Even from a short distance, I could see the man start. He would need the full spectrum of verification given that we lay on diametrically opposite ends of the spectrum. He pressed yet another button, and the familiar tring-tring of a handheld communicator being contacted filled the air.
The trings seemed to go on forever until it was silent. The man with the umbrella tried again because there was no way he could let an unverified Green's statement go. I smirked at his back, unnoticed. Something was different with me that day. This time, the sound cut-off mid-tring and the same toneless, colourless voice of the Verification Booth came back. Except it wasn't. It was just the government's anonymizer program smoothing the receiver's voice into a demographic-controlled neutral voice. The receiver would have been randomly selected by the Verification Booth, and the penalties for not responding to a Verification Call were fairly harsh.
"Is it raining?" The man with the umbrella asked. His voice too would have been neutrified for the receiver.
"Yes."
A number flashed on the screen. 60%. The Verification Booth was telling the man that there was a 60% chance that my truth would correspond to a coherent psychological state in his mind that would be his truth. This meant, of course, that there was a 40% chance his brain would explode from a cognitive break for believing a Green's statement. A bead of sweat appeared on his furrowed brow as the man, now looking mildly annoyed, pondered the odds. Maybe he had somewhere to be, something to do. I continued to smirk because I could see the gears in his head turn at glacial pace, making their way to the inevitable conclusion that was clear as day to me.
He pressed another button.
"Do you wish to begin the double blind test?" the voice of the Booth droned.
Now, here's the thing. While the first callee was randomly chosen, everything about the callee wasn't random. He or she had to be a Conservative, like the caller, and equally importantly, he or she had to be in a physical position to actually verify the statement in question. With the double blind test, a person of unknown political affiliation would instead be contacted, and the same question posed to that person. That person would of course not know anything about the caller.
"Is it raining?"
"Hold on. Let me check." The double blind callee was free to make a politically aligned verification call to hit a high probability post-truth. This particular callee was being meticulous.
"Yes," after a momentary pause.
The screen now flashed 87%. The man with the umbrella, while not quite jumping for joy, visibly relaxed and stepped out of the booth. His mind at ease, and in a psychologically coherent state suited to his political affiliation, he nodded and said -
"It is raining." And turned to offer me a spare umbrella. But I wasn't there anymore.
The same day, I quit my job, abandoned my government-allotted living space, and walked out into the Fog in search of conversation, and objectivity. I had had enough of the post-post-truth world and became a hermit.
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