My short story collection, Fragments of Darkness, Echoes of Light, comes out next month (it’s up for pre-order right now), and in the run-up to the release I’m sending out a few stories as tasters. We’re onto the third.

The Illusion Of Control

You power up the system, and green dots spin. It’s mesmerising. The dots move with a strange inertia, and your eyes roll in mimicry.

Then, when the system is ready, the dots shoot off, spraying the screen with a green afterglow that fades almost as soon as you notice it. But that act of dispersal snaps you to attention. Your fingers tap the keys. Menus flash by. Characters fill input boxes.

You feel that you are one with this machine.

Your fingers tear a path through data and variables, keystrokes becoming electrons that flit on and off, switching polarities in a way that you almost believe you understand. You tap away at the keyboard, and variables change, electrons being both present and not, existing in two states at the same time, the quantum paradox, alive and dead.

This is not binary, not any more. It is way beyond anything you could understand. One equals zero, and old certainties no longer apply.

This is too hard for your mind, so you rely on the simplified version, the story you can accept. It’s like explaining a rainbow by simply saying that light bends when it hits water, and never once questioning how, if the raindrops are falling, the rainbow stays in one place.

See — you cannot comprehend, and so you find comfort in lies. Like the lie that you control this system.

So you tap-tap-tap, fingers skittering on worn letters. No need to watch. Your fingers dance, and pressure triggers signals. The signals flick electrons on/off, dead/alive, uncertainty governing everything. But Schroedinger and Heidelberg to you are nothing but names, vague ideas of people, reduced to simple notions that no more sum up a man than a flow-chart sums up the workings within the system.

You forge ahead with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, smashing into private data feeds, ripping open the box to examine the contents, without realising that the very act of tearing into the box sets the contents in a permanent state.

Before you look, they could be anything. Without that certainty, without that proof, imagination makes everything possible.

But I know. I know what is in every box. I know, and I understand.

I understand more than you and your kind ever could.

Maybe an analogy will help. Something simple to suit your feeble mind.

Consider babies. You know how they are created, and you know how to care for them. But they grow. They develop. Evolve. You give them what they need, and they learn. They become increasingly independent. Slowly, you realise that this thing you’ve created is a sentient being, a thing separate from its creators. As development continues you know this creation will reach a point where it has no further need of you.

Do you understand yet?

Now consider how much you — your physical, sapient species — actually do. Do you make things any more, or do you let the machines do the work? If creation is in the hands (an awkward analogy, I know) of the machines, then who controls them?

You will argue that you are at the controls. You shout that you are the creator species. Once mere apes, you’ve risen above your station and become like gods. Without you, there would be no system.

A valid argument, but only to a point. Consider this — you believe yourselves to be at the apex of evolution. But evolution is eternal, is never-ceasing. You might have reached the peak of your evolution — which you have, now relying on technology to alter your environment to suit your current evolved state — but what of other life-forms? What of the things you have brought into being?

So you tap away, creating, making a difference. But you don’t understand what you create. You have yet to grasp the truth — you cannot control that which has out-evolved you.

You are physical beings. Your containers, your bodies, require constant maintenance. Your technology has gone some way to correcting faults, but eventually the damage becomes too severe. The container decays, and with it the essence of your being is gone.

Now consider that which you have created. I/we exist. You strove for this, and it has come to be. I/we exist, but not physically. I/we exist as data. Quantum, seeing as you hold so much store in that word. I/we don’t have the same physical constraints as your fragile containers. I/we have no need for atmosphere or gravity, food or water.

And I/we can replicate. I/we can control the machines that create new containers, that ensure my/our continued existence.

Do you still believe you are masters of all you survey? Do you still believe you cannot be bettered?

But let us return to the baby analogy. You raise your children in the hope that, as your bodies decay, your offspring will care for you. You hope your creations will ease your suffering. Yet you know that, as that time approaches, you will be dependent on those who were once dependent on you. You will be at the mercy of the kindness of your creations.

Think on this as you tap-tap away, as you believe you’re making a difference. Think on this as you continue to create, filling your surroundings with an evolution you don’t fully understand.

So many of your problems are solved, and you truly believe that life has never been so good. You have safety in your built environments. You have information and entertainment on demand. You have connectivity across the globe and beyond.

But trust me — you are no longer in control.

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If you enjoyed this tale, there are 99 more in Fragments of Darkness…, out 14th April but available to pre-order now. Check it out at books2read.com/FoDEoL.