The Angel Hack

/CHPTR_0: Eternity

So is this what humanity has come to? I don't understand how some people can let this happen. It's so... inhumane. They say it's for the safety of the rest of us. I don't believe it. It's wrong. Who gets to decide the outcome of a person's life? No one should have that power.

For future readers, I am referring to the Eternity Program. Modern advances in technology have led to a monstrous creation. They've managed to take a human mind, and turn it into a line of code. The eternity program is everything I feared. Greed, power, and hatred corrupting a leader's judgement. The Eternity Program is simple, but it could have the potential to go horribly wrong. But of course, it's already gone wrong. It was destined to fail from the moment it was announced.

The lead scientist was a man called Stuart Labret. He was a good man. It wasn't his intention to have this creation turn into the horrific weapon it is now. He wanted to save his wife. He began the project with good intentions. He could preserve his wife until they found a way to save her. Labret wanted to find the solution so desperately, spending nights on end staring at a screen, frantically typing in commands. Alas, he was too late. He received a devastating phone call, which felt like a knife slowly forcing its way through his already worn heart. Labret didn't show up to the facility for a month. After that time, he returned, and didn't utter a word to anyone while he stormed through the project. He finished the remaining work within the next week.

You'd expect the Government to use this for a good cause; perhaps taking a dying genius' mind and preserving it. However, they didn't. They took this idea and turned it into a dreadful concept. They are using it as a punishment. They are using it as a deterrent.

The men behind their grand desks high up in their guarded offices decided it would make a lovely life sentence. Their main reason was that it would be "space efficient". After all, a digital line of code would be easier to contain than a person. See, the thing with this line of code is that it can be changed. Minor little twists in the code. Distorting it. Manipulating it. Do you know what they actually do to the prisoners? It's an unending hell they live- no, wait. They don't live. They just suffer. Do you know what it's like to have your mind torn apart and reassembled? Everything you've ever known thrown together in a digital blender. It's mind breaking. Literally. All they can do is scream. They scream and scream and scream. It's all they can do; their natural reaction. They scream because of the pain they are forced to endure. No one hears these screams. You'd barely realise they existed until you studied the line of code put into a life sentence. You see minor changes, small fluctuations in mental patterns. Tiny little sparks on a screen. They are the cries from the prisoners.

There is no one to talk to, no one to listen to them. Don't you think it's cruel? In the space of a few seconds, it could feel like one thousand years of time. Imagine how long, how unbearable, how horrible that would be. An eternity of pain. Nothing but pain. Of course, the people have no real say in this. No matter what power you may hold, what position you may have found yourself in, it's hard to say "no" to the men with more guns than you. So, we dealt with it. We lived with it. We turned our backs when people were whisked away. The people in power didn't care about running the country properly. They only cared about how amazing they could make their own lives. They grew their comfort at the expense of our freedom. Anyone who disagreed was taken into eternity.

It hurts me to think about it, never mind talk about it, but I don't suppose you'd know how they took people into Eternity? They strap you into a chair, and plug all sorts of wires into you. Soon, you end up looking like a puppet controlled by strings. They take away your control. They ignore your cries and pleas. It's ridiculous to think that this disgusting process is triggered by a mouse click. One single mouse click. One man sat at a computer who decides the rest of your life. This is what it comes to. Your life at the mercy of a computer.

I wonder what Labret's reaction was when he found out what his project was being used for. It wouldn't have mattered. I think they put him in eternity too. Oh well, I shouldn't complain.

Besides. My sentence is almost up.