Neon Lily

'So, you want to party?' she teasingly asked. The intended client did not respond, instead succumbing to the perennial state of depressed hopelessness that had become a fixture of his daily existence. 

The purple neon projected on puddles of water on the asphalt, like misshapen television screens. The air was thinning out, but retained its icy sharpness. It was a typical evening in the dystopia that was reality for eight million cogs in a superstructure of monolithic proportions.

A small crowd had gathered in front of the complaint centre to protest the murder of a young, minority boy. Their voices were drowned out by the much more prominent screeches of the Patriotic Nationalists, a nationwide movement fighting the 'taking over of the country' by outsiders.

'Come on, baby. I'll show you a good time,' she urged, this time running a finger down Varten's face. He turned to her. She was a tall, athletic blonde with blue eyes. It was as if someone had meticulously put her together, specifically for him. They had done just that. 

Corporations had stepped up their efforts to tailor products with usage and preference data mined from daily user activity. But, a curated bot spiel was a first for Varten.

'You look expensive,' he drawled.

She moved in closer to him, and whispered in his ear, 'I come with a payment plan.'

Varten met her gaze and for a second, stared at his own reflection in her scintillating eyes.

'What's your name?'

She beamed. 'Lily.'

A protester heaved an electronic smoke grenade towards the complaint centre, triggering an armed response from the nationalists. Even as the melee intensified, bullets piercing through human and synthetic flesh, screams, stampedes and maniacal chaos, Lily remained impassive.

'It's now or never, cowboy.'

There was no authoritative action from the sentries, until one of the parked vehicles caught fire. Their priorities did not require intimation. A wave of armed guards suddenly emerged from all sides of the street. Magazines clicked into place under heavy artillery. For a moment, there was silence.

'We have to go,' Lily whispered — a marked urgency in her voice.

Varten remained resolute.

'Now,' insisted Lily.

A part of him wanted to break free of her, and scuttle towards the bloodshed. She held on to him tightly. Hours had gone into tailoring the perfect look for Varten's pleasure, and nothing would stand in her way from fulfilling her purpose.

Lily looked at her prospective client as if they had known each other for decades. Engineering had progressed far beyond what futurists of the past even imagined. The veracity of her programming and physical mimicry of her makers were a marvel of human ingenuity, but this seamless fusion had invariably redacted the definition of what it meant to be human.

Since the end of the Fourth Great War and the sale of cities to corporations, a centralised monitoring scheme had been legalised by decree of the business order. While some were taken over completely by single corporations, others were the subject of a tug-of-war between multiple companies vying for control.

The competition was, at times, deceptive. The city sold, as an example, sixteen brands of toilet paper. But, only two companies owned all sixteen brands. It was the illusion of choice that kept order in an otherwise chaotic burghul, rather than choice itself.

Central governments essentially became large monitoring hubs, where corporations bought cities from them, in exchange for a fixed monthly fee, and a percentage of the yearly haul. Law and order was a privatised venture. It had been years since the last of the state law enforcement units operated under any autonomy. Arrests, punishments and sentences were issued, based on a complex cost-benefit analysis, rather than any idealistic philosophy of justice.

Security agencies had pressed for phasing out paper money, citing concerns about the apparent untraceability of cash currency. The result was surveillance on an unprecedented scale. Smart cards were issued to every citizen, which functioned as identification, passport, license, and finance card. For a few years, corporations floated the idea of an implanted chip that could afford the same services, but a number of high-profile deaths from radiation poisoning put a full stop next to that initiative.

Surveillance was a fast-propagating synonym for security. Cameras, drones and satellites were prone to blind spots that left gaps in monitoring data, and so the team that brought the world DNA-unlocking for mobile phones, came up with a novel solution. They called it, 'The Universal Infrastructure' or TUI — one digital user account for every conceivable purpose, whether in cyberspace or the real world.

'Just scan your TUI card, and I'll show you what it is like to be 21 again,' Lily pleaded, looking deep into Varten's eyes.

'I don't have one.'

A person without TUI, did not exist. TUI accounts had become essential for all transactions — be it a mother buying formula for a child, or a one-percenter making a billion-credit stock trade. Workers swiped in and out of work with TUI smart cards. A later addition was integration of all forms of online and offline communication into TUI.

'We both know that's not true,' she said, running her fingers through his hair.

Under the guise of convenience, safety and security, TUI took over every aspect of modern living. Governed by the Global Intelligence Array, or GIA as it was referred to for marketing purposes, information about a person could be mined, collated and extrapolated to predict even the most obscure decisions one could perchance reach.

Varten had always wondered how the living beings that inhabited the cold, neon-lit spaces around him could peacefully snore through the night, knowing that their deepest, darkest desires were being stored on a metallic box for a synthetic intelligence to poke and prod, until all that remained was the hollowed-out shell of what was once the embodiment of the word privacy.

'So, what do you say, cowboy?'

He figured Lily was not sent by accident. GIA made a decision, based on Varten's history of depression, spending patterns, and escalating isolationism after losing a loved one. Lily was to remind him that life was worth living. After all, he was exactly the kind of law-abiding, tax-paying citizen that, under the new world order, was worth saving.