Between Two Architectures

Developers created more complex and intricate algorithms to filter the way users experience reality, tailoring their reality to be perfect for them. Corporations could pay money to have users be persuaded to come to their businesses. The Neuralink company could sell advertisement space to allow the Link to persuade users to buy from their business by highlighting their store as users walk by, and even slightly blur competing businesses who haven’t paid into the AdSense program.

Neuralink became so popular that governments began to partner with the business. The implant went from being consumer choice to necessity as more cities required people to have the Link to enter the city limits. People became easier to survey, influence, and persuade their every action. The Neuralink is really good at increasing the consumer spending and boosting economies, it was nearly impossible for cities to stay in economic competition without requiring their citizens to get the implant. Since the Link was able to edit the very way people perceive reality, more municipal money was put into the software. Cities began spending more on the technological software architecture than the infrastructure of their architectural built environment. Instead of spending exuberant amounts of money to repair and redevelop urban infrastructure, it was cheaper to spend money into the software architecture and only repair certain aspects of the city. The Neuralink could easily edit the city to make it look cleaner, newer, and better at a fraction of the cost.

Cities could continue to operate and attract people without having to solve important issues like smoggy air, pollution, deforestation, etc. Is it easier to solve climate change or just edit away its defects? Corporations and governments agreed that the Neuralink was much cheaper and easier at “fixing” environmental issues than spending trillions of dollars to determine a legitimate solution.

As years went by, people slowly forgot what life was like without the Link. The majority of civilization live life comfortably guided by the governments and corporations who want to increase economic prosperity at the cost of the environments. Children are born into a world not knowing what life without the Link was like. The collective memory of our societies is fading, and only a small few attempt to counter this technology with its constant guidance and surveillance. Government-Corporate partnerships decide that the Link should limit the range of emotion users feel and slowly begin to flatten the aesthetics of reality. Citizens don’t feel too excited, angry, or sad, merely content and happy. Reality becomes flat, efficient, and consumption-driven. Architecture, of the built environment, becomes almost “set-like” with superficial exteriors, decaying infrastructure, and less inspired. Architecture, of technological software, is more important to reality than the physical. In this future, the two almost work in conflict.

Narrative:

The story begins with an old advertisement for the Neuralink. The retro ad, from a time when the Link was an optional consumer choice, explains the simple procedure. With this simple technology, the ad explains how users can “streamline, enhance, and expand reality” and become apart of the future. As the old advertisement fades out, our Character fades in, obviously using the Neuralink.

The character stands on the Berlin street of Unter den Linden with the Brandenburg Gate standing proudly in the distance. As the character looks around the street for a restaurant to eat at, one restaurant is highlighted in blue and he sees a path, in the form of his own footsteps, guiding him toward this eatery. The Neuralink is calibrated to his preferences, so he mindlessly walks toward the chosen establishment. A restaurant just as close to him is slightly blurred, as they didn’t pay into the AdSense program for the link. All of the buildings on the street are slightly lighter than the destination, for the convenience of our Character. The character looks in the distance of the street down the Consumer Corridor. By the Brandenburg monument, to the left is the American Consumer Core, previously known as the United States Embassy, and to the right is the German Consumer Core. Beyond the Brandenburg Gate appears to be utopian skyscrapers, full of greenery. The street scene is peaceful, slightly blue and calming.

As the Character moves toward the restaurant, his whole field of vision becomes overwhelmed with fluctuating colors and different images of the street. In the distance, the utopian towers of greenery in the distance are slightly disappearing and reappearing, in a glitchy manner. All of the towers appear like flat images instead of their normal three-dimensional manner. The tower of the American Consumer Core flashes up and down with familiar brands: McDonalds, Apple, Coca Cola, Amazon, and Walmart. Their names flashing in and out as if they are embedded neon signs. The German Consumer Core has the same thing with brands like Volkswagen, BMW, Adidas and Audi appear and disappear. All of the buildings begin glitching out from their pristine state and begin to look as if they were crumbling. The calming blue of the street scene is overwhelmed with flashing glitchy strobes of color.

The Character shakes his head and begins to explore this weird glitchy world. The restaurant where he was going no longer has a blue highlighting around it but an exciting light band that is disappearing and reappearing. Looking to his left, the blurred building reveals itself to be a local hole in the wall restaurant and small business. As he focuses on that building the blur moves in and out. Buildings appear to be covered in logos of popular brands, glitching in and out. The Character realizes these logos must be the corporations who own the building. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong. As if this glitched reality was something he wasn’t supposed to see. He walks down the street, taking in this new reality.

Just as the Character was getting used to this new reality, the glitching stopped. But the Character no longer saw his Neuralink Reality either. Instead, the street was unlike anything he’d seen before. The air was thick with a greenish fog. An awful stench filled his nose as he looked down at the ground. Instead of seeing a helpful guide in the form of his footsteps, he saw old garbage covering cracked pavement. Large pot holes were in the roadway. The buildings around him were crumbling. Cracked concrete, broken windows, dirty facades plagued the street. As he looked down an alley, he realized some old buildings behind the main part of the street had caved in. It looked as though no one had been down that alley in years as moss and other weeds covered the decaying infrastructure.

While the police drones take care of the Character’s disconnected link, the Berlin_ Mitte_Neuralink_System realizes its under attack. A group or series of individuals seem to be attempting to hack one the Neuralink servers and a satellite.

These name-less, face-less counters have managed to hack apart of the Neuralink System, causing our Character’s Neuralink to glitch out, then eventually turn off. There is a bigger conflict going on between the corporations/governments of Neuralink and an independent legion of hackers and whistleblowers.