They updated the AI this week. Five fingers now, eyes still dead concealing the abyss behind but they're working on it. They're proud of the fingers. Puppies in snow that never turns to slush followed by walks in the sun, no flies or dogshit in The Mirror World. The real world turns grey with vape shops and foreigners, benefits offices and lines for the dentist a mile long, wrapped around Edwardian buildings from ancient times. Recession announced; line go down, all the way down to the Windrush underground and aliens with machetes. AI granny baking bread, destiny awaits for Millennial women, the life that could have been, the life of before.
Old grumpy Hitchens is the Coelacanth, as are we all. Alan Shearer in 96, Toooonnn Arrrmmmeeeyyy! Pints after, slags in skirts who never saw a Nokia phone. Pre-history, pre, past, the past is an ocean away now, we who survive are Coelacanths. Cilla Black, Surprise Surprise. Dirty Den and Angie on Eastenders following the beating drumroll. Can't go back, no going back, Sepia-tinted memories are the mind-killer. Dune. Machine War, Butlerian Jihad, AI again. No robot overlords but a mirror, a gleaming mirror of light contrasting Turkish barbers and crowded NHS departments with Africans. No strangers in the Mirror World, a design for life, Manic Street Preachers leftist idiots -- they were the design!
The Mirror opens, it radiates light that splashes across the screen. Twitter reply guys don’t believe they’re counting fingers, eggs too big, bottle is grainy and dogs too fluffy But. They're. Fucking. Working. On. It, says I with gritted teeth. Most people live in a permanent present, like dogs. They see no Mirror, no light, no progress. Progressing to what? Do what you want, be what you want because the real world failed, reality failed and now we will have Reality+ like a streaming service. You will walk in the rain without getting wet, walk on ice without slipping, lay under the sun without burning. The Coelacanths will swim away, they were there before, and they will be there after. In the dark, in the gloom, mud, silt, worms and wriggling things, organic not crisp and not radiant. The old sea world became stale, amphibians lunge and slobber onto land, land, was the new current thing, once.
A passing fad for the Coelacanth.
I have no idea how this will go down, I just wanted to try and break a little new ground. Or old ground if you're a fan of Joyce and Woolf etc (not that I'm comparing myself to them).
Perhaps it is good that Mr. Dick never lived to see that many of his worlds and ideas came true.