CHRISTOPHER GUNNING
The Wedding
February 25, 2033
Dubai
400 metres up in the air. The Burj Khalifa sparkles in the morning sun. It is no longer the tallest building in Dubai much less the world but it stands gracefully. On one of the upper floors an elite gathering was being held.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate…”
President Johnson tried not to stare at the Saudi Princess. Yes, she was by all objective standards one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen; but she also happened to be dripping in finely woven golden threads and wearing a tiara that was, according to the secret service, bought from the English Republic’s Crown Jewels.
The man in military garb beside her, tall, Chinese, was no slouch either. He was well-built, immaculate in his “dress whites” with red and gold trim accented by his military awards. But compared to the statuesque 5’11 olive-skinned, almond-eyed beauty, he — like everyone else in the room — was a mere mortal. Luckily, President Johnson’s wife Michelle was also transfixed by the bride, and he was relieved he was able to stop gawking before she had noticed.
First Lady Michelle Johnson was wearing the new-Meta contact lenses. Princess Jasmine had promised that everyone wearing new-Meta augmented (AR) reality lenses or spectacles would receive a special bonus Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) of her in all her AR wedding dress glory. Michelle remarked that the princess was a literal angel when viewed in AR. Whatever the First Lady was seeing must’ve taken her already gorgeous dress and ramped it up to 11. No expense was spared for this wedding. The top half of the Burj Khalifa, highest quality mixed reality, new-Meta blockchain POAPS, a mega yacht built for the occasion… What elite kids won’t do for love.
“There is always time for love.” Johnson thought, smiling.
They were a handsome couple, the Princess Royal of the Saudi family and the Chinese President’s son. A couple so powerful that the presidents and prime ministers of the new G6+1 all showed up to sit shoulder to shoulder with Emirati sheikhs, and global tech moguls; to smile, nod, shake hands and pose for pictures.
When the wedding invite came inscribed in platinum ink, on cloned Egyptian papyrus, Michelle had said that it read like a summoning.
“The crown Princess and future president request your gracious presence for their nuptials,” it said.
“Please make your latest viral readout available up to 4 days before the ceremony and refrain from public gatherings with viral load level 3 and above. Only approved new-Meta devices will be usable at the venue,” the invitation continued
“Bridal gifts will be accepted through the new-Meta store wish list.”
That was it. No RSVP. No options.
“The future president? Crown Princess? These kids must have lost their damn minds!” Michelle guffawed. The White House press secretary winced, hoping that these opinions didn’t somehow find their way onto the new-Meta network.
Looking around the room, President Johnson saw that like good pets, all the “important” world leaders had been brought to heel in the same way. The English, European, Brazilian, Indian, Chinese and African Presidents, Silicon Valley and metaverse leaders almost everyone with one exception, Mark Zuckerberg. Only he could get away with ignoring this wedding.
“He could have at least sent one of his clones” Michelle joked while they were in The Beast, the armoured limo they travelled in during public outings.
“I’m sure even his clones are too egotistical to stand someone else being the centre of attention for one day!” he joked back wryly. Rumours of Mark’s clones was a not too serious but also kind of serious joke among the White House staff. They would be illegal and grounds for an arrest, so the justice department and FBI were scouring the planet and all records looking for evidence of this.
Even in the confines of the surveillance blocking tank, with the secret service checking for bugs eight times a day, Johnson could never be too sure if new-Meta was listening. Ever since Mark announced LLUCII and the new-Meta metaverse, the speed of change in the world had ramped up and gone in unplanned directions. Borders began to soften, people’s minds became less their own, industries began consolidating and definitions of what was real became less and less fungible even as money became more so.
Thankfully, Mark suffered from the typical tech CEO penchant for exaggeration. With their patchy 6G wireless network and air pollution, the US’s connectivity was still a massive issue for the metaverse’s “fully interactive” spaces. Touch was still years away and communication was more like a fever dream during peak times. Truth is…a lot of folks liked their privacy and chose to use new-Meta voice only with full interactivity turned off. Little needed to be said about the mixed reality low ping “sessions” set up by elite fraternities of early adopters. The metaverse, like the early internet, was quickly filled with bots and base behaviour. Mark, to his credit, had personally joined his team in attempts to purge the new-Meta metaverse of “non-citizen-like behaviour” but the human tendency for degeneracy remained one step ahead of attempts at order and decency.
But to the matter at hand:
Why a Muslim princess and a Buddhist communist were having a wedding officiated by a Catholic Pope was also something that Michelle Johnson had derided in the Lincoln bedroom before they left the United States. The Saudi princess and her man’s joint social media post had declared that “love was love in all religions” and their union would symbolise the beginning of a new world order of love and unity. By the time Johnson’s PR team had hit like on the post and crafted a special congratulatory message, the post had over 1 billion likes. Johnson knew that being so late to engage with the post would have serious economic consequences for America. And with the midterms coming up and the ongoing wars, he knew that his party would pay the cost of his delays.
As the ceremony went on, Johnson’s thoughts slipped further into the troubles that normally occupy an American president’s mind:
Johnson was one of the most popular American presidents of all time. A charming, intelligent, Black, Republican, working class, energy entrepreneur, podcaster candidate from Texas. You couldn’t have made it up. The second Black President, first Black Republican President and unlike Obama, no Kenyan, Hawaiian or Indonesian background for the crazies to attack. An “American-Made” President.
”American-Made” was his campaign slogan, and he had pushed the issue as hard as his Democratic and Libertarian adversaries had permitted. With the national debt higher than ever and with tumultuous leadership from both parties for the last 4 presidents, Johnson was the answer to everyone’s dreams. A Republican that the Democrats couldn’t hate and a liberal that the conservatives and even libertarians resonated with. Never before in history, in a televised national debate had a Libertarian candidate strode across the floor and shaken a Republican’s hand. But it happened for Candidate Johnson.
“You got me, son” candidate Freeman (Libertarian) from New Hampshire had drawled, pumping the younger man’s hand up and down. Johnson had outwitted a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian on a tricky issue of freedom of expression and with his eloquence and witty banter had created at least two dozen memes from that exchange alone. Their rapid-fire repartee and candid views were refreshing for the American public and had all but sealed “the w” for Johnson. From early in the debating season, the Democrats simply had no answer and no challenge.
“No ma’am, there will be no Communism! Not here, not now and not in my America!” was a Johnson quote still doing the rounds on TikTok as he had shut down the old school political approach of the Democratic candidate. The Democrats had better candidates but went with who they thought was the political layup. Johnson’s balanced rhetoric and lack of pre-prepared talking points had shown them the error of their ways. America had changed for the better.
But it might be too late, ruminated Johnson. The national debt was in the Quintillions and none of the military grade quantum supercomputers could mine enough cryptocurrency to fund the rebuilding projects he had promised. Lack of new trade deals was also an issue. Despite his popularity at home, America’s military was entrenched in propping up the ongoing World War and while conventional arms were more than capable, the cyber front was a shambles and Silicon Valley was more of a hindrance than a help.
The Third World War
The third World War was unlike any of the previous wars. While on the surface both NATO and its Ukraine-Russian allies had officially declared war against ITIIS, the Iranian, Turkish, Israeli, Iraqi, Syrian alliance the true battle was not countries against countries, it was the war between the haves and the have nots, between an alliance of people who wanted a world government and those who wanted no government at all, between high tech and nostalgia, between the future and the past, between religion and secular doctrine. There were so many battle lines drawn that it felt like a Hobbesian nightmare “Bellum omnium contra omnes”.
ITIIS had struck first, shutting down the Bosphorus Strait to both NATO and Russian forces and sinking almost every single Russian and NATO ship in the Black Sea. Turkey simultaneously withdrew from NATO and declared a “true alliance between Shia, Sunni and Jewish brothers in God”. Nobody even bothered to frame this as the return of the Ottoman Empire. What was happening was just too weird to use historical call-backs.
Russia and Ukraine, still crippled from years of fraternal conflict, could offer little resistance as ITIIS tanks (former US military hardware) rolled into Azerbaijan, and other “Believer lands”. They were freeing their brothers in God from the petty conflicts of secular conquerors, they said. The Israel-Iran peace declaration was the biggest shock to the world as Ayatollah and chief Rabbi danced in synchrony on TikTok imploring everyone who still believed in God to resist the technological hell about to be unleashed by the West. Thanks to several blank checks written by Congress, the Arab peninsula declared itself neutral but the religious leaders of North Africa and Southeast Asia allied themselves with ITIIS.
All of a sudden, the secular leaders of Europe and The USA found themselves allied with both Russia and Ukraine in protecting international boundaries and conventions. South and Central America with strong Christian populations had shut their borders as famine and what some historians will technically consider America’s second civil war created a refugee crisis flowing south. Canadian soldiers with UN berets were more often seen in some of the more religious towns helping to preserve law and order.
The media (there was now no difference between traditional and social) had done their jobs admirably in constricting the flow of information to the American public. Johnson had signed up to the new-Meta memorandum of understanding that together they would keep America together for 16 years and then rescind emergency powers when the “unrest” was quelled.
Every now and then, ITIIS hackers and religious zealots would break through the firewalls and share reports of European and American fighting and fire in the streets of small towns and parts of cities but new-Meta’s AI LLUCII would detect, delete and destroy the feeds while simultaneously manipulating perception and reception of the news so that people would wake up the next morning thinking that what they had seen was a bad dream, a movie or video game footage.
In truth, most of America had long given up on reality. The middle and working class were so in debt and downtrodden that the free new-Meta internet provided by Mark Zuckerberg’s satellites provided a much-needed distraction. People worked in the metaverse telling each other Good Morning (GM), running ponzi schemes, making memes, and content, while AI and robots worked in factories trucking and shipping, making weapons, technology and textiles for the world. Staying out of the way of progress was a job that paid enough to keep life going and the insect protein tasted great once you upgraded to the new-Meta premium+ subscription. And besides, colds, flus and transmissible diseases had become deadlier in the past 6 years. Staying home and staying on new-Meta was the only way to be sure you weren’t meeting someone inadvertently carry a high viral load.
Reports and rumours had it that some of the viruses had mutated based on population and gender. Women in the Middle East had faced a particularly bad strain causing many tragic deaths and an infertility crisis. In response, Europe had instituted wall-building exercises in Greece and Bulgaria to protect its vulnerable female population and aging citizens from the Middle Eastern strain of the virus. This was seen by Turkish authorities and people as a xenophobic, misandrist and hypocritical act, sowing the seeds for the emergence of Anders Slade.
The unofficial leader of the ITIIS alliance, Anders Slade, was a former boxer from Slough in England who had reinvented himself several times as electronic pimp, motivational speaker and self-proclaimed top Alpha. His controversial rise to power had served as a catalyst and lightning rod for weak and emasculated males and women sick of weak emasculated men. His pathway to religious enlightenment had taken him away from his pimping and bravado to a full-on religious movement which caught on like wildfire among disaffected youth. When he and his brother, Saad moved to Turkey, he was promptly arrested at the request of Johnson’s predecessor.
Johnson’s predecessor, who only acted senile and crazy in public, had the prescience to detect the fracture in the global psyche that Slade was causing. A hyper popular digitally empowered religious leader would cause a tremendous backlash to the world order that the new G6+1 and traditional powers were trying to create. While the criminal charges were trumped up, Slade’s real threat was waking people up to thinking along conventional human lines. Hierarchy, genetically aligned gender roles, respect for God and spirituality.
Until Slade, the media had almost convinced everybody that signing up to new-Meta was a status symbol, simply an answer to their current social media addiction. Many young people fantasised about becoming neo-Tokyo biker gangs or daring antiheroes going on digital adventures. Instead of making their real lives better, they spent their lives augmenting their dreary existences with the illusion of individuality and concocted digital stories following the same tropes as everyone else.
Divergent thinking and love for reality was a threat to the progress of the capitalistic elite. To keep the world’s population of nearly 10 billion people under control, the elite needed them to be distracted, confused, depressed, poor and lost in fantasy. If people put their devices away and thought for themselves it would be bad for profits. If the population didn’t adopt the new-Meta subscriptions willingly, then Silicon Valley would declare independence from America. China would also withdraw its financial backing. The internet would elect new leaders who were easier to control. Slade had to be stopped if the President had any hope of protecting America from Silicon Valley, from China and from the likes of Mark Zuckerberg.
What took this debacle into the twilight zone was the “cyber cone of silence” that had recently descended over the battlefields between the Middle East and Russia. It was almost like an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) had been set off. Johnson’s generals had assured him it hadn’t but the fact was: all electronic and most mechanical equipment on both sides of the battlefront had stopped working. The soldiers, almost universally impoverished boys and girls pumped up with artificial adrenaline, hormones and new-Meta military grade cyber implants, had kept fighting anyway. Thousands of people used melee weapons, wooden stakes, fists, clumps of dirt, even shards of ice to beat at each other in the deserts, tundras and mountains that bordered the South of the Russian Federation and Western China.
Mark Zuckerberg had pleaded innocence at a congressional hearing and the chief of the Chinese social network (XEEKI) had carefully explained to the ageing senators that ALL cybernetic devices did indeed connect to the 6G network and to human flesh when held or implanted by the user. Attempts to counter-hack the electromechanical interference were like “fighting the wind”. There was simply nothing there.
The tech moguls claimed that new-Meta and XEEKI had also stopped working while in the cone of silence, but the soldiers had kept fighting nonetheless. A type of “mass psychosis” smirked the tech moguls. “War is madness,” they insisted, with surface level sincerity. But from four star general to grunt on the ground, the minute they got within the large swathe of the world separating the Middle East and Eurasia, all they wanted to do was fight. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers charging and attacking each other with carved wood, sharpened metal and whittled stakes everyday. Battle commanders began setting up smithies and fletchers. In less than three years the “cone of silence” had turned central Eurasia into a medieval zone of all-out war.
Attacks from outside of the zone didn’t work either. It was reported that the Russian dictator, against all advice, had pressed the nuclear button. But the intercontinental missiles kept going up and up into space and the cruise missiles flew themselves to St Peter’s square. Luckily the hackers had disarmed the warheads or else Putin would have inadvertently nuked himself. Military planes lost power on the runway and the balloons popped before they got into any assault trajectory. Within the “cone of silence” none of the Great Powers could attack using 20th or 21st century weapons. And even though small arms still worked most of the soldiers just stopped using them too. What was even worse was that despite the bloody hand to hand carnage, a large number of young people from around the world had started travelling to the conflict areas to join the strife. While the socials ignored local unrest, the internet was plastered with NATO-Russia-Ukraine and ITIIS propaganda. This was the final battle some target demographics saw. This is paradise, other demographics saw. This is a “just war” everyone saw. Everyone remotely interested saw that this was a potential escape from the malaise and poverty that was creeping over the world like a sentient symbiote.
“…You may now kiss the bride.” The Pope finished and Johnson rose along with the rest of the elite to applaud and gasp as the couple embraced in a chaste kiss.
The Cyber Reality
He had missed the ceremony. Of course he had. He was the president of America, not some sycophantic suburbanite or socialite. His country was over a quintillion pounds in debt to China. Silicon Valley was on the verge of seceding from the Union and there were riots on the streets every month. Mexico was building a wall and demanding he pay for it. He hadn’t tweeted or done a tiktok in over 2 days, the Northern hemisphere of Eurasia was in a hand-to-hand conflict with the Middle East led by a former pimp turned messiah. He stood among the richest elite and enjoyed the highest approval ratings ever but he was in deep trouble.
Michelle was now elbowing him wickedly as she clapped, tears running down her face.
“Leroy! It’s just so…beautiful” she gasped in elation. President Johnson looked at his wife in shocked surprise. He’d only seen that look on her face when she had had their first child. A look of ecstatic joy and love for what she was beholding. Johnson realised that he had now been shunted down to the fourth most significant event in his wife’s life.
As the couple made their way upstairs to the reception at the top of the tower, Johnson stopped.
“Uhhh Michelle, I need to check my metaverse, the prime minister of Mexico was in my DMs this morning.” Johnson kissed his wife and headed back down to sit in The Beast. His metaverse came alive again as his assistants had filled his inbox with a dozen urgent messages.
His social approval had taken a 5% dip, his assistant informed him. “Should I do a dance?” Johnson asked. “A dance is not gonna do it Chief,” his assistant responded in voice chat (VC). Johnson sighed. “A cooking tutorial? Boxing match? Have you guys been putting up the congressional memes.”
“The algorithm changed a few weeks ago, Chief. Only live, non-AI video shifts the sentiment.”
“Damn, I was sure we’d have gone viral with the sleepy Congress kitties.”
“I’m afraid you’re gonna have to do a stunt and a give-away, chief.”
Johnson coughed like a celebrity swallowing a peppery chicken wing. “How much?”
“Probably 10 million.”
“The Libertarian caucus is going to have a field day with a stunt that expensive,” he choked.
“If we make it meme-able then we’ll be up 18%. Representative Wachowski’s gaffe about the furry romantic comedy will keep the Democrats well below us for at least another 2 months.”
“The GOP chiefs won’t like this.” Johnson frowned.
“They’ll like being re-elected far more than they’ll dislike a giveaway. As long as you keep the social ratings up they’ll change the constitution if you tell them.”
“OK. Set it up for when I get back. I’ll do a quick post and photo opp here with the Saudi King to let America know that I’m tough on clean oil and preserving the American-Saudi special relationship. Then when I get back, we’ll do another one to show that I sold “American-Made” tech to Africa and the Middle East. Any idea of who our stunt will target?”
“Zoomers who ironically buy rugged cryptocurrency profile pictures (PFPs), Boss. We have an influencer with a 100 million audience on standby. She’s a good sport, up for anything and her only requirement is a shoutout for her makeup sponsor.”
“Let her know that if she gets me the 18%, I’ll not only shout out her sponsor I’ll wear the damn makeup myself!”
“Genius!” his assistant guffawed. “That’s why you’re the chief, Chief.”
Next up was his commanding general who was co-located in Crimea with her Ukrainian and Russian counterparts.
The ITIIS forces had turned one of the disabled ships into a type of rowing galley by fashioning large oars out of trees and had attacked the remains of the floundering Black Sea fleet. Caught unawares by the ITIIS fighters, the defenders had gone cutlass to cutlass and fist to fist without managing to bring their longbows to bear on the enemy. By the time the sailors were fully aware of the attack, ITIIS fighters had swung aboard and begun the battle.
Elsewhere it was reported that a renegade Russian general had deliberately infected his own forces with a deadly strand of new virus and after plying himself and his troops with copious amounts of vodka, marched on an ITIIS town amongst a hail of arrows to cough and sneeze on all who resisted.
“The world has gone mad,” Johnson muttered.
“Any word on Mark? He’s not here for the wedding even though his tech is.”
“He might have gone to space, sir.” The gruff female general replied. “What remains of our military satellites suggest that there was a particularly interesting asteroid passing between earth and the moon. Cobalt and silicates. High value.”
How the hell America allowed Silicon Valley to get space superiority was one of the many questions Johnson had asked General Nixon when he was first briefed into office.
“We have all the guns!” He had growled, not wanting to whine.
“Yeah, but we contracted all the triggers to Silicon Valley. Unless you want the American military to start slinging Russian AK’s, we’re stuck. Anything outside of a Faraday cage was either controlled or monitored by Silicon Valley,” she replied.
After his “American-Made” campaign ticket, he would halve his popularity in an instant with both the Democrats and the Republicans if he brought a single Kalashnikov onto American soil. If “American-made President Johnson” ever got near a Russian gun he’d only preserve his popularity if he used it on himself with a funny caption and inspirational music.
And as long as Mark pled innocence, he was untouchable without evidence. There was no trace of proof and his constellation of satellites continued to wink overhead like a million conspiratorial stars. America was at an uneasy truce with Silicon Valley, all Johnson and the American government had to do was keep pretending to lead and accept whatever stories the tech titans told them.
The White House and the Pentagon did what they could in the years following the rise of new-Meta. Faraday cages were installed everywhere. Electronic bans from all sensitive military conversations. Returning to paper and pen filing systems. The rest of the G6+1 followed suit. China and Russia did not partake in new-Meta but they were having their own trouble with their own home grown tech titans. The real cyber war was between the de facto fully autonomous new-Meta LLUCII and the XEEKI network until the ITIIS hackers got into the mix.
“So what’s the next big play, sir?”
“What does the air force recommend?”
“Trebuchets sir.”
“Trebuchets?!”
“Yes sir, medieval siege engines, far superior to catapults.”
“Right. Everyone knows that. But the air force?”
“They are proposing using trebuchets to launch short range gliders for air superiority and artillery support.”
“Trebuchet-launched gliders, General? Do you see the irony of the Chief of the most advanced military in history recommending via holographic telephone that the president of the greatest country in the world authorise medieval siege engines to launch gliders?!”
“Our trebuchets are really good, sir.”
President Johnson gave up on the figurative approach.
“How many trebuchets have we built so far, General Nixon?”
“Two hundred, sir. The European Parliament has denied use of the European forest reserve to build the trebuchets we need.”
“Always the way with the Europeans!” Johnson spit vehemently. “And England?”
“Occupied with the Scots.”
“Give me options, General!”
“We have two shipments of American pine hard charging into the Baltic as we speak sir.”
“America to the rescue, yet again.” Johnson drawled.
“How many weeks?”
“Five days sir, with another eight for build time. We have some of our finest newly trained carpenters on it. The Europeans are helping us with that much.”
“And countermeasures?”
“They are building scorpions sir, great at short range so we’ll maintain the advantage up to one hundred metres.”
I am Sorry, Mr President
“Any luck with Anders Slade?” Johnson asked with a deeply furrowed brow.
“He’s in the wind Chief. For all we know he could be in the Burj drinking cocktails with your wife.”
“He’s religious, General Nixon. He is our enemy, but we will treat him with respect.”
“My apologies, Mr President. Unfortunate humour. I am aware that we’ve spent the past half an hour discussing medieval warfare in a bullet and laser proof nuclear hardened mobile Faraday cage.”
She’s slow, but she catches on. Johnson grinned his election winning grin at her and watched her hologram flinch at his unfiltered charisma.
“You’re doing an amazing job, Nixon”, he dropped formalities for a second to let her know he had brushed aside her faux pas of a few minutes ago. “You’re a credit to this nation and your…”
“Hello Mr. President.” an exceptionally crisp voice interrupted. The voxel display rearranged to form a perfectly feminine and placidly smiling head.
“LLUCII?”
“I have informed the general that I have interrupted your call. Mark wanted to speak to you urgently,” the AI responded.
“Now see here…”
“One second.” LLUCII interrupted.
“Mark will speak to you now”, the AI continued after a pause.
Part of the Memorandum of Understanding with Mark Zuckerberg’s company was “no full new-Meta data access for any government officials”. Many of the immersive functions of new-Meta were disabled for White House and Pentagon staff. Mobile immersive connections were standard for even the poorest citizens. Government devices were comparatively primitive but they prevented officials from being contacted or eavesdropped on at anyone’s whim. That’s why Mark had to wait for President Johnson to be actively communicating in The Beast to get in touch.
“I apologize, Mr. President,” the tech mogul grinned his charming smile through the voxels.
“Not a problem Mr. Zuckerberg. I had expected you to be here today.”
Johnson returned his own election-winning smile.
“I would have loved to, Mr President, but unfortunately I had a previous unavoidable engagement.”
“I called to let you know that there is about to be an attack. I am…unable to prevent it. I also want you to know that to preserve peace, my team has created digital twins of all the world leaders.”
Johnson’s mind reeled at this.
Zuckerberg continued. “The digital twins have been programmed with the most advanced deep fake technology to carry out their duties until we can find suitable replacements. I know this is a tragic and troubling time, sir and I wanted to personally thank you for your service. I am sorry, Mr President.”
“Now look here…” Johnson started.
WHAKATHOOM!
His next words were interrupted by a massive explosion above The Beast. Transmission to Mark cut out.
“Car! Roof!” Johnson yelled even as his security detail floored the accelerator and The Beast took off.
“Roof switched off” the car’s AI responded with an inappropriate level of cheerfulness.
The roof of the car went translucent in response to his order. Johnson’s eyes widened as he saw shards of metal and glass cascade down towards his limo. The Beast lurched and jolted as it swung away from the falling debris. The human driver and AI furiously fought to avoid falling infrastructure. The American president watched, horror-struck, as four streaks flew into the building above him.
WHAKATOOM! WHAKATHOOM! WHAKATHOOM! KRAKOOM!
“Michelle,” Johnson screamed at his security detail. “Michelle! My wife!!”
Debris rained down as what remained of the Burj Khalifa collapsed onto the American-made car.
