Page 20 - Tales Apocalyptic and Dystopian

The Infoarchy

Lester Morris shook his head. “No bedside manner, these new
doctors. I guess they still call them doctors. Getting sleepy, like he
said—didn’t say much, though. Have to ask about getting a TV set in
here. I wonder if they already cured me. I wonder what my bank
balance is. Hmmm...”
He awoke abruptly. The room had darkened but he could see a
figure standing over him. It was not the tall man.
“Some things haven’t changed since I was in the hospital last
time,” Lester said. “They wake you up in the middle of the night to
give you a sleeping pill.”
The man moved closer. He looked very worried.
“Hey, aren’t you a doctor? What’s going on?”
“I am an historian, not a doctor. I do not belong here,” said the
other in a very low voice. “And I will have to leave very soon to
avoid arrest. I am taking a big risk. Listen carefully.”
Lester Morris suddenly felt a wave of nausea. It triggered
something in his memory as well as his gullet. He groped at the sides
of his bed for a call button. None was there.
“You are unique,” began the intruder. “Everyone, for the past
three generations, has been fitted in infancy with two interfaces to
the Infoarchy, the central governing body and information source.
You must try to comprehend the evolution of communications and
transmits a person’s subvocal speech; the speaker emits sound waves
amplified from a broadcast source.”
The man from the twentieth century found he could not sit up in
bed, nor roll over. Invisible bonds restrained him. He had to listen.
“The units, having been inserted into developing tissue, cannot be
removed without life-threatening surgery; further, any computation
since you were quiesced. All human beings, by law, carry miniaturized
input and output units implanted in the head shortly after birth: one
with a speaker in the outer ear, the other with a microphone by the
Adam’s apple. Note that these devices do not tap into the nervous
system directly: the microphone picks up and attempt to disable or
dislocate them is instantly transmitted as an emergency signal to the
Infoarchy. No one can live or die anonymously anymore. Each
person is constantly in contact, via these tiny mechanisms, with a vast
store of information and analysis, the rudiments of which were
known in your day as expert systems. The Infoarchy is supposed to

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