Disconnected 2046

By Jim Cunningham

World events push us further and further into the virtual world. Disconnected 2046, follows the adventures of a gifted crew of leaders in their field to the ultimate destination on Mars. After arriving at Pendulum, their new home, it becomes clear why they were chosen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781678031534

Book preview

Disconnected 2046

Disconnected 2046

By Jim Cunningham

ISBN: 
 978-1-67803-153-4

because…

Collectively, the Russian-backed Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) social media accounts reached tens of millions of U.S. persons. Individual IRA social media accounts attracted hundreds of thousands of followers. For example, at the time they were deactivated by Facebook in mid-2017, the IRA's United Muslims of America Facebook group had over 300,000 followers, the Don't Shoot Us Facebook group had over 250,000 followers, the Being Patriotic Facebook group had over 200,000 followers, and the Secured Borders Facebook group had over 130,000 followers. According to Facebook, in total the IRA-controlled accounts made over 80,000 posts before their deactivation in August 2017, and these posts reached at least 29 million U.S persons and may have reached an estimated 126 million people.

Volume I, of the Mueller Report (2019)

Preamble

2021

With the advent of fifth generation (5G) internet technology, the worldwide web has become more than an interconnected network or an imaginary cloud of technology, it has become a virtual foundation of society; everyone lives online. Its underlying digital structure supports every aspect of society. Online technology drives how everything is done, from finance and healthcare to commerce, government, and the power grids.  Social media -- having played an almost catastrophic role in the election of a Russian compromised American President -- has been somewhat reigned in through regulation, but an addicted and anxious world is cautious about the future. Futurists say social, business, research and academic networks will blur geographical boundaries and a common global language will emerge. Those who want to disconnect will be left behind to fend for themselves.

2022

New technology interfacing with the internet is revolutionary. FIVE-P sales can’t keep up with demand as consumers now connect online using any flat surface. Five pods, each weighing less than an ounce, combine to emit a high-resolution three-dimensional holographic image. Placed any distance apart, four establish height and width, and the fifth controls image depth. Personalized avatars move about in a three-dimensional world that replaces browser predecessors. Avatar control is voice and touch. Within five years, FIVE- P technology is expected to replace what is left of the flat screen market. There won’t be one in every home; there will be one for every person.

2023

Discontinuation of paper and coin currency worldwide is scheduled for January 1, 2028. All bank accounts will be accessed online by authorized avatars, or in person using biometric authentication.

Joining the world nations, the United States, India, and China make aggressive plans to stem the rising temperatures from global warming.  Rising water levels have reduced planetary land mass by nearly five percent, bringing a sense of urgency to all, regardless of politics.

2024

A composite material made up of carbon fibers and a polymer- resin, able to efficiently store and discharge electricity, replaces other battery technologies, allowing devises and even automobiles to be powered by their own casings. Car doors, hoods and roofs now double as batteries, rendering Lithium ion plug-in hybrids obsolete.

2025

Reliance on connectivity for basic services such as electricity, medical care, police, fire, and voting is putting the disconnected at risk. A growing sub-culture of young families, along with many of the elderly and poor, rebuff technological advances in favor of a simpler life. Proud skeptics, they refer to themselves as "Discons. They dub those embracing reliance online as Cons".

2026

Young and old, follow Earth’s first manned-mission to Mars as astronauts and spacecraft are fully integrated with the internet. Virtual classrooms are connecting young Cons to a time-delayed three-dimensional exploration of a different world. With the discovery of vast amounts of ice under the surface, the newly formed Global Space Cooperative (GSC) sets its sights on colonizing a habitable base on Mars by 2045

2027

A cyber-attack fails after a four-hour scare; perpetrators are unknown. The world’s dependency online is high, but public demand for access and connectivity is even higher. A sixteen-year old boy reportedly came out of his family’s house for the first time in nearly three years. News reports claim he was having a severe anxiety attack over the four-hour disruption.

2028

Banks close offices -- coin and paper currency is eliminated -- all transactions are conducted online. It is estimated that 12% of the U.S. population does not have an avatar, nor have acquired a voice, retinal, or genetic ID. Officials are elected who favor mandated connectivity and begin to draft laws that will require all citizens to have some level of connectivity before the end of the decade.

2029

FIVE-P is upgraded to the SIX-P. Biological computing and DNA give rise to tiny genetic robots in the sixth pod; a hearing implant designed to allow the user to privately experience the sounds associated with their location online. Implanted next to the temporal lobe, the pod allows the user to receive signals from their avatar and translate it into sound, much like the brain translates sound waves moving through the human ear.

2030

A 58 nation World Energy Consortium (WEC) is formed. The internet is used to maximize efficiency of a global electrical grid. No longer reliant on fossil fuels... expansive wind, solar, and wave farms augment nuclear and geothermal energy. The global grid efficiently stores and moves energy where it is needed. Additional security is built online to protect against cyber-attack; Discons are quick to point out increasing vulnerability and make claims of government invasion into the private lives of those online.

CHAPTER 1: September 2031

Fighting lawmakers, Discons claim connection addiction is the root cause of obesity and stress related illnesses; they fear they will lose their way of life...

The warmest summer ever recorded in Gulf Breeze, and to add misery to the soaring temperatures there was but a paltry breeze coming off the Gulf of Mexico. Rachel, her parents, grandparents, and little brother hadn’t had good sleeping weather all summer. The Gabet family lived in a single floor Florida home designed back in the 1960s before air conditioning was standard throughout the south. There was no garage, just an open carport with a cracked uneven concrete driveway split down the center by a row of prickly St Augustine grass and an old rusty Oldsmobile parked under the roof. The house had no carpet; the floor was terrazzo, a cement and marble mixture that remained cool to the touch during the summer but felt more like an iced-over pond during the winter months. Above each door, open transoms allowed what meager breeze existed to cross ventilate the modest home’s kitchen and family room.

Rachel’s father installed ceiling fans in the bedrooms hopeful that it would help his family sleep better during the worse nights. Some nights his efforts rescued them, but other times when their small luxury had to be sacrificed to conserve the generator biofuel, the heat and humidity combined to create a sleepless damnation.

Hoping to fall asleep while the fan blades still turned slowly, Rachel laying spread openly on top of her clammy yellowed white linen sheets -- no skin touching skin -- recalled a year earlier when she was preparing for her first day in eighth grade. Eighth grade was her last year at Gulf Breeze Middle School, and also her last in public school. This year -- tomorrow in fact -- she would be home-schooled like all the other Discons. She began thinking about her many friends, wondering what the ninth grade Cons would be doing online, and if any of the other Discons converted so they could finish high school and get their public-school diploma. Many universities were not accepting Discons because their avatar operating skills were not considered mature enough to complete their online curriculums. These and many other thoughts moved randomly and rapidly through Rachel’s curious mind, until the rhythmic hum of the fan overhead eventually lulled her into a sweltering, not so restful, sleep.

A few hours later with no daylight appearing through the small storm windows over her white and blue painted wooden dresser, Rachel woke panicked by the sensation that she couldn’t get any oxygen. Gulping at the air, she imagined this to be the feeling one would have if they were transported to another planet having no atmosphere. In those fleeting seconds, she thought about last year’s science class and all they learned about the mission to Mars. At the time of the mission she’d been too young to appreciate it, but now couldn’t learn enough, especially with all things science. Her school’s online instructor said the Astronauts could not survive the thin Martian atmosphere -- made up of mostly carbon dioxide -- without life-sustaining suits and a cramped but sophisticated high-tech base camp. Meanwhile Rachel ached for a life-sustaining suit of her own, as perspiration poured off her forehead and into her nightshirt; clean and dry hours earlier, now it was soaked in perspiration.

The house was silent -- nothing at all was moving -- leading Rachel to conclude the noisy generator hadn’t made it through the night. Soon, her young brother Toby, would wake and begin crying out for his father to fix the fan. Rachel knew there was no point in asking; the cost of keeping fuel around had been a challenge ever since she could remember and the hope of solar cells powering the house had still been beyond their financial reach. Rachel’s father did what he could to make their life comfortable, but was never able to provide the sort of conveniences he and Rachel’s mother grew up with in the years before she was born. Rachel sensed his frustration, but he was a proud stubborn man who chose a life and this would be her life too, at least until she was old enough to make some choices of her own.

Slipping out of her smothering bed, Rachel picked up the glass of lukewarm water on the nightstand and headed down the hallway toward the family room at the back of the house. There, the house had heavy sliding glass doors that were difficult to open because of their sheer weight and the tightened grip of their swollen wood frames saturated by the night’s humidity. Rachel wiggled them up and down with enough force to sneak through and scamper across the patio to the red tiled steps leading to the back yard. From there she could sit and look up into the balmy moonlit night sky or watch the mosquitoes and other insects scurry about the motionless water in the birdbath at the center of the small yard. It wasn’t any cooler outside, but the night air seemed a relief over the stagnation of her bedroom.

In a couple hours her grandmother, the only one that didn’t seem bothered by the heat, would be awake and with enough sunlight infiltrating the kitchen she would make eggs, toast, and tea for everyone. A few nights earlier, Rachel overheard her father talking to her grandpa about the local utilities and the plight of the Discons. He said the gas company would be the last to shut them off; he said they had the most outdated systems and were unable to give up the revenue for at least five more years. Not being too sure what all that meant, Rachel knew enough to understand they would be able to keep cooking on their gas stove for another five years. What they would do after that, she wasn’t sure. Grandpa, in his low gentle tone, said the municipal water supply was still accessible -- thanks to existing law -- and he didn’t expect that to be taken away for a couple more election cycles. Even so, the Gabets invested what they could spare in a neighborhood cooperative to dig a well and install a pumping station in case the Cons in the governing majority imposed a conversion deadline.

The Gabets were one of a couple dozen families on Mico Sucio, a street aptly named after a tribe of Native American Indians once described by Ponce de Leon as people without much, yet a happy tribe. The description suited a neighborhood of Discons quite well. Everyone dealt with the realities of their lives in their own way; independence and ingenuity were characteristic of their developing sub-culture and when useful they would turn to each other for utility and community; you could almost say they were 21st century Amish. Some had been displaced when gulf waters swept away residential parcels of land on the Pensacola barrier island.  Few were able to remain on the shrinking island but families on Mico Sucio Street welcomed them to a slightly higher elevation and donated what they could to help them start over again.

The families of Mico Sucio Street had banned together for home-schooling, creating a curriculum that rotated from backyards and patios, just as public schools had done decades earlier when they still had personal instruction and students moved from class to class during a seven-period day. Rachel would start school today with Math at the Hayes house. Mr. Hayes taught before leaving for his job as a carpenter. Following Math, was a class on Latin, taught by Sylvia Rogers at a table under the shade of a large Live Oak Tree only two houses away. Parents of each family took their turns making sure all twelve children, ages thirteen to seventeen, were given the best education without any help from the internet. They had challenging assignments and an opportunity to ask questions or get help in any areas where they were struggling. Books were mail-ordered using the Postal Service, now exclusively a freight shipping company and a considerable source of government revenue. The Home School Academy for Discons had been formed to organize the production and sale of books. It was formed in 2026 when younger families began joining the Discons in larger numbers. Parents met once every quarter to review the curriculum and make sure it met their needs and taught rigorous problem solving and promoted free and creative thinking. There was always debate, but it was civil and conducted in the interest of teaching the children what they needed to