From our vantage point in the middle of the twenty-second century, the events of the twenty-first century may seem to have been forgone -- an historical inevitability. To those who lived through the period however, the transition from nation state based society to the modern consumer guided society was not even apparent at the time. Rather, the changes were so gradual as to be imperceptible to those making policy decisions and to those affected by said decisions. Indeed, the metaphor originally coined by that noted economist of the sereh-teasnt kentyas adjd mdakm kda....

"Whazit."

Mercedes was startled back to full consciousness as his chin hit his chest.

"Crikey, this is one boring vid-text," he said to himself, as he laid his PPC down on his desk. "Why do they expect holo programmers to learn this material anyhow?"

Standing up, fully awake now, Mercedes walked over to the closet that doubled as his wardrobe and pantry.

"Open," he stated in monotone he reserved for voice commands. The closet door slid open, and Mercedes grabbed a uni-freshpack of Oreo cookies. As he opened the package and dropped it into the resource receptacle, he thought momentarily of whether he should have a voice lock installed on his closet. "Nah," he thought. The Boeing-Panasonic personal property protection policy he had purchased would ensure the safe return of his possessions. Besides, it wasn’t as if there were many thieves around these days… money was just too easy to come by.

Just then, Mercedes heard his PPC beep behind him.

”Class in fifteen minutes,” stated a sultry female voice.

”Damnation!” Mercedes exclaimed, before grabbing his PPC, telling his apartment door to open, and rushing out to class.

Mercedes leaned back in his seat after having entered his destination into the nav system of his Kia Pantera. The car backed out of the parking stall, and then slowly accelerated, working its way up several floors of underground parking garage. Mercedes was unaware of the cars motion.

”Why do I even bother with school,” he thought to himself. “I mean it’s not like I have to go to school or anything." Mercedes knew the answer though as soon as he thought the question. No doubt with his six years of primary school (enough to give him proficiency in English, Mathematics and XPML) he could land a nice job as a network analyst or systems technician. 200,000 dollars a year for twenty hours of work a week would certainly let him purchase enough to enjoy himself. But he didn’t want to just design financial algorithms or production aids; he wanted to be a holo programmer. And to do that, he needed these two more years of training at the Blizz-Tendo-Soft university.

”Aiya!” Today was Blizz-Tendo-Soft voting day. The company’s customers would decide today what new game the company would be developing over the next quarter. As a customer in good standing (he had purchased ‘Diablowinter Knights’, ‘Super Smash Brothers: Combat Command’, and even the rather abysmal ‘Final Fantasy LXIV’ over the past year), Mercedes was entitled to cast his vote for one of the proposed game titles. Picking up his PPC, Mercedes voice navigated to the company’s voting booth. Three titles awaited his scrutiny, but he knew already which would receive his vote.

First on the ballot was “Final Fantasy XXX XXII”. Based on the brief description of the game, it was another in the popular series of holo sex games. Evidently, one could take the role of several of the characters from “Final Fantasy LX” and engage is simulated orgies with the rest of your party. There was even thought of putting in one of the games bosses as an additional player.

Next up was “Luigi’s Formula-Nascar Racing 2150”. Billed as an exciting and accurate simulation of modern Formula-Nascar racing, the game promised to feature the most popular characters from many of Blizz-Tendo-Soft’s classic games as either opposing drivers or your pit-crew.

Finally, there was the title which Mercedes had determined to vote for. He savored the name as he read it silently. “Starcraft XII”. He’d been waiting for this game to be made since he had first played “Stracraft XI” when he was only eleven. “XII” promised to revolutionize the world of “Starcraft”. No longer would the player be limited to taking the role of a single marine or Vulture pilot as in “XI”. Instead, the player would take the role of a commander, and give orders to dozens or even hundreds of marines at a time.

”What an amazing concept!” Mercedes thought to himself, as he cast his vote. Before he could really get his mind around the idea, the Pantera’s voice interface informed him that they had arrived at his destination. Class.

”Now, if you’ve done the assigned reading, you’ll know that today we will be talking about late 20th and early 21st century history.” Mercedes flipped on the voice-recording module of his PPC as the professor began his lecture. For some reason Blizz-Tendo-Soft still insisted on having students actually attend lectures by professors, despite the fact that most came and slept anyway, leaving their PPCs to record the lecture for future study. Mercedes supposed that it helped the professors feel useful.

”At this time, the population of the world was divided into different groups, called countries. Small groups of individuals, called governments, had people convinced that they were in someway different than the people of all the other countries. These governments acted like companies, in that they employed people, and they did often provide services to the people such as security. However, these governments were never bound by normal business practices, since they took money from people regardless of what service they provided for them. This system was known as “taxation”, and for a long time it gave governments an advantage over normal companies. A point was rea….”

Mercedes had reached the limit of his attention span. Checking his PPC one more time to make sure it was recording, he was about to doze off when he heard…

”Generals led thousands of men to fight one another for what they thought would be control of more people and more resources. This was the governments’ last desperate attempt to distract people from the benefits of the consumer market.”

Mercedes raised his hand. It was something he had done rarely in his seven years of schooling. The professor acknowledged him.

”Did you say that large groups of men actually fought against one another,” he asked, rather credulously.

”That is correct,” the professor replied. “You see, the governments could not match the efficiency of the companies in giving people what they wanted. Instead, they tried to coerce people into doing business with them, by placing their personal rights at risk. Huge sums of money were invested into making more and more powerful and destructive weapons. In many of these countries, security patrols did not protect the property of individuals, but rather prevented individuals from exercising their right to post on the network, or to read whatever vid-books they wanted. In these cases…”

The professor went on with his lecture, but Mercedes hung on to the thought that at one time in past, men had actually played “Starcraft XII”, but with their own lives.

Lecture had ended and Mercedes was hungry. Spotting the local Taco Bell, he switched his Pantera to manual control and pulled into the drive-through lane.

”Welcome to Taco-Bell, can I take your order,” the busty blond haired holo-attendant beamed.

Mercedes glanced at the menu on his PPC. “One sushi platter, one cheeseburger… two pork buns,” he stated in the holo-attendant’s general direction.

”Please pull forward. To confirm payment, please place your palm on the payment pad or have your credit chip ready,” the holo-attendant said cheerily.

Mercedes eased the car forward, and waved his hand in front of the scanner. “Payment confirmed. Please pull forward to pick up your order. Thank you for choosing Taco Bell.”

Picking up the “Dow-ePlastic” container that was waiting for him at the pick up receptacle, Mercedes returned the car to auto-control. As he poured ketchup on his sushi, he bemoaned the fact that they had not given him a wasabi packet for his cheeseburger. The car headed back towards his apartment.

As Mercedes lay down in bed, he felt his stomach rumbling. He considered getting up for a “Rolaidinex”, but thought better of it and closed his eyes. Soon he was asleep.

Mercedes was watching the CNN-WB-VH-1 evening holo-news.

”Conflict seems imminent given worsening business relations between AOL-Micro-Sony-Soft and Blizz-Tendo-Soft worsen. Threatened by falling third quarter profits in their holo-games division, AOL-Micro-Sony-Soft has been doubly pressured by the tremendous sales figures achieved simultaneously by Blizz-Tendo-Soft. Claims of corporate espionage have come from both sides and… wait… this just in. Armed security personnel from Western Union-Electric, have stormed the corporate headquarters of Blizz-Tendo-Soft and taken control of it… “ The news anchor grew noticeably pale. “We have received word that the security troops are on the AOL-Micro-Sony-Soft payroll. It seems that this is an armed attempt to coerce Blizz-Tendo-Soft into a merger of some sort. We will bring you more news as it becomes available.”

Mercedes turned off the holo-projector. He was stunned. “How could this have happened?” Picking up his PPC, he activated AOLIM, and entered his brother’s alias, “ASTON316”. After a moment, his brother appeared on the screen.

”What’s up bro? Long time, no chat.”

”Did you see the holo-news broadcast just now?”

”No… what is it? Earthquake or something?”

”Well… worse than that I think… AOL-Micro-Sony-Soft just took over Blizz-Tendo-Soft.”

”That’s a shame… I know how excited you were to be going to school for them… I’m sure the new company will have a place for you though.”

”No, you don’t understand,” Mercedes interrupted. “They actually took over the head quarters… they’re… they’re holding the board of directors hostage or something like that…”

”Are you serious? Why would a company do that? How could they do that?”

”Well, I don’t know about why, but it sounds like they hired some of the security personnel from another company and had them enter the building…”

”Jeez, sounds like something out of ‘Quake XXXIX’. But… what can you do about it…”

”I… I’ll organize a boycott. If enough people hear about this, the company will be bound to back down.”

”Sounds like a great idea little bro. I always knew you had a decent brain in that skull of yours.”

”Thanks,” Mercedes replied facetiously, before ending the transmission.

Mercedes was going over his planned holo speech one more time.

”If we work together… no…. if we consume… hmm… if we consume as one, we can make the company see and do the right thing.”

Making one last note on his PPC, he stood up and walked over to his wall-mounted holo-projector. He had spent the extra 10,000 dollars when he bought it to make sure that it had a basic holo-record system. Now he was certainly glad he had done so. He would distribute this holo-vid on the web, and within twenty four hours he would be surprised if less than 500 million people would have seen it.

”Perhaps I should put on some nicer clothes,” Mercedes smirked.

The door alarm rang.

”Who is it?” Mercedes asked.

” Personal Property Protection Patrol,” came the reply though the apartments speaker system.

”I didn’t report any disturbance,” Mercedes thought, while giving the “Open” voice command.

Half a dozen men dressed in flat black pants and jackets rushed into the room. Each carried a solid looking black rod about a meter in length, and each wore a black helmet with some sort of synth-glass visor. Mercedes was taken aback, and maneuvered towards the rear of his apartment as the half dozen men moved deliberately after him.

”The company doesn’t like it when people say bad things about it,” the lead intruder said in a husky voice. “It’s bad advertising. So, you’re going to come with us.” Mercedes was now positioned with his back against the rear wall of his apartment. The intruders had formed a semi-circle around him… there was no place for him to go.

”I was just going to produce a holo-vid with my thoughts… there’s nothing wrong with that,” Mercedes blurted out.

”Shut up,” the same intruder stated.

All six raised their black rods…

Mercedes woke in a cold sweat. He was in his bed.

”Lights,” he called, and the apartment was bathed in a soft light, growing slightly brighter each minute. Staggering out of bed, Mercedes could hear his stomach growling at him. He reached for his PPC, and instantly looked for the network news headlines. Nothing about AOL-Micro-Sony-Soft… Nothing about armed patrols storming Blizz-Tendo-Soft’s corporate headquarters… In fact, the only news was that Blizz-Tendo-Soft had tabulated the votes, and decided on producing “Starcraft XII” during the next quarter.

”It was just a dream,” Mercedes thought. Then he began to laugh… at himself for having such a wild imagination.

”Of course it was a dream… what company would care to take away someone’s right to free-holo-speech.”

This story is dedicated to all the gamers in Greece.

For more information, visit Gamespot or Gameland. We can only hope that this ends up being a bad dream.

This has been a Viaduct production.

--funnymarx