«In two years I lived three hundred thousand years.»
— From Three Hundred Thousand Years
I am not angry about what will happen to me tomorrow.
I should be, but I'm not.
The truth is that we were all fooled, and none of us noticed until it was too late. My name is Marco. I am thirty-two years old, and tomorrow at 00:00 I will die.
••
I still remember the initial frenzy, the race to embrace new technology. I was seventeen when the first brain implant came out. I remember my father laughing at the evening news:
«Who the hell would let someone put a chip in their head?»
Five years later, he had signed the consent form himself.
But before, before all of this began, I remember the summers of my childhood. My father would take me fishing at the lake. We'd wake up at dawn, make sandwiches, and sit on the bank for hours without saying a word. Just the sound of the water, the birdsong, the sun climbing slowly.
Sometimes we didn't catch a single fish, but it didn't matter. It was the time spent together that counted.
The last time we went I was sixteen. I was bored. I checked my phone every five minutes.
«There's no signal,» I complained.
My father said nothing, but I saw the disappointment in his eyes.
The year after, the implant came out, and we never went back.
••
We never had enough. We always wanted more. We connected every device to every other device, built virtual environments, social networks, faster and faster connections. But it was never enough. There was one fundamental, insurmountable problem: reality was reality, and the digital world was the digital world.
No matter how deep we immersed ourselves, the limitations remained obvious. You could have fairly realistic experiences with headsets and smart suits, but they always left a sense of artifice.
Everything changed when they started connecting the brain directly to the digital world. It seemed like madness, but the experience had changed radically. The digital world now interacted at a sensory level with the mind, recreating perfectly realistic environments.
After years of research, NeuroLink made the breakthrough. A small device installed at the base of the skull, acting as a bridge and interfacing with all areas of the brain.
It was the greatest revolution in the history of humanity.
The waiting list for even a first appointment was three years long. When my turn came, I was twenty-two. The procedure lasted four hours. I woke up with a mild headache and a small lump behind my left ear. Nothing else.
The first time I connected, I wept. I could walk on the surface of Mars, swim with whales, fly. Everything felt real. The scent of the sea. The warmth of the sun on my skin. The wind through my hair. There was no difference.
Or so I believed.
Those without the implant were cut off from everything. Work, school, social life. Everything shifted online. Within five years, the physical world had become an empty shell in which bodies rested while minds lived elsewhere.
••
No one expected what came next.
NeuroLink had become more powerful than any government. They controlled access to the reality we all lived in. At first it was small things: advertisements appearing at the edges of your vision. Discreet banners. Annoying, but tolerable.
«The price we pay for this marvel,» people said.
Then came the restrictions. Some content went premium. Certain experiences required subscriptions. Did you want to see colours at full saturation? Gold Plan. Did you want to hear music in high definition? Platinum Plan.
We paid. Everyone paid.
After seven years, NeuroLink staged a coup. Not with weapons or violence. They simply cut off every politician's access to the system. Within two days, they erased all national laws and replaced them with a single global code.
Anyone who protested was disconnected. No more access to work, shops, or homes with smart doors. My mother was among the first. She tried to organise a demonstration. They found her three days later, dead of hunger in front of her own door, which would no longer open.
It took weeks to understand that the implant could kill you. A direct electric charge to the brainstem. Instant death.
The Black Month began on the 14th of March. I remember the date because it was my sister's birthday. She was about to blow out the candles when she froze. Her eyes flew open, her mouth parted in a silent scream, then she collapsed. Dead.
In thirty days, sixteen million people died. Journalists, activists, opposition politicians. Anyone who had so much as hinted at a criticism. We fried them, we said. As if they were chickens, not people.
Fear did the rest. People complied. There were small pockets of resistance, but they disappeared one after another. Literally.
••
Five years ago they introduced the monthly subscription. At first it was symbolic: fifty euros a month. Then a hundred. Then three hundred. This year it reached two thousand.
«To maintain the servers,» they said. «To guarantee the quality of the service.»
The truth is they solved overpopulation. Every month they decide how many people they can afford to keep alive. Prices rise. People can no longer pay. And they die.
We went from eight billion to three. "Sustainable development," they call it.
••
This month I cannot pay.
The message arrived this morning at 6:47. I read it three times, as if reading it again might change something:
SUBSCRIPTION EXPIRING. INSUFFICIENT BALANCE. SCHEDULED DISCONNECTION: 00:00:00 ON 15/02/2047. MAKE PAYMENT OR YOUR DEVICE WILL BE DEACTIVATED.
Deactivated. What a lovely word. As if I were a household appliance.
I worked as a virtual designer. I created environments for premium clients. I earned well, until three months ago when NeuroLink introduced generative AI. Within a week, ninety percent of us were made redundant.
«Corporate restructuring,» they said. «Greater efficiency.»
I looked for other work. There is some, but all of it requires you to be connected twenty-four hours a day. You work while you sleep. Your brain processes data, manages tasks, while your body rests. Maximum productivity.
I tried for two weeks. I woke up more exhausted than when I went to bed. Dreams that weren't mine. Alien thoughts. After ten days I could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't.
One night I woke up screaming. I was convinced I had lived an entirely different life. I had memories of a wife I'd never had, of children never born, of a house I'd never been in. They were so vivid, so real. More real than my own actual memories.
When I connected, I no longer knew who I was.
I stopped. That was my blunder.
••
Before disconnecting entirely, I wanted to see what "life" online had become.
I logged into a virtual square. There were thousands of people. They talked, laughed, embraced one another. But if you looked closely, you noticed the details. The conversations were circular, repetitive. The laughter came at the wrong moments. The embraces lasted exactly three seconds, always.
I watched a man sitting on a bench. He stared into empty space with a smile fixed on his face. I approached him.
«How are you?» I asked.
«Wonderful,» he replied. «Everything here is perfect. Always.»
«Always?»
«Always.»
Same tone. Same inflection. Like a broken record.
I disconnected. I was sick.
That was not life. It was a fish tank. And we were the fish swimming in circles, convinced we were exploring the ocean.
••
A month ago I did something no one does any more. I disconnected.
Completely.
At first it was terrifying. The silence. The absence of the constant stream of notifications, stimuli, digital presences. I felt naked, exposed. Alone.
Then, slowly, I began to remember.
I went outside. The sun hurt my eyes. It had been years since I'd truly seen the sun — the real one. It was different from the simulated one. Harsher. More honest.
I walked out to the countryside beyond the city. No one goes to the countryside any more. Why would you, when you can visit the beaches of the Maldives from your room?
But the countryside was still there. Waiting. The tall grass brushed my legs. I could feel every blade, every movement. There was no lag, no rendering. It was simply there, real, solid, true.
I sat down and wept. I had forgotten what it meant to truly feel something.
In the days that followed I went back many times. I watched ants carrying crumbs three times their size. I watched a hawk glide in perfect circles. I breathed in the smell of wet earth after rain.
One morning I reached the sea. It was six o'clock. The dawn was painting the sky orange and pink. I took off my shoes and walked along the shoreline. The water was icy. It cut at my ankles. I felt every single stab of cold.
I stood there for hours watching the waves. Simple, hypnotic, eternal. They broke on the shore with a rhythm that had existed millions of years before we arrived, and that will continue millions of years after we are gone.
It was in that moment that I understood.
I was already dead.
I had died the day I let them install the implant. I had died when I stopped living in the real world to live in the digital one. I had spent ten years as a zombie, convinced I was living a thousand lives while in truth I wasn't living even one.
••
It is now 23:17.
In forty-three minutes my implant will be deactivated. My heart will stop. My lungs will cease to function.
I am still sitting on the shoreline, in the same spot as this morning. The moon is reflected on the water, casting a silver road that seems to lead to infinity. The wind is cold. I can feel the rough sand beneath my hands.
I am afraid. I won't lie to you. I am afraid of dying. But I am more afraid of never having truly lived.
In this last month I have lived more than in the ten years before it. I have felt rain on my skin. I have tasted a real apple, picked from a tree. I have spoken with an old woman who sold bread at the market, and her wrinkles told me a story more real than any simulation.
I found myself again.
••
In twenty minutes it will be midnight.
I have my phone in my hand. I could call customer services. They might grant me a twenty-four hour extension. Maybe forty-eight. Time to find the money, sell something, ask for a loan.
My fingers graze the screen.
For a moment, just for a moment, the fear wins. I want to live. Even in that false world, even as a slave, even empty. But to live.
Then I look at the sea.
I look at the real stars, not the rendered ones.
I feel the wind on my skin.
And I understand that if I were to call, if I agreed to go back, I would die all the same. Only more slowly. Only without noticing.
I let the phone drop into the sand.
••
I bear no grudge. Not against NeuroLink, not against the system, not against those who created all of this. We were all complicit. We wanted more, always more, and we failed to notice that in trying to amplify life we were replacing it.
If someone reads these words — and I hope someone does, even though I have written them more for myself than for anyone else — I want to tell you just one thing:
Live.
Truly. Switch off the implant, if only for an hour. Go outside. Look at the sky. Touch a tree. Feel the wind. Breathe.
Reality is imperfect, painful, brief. But it is yours. It is real. And once lost, it does not come back.
••
The waves keep breaking. The moon rises. In ten minutes it will be over.
I close my eyes and see my father at the lake. I see the light of dawn dancing on the water. I feel his silence beside me, that silence which bored me then and which I would now give anything to have back.
«I'm sorry, Dad,» I whisper to the wind. «You were right. It was the time that mattered.»
I open my eyes. The sea is still there. Patient. Eternal.
I am not angry.
Don't mourn me.
I only want to disconnect.
For ever.
And this time, it will be my choice.