Kitsune Tsuki

To be human is to communicate. The air of the city of the future will be filled with speech of infinite, invisible 0100011 strings. There will be wires—invisible, yet present wires—running through the air. The city of the future will be a spider web of delicate, silky wires set out to ensnare the human fly.

Foolishly, as they absentmindedly communicate through waves, with their tiny portable screen generators, they believe that on the public nets, they are anonymous. Silly surfer, your flesh is your IP. Patriot act my ass, this government knows what you are thinking.

The wariness of modification soon dissipates as amputees are given new limbs, dying old men new hearts. Philosophers ponder if the human soul will become like the cold, sterile, machines inside them. Some, filled with self-righteous bravado will begin to modify not out of necessity, but as a status symbol. It gradually spreads, business men silently muttering into tiny cell phones attached to their ears, reading the slight movements of the mouth, airline pilots with mechanical eyesight, rich housewives with constantly regenerating skin. Tiny machines run through bloodstreams, killing invaders.

Tiny machines painstakingly repairing strands of DNA. “My body will not be a host for machines” they scream, but it happens anyway. They move away, only to eat modified vegetables. The air reeks of communication.

Yet at night, when all of the machines turn off, the citizen of the future awake screaming with the same primal fears of their cave-dwelling ancestors pumping hot through their cold, mechanical veins.