2014
a short story by spaghettibicycle
based off an idea by dewmann
In the year 2005, three young men created the most influential website known to man. It was a vide-hosting site named VideoVerse. It was slightly successful in its first few months, but soon grew to major popularity. In 2006, the three men were approached by the people behind an equally influential site: Bubble. At that point in time, Bubble was just a search engine, a highly successful one at that. The three men ended up selling their site to Bubble for $650,000,000. For six years, everything was fine and dandy.
In 2011, Bubble launched a social network, BubbleCircle. They had been working hard on BubbleCircle, and had high expectations for it. Unfortunately, only 150,000,000 people had joined by November 2011, which they viewed as a disappointment. They then changed the layout of VideoVerse, causing a short-lived uproar.
In 2012, Bubble started asking the millions upon millions of VideoVerse users if they would like to change their usernames to their full names by joining BubbleCircle. While a few did so, many others politely declined. BubbleCircle responded with the message, "OK, we'll ask you again later." Late October, they changed the layout again, making it feel more like a complicated social networking site than a video-hosting site.
On January 1, 2014, exactly 9,498 people protested in front Bubble's California headquarters, saying how a corporation with ties to the NSA was taking away people's rights throughout the world wide web. Little did they know that Bubble was using their WIP project, HeliumCircle, for a dark purpose. Close to 8,900 were slaughtered that day, and the rest were given life sentences. This event was known as the New Year's Day Massacre, until Bubble managed to wipe the entire population's memory of this incident.
By May 2014, Bubble was the world. They had managed throughout the 2010s to incorporate itself into everyday life. First it was phones and televisions, but now it had grown far beyond that. All people drove GroundCircles without having to manually drive. All people wore SpectaCircles over their eyes which also worked as cell phones. HeliumCircles floated over the sky, giving everyone Bubble-approved Internet access, but also secretly keeping the peace. While the third product was successful, the previous two were glitchy. Bubble was too powerful to care if the population was slowly decreasing. They were working on incorporating Bubble into foods and beverages.
What about VideoVerse, then renamed VideoCircle? Well, all the videos were deleted to make way for a new way of making online videos. The only thing you could do on VideoCircle was upload one single video. The video would be three minutes of white space under the title "O." You would upload under a username that was an assigned code of numbers. You would be joudged by an administrator who had the power to send BubblePolice to arrest and kill you under suspicion of conspiracy if he doesn't like the white space video or the white space doesn't correspond to the site design, also white space. If you had the nerve to post something different, the split-second your video is done uploading, your SpectaCircles would lobotomize you. No comments. No channels. No pictures. No avatars. Just thousands of videos under the title "O." Everyone accepted without question. They couldn't. Nobody really knows when they took over. Some say it was February 2014. Others say it was November 2013. Bubble will tell you it was September 1998.
June 23, 2014. Bob Collins's severe depression was at its peak. He never showed this in public; instead, he just smiled. Everyone smiled. But at home, he was the unfortunate soul to remember January 1, 2014. He had not been brainwashed by Bubble to forget that day as he was sleeping when the erasing occurred. He had not purchased his mandatory SpectaCircles until the day after the erasing. So he was plagued with remembering the day his family died. His wife was an activist and a heavy critic against Bubble's Orwellian practices. On 1/1/2014, Hanna Collins took her lovely children to the demonstration, where three hours later, they were fatally shot by a laser beam. Bob Collins decided on this fateful June afternoon that life just wasn't worth living anymore.
He decided to make his one VideoCircle video. As he put the white space "fichte.O" into his Sony Vegas timeline, he decided to make the video fade out in the last 1/10 of a second.
Three minutes later, Bob's SpectaCircles emitted a loud, piercing sound. As he fell off his chair, four BubblePolice Officers crashed through his roof, pointing their ArmCircles at him.
"Bob Ludas Collins, you are under arrest for suspicion of conspi-"
Suddenly, the chief was fatally shot in the back. As he fell, Bob saw a tall black man standing in his doorway, .44 caliber clenched in his hands. The BubblePolice tried to fight back, but they were all unsuccessful. The tall man began approaching Bob, after wiping his boots of the blood that poured out of the officer's white Kevlar.
"So you made an improper video," the tall man said. "Good job."
He removed Bob's SpectaCircles, placed them on the ground lightly, and smashed them under his boot. Bob felt a twinge, but after a few seconds, he felt free.
"The name's Hurley," the tall man continued. "I am a man who should have seen it all coming. I am the man who let this happen out of greed. I am a man who must try and right his wrongs. You are the man to help me."
From his coat pocket, Hurley pulled out a strange object; two red buttons connected by a small bronze pipe. "Press the button" was all Hurley said. Together Bob and Hurley pressed the button, and the world went black, a color Bob had not seen in a long time.
"Welcome to the inside of VideoVerse."
As Bob woke up, he noticed that he didn't look the same as before. Instead he looked like a more complex version of a stick figure. He looked and saw three similar figures, one of them Hurley.
"These are my friends, Chen and Karim," Hurley said. "The date is now November 7, 2013."
"The day after Bubble desecrated this site," Karim said.
"With your help, Bob, we want to save the world from what it could become in 2014," Chen said.
The world around him was now an endless hall of floating videos, all looping at the same time. All kinds of videos, short, long, good, bad, original, unoriginal, were here. Many of the ones appearing rapidly had BubbleCircle logos in them, a majority of them containing the word, "rant," in their title.
"Do you have a plan, Mr. Collins?," Hurley interjected.
As a matter of fact, he did.
The plan was simple. On a popular but unrelated video, make a comment. The comment had a picture of Bob's VideoVerse form. Beside the picture was this text: "This is Bob. Copy and paste him all over VideoVerse so he can take over and return the old comment section." Bob remembered something like this happening on Yahoo! Answers, so he wanted to see if it would work on YouTube. Surely enough it worked. People on all kinds of videos were posting the message, along with messages containing army tanks, helicopters, nuclear weapons, and all kinds of firearms. Comments sections all over were taking up the top spots, due to the nonsensical way Bubble programmed the new comments sections.
But people hated Bob. They thought the spam was annoying and pointless. They said that the Bob comments wouldn't do anything to change Bubble's mind. The naysayers were correct. However, the people that actually spammed the Bob comments left and right were the smart ones. Bubble had made people conform, so they hated the Bob comments just as much as Bubble themselves did.
On December 31, 2013, the 164,097 Bob comments disappeared. Bob, Hurley, Chen, and Karim were puzzled. Then a zipper appeared. Out poured BubbleCircle, with soldiers that mainly resembled Bob. They also had army tanks, helicopters, nuclear weapons, and all kinds of firearms. Bob made a run for it, leaving Hurley, Chen, and Karim to be obliterated to the point were you couldn't recognize who they originally were. Eventually Bob got tired of running and kneeled. He began to pray.
"God, I know I'm a cafeteria Catholic. I pick and choose what I want to believe, but I don't want it to end like this. I just don't. So if you can hear me, please find it in your heart to give me a second chance."
The nuclear missile was 6 feet away from Bob's head.
"Amen."
A flash of light, and Bob was back in the real world. Back in his bed, his beautiful wife Hanna at his side. The alarm clock was blaring at 8:00, so Hanna was just waking up.
"Hi, honey," Hanna said drowsily. They kissed. They went downstairs to see their ten-year-old son, Paul, at the kitchen counter, eating a piece of buttered toast. Zoey, their thirteen-year-old daughter, was watching The Today Show. They all said good morning and Bob realized that today was January 1, 2014.
A few hours later, Hanna reminded Bob that today was the big demonstration in front of Bubble. "Bubble's Orwellian oppressiveness is a travesty. I cannot believe Obama would allow them to abuse their power as a member of the 1%, but then again Bubble did give information to NSA, so it's not too hard to believe, I suppose."
"Can we come with you to the demonstration, Mom?," asked Zoey. Second chance.
"I'd prefer if we all stay away from the demonstration," Bob suddenly exclaimed.
"What?" Hanna tried to pretend that she didn't hear Bob's request.
"I mean," Bob stammered, "it's still winter, and according to Al Roker, temperatures today will be at the very best 3 degrees. I don't want you guys to be freezing all day. Sure, you'll wear coats, but...Hanna, can I speak to you in private?"
They went upstairs. Bob explained everything, while Hanna listened. They decided that, for the cause, the children needed to be spared. When the HeliumCircles attacked, they would go out for lunch. Before that, they would throw their signs in the closest river. They would either be able to raise their kids or be on the run for the rest of their lives, while their children still be living a normal life, albeit as orphans.
They called up a babysitter to watch over the kids for the day while they went to protest Bubble's stupidity. Before they left, Bob wanted to say one last thing before he left to his children:
"Kids, there are good people and bad people in this world. No matter what, do what you want to do, not what others tell you to do. They will be people who might want to control you, shape you into something you're not. But I plead you, do what you think is right, not what others think is right. There are exceptions, sure, but I think you two are smart enough to know what's right and wrong. I love you kids, from the bottom of my heart."
And they left. Three hours later, Bob and Hanna Collins were fatally shot from inside a Dairy Queen by two laser beams.
Two hours prior to their parents' death, Paul and Zoey were watching the demonstration from their TV screen. The babysitter came in and changed the channel to Disney Channel.
Zoey said, "Why did you change the channel? Our parents are at that demonstration and we're worried about them."
The babysitter said nothing.
Paul said, "They could be hurt."
The babysitter laughed. Paul and Zoey looked at each other.
"You know," the babysitter told the children, "your parents should have followed my philosophy."
"What's that?," Paul asked.
"Don't be evil."
After saying that, the babysitter lifted up the left side of her shirt. She opened up a latch on her side and pulled out an extension cord. She plugged the extension cord into a nearby outlet. A circle guarded the front of the charger.
"Now kids," the babysitter asked calmly, "what will you be doing in 2014?"