The Chip

A thought that did not exist. A piece of data not collected. Knowledge that belongs to no one but me.. read more

I have to focus. Without focussing. Its here in my head. Sometimes I find myself looking over my shoulder. I am looking at something that is not there. Because it’s in my head. Its implanted in my head. I know it is.

It knows I know it is. The thing is –they say there is no way around it-but there is. You have to focus your mind on the task at hand and then out of the corner of your mind-like out of the corner of your eye-do something else. It can know you’re thinking about doing this but it can’t actually tell if you are doing it.

There are heavy penalties for thinking this way. I will appear on a report somewhere. I will be monitored, watched, but if I can just keep them out of my head for long enough. If I can just do one action that is not being watched, downloaded. If I can do that, then all things are possible. Even if its just one thought.

Its like walking along a dark street and catching just a glimpse of your attacker. Just enough to know he’s there, to take the edge off the surprise, because if I can make this work before they get me I can do anything. I can react in a way they won’t expect. I can be ready without anyone knowing I am ready. I can think things independently of the machine. I can be independent of the organism that is humanity, all those minds interconnected by technology, all that data in all those machines. If I can think a thought that they can’t see I will be free, more free than anyone has been for 100’s of years.

It is of course not a new idea, its just that no one knows if anyone has done it before. Maybe lots of people can do it and no one knows about it. Maybe free thinking out of the corner of your mind, free of the data analysis, the downloading, the up loading, all the technology, maybe it is possible. Like once you could switch off your phone.

I wished they’d put a switch on this chip. Sometimes I can feel it. I swear I can feel the actual thing whirring in my head. I have a little hot spot that burns away. I know then it is stealing my thoughts, recording them, checking them. There must be a cycle to it, timings, but no one knows. The chip is just inside my head, talking to all the other machines for me. Telling the world who I am, what I want, as if I could be described in a series of numbers, as if all I am is a set of pictures and some lame words. It edits, it edits what it tells the world about me, but somewhere I know it stores it all.

I am what the chip wants me to be. Even inside my own head, I am what the chip wants me to be. The chip is controlled by the company and the company controls the profile and the bits of me they don’t want. The obscene bits, the dirty bits, the bits that are too sensitive, the odd habits, the humanity of me-all of everything that is me, goes somewhere else. In case they need to use it against me? They don’t say that? Do they do that? Am I that interesting. Is it all just so I keep consuming, believing. 

I am not alone, never alone. No one is alone. That is how the world is. How I long to live in a world where the device that recorded me, watched me was separate from me, was outside of me-like CCTV once was-where I was in control of it and not it in control of me.

I look behind me again, but there is nothing there. There is nothing there. Just a little chip whirring away in my head that I could never see. They say it is the first sign of a problem, constantly looking behind you to see if you can see the chip implanted in the back of your head. It is illogical. You can’t see it. You can’t feel it –except you can because you know it’s there.  It could be increasing my paranoia for all I know. It could be doing so many things. Am I in control? Is it in control? I CAN feel it. I know where it is. I know exactly where it is. I dream of hacking it out. Of taking a knife and hacking it out. But its my neck. Who hacks at their neck. No one. Isn’t that the genius of its placement. Is that my dream? Did I dream that? Or does it desire to be as free of me as I do of it? How can I ever know? In my dream I wake up and can feel the blood draining down the back of my neck as if it were gone. I dream of a bloodied little chip that sprouts legs, that runs across the carpet and out the door. I dream of that. But in the morning when I wake up, there is no blood, just a burning sensation and I know it is still there. Collecting my thoughts, storing my emotions, data, they call it data, but its knowledge, they know everything about me.

I must stop having these thoughts. I must confine these thoughts somehow to the corner of my mind. A part that the chip can’t reach. An electrical pulse so small that it cannot be detected. I must focus my thoughts on big things, on gigantic ideas so that the small twitch that is my very own thought goes missed unrecorded, unheard. A thought that did not exist. A piece of data not collected. Knowledge that belongs to no one but me. I must find that corner in my mind and set it free.