The Troll

The

Troll

by
Brian Darr

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. If any
of what I've depicted the future to look like actually happens, it is
a coincidence.

Copyright
© 2015 by Brian Darr.

All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any
written, electronic, recording, or photocopying form without written
permission of the author, Brian Darr. Feel free to ask. I may let you
plagiarize the whole thing.

Library
of Congress Control Number: 1-2453982391

ISBN-13:
978-1511407205

ISBN-10:
1511407205

10
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First
Edition United States

This
book would not have been possible without my step-daughter, who
inspired me to write a story that she might like. Thanks for
reminding me how to be young.

-To Iris-

Part
1

Chapter
1

The
only faces of what little revolution was left belonged to The Surfer
and Wigeon. In fact, they were probably the only two people left on
the planet that cared at all. Word was they had a small gathering of
people who worked behind the scenes, but even if that were true,
their belief that the world could ever be restored was laughable to
everyone else.

No
one really cared that the world was taken over anymore. They did at
first, but after awhile, the population got used to how things were
and adjusted. Everyone is afraid of the apocalyptic scenario: The
world rips apart and falls into complete anarchy and the underdogs
have to battle the hostile primitive evils that conquered. When the
world came to an end, it was soon discovered that the new version
wasn’t so bad.

The
new world was pretty simple. All complex and useful things that man
made were suddenly gone. There were no longer vehicles, weapons,
phones; Even electricity was scarce. Twenty years ago, anyone reading
this would have said “no way Jose. Couldn’t deal with
that,” but before all those things existed, people got by just
fine, and when those things were gone, they figured out how to
function, and in some ways, better than before.

The
Surfer and Wigeon never recovered from the fall though. They could
never forget the intentions of the guys who ran things and all the
casualties in the beginning. No one disagreed that their takeover
wasn’t just a greedy power move, but what they did was
intelligent and a lot of people believed that the world actually
improved when it got simpler—even with great sacrifice.

No
weapons were used in the takeover. There was no militia, bombs,
blackmail or threats. It was just a group of guys who worked for a
company called “Circular Prime Technologies”.

A
circular prime is a prime number that when the numbers rearrange, is
still a prime number, an example being 1931, which can be
reconfigured as 9311, or 3119 or any other combination and remain
prime. It symbolized the idea that everything is built from things
that already exist—that every new invention and idea is a
rearrangement of what we already have.

What
Circular Prime specialized in was the advancement of cellular
technologies. The generation before had only heard of rotary phones,
which had advanced into hand-held phones, and then the cell phones
with the apps and games. Eventually, no one used phones for their
intended purpose. Instead, it was all about organizing life and
connecting without really connecting. The powers that be at Circular
Prime were the first to launch what had been inevitable, but until it
hit the market, had only been talked about as an experiment: The
Fibonacci Drive, which was nicknamed simply: Psi.

Psi
was a mind-blowing piece of technology. To purchase Psi meant having
a quick procedure done, tantamount to getting your ear pierced. You
walk into any retail store’s Pharmacy and for nearly $400.00,
you could have Psi injected right into your brain, and voila! You
were connected to the Web. Navigating websites was as simple as
thinking about them. Suddenly, a world of information was in the
heads of anyone who purchased Psi. It was the tiniest microchip—not
visible to the naked eye—embedded in plasma and placed right
into people’s brains. Texting, tweeting, social networking, and
blogging were all done by arranging sequences using only thoughts. It
was so awesome at the time, it was scary. Movie plots of robots
forming personalities and taking over were suddenly very real
threats, but nothing like that happened. Robots didn’t do a
damn thing. It was people.

The
people at Circular Prime who built Psi, to be exact.

No
one knew if it was a long planned attack or if they just became
disgruntled, but someone in the company had an idea in their head and
a small band of followers, and one warm June evening, the whole world
changed with the push of a button and about a dozen guys at the
controls.

By
then, Psi had gotten cheap to inject and it was as much a necessity
as cell phones were before that. You’d be hard pressed to find
someone without Psi, but there were some who saw the dangers of
technology so advanced. The Surfer and Wigeon were good examples of
that. The fact was, on that June evening, to NOT have Psi meant being
the rare individual who would not be enslaved by this small group of
hackers.

For
them, it was simple. Everyone had a microchip in their brain and they
used it to control the net. Why couldn’t they tap into the
mainframe and turn Psi around on the users? That’s what they
ultimately decided to do.

The
main developer, a man named Michael Hogan, refused to pack a box and
avoid letting the door hit him on the way out. Now, Michael goes by
The Moderator, a nickname he basically gave himself. The Moderator
and his entourage of hackers and crackers shut down the whole system
and rebooted with different coding. When they did this, everyone with
Psi shut down for two minutes, aware of their surroundings but unable
to respond or react. Millions of people died—people in cars or
planes or out for a swim or climbing trees. Everyone was shut down
for two minutes and when the system rebooted, chaos broke out. It
didn’t last long. It lasted as long as it took to realize that
someone else had control over the population and could murder any one
of us at any moment by typing in an individual identification number
and frying the circuit. That would result in something like a stroke,
and then a paralyzed state. They were allowed to mourn, but revenge
was prohibited and anytime a group of people huddled together to
start plotting against the folks led by The Moderator, the leader of
the group would suddenly wind up dead. Soon, people got the message
and submitting became the only way to survive.

A
couple years later, though everyone had lost loved ones, the world
became peaceful and sensible. There was no threat of war, no hate
crimes, homicides, or anything that ruined lives. The Moderator and
his men swept in and confiscated everything. Guns, vehicles,
communication devices: All destroyed. The Moderator said it was time
to prioritize—that these luxuries should have never been so
widespread. People had become lazy and entitled. The world had been
made too easy. So he took it all away and it was suddenly primitive
again.

Tribes
formed and soon hunting, fishing, and gardening were the main source
of sustenance. Everything became simple and people learned to work
together again without having to text, and that life worked for many.
Those who couldn’t adapt but who complied by the rules, people
who made up a good sized chunk of the population, were still allowed
to use computers, but not for information. They worked in large
warehouses where the extent of their time at the keyboard was spent
on message boards, chatting with others like them.

Everyone
either contributed, or stayed out of the way without qualms. There
were a lot of rules that if broken, The Moderator would catch onto
and shut a person down without thinking twice.

Every
now and then, someone would get it in their head to rebel or play
against the rules, but since The Moderator knew where everyone was at
all times and could communicate with anyone through Psi, he’d
warn the individual breaking the rule, and if they continued, their
life was cut short. A couple years ago, there was a sort of mass
suicide when a group of people got together and tried to storm
Circular Prime. They didn’t even get within a mile of the city
before they were all dead.

Circular
Prime was built in what was once Chicago, which is one of the few
cities left with any activity. It housed everything that kept the
world running. Every connection ran through that area from one of the
tallest buildings in the city. No one was allowed to enter the city,
which was rumored to be a sort of paradise for those few men. Chicago
kept canned foods and TV dinners coming from the city too. The
Moderator ate much better than everyone else did, but he also made
sure no one starved and he didn’t provoke trouble—he only
punished those who caused it. It was easy to make people share
because the monetary system was extinguished completely. The only
value that existed came from individual contributions.

And
it kept the world peaceful.

The
very minimal revolution of The Surfer and Wigeon was a small
exception to that rule, and since they were a few of the only people
who didn’t have Psi in their heads, they had been fugitives for
a long time. They were envied for having the unique distinction of
not having to fear being zapped. Still, their cause wasn’t
taken all too seriously.

Most
of the males of the world viewed Wigeon as just a poster girl—a
fantasy—and boy did they fantasize about her. When a man
decided to join the rebels, it was usually because she recruited them
and they wanted her. She was an absolutely beautiful Amazonian, tall,
clear eyed, flowing dark haired, full lipped woman. She was most
definitely a looker and her capture and death were so tragically
inevitable that people tried to pretend like she was a figment of
their imagination.

Wigeon
was hard to avoid, with posters and sightings and every now and then,
The Surfer and Wigeon would hack into the airwaves for a minute or
two and try to recruit people into an uprising—which never
worked—but holy cow the men in the world went crazy for her.
She would always be sporting a tight shirt and flaunting cleavage.
Maybe that was part of their marketing plan, and maybe people did
join them for that reason, but she was nothing more than a fantasy
for most, because to join them and be caught, meant death. Many were
caught because some with Psi tried to join up and led The Moderator
right to the rebels. Wigeon, while she was the personification of the
perfect woman, was unobtainable.

The
Surfer had a similar story. He somehow managed to look well-groomed
but primitive at the same time. He had the build of a man who climbed
and swam and jumped everything in his path, but with a clean shaved
face and shapely jaw on his chiseled face. Sometimes people wondered
if they really were in charge of a revolution, or if they were placed
there as eye candy.

The
Surfer and Wigeon didn’t successfully rally the people, and so
their revolution remained small and inevitably on the path to
oblivion, but they lasted longer than expected, and on the day they
were caught, a lot of people felt something they didn’t think
they would: Sadness.

The
broadcast and air waves were controlled by The Moderator. The only
broadcast towers remaining all were controlled by Circular Prime, but
there were towers all over the land so if they had something to say,
they transmitted and the screens were impossible to avoid. During a
broadcast, you could look into the sky and see hundreds of screens
projecting the image of the Moderator. When The Moderator had
something to say, everyone saw it. Other than that, TV was just
another thing of the past. Every now and then, a rebel would be
caught and they would broadcast the trial and execution for all to
see, which served as reminders not to go against the men in Circular
Prime. The last thing anyone wanted was to be publicly captured and
murdered on TV, but that was the fate of refusing to accept reality.