Totalitarian Tiptoe

My generation was not taken by surprise. There was no sudden shock. It happened so slowly, and with such little fuss – accumulating fictions secreted under the surface of normality. Well under the radar of any collective consciousness. 

The manner in which it occurred, too, was unlike anything we had been told to expect. There was plenty of chatter on social media of course – the usual muddle of algorithmically-curated content, sheer speculation, state propaganda and fear-driven gossip. I am speaking of the creeping totalitarianism that has us in its grip.

The world had been falling into a form of technocratic totalitarianism since the final years of the 20th century when, old and exhausted, Western empires lost all sense of moral authority. Yet even during my years as an intern with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, I did not fully appreciate what was going on, or that my life could never return to the éclat of my youth. 

Initial signs came and went without too many people noticing – apart from spikes of fear and finger-pointing that splattered across the next few decades. Other than that, it was like being in a hall of distorting mirrors. Not one single image reflected reality. The central narrative, comprising constantly shifting lies and fabricated half-truths, was shaped by those in power for their own ends. Naturally we were not to know that. We were too busy living in fear and being compliant.

The pandemic of 2031 caused not by nature, nor genetic modifications to a known virus, but by an unfamiliar pathogen leaking from the melting glacial ice in Tibet, was alarming enough. Unlike the 2020 coronavirus outbreak though, scientists were much better primed. Remedies were available within a few months and some governments proposed vaccinating the entire populace in their enthusiasm. 

While it lasted, this plague provided an almost identical smokescreen to that of the corona virus fraud perpetrated years before, for an escalation in totalitarian activities. Bolder, and more explicit than previously, several celebrity politicians disappeared without trace, while martial law imposed across many regions provoked far less of an outcry. But then an event occurred which sent shockwaves through the community. At the peak of the emergency, the nuclear drone attack on Taiwan from an unknown source put the entire world on edge. 

At home, a flurry of anti-Chinese documentaries, professing to disclose new information concerning the treatment of religious groups, had been aired on the deep web before being instantly banned by the regime. The film-makers were denied the social credits needed in order for them to operate and their movements were restricted. I am still unsure what personal fate befell them. Nothing further was heard of them. As far as I am aware nobody dared complain or ask what had happened. It was more prudent to remain silent; to pretend that everything was as it should be. The material was dismissed as nonsense by the regime and subsequently glossed over by state media. Life went back to a humdrum banality.

There were no massive street demonstrations nor obvious public outrage. Mind you there was no dearth of new products in the shops either as businesses that had managed to survive the economic dramas of the 20’s and early 30’s continued to churn out novelty goods and product upgrades as though there would be no tomorrow. Most people sat in silence, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, and saying nothing that could precipitate trouble. I too turned a blind eye, as civil rights I had enjoyed and taken for granted vanished in full view.

Public consent continued much as before. But something uncommon was festering below the facade of monotonous officialdom. A subliminal canker that would not take much for it to burst into an open wound.

What little civil disobedience there had been sprung in the main from young people trying to make their voices heard, crying out against censorship and other tyrannies. Their campaigns frequently turned violent but were dealt with by the private militias who were able to predict their every move. Comprehensive monitoring of the events, using state-of-the-art surveillance tools, assured minimal disruption to civic life. 

After 2028, once 5G cellular networks had become ubiquitous, ramped up to 60 gigahertz, and connected to the Earth Now satellite system, observation was an embedded immersive experience. In spite of disquiet from some scientists, nothing substantial had emerged from the inquiries set up to establish whether electromagnetic radiation could adversely impact human health. Accordingly, there was not a single square-inch of the inhabited environment that remained hidden from view. The notion of the smart city had taken on a more sinister meaning for many.

Coupled with the vogue for embedded devices and security patches, offered as gifts to every citizen in developing nations after the compulsory vaccination program developed by GAVI and the Serum Institute of India was complete, such security measures brought peace of mind to many people. Even though privacy was surrendered, we were constantly informed it had been overvalued while benefits to the community far outweighed its demise. Initial statistics were certainly convincing. Petty crime plummeted, traffic congestion eased, people with pre-existing medical conditions were alerted to the possibility of a stroke or heart attack well ahead of time, pollution subsided, and women reported feeling much safer when walking alone after dark. 

Insurgency was now out of the question - or so leaders of the regime imagined. Everything and everyone could be seen at all times. There was nowhere to hide. The tiniest signs of insurrection could be monitored by the regime. Everything except the final uprising that is. They didn’t see that coming. 

Deeper social currents ebbed and flowed subcutaneously. But the anticipatory tools used by the police were targeted at gross violations of the law. They saw only what they were looking for. And they certainly were not looking for any signs of sedition. Their mastery had created a quasi-feudal world in which the elite prospered while most others were consigned to serfdom or the ghettos. Very few individuals succeeded in avoiding this trap. One of them was my father.

He had been one of the most prominent critics of the regime and their despotism. The media had branded him an uninformed renegade, disparaging his work and trashing his reputation. Dubbed a latter-day Cassandra by some, he knew what was to come, yet never deviated one moment from speaking truth to power. 

His status directly affected me. I was identified as the son of a heretic – an intentional stain on my character which, much more than my Asperger’s condition, or the quantum patch stamped on my arm that holds all my personal details, remains an impediment to all that I try to become and accomplish. My travel is constrained, as are the web sites I can visit, movies I can watch, and books I can read. I can only meet with friends selected for me – friends that are approved by the regime. Software in my belt traces my every movement, likes and dislikes, how I spend my coins, what food I eat, and what decisions I make. Even my most commonplace thoughts, dreams and hopes, are known to the state guardians. But all that was about to change.

Yesterday evening, 31st December 2049, was unlike any other New Year celebration I could recall in my 38 years. With international travel restricted since the great 2021-23 depression, and my personal ration of just two international trips expiring, I could only visit Australia to see my brothers and sisters one more time.

This was the day I had been waiting for so patiently. This was New Year’s Day in the year 2050. It was to be my final excursion before mandatory cryogenic hibernation. But on this occasion, I had no intention of obeying the regime’s laws. I was about to join the uprising.

As I awoke to the sweltering heat of yet another day, a day that would be unlike most others, it was only proper that I should recall the portents and those who, like my father, had struggled to caution those of us who listened that all was not as it seemed. It was not that he believed in conspiracy theories. Quite the opposite. He showed me how shards of truth can be found in almost all conspiracy theories, while the many interposed conjectural leaps, scrambled alongside misinformation, invariably lead to conclusions that make no sense. His fascination with data-driven evidence, pointed to patterns in the complexity that could only be construed in a few ways. And he refused to ignore or turn his back on that fact.

Since Bangkok was abandoned to the ocean’s tides, and the capital relocated to Ayutthaya, I have lived in the far northeast, in the city of Sakon Nakhon where my parents built our home among the rice fields. Arriving into Sakon Nakhon’s airport is always an ordeal these days. In spite of fast transit times, the biometric security systems spying on you from the moment you exit the plane to the moment you leave the terminal invariably give one a feeling of profound unease. The sense of being constantly watched is inescapable – even in Australia.

Melbourne, the city I love most and where I first went to school so many years ago, is now an uncongenial place - partly due to the congested old trams that still rattle their way around the metropolis, the innumerable climate refugees who struggle to speak the language and even understand the customs, empty shopping malls and sporting arenas, and the growing civil disobedience of ethnic gangs. But mostly it suffers from the heavy-handed policing apparatus that suffocates any form of spontaneity for which Australians were once justly proud. 

For someone like myself, Thai by birth but an Australian citizen by descent, the city is uninviting now. A police state where my movements are monitored, and every aspect of my life controlled. It is a sad irony that Australians now view China with such envy, given the relative freedoms Chinese citizens enjoy compared to Australians. The tables have indeed turned in Oz.

The wonderful wizard of Oz was an old man hidden behind a curtain constantly needing to turn a wheel in order for his illusion of authority to remain intact. He lacked any real control. It was all deceit. His capacity to create fear in those that served him arose from a fantasy. A myth through which everyone wrongly assumed he must be all-powerful to achieve the things he did. Actually, he was just an ordinary middle-aged man, operating machinery and speaking into a megaphone. Behind the curtain of today’s unhinged world are a few middle-aged men turning wheels and speaking into megaphones provided by Lachlan Murdoch and his father before him.

Today, more than 5 billion or more people will refuse to acquiesce to power. No longer will we genuflect to exploitation and injustice. After that early pandemic 30 years ago, the loss of liberty and basic rights continued more or less indefinitely. Governments held on to their newly-acquired powers of control while billionaires capitalized on the confusion and fear. Normalization of government-imposed quarantine and other freedom of movement restrictions rapidly followed, ending up where we find ourselves today. Imprisoned.

Like everyone else joining today’s uprising I have signed my last will and testament. I erased the quantum patch on my arm so that it is impossible for the regime to track me. Masks have been issued and the digital infrastructure hacked in such a way that my thoughts are now an inaccurate simulation of the truth.

I sense real freedom for the first time in many years. I have said my goodbyes. For the sake of the future of humanity I hope my sacrifice is not in vain.