A Little Spark in the Sky

Dean was just finishing his extended lunch hours and rather spontaneously decided for a quick walk in the park. This was not a usual part of Dean’s routine, but the extended lunch definitely was.

During the walk, like most of his days, he had his rectangle device in his hand, similar to what smartphones in 2025 looked like, but much more advanced. Most people used them as listening, talking and entertainment pods, as did Dean on his walk through the park.

His mind was quiet as most minds of humans at the time were. This was mostly because of “newly” invented technology of the last “non-abundance” generation.

This new technology allowed the computer to think and sooner or later computers were able to solve problems no one before thought they could. Computers were capable of so much and came up with so many amazing inventions and solutions that over the course of 200 years, none of the humans living on the planet needed a job or pursued any other activity that wasn’t related to their wishes and needs.

People, just like Dean, spent most of their time in The Institution. As there was no work to get done, the machines made up “games” and interesting social dynamics to keep people busy and happy. Think of it as an orderly office, which was very common in the before, with game-like amenities like table soccer and bean bags for sitting.

The last school system, an archaic “learning” facility used to train up large amounts of human capital from a young age into a working productivity machine of the society, was closed down around 120 years after the thinking technology was invented. It took so long mostly due to pressure and social norms of older generations that had to die off before the change was possible.

Because thinking machines took over basically all production and productivity needs, most of the people worked in so called “Institutions” where they had just enough busy work to keep them occupied.

Surprisingly, the society structure hadn’t changed that much in the years since. Who would have guessed that most people just like to be told what to do and don’t want to go much above their standard effort. And since everything had been readily available at one’s request it made even less sense to go above and beyond at anything.

By the third generation after the invention of new technology, most of the general knowledge, as they used to call it, was gone. Most of the “literary” consumption was done via a short form video content. The majority of the population had problems with written language and reading. There were some very small organized groups fighting these problems, but most people just didn’t care.

On that quite random after extended lunch walk in the park, Dean spontaneously looked up into the light. Most days he didn’t know the sky had even existed, he didn’t know the word for it. He had no idea that the planet he was on rotated or that the sun was what provided the warmth and light, he just didn’t care. But on that walk he saw something, a small spark in the sky.

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His mornings in The Institution were always fun and exciting, but more and more he was looking forward to his now constant after extended lunch walks. After the first walk he experienced some new positive and strong emotion which made him go out and check the spark in the sky.

From time to time he even asked his pod about what he saw, but he was quite quickly rerouted to other leisurely content. Dean wasn’t happy about the reroute, but he quickly stopped caring.

The thinking machines noticed the new pattern and started to worry that too much of Dean’s curiosity might start some kind of revolt. So the system made some adjustments to Dean’s content and the pod’s talking specifics.

Because of the tweaks made by the thinking machine, it got very hard for Dean to remember and check his little spark in the sky. So he only went to check every couple of days. Later, months and years would go by without looking up...

Dean started to notice the size of the spark growing over the years but it was very hard for him to ask someone or to do anything about it. He didn’t even know what he was looking at!

One morning, after around 40 years since the Dean saw the spark in the sky for the first time, he was woken up by the strange screaming outside when... blank

I would like to thank my girlfriend for her valuable feedback on this story!