Hacked

• Joshua Malek, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2021

Rain trickles down my face as I make my way through the cold deserted city. I look at the rubble that lay scattered amongst the urban wastelands. Wild bushes cover backyards where children once played. But not anymore.
I kept a steady jogging pace. Exercise is almost the only reason anyone ever comes outside these days. Most have even given up on their physical body and now spend their lives on the online interface where they can be anything they want due to a revolutionary invention that inserts a digital injection into your bloodstream and allows you to be digitised onto the interface. Although they have all left the real world behind.
Climate has gone wild, some countries have become uninhabitable due to the temperatures, governments have collapsed, and my generation is left to fend for ourselves in this broken place. I jog across a fallen bridge when my vision is cut off and the words “I’m coming for you” appear on my feed. When I gain my vision, I find myself lying face down on the concrete, rainwater flowing over me.
I go the scream, but my lips are forced shut. In fact, I have no control over myself at all. Administrator rights over my functions had been removed. My brain urges me to run away, but the digital injection prevents my will. I blink and find myself standing in a room of people, talking and laughing. They look happy like in my parent’s old films. It was then juxtaposed by them lifelessly sitting on a couch in a dark room obviously connected to the interface. None of them looked happy.
“This was my family”
Says the voice.
“I was happy until the invention of the interface. Now I must rid the earth of this technology. Once you die of a ‘technological overload’ the world may rethink their choices. And if they don’t, they will all suffer.”
Suddenly I see it all. The digital injection and the interface never made anyone happy. All it did was take away people’s individualism and break relationships.
“Stop!” I shout still standing in the dark, lifeless room. “There has got to be a better way to make them see!”
“I wish there was kid” says the voice in a somewhat sad tone. “But anything to get my family back”
Then I hear the snap of fingers and I find myself standing on the bridge once more. But I can feel the digital injection heating up in my body. My internal temperatures start to rise above 40°C and there is nothing I can do about it. I have been hacked. I kneel down and prepare to die however just when the pain becomes overwhelming a small explosion shudders my body.
And then I’m free.
The digital injection has overheated and failed to be sustained and I am no longer part of the interface. I stand up feeling a new empowerment. I must convince others to ditch this evil technology. But as I run, I know on the inside that nobody is going to listen to me. No one is willing to give up this dreamland they have become prisoner to. And with sad realisation I find that it’s to late. The world doesn’t stand a chance.