I won a sci-fi writing competition | 20
read one of my favorite entries - a short story featuring artificial cells as chemical plants and a speculation on the future entertainment industry
Whackamia note:
This is my favorite among my submissions for Speculative Technologies’ Sci-fi writing competition–– which I was one of the winners of last August. Hope you like it! :)
You can find my other stories on the SpecTech Website as part of their compilation, here.
p.s. Massive thank you to my tks directors Andres Velarde and Micheal Raspuzzi for giving feedback on this :)
Speculative Technologies is a non-profit that aims to unlock powerful materials and manufacturing technologies that don’t have a home in other institutions. Speculative Technologies runs research programs across multiple organizations to derisk technologies that are too long-term, unjustifiable, multidisciplinary or public-goods oriented for other institutions. The non-profit is funded by Patrick Collison, Malcolm Handley, Protocol Labs, Schmidt Futures, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a number of smaller donors.
Synaptic Symphonies
Once upon a time, somewhere ethereal, God - the silent observer of existence and eternal eavesdropper on the universe's melodrama - sat watching a curious little blue dot called Earth. This is no ordinary tale of divinity, so don't expect any lightning bolts or burning bushes. Our God, for the sake of today's story, is a jolly ancient deity with a fondness for humanity’s whimsy, relishing in their odd experiments and even odder technologies.
“There’s new tech on the block.” God said delightfully as he rested his eyes on his favorite little blue planet.
In a world where VR headsets had become a family staple in even the most impoverished homes–– as ubiquitous as TV and Wi-Fi are for us today, a gap in the markets emerged. Movies and streaming services were recovering from the broken economic system. Dinner conversations started to hint at cravings for the next digital distraction. God heard these murmurs and whisperings, watching them weave their way through the social zeitgeist until they reached the ears of builders itching to make things happen and tech tycoons eager to multiply their riches. Deals were feinted and struck, and after a relatively short R&D process, advertisements for “The Synaptic Symphony” began popping up all over people’s digital devices.
The pitch was simple: Imagine the most Immersive VR experience you’ve ever had. Take your family and friends for only $9.99! The similar price to a movie ticket was an ironic recall to revive emptying cinemas as the Synaptic Symphony replaced blockbuster movies. Humans would step into the cotton seats, don a neurointerface helmet, and let the microscopic electrodes connect with their brains. It was a bit like having a billion tiny hairdressers working on your scalp, only these hairdressers were beaming artificial cells into your cranium.
That was the extent of what most people knew about the Synaptic Symphony and its experience–– much like most people know today that movies are filmed on cameras and edited with computers.
Those more curious would find scientific papers or YouTube videos explaining in detail how the artificial cells employed in this technology were engineered to mimic the behavior of neurotransmitters, the brain’s chemical messengers. The cells were carefully designed and carefully controlled, but most importantly, non-self-replicating to prevent any unintended consequences. Monitoring the user’s brain activity in real-time, the electrodes used neurofeedback loops to adjust intensity and chemical release patterns based on the user’s brain signals, creating a personalized virtual reality experience that responded to an individual's cognitive and emotional states.
Imagine hearing a cello's deep note and tasting dark chocolate or sensing the ocean's roar in the crash of a cymbal. The music not only tickled the brain but also pirouetted with your senses, creating a symphony that was as unique as your DNA. Yes, any person could now experience synesthesia, where all the senses were wrapped up in each other, barriers nonexistent, overlapping and borrowing, and sharing. In the span of just 3-5 minutes, you could let yourself be enveloped by a petal's velvet touch, the sight of music notes dancing in the air, smelling the passage of time as it warped itself around you. The humans had somehow engineered the artificial cells to modulate the brain's temporal processing— realizing that by activating or inhibiting specific neural circuits, experiences could be made to appear to unfold faster or slower, effectively changing the human’s subjective perception of time when they were within the virtual environment.
A new kind of popcorn in hand - celestial flavor, his favorite - God continued his divine binge-watch of the human race."On one hand," he mused aloud to nobody in particular, "they've finally managed to simulate time travel, which is quite the technical party trick.” He crunched on a fluffy piece of cosmic popcorn, the taste like the glow of nebulae. "On the other hand, they’re introducing artificial cells into their brain and turning their nervous system into a vat of miniature chemical plants…"
The synaptic symphony affected many in a very peculiar way. It was not a harmful or addictive strain; it was a subtle discordance, a shift in the internal rhythms of those who experienced it.
See, in the beginning, there was God. And before God created light, or darkness, or anything of the material sort, he first sorted out the ancient notion of "musica universalis," which humans commonly referred to as the "music of the spheres”. All mathematical relationships express "tones" of energy. ", manifesting themselves within the realms of numbers, visual angles, shapes, and sounds, forming an exquisite tapestry of proportionate interconnectedness. Pythagoras proposed that the Sun, Moon, and planets all emit their own unique hum based on their orbital revolution and that these celestial harmonies, though imperceptible to the human ear, influence life on Earth, imbuing everything with its own harmonic tenor. Building upon Pythagoras' insights, the philosopher Plato drew parallels between astronomy and music, considering them “twinned” branches of sensual recognition— astronomy captivating the eyes, music enthralling the ears. Both disciplines sharing an intimate reliance on the profound understanding of numerical proportions.
In other words, our world is a symphony, and every atom a note.
Most humans were oblivious to this, of course. The impact of the Symphony was akin to an instrument being finely tuned. It subtly changed the essence of a person, like a piano wire being tightened or loosened—just enough to alter the sound but not enough to be immediately noticeable. Corporate-funded psychologists, no matter how well-intentioned, plagued the first recipients with surveys and psychological evaluations, yet could never intuit the reason behind this disharmony.
The Synaptic Symphony was such a classic case of human curiosity mingled with ignorance about their extensive interconnectedness with the universe. This would have made God blink twice if not for his omniscience. Reclining further into his cosmic armchair, his attention remained firmly on the little blue dot. Seeing humanity in this light, on the verge of a precipice between innovation and possible self-destruction, God felt the thrill of uncertainty, the one thing even an omniscient being could enjoy.
"So the grand experiment continues," he chuckled grimly, his divine laughter echoing through the cosmos, sparking a few new galaxies on the side. "I suppose it wouldn't be humanity without a little bit of chaos."