Renung

Act I. Existential Extensions (reflection)      

Multiple objects, seemingly in a haphazard state, exist in this room. She had bought this collection of micro machinery as a blanket to her carnivorous conscience for consumption. It was a time where ‘more is more’ was not enough, and a well-endowed metropolitan lifestyle required its corresponding supply of gadgets. They were tools that prevailed beyond their intended purposes. A camera was not just a camera; a laptop was not merely a laptop; a phone was not only a phone. With every addition to the idiosyncratic agglomeration she mollified herself by noting that they were prime accelerators of efficiency and convenience. Thus her room, similar to so many of those in her generation, was filled with devices of personal enhancements. It escaped her realization that every second of her life was devoted to at least one gadget, each being used to express or record a thought, a moment or an action. Each being utilized to stage her life.

Act II. Perforated Presence (reaction)

There are evidences strewn across a virtual plane, a scattering of multifarious bits and pieces that told the story of her life to minute degrees. An aimless bot happened to stumble across a pile of photos that were from ‘Summer Holiday 2018’, and proceeded to meander through the digital archives of her life. Soon, more bots accumulated in her computerized stocks. They frenzied and buzzed over her blog entries, her tactless tweets, youtube videos and check-ins of the cafes she frequented. Unbeknownst to her, servers were being dedicated to view this life she led, finding ways to worm in on private information she had never intended to share. Her cameras began to capture her movements, her laptops commenced to detect her activities and her phones generated her interaction scape. The hunger for her data grew to an extent that bytes were not enough, and soon there was demand to see her in physical reality. After years of hacking, the bots found a way to permeate this dimensional barrier through a diverse set of microwave and Bluetooth gateways. Overnight, this room began to overflow with mechanical beings.

Act III. The Hermit’s Hamartia (resolution)

It is years after that fateful night. The young woman is curled up under her warm duvet in the dark, immersed in the puny process of her respiratory system. Each breath ragged on, rattling through the silence of the hour. Around her, the mounds of bot colonies that had overtaken the room were steadily pulsing. They hung from her ceiling, cascading down like aluminum trellises and ballooning up on the walls like alloyed bee hives. They breathed and rustled around her with small clinks. She had lived as they grew around her, ticking as they recorded her every moment. Once the fear had subsided, a gnawing curiosity had taken over to wonder who, exactly, was watching her. Many failed attempts at expelling them had forced her to dully accept defeat, along with their ominous presence in her life, echoing her life. There had to be a way to live around them, instead of among them. Thoughts of a solitary existence and self-recluse pervaded her mind. She considered the means of achieving this goal to obtain, ultimately, her privacy. That night, she decided to become a solitaire.