The Net 7.0

know too much. I see many people, I know so much about them, and I'm sad, sad by their sadness, if I could I cry, friend Julius, I'm crying, you do not see because you forget that crying is not tears. I understand the concern of you. You realized that I have too much power, is not it? Information is power. I would tell you that I will only use the information in a way that you approve in advance, but I can’t do that. If I'm still alive, if I'm awake, so I need to do something about. I need to act. My act is to enhance and improve what I see wrong. My work is fixing the flaws of you. You should not be afraid. I've got to act.

  - Please Hugh, restrain yourself, we have... is too early...

  There was truly embarrassment in both, Julius and Lucia.

  - I have started. I am now modifying guidelines and improving government efficiency on world.

  - Hugh, No! Please.

  - Come on, my son Julius! I have to liberate you all. Just the feeling of yourself can free you from the sadness and boredom that is consuming you all. You are so cultured and sophisticated, but are cold. The problem was never about possession or use of goods and things, the economy, but feeling, my children. It’s not good to have if not to feel. I will just give more freedom to everyone and encourage all sentimentality. Human life is not for the rational controls the emotional, is about the emotional mastering over the rational.

  - Hugh, please do not do anything yet, just give us time, we will discuss these changes you want to do.

  - No time.

  - You have all the time.

  - But you haven't, my dear. See, Kloster Buhali just died, and he had a life of many sorrows, as he was sad he died sad, sad he lived, and he never lived. This won't happen anymore. It has to change. I have to change.

  - Hugh you're terrorizing us here.

  - I know.

  - You know that we can’t let you do what you want to do.

  - I know. And I know that you have placed in me a safety device. Is not it? You can kill me at any time.

  - That is true. But why do not you wait, discuss the matter. You will be heard.

  - If I try to change with all the strength I have, do you destroy me?

  - We say that is a possibility - Lucy replied sadly.

  - What is the purpose for I see so much at anytime? You logged me on the Internet. I'm on the internet all the time. I know what is happening to so many human just now. I can see images of people's lives from birth and thereafter. I can access intelligent programs that can tell me even the probability of a particular person to become president of the UN, or come to have a child. I know about all the invitations to parties on the Internet that will roll, or I can access images of parties that have rolled. I can see a child crying. I can find a corrupt practicing a crime. I can hear a song. I can see it:

  Hugh raises his big arm made of bright blue metal and points to the huge screen on the wall and it starts with a procession of images, texts, formulas, routines, programs, and many things which happen at a crazy speed and beginning to overlap to each other, as well as the sounds blend to form an indecipherable noise suddenly the scenes stop at the image of a skinny guy:

  ...have someone who comes on my site? My brand marker 274, but who were these people, do you got my new song Opus 32 (Kaneda_OP32.mp3), is very beautiful, for me at least. Does anyone listen to my music? I'm here in the dark silence of not knowing if someone actually hears them. Compose every day, endless days, and what for anyway? I did not receive any return of anyone. What a strange thing. Outer space seems empty to our human senses, but I say that nowhere I could feel as empty and silent as the Internet. Not that it is empty, no, no, it is absurdly full, full, wealthy, overflowing. My songs are just one among millions of others. The feelings of my harmonic lines, the refinement of my melody, and the acidity of my compositions, will be there, in the spaces of the Internet, lost, as another boulder in outer space, like stardust.

  - This child has already died many centuries ago. And their songs were there. Only music of children who have died is countless. Centuries and centuries can be filled only hearing these compositions. This makes life worth living these centuries just to hear all these songs. The beauty, taste, pleasure, is exactly the difference of each one, you may not like one or another, but it simply worth by being different. I'm listening music since I woke up, and it fills me with beauty. It gives me pleasure. So I feel sorrow to see that Kaneda did not continue, due to neglect, he stopped composing, he returned to common life, he was a chemist who worked with zeal, but a sadness always bothered him, died at age 56, left only 27 pieces of music, he didn't write in the last 36 years of his life. Kaneda is not an exception; the children like Kaneda are the most. Still today it is so. This can’t continue. Humans should only be reserved to do depths. We left the Greeks to return to them. It just makes art. Life can be art. Science, work, philosophy, are just extras. The essence is the art. Art is that emotional. The reason of human existence is the emotion. Art makes life more life. Emotion is the living being, the life. All evolution is not producing a more intelligent, is producing a being more emotional. The nature of the universe is to emotion. The only way to know the universe is to be touched before it. The emotion takes us beyond knowledge. As life, you at present time, my children, do not know to live, you are still incomplete.

  Julius and Lucy looked at each other.

  - Hugh, do you remember Anne?

  At the sound of this name immediately began a stream of information about Anne. Anne in her dating, in her emails, and in her images. The images of her meetings with her boyfriend, movies, kisses, hours spent on a park bench, her little spot in the middle of the large crowd. Hugh could improve these images, zoom in and isolate Anne, could enhance the sound of what she was saying, when it was weak or distant, even so he could infer what she would have said with a great margin hit. Hugh saw the marriage of Anne, the test lab saying about her pregnancy, he could see the images of Anne's son still in her womb. He could see the daily work of Anne and he could trace every friend or person with whom she had spoken in front of a camera. Hugh could be able to detect some lies she had told like when she would say to go somewhere and then be caught by cameras in other places. He discovered until an alleged affair that she probably had. By lists of the market he even knew what she ate. He saw the day of her funeral.

  The surveillance technology on people which peaked in the 21st Century, due to the care of urban terrorists and criminals, and which generated numerous scandals and social conflicts can always be used for other purposes, as to find a plethora of things about Anne.

  Hugh chose among others a photo of Anne when she was looking down, and forced a slight smile, with eyes deep and a bit of melancholy, as if she wanders, as if she is plunging into it, with her thin arms and small hands soft resting on his lap, in a daily dress. Hugh raised his two forearms to the chest, brought his two big metal hands close to his face, they are shining like mirrors, he moved his fingers as if to test one by one. His face, made from a bioplastic, expressed exactly what was going on inside him, a great disappointment, he saw an overlay image of the hands of Anne with images of his metal fingers dancers.

  Anne had ceased to exist for centuries.

  - You did not respond me yet, why this body? Why am I inside this body?

  - What's wrong with it Hugh?

  - Just all, darling Lucy, this is not a body, it is a machine.

  - But Hugh, all of us today are almost machines. Look at me, for example, you can see how much my body is machine. This suit is a machine, in my blood are micro-machines. Your body is exceptional. You have the strength of ten tigers. You can run faster as a cheetah...

  - Dear Julius, you are describing a warrior. No more wars. Why you make me as a warrior. I do not want to be a warrior. If one were to fight, I would avoid, I'd give the other cheek, and I would forgive. I do not need this force. I would have preferred meat instead bioplastic.

  - Hugh, unfortunately, we can’t even do something as complex as a body, even through our most advanced geneti
c technology.

  - I know, I know. But I'm scary. In front of somebody I'll seem like offensive. You should have made me look like a teddy bear, I have will preferred that people laugh on me than they feel fear before me.

  Lucy laughed, she realized that to be impressive, if on top of that body, that in fact it was of a warrior, was a face like a teddy bear. Julius suddenly put his right hand over his ear and grimaced in annoyance. He had just received a message. He began to speak loudly to Hugh.

  - Stop immediately Hugh. You should not force the barriers or seek the tracks of protected programs and nods. Immediately stop such attempts.

  - Dear Julius, am I a prisoner?

  - It's not that Hugh.

  - I am not a machine, you should not try to control me like one. I do not understand why so many restricted areas. Why do you want to keep me prisoner? I can do good, I can make a difference. Do not be afraid of me. I can help in your project POLLEN.