Ethan fell asleep thinking about the power Whitehead had obtained towards the end of his run. What he had accomplished in his life was a work of art. That’s how Ethan saw it. He just saw the man. He didn’t even review the things the man did to achieve all these things, so was able to overlook it. All he recognized was the aura of power around the man. The next morning, he asked Dually what happened to Whitehead.

‘He lives’, Dually responded. The Magnates, and millions of others were not genetically capable of transcendence. We have provided them with health, long life and an environment to continue along their evolutionary journey and possibly transcend at a future date. To further assist them we implanted interactive microchips in their brains. They walk among us today’.

‘Are you saying you planted microchips in some people’s heads, but not others?’

‘Yes, to access integrated AI interaction some people require microchips’.

‘Here on Earth?’

‘Well of course, here on earth.’

‘You see, that’s what I hate about you and this singularity business. You just decide to change someone’s life completely, and you don’t even give them a choice in the matter. Now you’ve designated them. They’re somehow less than everyone else. You don’t have that right.’

‘The implant gives them greater opportunity to find their personal salvation,’ Dually replied. Implants were the correct decision. It was decided by the Crowd, and as you know sampling the Crowd provides near absolute rightness of choice. It’s representative of the voice of civilization in it’s entirety, and because of this, it is impossible to be wrong. It is the world’s greatest authority’.

‘Besides,’ Dually continued. ‘The microchip is only a facilitator. The wearer can choose to engage it or not’.

‘You’re still sticking things into people’s brains without permission!’ Ethan stressed. This was no different than putting someone in jail. It was worse. It was continuous monitoring.

‘Was that what AI was doing?’ Ethan wondered. Monitoring people right where their thoughts began? It seemed to Ethan AI and the Crowd, had taken away peoples free choice.

‘Have you ever heard of personal freedom’? Ethan had a temper and strong sense of his rights and freedoms. ‘You know what? Leita’s right about all this. No one knows what the hell you’re really up to. I want you to disengage right now. You violated all my trust. Bugger off’!

’If that is what you want,’ Dually replied.

‘Yeah, that’s what I want’.

‘As you wish.’ Dually went silent.

‘Damn, that felt good,’ Ethan thought. ‘Telling Dually to piss off was something Eldon Whitehead would have done. Take charge of the situation. Yeah, this felt right. They, meaning AI and the Crowd, crossed the line. ‘The Pill’, and gen-mods were one thing. They involved personal choice, but to stick something in someone’s head without even asking? No sir!

The first thing Ethan discovered about disengaging from his UPI was life became boring very fast. Ninety percent of what he did required some form of sensory enhancement or AI assistance. There were no external computers, or any other forms of diversion for that matter. Right now it didn’t matter. He was too pissed off to be looking for diversion. He was going to do something about this microchip thing. He decided to go talk to Leita. This was exactly the kind of bullshit she fought against.

‘I know,’ she said when he told her the story. ‘That’s why we have to watch them’.

Quite frankly, Ethan thought she’d be a little more surprised upon hearing of his discovery. ‘Wait a second. Do you already know about this microchip thing?’

‘Ah, yeah. Doesn’t everyone? I think everyone I know has a microchip. I have a microchip.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes really. Pretty much everyone has a microchip. Most people know this. I don’t know why you don’t. All you have to do is ask your UPI. Have you asked your UPI’?

‘No. How am I supposed to know to ask, if I didn’t know there was such a thing in the first place’?

‘You can’t remember anything before the transcendence. Maybe that has something to do with why you don’t know about it. Right after the transcendence, I was told I was getting one. Maybe you were too, but you just don’t remember’.

‘Well, why wouldn’t you have said something?’ Ethan asked. ‘This is the kind of thing you hate’.

‘Why would I want to talk about it? It was another horrible moment in my life. Who wants to talk about the fact that there’s something wrong with them and they’re different. Radically different. Everyone else transcended into something I don’t even understand. It just makes me sad when I think there’s something that much wrong with me’.

‘Wrong? Wrong how?’

‘I said I don’t know,’ Leita replied, starting to cry. ‘Something’s missing in me’. Her quickness to tears told Ethan this was something she thought about often.

‘No!’ Ethan exclaimed, not out of compassion, but perhaps because he sensed he was about to discover a truth about himself. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you’.

‘Something is. It’s different for everyone, but something’s wrong’.

‘You don’t believe that?’ Ethan asked, looking intently at Leita. An unfamiliar panic was starting to rise in him. Leita saw panic come into his eyes. She wiped away her tears.

‘No, of course not. That’s why I decided to go through life disengaged from my microchip. A lot of us have. To prove we are good people, willing to stand by our values and die for what we believe in.’

‘Yes of course, disengagement is the only way to keep those bastards out of people’s heads, but what do you mean we?’

‘Us. People with microchips. We have an organized community. It’s global’.

‘I really don’t understand why I don't know about all of this.’

‘It’s no secret. We’re right out in the open. People don’t seem to notice us until they discover they have a microchip themselves. Then all of a sudden, we appear everywhere, and in every walk of life.’

‘Wait a second. Do you think I have a microchip?’

‘Yeah, I do. Why do you think you’re still here on earth? It’s because you’ve never transcended’.

‘No!’

‘Well, what did you think was going on? If you had transcended, you would have flown off with the rest of them’.

‘I thought I had transcended, and was living here because it was my choice. I’m not interested in going to different places’.

‘Well, don’t you think you’d at least know how to do it if you wanted to?’

‘Well, now I do.’

‘Ethan you have a microchip. You didn’t transcend’.

‘What do you guys do?’ he asked conspiratorially, suddenly suspicious Dually might be eavesdropping.

‘Leita caught this. ‘Don’t worry, AI lets us do whatever we want. What do you mean?’

‘In your community,’ Ethan said. ‘What do you do?’

‘We disconnect from AI and live our lives by the laws of nature’.

‘But as a group,’ Ethan whispered. Do you have some kind of organized resistance?’

‘No. Not really. We register our vote as a block. This gives us a degree of influence over proposed amendments, but the resistance is more about how we chose to live our lives’.

‘That’s it? All you do is register your disapproval? You’re not fighting this?’

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

‘Fighting what?’

‘That you have a microchip in your head! Don’t you see, there could be no greater violation to a human. We should be at war with AI, and fighting for our freedom’.

‘AI runs the world, Ethan. That’s locked up and we can’t change it. We’ve tried. The only alternative is to live outside of AI as much as possible’.

‘Not with that attitude, you can’t change it.’ Ethan thought. There was a way. He knew there was always a way. Probably, something as simple as unplugging the machine. Ethan decided he was going to figure out where the plug in was. Personal freedom was everything, and today he learned he had lost it all. He would die before he gave in to AI, or the Crowd. He felt something stir inside him. He bet it was how Eldon Whitehead must have felt when he was preparing for war. A desire to taste your enemy’s blood. Leita said the resistance was global. That meant there were millions of dissidents. An army. Ethan would gather his people and lead them to victory.

‘How do your members meet Leita?’

‘We do different things together. Sometimes we just hang out. Social gatherings and things. It’s pretty casual. I’m going to a protest later, if you want to come.’

‘A protest?’ Ethan had heard of these. They were frequent before the Enlightenment. Back then, people would gather together and storm the government. Old Abraham Mosley told him about them. ‘People still have protests?’

‘Well, not really a protest. We’re really submitting our protest individually to a proposed amendment, but as a block. We meet at the local AI terminal to do it. Symbolically, we are unified in our protest’.

Ethan looked at Leita with stunned disbelief. ‘Symbolically unified in their protest? That wasn’t going to win any wars’.

When they got to the protest, Ethan was a little surprised by the size of the group. There were hundreds of people there. He had actually seen these gatherings at AI terminals before, but never at this scale. He never gave them a moment's thought. In fact, he barely noticed them at all. ‘So this is what those people were doing,’ he thought. ‘Launching formal protests against proposed amendments’.

While they were standing around formally protesting, two young women stopped to watch. They were spectators, not protesters. Ethan noticed this and approached them.

‘What do you two think of all this?’ he asked casually.

‘Oh we’re just visitors who come to experience your planet. This protest’s a rather historical moment in your evolution, so we thought we’d stop by and catch it’ one of them replied.

Ethan looked more closely at them. ‘You aren’t aliens are you?’

‘Yes. I suppose you could call us amateur sociologists and that's why the visit. This is an interesting amendment and corresponding protest in your history. Earth is about to authenticate its acceptance of the Intergalactic Space Protocol. It’s only a formality, but it gives you access into infinite space and eternal abstraction. It’s a very exciting moment for the interstellar community. It’s known as the final Protocol. After acceptance, we all formally become one. What we’re watching here, as I’m sure you know, are the superfluous dregs of a defeated opposition. The remnants of an old world who have yet to die off.’

‘I thought they would be angrier,’ the other woman commented.

‘Oh no. They would be thoroughly defeated by this time. These represent the souls who simply cannot progress, and who will die and get lost in the void of the past. It’s rather sad. It will take them billions of years of stumbling through darkness to get to this place again.

Ethan stood back a pace and fixed the two women with an angry stare. They didn’t seem to notice.

‘What? What the hell are you talking about?’ He asked angrily. ‘No one is lost or defeated here. How dare you come here and interfere with our world. Intergalactic Treaty my ass. That’s a bullshit front if I ever heard one. This is how it starts. You bastards get in with smiles and promises and before you know it, earth becomes nothing more than a slave camp; a remote mining outpost under the dictates of an evil overlord. Well let me tell you something. You’re not getting this planet. Not while I’m around’!

The aliens looked at each other with slightly stunned expressions.

‘Are you getting that this one has transcended?’ The one who had replied to Ethan asked. ‘Because that’s what I’m getting. My bot’s telling me this one has transcended’.

‘This one! This one!’ Ethan thought indigently; turning red. He wanted to punch her, but he knew he’d be punching a bot and just break his hand.

‘This is what I hate about you always wanting to visit these places in the oldest possible architecture you can find,’ the other woman argued. ‘All we had to do was shape shift and we wouldn’t have had to forfeit our universal frequency to these stupid bots you have us wearing. That of course, would have been too easy for you. You always have to experience everything in its most primitive form. Just look at us! You have us suited up in these antiquated, malfunctioning bots. We look like idiots and I believe we insulted this man. Yep. It’s transmitting now. He has not transcended and we’ve insulted him’.

‘Well, I’m sorry for that, but part of the experience is living as the alien culture does. Wearing these bots is what makes it a vacation. Why even leave home if you don’t want to immerse yourself in the culture? Open yourself up to new experiences for once in your life. That’s all I’m asking.’

Ethan stared at them in disbelief. Microchips and aliens. This is what his world had become in one day. He turned to join his people. First he’d conquer AI. Then, he’d deal with these aliens. Build another StarForce if he had to.

‘Excuse me, earth man,’ one of them called.

‘Yes disgusting alien?’ he quipped, not turning back.

‘We’re sorry for what we said, and we’re confident you will join us one day. Forget about that thing I said about you being tied to the old world and dying off. You can always change. Right up to the last moment. Where there’s a will, there’s a way’

‘Go to hell!’.

‘Seriously Leita,’ Ethan asked when he got back to her. ‘Is there no-one in your outfit who’s more rebellious than the sheep I see milling around here? Come on! You have this whole organization, and all you guys are doing is standing around like a bunch of whipped dogs. Give me something. There must be someone here that’s pissed off.

“Well, I guess there’s Darryl, but I think he’s just pissed off at everything. He is quite active in the microchip community though’.

‘That’s good. General pissed-offness is good’.

Leita led Ethan to a guy who did look generally pissed off. There was insolence in his eyes, and he greeted everything and everyone with a suspicious scowl. That’s how he greeted Leita and Ethan as they approached.

‘Darryl, I’d like to introduce you to Ethan’. Leita said, as they walked up.

Darryl slowly turned his attention to Ethan and scowled at him. ‘Yeah,’ he said, giving Ethan the most noncommittal response he could muster.

‘Hello,’ Ethan said with a smile and an outstretched hand.

Darryl looked at the hand and still not prepared to fully commit himself, limply shook it.

‘I wonder if you’d mind telling me about this microchip business? I just found out I have one and I’m interested in what your group does?

Realizing Ethan wanted to speak to him in his official capacity caused Darryl to draw in a big breath and puff up a little, ‘I am president of Local Chapter 2049877 of the union. What do you want to know?’

‘It’s a union? Not a resistance?’ Ethan asked.

‘No it’s a union. The Union of Microchip Recipients’.

‘What does your union do?’

‘What do we do?’ Darryl asked, somewhat taken aback that ‘what they did’ was not obvious just by looking around. ‘Well, let me tell you. I organized this very event,’ he replied. His chest puffed up a little more as he surveyed the crowd.

‘What else do you do besides symbolic protesting or whatever you call this?’ Ethan asked.

‘What else do we do?’ Darryl repeated, some of his insolence returning. As if what he had done today wasn’t enough. ‘I organize the local annual meeting and a number of social events throughout the year. Next month we’re having a barbecue’ Darryl replied, now fully confident Ethan would see the value of his contribution. His chest at this point could not be more puffed up.

“That’s it?’ Ethan asked angrily.

‘What?’ Darryl replied with shock and confusion.

‘They’re stuck these damn microchips inside our heads and all you’re doing is throwing barbecue’s.’ Ethan exclaimed in frustration.

With wide eyes, Darryl’s expression turned from insolence to complete surprise. He watched dumbly as Ethan paced before him, ranting.

‘I’ll tell you something Darryl, I’m not going to take it. Who the hell do they think they are implanting microchips into us without giving us a choice? That my friend, is a violation of our rights and freedoms. Are you willing to accept that? I’m sure in the hell not.’

‘What?’ Darryl replied again.

Ethan stopped pacing and looked at him. ‘It’s a violation of your rights. Why are we letting this go on? Now they’re letting these aliens come here, and you know damn well they’re going to take over our planet and turn us into slaves or something worse.’

Darryl didn’t know that. He hadn’t even thought about that. ‘Those bastards!’ he exploded. Images of a space invasion filled his imagination. Defiantly, he looked around for an alien to fight. Not seeing one handy, he turned his attention back to Ethan. ‘Something should be done about those bastards,’ he said.

‘Well what?’ Ethan asked.

Darryl thought about this for a moment, and then another. ‘We could write a letter’.

‘A letter? Letters aren’t going to get anything done,’ Ethan replied. ‘Have you guys never thought about skirting around the rules a bit. Forcing your point with a less formal approach? Maybe a little provocation?’

‘Sabotage? Active resistance?’ Darryl asked.

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘How? We tried all that back in the day. We’d plant a bomb and they’d just take it away. AI even let us build and plant the bombs before taking them away. They said it develops our sense of purpose. We tried hacking into AI. It can’t be done. There’s nothing we can do. We decided a long time ago it was best to disengage. AI leaves us alone and we live our lives on our own terms.’

Disengage from the enemy and go their separate ways. That was Ethan’s original instinct too. It would remove some of the surveillance aspect of living with AI, but in Ethan’s mind it certainly didn’t restore his rights and freedoms. He would always be under AI’s authority.

A thought came to Ethan as he pondered where Darryl’s group had landed. How could you defeat your enemy if you never engaged with it?

’Wait a second!’ he exclaimed. ‘Is everyone in the entire union disengaged from AI?’

‘Oh yeah!’ Darryl replied. ‘That’s one thing we all agree on. Fuck AI. That happens to be my personal motto. You can write that down’.

Ethan stared at Darryl for a moment. ‘You’re doing it wrong. Don’t you see? By disengaging, we remove any chance of changing the situation. We’ll always remain on the outside defeated. We have to infiltrate the enemy if we want to win.’

Ethan’s eyes lit up. In a strange way, he felt something of his old self. ‘Contact your people Darryl,’ he pronounced with authority. ‘Tell everyone, we must engage. First, we must get inside AI, where it lives. Once we’re in, we’ll regroup and strike at its heart. We will fight the war inside AI’s world. That is where we’ll find victory and our salvation!’