Short Story: Holograms of New Fukuoka

She sat by the bay of New Fukuoka, and watched as the holograms slowly danced to a song of sadness on the water.

Each hologram about fifty-feet tall, bright neon, displaying its poignance through the slow swaying movements of limbs. Their existence mirrored a common sentiment of despair among the city.

Lay down your head; sleep silently. Disappear.

New Fukuoka's economy had flipped. Something about the then government collecting the private information of citizens and selling it on to monopolies; and the people stopped becoming people and became nothing more than fodder for the greedy. The truth is, it's always been that way. We've always been nothing but sanctimonious machines; processors rather than creatures capable of feeling, truly loving, truly displaying care. At least for things fake and weightless. They have had us acting histrionic, competing against each other: our friends, our families, our neighbours. A facade designed to make one believe one is not equal to the other.

Our civilisation as we know it became a room in an ever dimming light. No attempts to increase that light's strength were ever made; its enclosing darkness was merely amplified by those in power. Those who claimed that their ideologies were the only way, as if all would cease to exist without their emancipating arms.

Bury your thoughts; listen.

The holograms were first a sign of complacency among the people. The first strain of rebellion. Generated by the resistance, each hologram signified the oppressors; their extended waistlines, heavy pockets, and lack of humanity as their primary visible features. Each dancing silently on the moonlit water, with mirrored neon where the sea met land. They did not like that. Their attempts at removal simply added fuel to a weak fire that had been burning in the people's hearts for a lifetime.

Unyielding, they began a search for those responsible for such blasphemy against our saviours, using their advantages in technology to locate the primary data packets transmitted to all resources in relation to the creation of the holograms; and while the packets didn't particularly yield any significance in information regarding those responsible, it led them to cyberspace: a liberation front designed to be open-sourced, consensus-based, and home for the weak. A network of souls each bearing the weight of a node; growing in strength with each new entrant. Cyberspace wasn't simply an escape; but an unstoppable, technological new era for humankind.

As she sat by the bay of New Fukuoka, watching the holograms silently dance as the wind caused her hair to dance in similar fashion, she jacked herself into the Synchroniser with a makeshift neural transmitter placed poorly behind her ear. Pressing the Sychroniser's only button, her eyes rolled into the back of her skull. Her heart stopped within an instant. Her consciousness now a thing of the past, and her rebellion only just beginning.