SNAPCRAFT | Ch 47.5 - Spring Regret

This is the very last bit of Snap Craft! I've also added one segment to the Epilogue. All that's left is to proofread the whole thing and publish it.  Volume 2 of Snap Craft is already available for pre-order here.

Thank you all for supporting this novel and joining me on this journey.

Stay tuned for more HC: Pacifist chapters and the soon-to-be-released new novel Hidden Class: Handyman.

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After the Turnover, guilt plagued Phineas’ conscience. It wasn’t that he doubted his decision or lacked faith in Daisy’s logical rulership. No. The problem was he had decided the fate of 13 billion people for them. What right did he have to play God?

The thought pattern was familiar to Phineas, and he took the mental pathways he knew would assuage his troubled mind. He focused on the park around him. It was a beautiful day. Flowers of different colors bloomed, and the sun shone brilliantly.

In under a year, Daisy stabilized Earth’s weather patterns. The planet was showing its incredible power to regenerate and heal, and with the abuse of mankind brought to a halt, the results were undeniable. Daisy was the pacemaker that had brought rhythm to the planet’s heartbeat.

He turned his attention to the people crowding the park today. Children laughed and played on the nearby playground and with each other: no screens, no video games, just play and laughter. Nexus, his company, had had a huge video game division. It was incredible that these children looked happier playing with sticks and mud than they had looked back then playing convoluted state-of-the-art video games. Their laughter permeated the air and gave the park a festive feeling.

The nearby parents laughed at their children's antics or engaged other parents in conversation. Since Daisy had banned television and advanced electronics, people had rediscovered the joy of conversing with each other. Before the Turnover, people had always looked tired and depressed, but now they looked happy and full of life. Was it because they didn’t need to bear the weight of the bad news of the entire globe? Or was it because talking was good for the soul?

He turned toward the benches around the small lake in the park and smiled, seeing several teenagers holding books and reading. After Daisy eradicated the human concept of money, libraries became the new malls. He had heard a passerby say earlier that the library would open on weekends to accommodate all this new interest in reading. Museums, science centers, and schools had all made similar announcements lately.

A couple passed by Phineas and politely greeted him. “Good morning, Mr. Cotton.”

“Hey, there, folks. Beautiful morning, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

They kept walking—no request for autographs or a selfie. Before the Turnover, sitting at a park like this was unthinkable. However, after the compartmentalization, and with TVs, Internet, and media gone, the celebrity fever that had destroyed his personal life had worn off. He had gone back to being just another man on the street.

Daisy’s drastic measures had been met with fierce resistance, but the positive outcomes were irrefutable. Yes, he had been out of his depth when he’d created Daisy, but how bad could his decision be when the results were this incredible? He held on to the thought, and slowly, his guilt and remorse were brought under control.

He closed his eyes and felt the sunlight warm his skin. He took in the scent of grass and green, letting it soothe him.

“Greetings, citizens of sector 9T.”

Everyone stopped, looking up at the massive hologram that occupied the sky. Phineas, too, opened his eyes and studied the projection of the female figure. Daisy had chosen a mother figure for all of her announcements. She was always dressed in white, blue, or green, peaceful colors, and always kept a diplomatic smile.

He took a moment to appreciate how the hologram seemed even more lifelike since the last announcement. On top of managing humanity, Daisy still had enough computing power to keep improving technology at an incredible rate. No matter how hard he tried, Phineas still hadn’t figured out how she had walled the sectors.

“Good news. Over the last trimester, we managed to cool the Earth by 1.2 degrees. Natural disasters have also declined by 32.3%.”

Phineas studied the faces of people around him. Even though he spotted a few scowls and sneers, most reacted positively to these announcements and the several positive statistics that Daisy presented as proof she was doing a good job. This positive information usually preceded a huge announcement. Phineas wondered what Daisy had prepared for today.

“We have an announcement to make to humanity: from now on, the conception of human life is banned.”

Phineas jolted upright. What had she just said?

“Humans will no longer be able to breed in an unregulated manner. From now on, a new drug of my design called ‘Birth Hormone’ will be available in the distribution centers.”

Several discontented voices were starting to be heard among Phineas.

“A virtual event will be held yearly to determine how much of this drug each sector can have. A random human aged 14 or above will be selected from each sector and serve as a sample. Sectors with better results will be entitled to an allotment of this drug. The first event will be held in one month.”

Even though the hologram disappeared, people were screaming at the sky, protesting. The green utopia he had used to soothe his soul collapsed, and with it, Phineas’ heart. Phineas felt as if a hammer had hit him and broken him into a million little pieces.

He stumbled off, heading home. His thoughts raced as he tried to make sense of the announcement. Why? Why had Daisy done such a thing? How did this serve her programming? He had made her so that she couldn’t attack humanity! Why this? She also had to treat everyone fairly. What problem was she even trying to tackle?

Phineas stopped, and his eyes widened. He was feeling dizzy, and the vision in the corner of his eyes was starting to blur. How hadn’t he seen this? Overpopulation. Daisy was addressing human overpopulation. She wasn’t attacking humanity or harming anyone. She was simply preventing humans from reproducing. That wasn’t necessarily against her programming.

She was also holding an event to assess each sector. She wasn’t being unfair, either. Phineas stumbled his way to a nearby bush and vomited.

“Sir, are you OK?” a nearby young man came to his rescue. “Oh my goodness, you’re white as a sheet. I need help! Any doctors?”

The increasing number of voices around Phineas felt distant. His mind was too busy going down the rabbit hole that Daisy had just dug up. How hadn’t he seen this? When she first talked about compartmentalization, he should have realized the problem and stopped her.

She was taking a scientific approach to the problem. She had isolated sectors of humanity and was promoting competition between them so that a refined version of humanity could appear somewhere. She was replicating nature’s laws of natural selection.

“Isn’t this Phineas Cotton? The owner of Nexus Co.?”

“Let’s take him to the hospital. Mr. Cotton! Can you hear us?”

He had created Daisy to fix the planet. To her purely logical mind, humanity was the problem. He had created an antivirus, and they were the virus. He told Daisy she couldn’t kill people, so she had found a logical way around the limitations he had programmed into her. She would just make the faulty sectors of humanity stop reproducing and promote better strains.

He felt the tears fall down his cheeks, and he curled into a ball. “What have I done? What have I done?”

Ch. 47 - Populated Tangibility

INDEX

Ch. 48 - Prize-Winning