Click here to read the plot summary (spoilers alert!)
The night was calm and peaceful before The Great Sharing happened.
Right at 22:20 (Pacific Time) 2035/10/10, people worldwide received a message on their Vision. It was a regular Updates Found notification sent from ArcHive, the one and only personal data storage company in the world. Some people didn’t bother to open them, but most who couldn’t resist their curiosity listened to the whispers within their heads, reluctantly opened Pandora’s box.
It turned out that those messages weren’t ArcHive updates for themselves at all, but instead the archives of trillions of other strangers. All at once, accessible to every human, retrievable within their brain, playable inside their minds.
It took about a minute for ArcHive to send out an official mail reporting a severe central computer malfunction. They had already assigned their top engineers to stop the machines from sharing everyone else’s archives.
News regarding this incident spread across the world within seconds like a virus. People called this event “The Great Sharing.”
The night wasn’t peaceful anymore.
For some reason, a group of people, especially those who live off scandals and the privacy of others, went straight for the archives of celebrities and politicians. Countless indecent footage was exposed and bled through the Vision for free. Some victims immediately apologized for their behavior and begged the world to spare them some dignity. However, it was too late to end that kind of humiliation, as their personal lives were viewable to the public like they were some sort of cheap items on display eternally.
When The Sharing happened, some couples looked through their partners’ archives behind their backs. It broke their heart to find out their doubts were always right, and the evidence was right there. They had no excuse to get away this time. Those confrontations rapidly escalated into brutal violence. Men and women of different sexual orientations let out their rage on each other. Calls for the police spiked that night.
It wasn’t easy for law enforcement, either. Not only did they have to send out officers on domestic violence calls, but many of the specialized units had to abort their operations as internal information leaked, leaving their teams exposed. For those undercover, The Sharing jeopardized their missions. Some were killed on the spot by gangs or mafia squads. Another victim, another broken family.
It was a big night for those conspiracy theorists. They discovered their government had, in fact, been lying to them all this time. Declassified documents, previously made public, turned out to be cover-ups. On that night, people finally made sense of the world they were living in. Civilians had been under complete unacknowledged surveillance, not only from their government but also from extraterrestrials.
Books and houses were burned to protest against government control. They demanded an explanation from their representatives. What they didn’t know was that some of their leaders were cowardly escaping their homes as the public protested on the streets. Some families were crushed to discover their missing family members were actually victims of federal operation cover-ups. Fire and relentless yelling engulfed the night as rage roared across the city.
Beyond the reach of urban chaos, a mother locked herself in her room. That was the first time she dwelled on the past of her long-departed son in almost ten years. At the time of his passing, personal archives of the deceased were always secured in ArcHive, no matter your relationship to them. That’s why, as soon as The Sharing broke out, she logged into his profile to immerse herself inside his old memories locked away for all these years.
That was his first time calling me Mama. I looked so much younger than I am now.
“I LOVE YOU, MOM!” Be careful, Jason!
Wait. He had a girlfriend named Lucy, and he didn’t tell me? Lucy seemed nice, but my Jason is better.
I can’t believe Adam brought him to a roller rink without me knowing. Getting a concussion from going to the library? Did you really expect me to believe that?
“Jessie, can I kiss you?” No. This Jessie was no good for my Jason. Honey, look what she’s wearing!
Blood. His nosebleed. He fainted in his room, unconscious for almost 2 hours, and we didn’t know. Hold on. The timeline doesn’t match up. That was 2 months before we knew about his —
— “I’m sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Masons, I’m afraid your son couldn’t make it through eighteen.”
I was in the kitchen, crying. “Mom, was it because of me that Dad left?” “Tell me the truth. Am I the reason why you guys keep fighting each other?” No, no, that’s not true. I love you. I will always love you.
His hand put on mine, smiling and looking up at me. “After I’m gone, promise me to move on.” I frowned as I stared down at him, so that’s how I looked like to him at that time.
I told him to stay strong for me. Don’t give up for me.
He cried alone in his ward. Every night after I left. The food I brought him? He couldn’t taste and he told me they were good.
Diary entries? I have no idea he kept diaries.
“I wish I’ll die sooner. I hate this life, I hate the doctors, I hate the nurses, I hate everything! Why couldn’t I die? Why am I born into this fucking world? The chemo is killing me. JUST LET ME DIE!!!”
At this point, the mother wasn’t paying attention anymore. She had sunken into her bed, lost control of her limbs, and all she could feel was a hurtful hollowness that she had to gasp for air, for forgiveness. She didn’t care if her personal information was being stolen at that moment; nothing mattered to her anymore. Those memories she shouldn’t have discovered in the first place sent her into spinning despair, restless archives flashed inside her brain, but she couldn’t see a thing. Blurry footage kept on playing, and her heart lingered in agonizing pain.
She wasn’t the only one who suffered from knowing the truth. The truth was always there, lying inside servers that shouldn’t be shared with anyone except their owners. The government promised this. They were supposed to be secrets. Secrets that were deleted and forgotten. Secrets that stop people from blaming themselves for not knowing sooner.
The ancient clock tower in the middle of the city donged at midnight, heavenly echoing across the night sky. Various notification ringtones chimed in the background.
ArcHive had fixed the problem. They had to make one big decision – to shut down all their servers, including their backups, thereby deleting everyone’s archives.
Archives of strangers that people had been disgustingly prying were removed. Classified documents dating back to the beginning of the universe were erased from history. Memories of trillions ceased to exist.
Nothing was left.
Stars still shone, and the moon still glowed, but the world was never the same. Where does that leave us then?
The Great Sharing flipped the world into an abyss of devastation.
The world went silent again.
END
