The Collective Buzz

The café manager leered down at Constantine over the counter. It was a simple order, really: ‘I’ll have a cinnamon roll’. But it made the manager’s bushy eyebrows furrow, first in confusion, then in incredulity. He didn’t know what to make of the young man before him. “We don’t sell those anymore! Nobody sells those anymore!” He raised his voice. “Who even likes cinnamon now, anyway?”

By now, half the of the café customers had turned to stare. Someone in the corner yelled out “It just ain’t normal, I’m telling ya! It ain’t right.” Even after so long, the utter absurdity of this sort of reaction still bewildered Con. A sharp slap landed on his back as mocking laughter rang out. He winced. Encouraged, the entire room began to bristle with hostility. “What are you? Some kind of freak?”

Within seconds, the café was a hailstorm of jeering. He should have been used to it by now, but it startled him just the same as always. He vaguely wondered why he hadn’t learnt from past experiences to watch his mouth. But it wasn’t the people in the café he couldn’t bear. The WiHive was abuzz with flurries of pictures and videos of the scene being uploaded simultaneously. He tried to block out the network but to no avail.

Across the globe, bored people with nothing better to do pounced on the excitement and joined in the abuse with glee. Con reckoned his brain might explode with the overload of flaming that was being volleyed into his head. Somewhere at the back of his mind was the usual internal groan, ‘Really, now? This is ridiculous.’

“Break it up! Break it up!” A sharp bark sounded from a woman who stood in the doorway. Silence fell immediately. The uniform she wore was unmistakable. Her voice dropped to a low growl “If I see any more trouble around here…” Her fingers fell on her waist pouch. Some cowered. Some resumed their activities from before the commotion. Others looked at her with pity.

Con ran after her as she turned on her heel and stalked out. “Wait! Officer!” He caught up to her, panting. “Thanks. But why did you help me?” She raised an eyebrow. Con pressed on, curious. “Contamination Control and Pre-emptive Strike Force, right? You guys patrol the WiHive. Not the streets. So how come you came to help me?”

“If you think I came down specially to get a troublemaker like you out of a tight spot, you’ve got another think coming, kiddo.” Troublemaker? Con indignantly opened his mouth to argue, but she carried on, “End of my shift. Was on my way home. Felt the disturbance in the network and decided that things were getting out of hand.”

“I wasn’t the one making trouble! It was everyone else! You’d think personal preference were a crime, the way they were reacting!” He paused. “…It’s been too long.”

“…So you do know.” The officer allowed some faint surprise to cross her features before they resolved into their usual hardened expression. “Then you should have known that this would set them off! It drives them crazy that an individual could disagree with the rest of the world. The world, Con. You should know by now to keep a low profile if you can’t follow the norm!”

Of course she knew his name. She also knew he painted, often sat in trees to contemplate the strangest things, and saw a whole world of magic in a drop of water. All it took was a quick profile search on the WiHive. And of course, she now knew he was stubborn in his preference for cinnamon buns despite the fact that everyone else hated them.

Con didn’t know anything about this woman who seemed to share his understanding of the world situation, and yet didn’t quite seem to care. CCPSF officers had the privilege of having their own privacy protected. It was a privilege granted to them as a professional necessity. They patrolled the WiHive network, dealing with contributors who threatened to severely contaminate the global thought-pool with undesirable – and sometimes, dangerous – ideas. When the world shared one mind, it was crucial to protect it. The CCPSF also traced the thought patterns of those who were deemed potential threats to society. Pre-emptive strikes on rising criminal organizations were their duty.

Fifteen years ago, scientists had rejoiced as they proudly presented to the public the result of years of research and experimentation – the WiHive. Wifi was already global, but they had taken it to the next level. All particles being constant random motion, scientists had achieved fine-tuning the wifi frequency to match that of the molecular vibrations of the human brain. Thus, the next generation of networking was born. Faster, more convenient, and with improved ability to share with others exactly what it was you wanted them to know. Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Google – A wealth of knowledge and social connections no longer merely at your fingertips, but at the impulse of a neuron.

Society welcomed the new system with open arms and adapted to it rapidly. It had only been fifteen years, but now few people could imagine, let alone remember, life without the WiHive. But Con could remember. He could remember what it was like when a person was still himself, not the entire world condensed into a single body, to be no different from the next person.

Now, these fifteen years later, Con sat on his living room floor. Kyra – the CCPSF officer – sat opposite him, sipping tea. He’d wanted to talk about what he’d noticed some time ago, because Kyra seemed to have noticed it too. Kyra, for lack of any better way to pass the time, obliged him.

“Alright, we’ll talk. I’m not on duty for a while. But what is there to talk about?”

Con twitched in frustration. Kyra surveyed the living room. It looked like… an organized mess. Palettes and brushes littered the floor. Her eyes fell on a pamphlet.
‘WiHive aims to link up the world more intimately than ever before! Like bees in their hive, the world will be a connected community that shares greater understanding, empathy, knowledge, and unity towards greater goals!’
It was the pamphlet that was given out when the WiHive was first released.

“What do you mean, what is there to talk about? Look what’s happening! It’s getting worse! Everyone’s minds are…” He struggled for the word. “…Homogenous.”

“You and your cinnamon rolls. Why can’t you just eat what everyone else eats? If they don’t like cinnamon, then there won’t be any. It’s useless producing something which no longer has a market. How else do you think our economy has become this efficient? We pour our scant resources into things that the world wants. We don’t need deviants like you going up to cafés and ordering things that nobody else eats.”

“Okay, so the economy thrives. But what about progress, then? What about progress as a society?”

Kyra shrugged. “C’mon. The world is hooked up 24/7 into everyone’s minds. So we have greater understanding, empathy, unity, blah blah blah.” She mimicked the pamphlet text. “We’ve come a long way as a society. No racism, for one. No prejudice.”
“No prejudice? Then what was that, back in the café? They picked on the minority! Me!”
“You were the equivalent of a carnivore in a vegetarians’ meeting!”

Con ignored her. “What about you! Did you see the looks some of them gave you? They pity you because you’re above the network and not swimming in it. They were looking at you like having your own privacy cleaved you off from humanity. Like you were robotic, somehow. Unfeeling.”

Kyra fell silent. He’d struck a nerve.

She leveled herself, then hissed, “I don’t need their pity. My privacy is a privilege. I would sooner die than lose myself to the masses.”
They contemplated this for a moment.
“So would I” Con replied.
Kyra sighed. “It’s not often I find an individual who’s… an individual.”
“That makes two of us, then.”

Kyra shook her head. She got up and paced the room. “It’s not the same. You, you’re an artist. You noticed the merging of minds because you’re different. Because you’re always looking for the new. The exciting. Looking for inspiration.” She gestured vaguely towards a pile of sketches on the sofa. Their depictions were hard to make out, but one thing was clear. They were all the same: scrawls of frustration, trying in vain to portray a single indecipherable object from different perspectives. “That’s when you ran out of new inspiration, right? That’s when you noticed that there was no more diversity.” She closed her eyes.

“That’s where we’re different. It’s my job to be ‘above the network’, as you so nicely put it. I just sit there all day, weeding out ‘dangerous ideas’, predicting the next loony, watching our safe, happy, connected world decay on the inside. But what do I care?” She sniffed. “I have the rights to my own personality. So does everyone else, if only they bothered to realize it. Like you did.”

They sat in silence for a few moments more. Finally, Con rose to his feet, and took the empty teacup from Kyra and put it in the kitchen sink. When he re-entered the living room, he returned her level gaze. “They’ve succeeded, then. We’re bees in the Hive.”

She smiled wryly. “No, Con. They’re bees. We’re drone flies. We look like bees but we're not."