Window to the Future

Alpheren obsessed over the future. He spent many days in wonder about what may or may not be. One day he sat down, tinkering at his workbench as he liked to do when he stumbled into creating a new material. This material was reflective, like a mirror, but had a special property that Al discovered after some experimenting. When he held a small bit of it and stared deeply into it and thought about a plan he wanted to do, let's say try to fix the toaster even though he knew he lost the manual; the surface of the material would shine and show him the future. He would see himself attempting to fix the toaster without the manual and eventually fail, get frustrated and return to his workbench with a new toaster.

After some more experimenting he realized that the small mirror showed what would be given the current circumstances. He realized that he had a small window into the future. He took this material and made it into a small lens that he placed inside of an old makeup kit his wife never used anymore. He took the kit to places like the race track, and would see the end results of his supposed bets. He gained a large fortune, and one day he died, leaving everything to his eldest son. The son, Alpheren junior, took the lens and did much of the same, leave a large fortune to his son, Alpheren the third.

This Alpheren hated how his father and grandfather kept such a wonderful gift to themselves. He went to the workshop where the original material was made and he made more of them. He made a small device that opened like a makeup kit, but had a clear label and branding as Alpheren Company Future Lens. With his family's money he made a factory and began to mass produce them. Pretty soon everyone could enjoy the power of seeing the ramifications of their actions. Wall street investors all made the best calls that they could at the time that they made them. Criminals and CEOs alike learned how to use their time to create the best possible profits. Everyone in world knew exactly what they had to do, when they had to do it, and how best to do what they needed. The world began to run like cogs in an eternal machine. Everyone knew what was best.

This got incredibly boring, but no one seemed to notice. People seemed to just stare at their ACFLs wondering what course of action would be the best, and it would show them just how things would turn out. And the people didn't have to think about themselves or their lives or their kids or their pets. The ACFLs would show them all they needed to know in those regards. The ACFLs even showed them what would happen if they stopped using the ACFLs, and no one wanted that.

Eventually communications began to slow down as people had to stare into their mirrors to the future before sending anything as simple as a “hello” in an instant messenger software. Conversations turned into long drawn out affairs where people would say a sentence, and everyone around them would see the outcomes of their responses.

People began to think of how to expand on the functionality of their ACFLs. They would think of complex situations and lived those moments vicariously.

“What if I killed myself...”

“What if I made breakfast...”

“What if I...”

“What if...”

People became locked with what ifs. The whole population on the planet became so enthralled with the thoughts of “What if?” Many just sat in their homes, thinking about all the things they could be doing. Never actually doing them, never seeing the light of day, just the small artificial light of their residence illuminating a single mirror with widened eyes sunken into heads that had forgotten how to do anything but ask the question, “What if?”

A small group of people began to disrupt the endless cycle of asking questions. This group of people went out to try and free people from their addiction to the mirrors. The people enslaved to the mirrors, the “normal” people, judged them to be a rebellion of order and law. The highest seats of power at the time all sat around their large scale mirror and made suggestions as to how to end the rebellion. The best result, as any of them could see from the ACFL, was to slaughter all of the rebels like lambs.

So they did.

Police and military alike went out into streets. They hunted down anyone who did not own an ACFL. Anyone who was acting outside of the norm were captured, tried, executed, and buried that same day. What would have some fifty years prior been an outrage, an immense wrong of the government of the people, was overlooked. No one knew really. Everyone focused on their lives, heads down, mirrors up. They had to know what to do that day, and something or someone had to tell them.

And so it went.