Screenslaved is a short story about video gaming, but it's set in a dystopian future world that's not so far from our own.
On March 15, 2019, a young man attacked the Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand and then proceeded to attack the Linwood Isalamic Center. He attempted to livestream the attacks in a twisted effort to encourage others to act violently against Muslims. I did not watch the video, but I couldn't help but compare it to video game livestreaming which is incredibly popular.
I have two sons and they are kind and wonderful humans, but they do like to game and when they are video gaming, they don't eat for hours, they get "hangry" and they stay up way too late at night. I've shared the story about the Korean couple whose baby starved to death while the parents played a particularly engaging video game, but they play in a group. It's their social time and you can hear them talking about the bosses they are about to destroy or yelling and cursing when their character is killed. I thought this could make a good background for a story about the future of gaming.
My kids wear earbuds when they are communicating, so I only hear their end of the conversation. Sometimes, I have to ask them to take out their earbuds to talk to them, so I invented new tech called the "eyebud." It's like an Oculus visor but it's got two wireless projectors that mold to your eye sockets. Kids are supposed to take them off between games.
I wanted to critique the Christchurch killer's motivations in targeting a religion, but I thought I'd better not make the story about Islam, because then I might be encouraging the bad behavior I want to prevent. Instead I invented a religion centered on a messianic figure known as Jebix. In the culture of this future world, Jebix beliefs have fallen out of favor, supplanted by a new, unnamed religion that is both more "woke" and much stricter. This unnamed religion controls the government and it's at war with the Jebix believers.
I don't want to spoil the ending, but you may have figured out the plot already. I still think you'll find the story fanciful and thought-provoking. I've performed it live and it's a crowd favorite. Things are a little different in the future, for example, the cost of living has gone up quite a bit and they have robots to help perform menial tasks.
Learn more by reading "Screenslaved" in my book, Capital Disrupt. I played around with the title, until my screen went to sleep and that's when "Screenslaved" came to me. It's a dramatic title, but I think we're learning from social media studies that we all may be a little screenslaved.
