The soon-to-be-eighteen Silas was sitting at his desk. He had curled up on the chair, staring immersively at his phone. A chat was open on his screen. It was a comment section. His eyes moved side to side as he read paragraph after paragraph of never-ending text.
"Reply to Silas967: To me it seems you have absolutely no sense of right and wrong. You only follow the crowd. Grow up already."
"Neurolinx? Don't make me laugh. It's not innovation, it's straight-up stupidity dressed up as the future. Just hearing people talk about it makes me lose brain cells. Shove wires in your head? Yeah, great idea, maybe next you'll replace your lungs with Wi-Fi routers too.
"This whole thing is a circus act for tech-obsessed clowns who can't survive without worshipping their imaginary gadgets. Neurolinx isn't progress, it's the dumbest joke humanity has ever come up with, and the fact that people even clap for this nonsense shows how far gone we are."
Silas was engaged in an online debate with an anti-Neurolinx believer. It had been about a month since Hypersonia introduced the revolutionary concept of Neurolinx, and in that short time, online communities had already been set up, dedicated to debate and discussion around this new technological advancement.
However, when Silas came across an anti-member in the comment section of a random video which claimed to explain Neurolinx in-depth, he could not resist the urge to get involved in the debate.
"Stop behaving like an id**t"
Silas was glued to his phone, reading every word the commenter had written. The room was steeped in silence, broken only by the steady ticking of the clock. It was the loudest sound in the room.
"You asked me what I would do if the entire world shifted to Neurolinx. My answer is simple: I would rebel. I will not allow machines to take over the human mind, even if it means sacrificing my life."
After completing the final part of what felt like an essay, Silas leaned back in his chair. His lips curled upwards, and a grin appeared on his face.
"I see, So you're the 'fundamentally-against' type." He broke the silence, waving his phone from side to side.
"How many times do you think I've encountered your kin?" A small sigh escaped his lips as he stood up, tossing his phone onto the single bed positioned vertically opposite his desk. He then leapt onto the bed, following the same trajectory, grabbed his phone, and lay comfortably on his back.
In the meantime, he had already decided what he was going to reply to the anti-Neurolinx commenter.
"Reply to rotargimsnart001: Thank you for entertaining me for this long. I've read through your arguments and have come to the conclusion that I was a little wrong. Our debate ends here. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your patience. I am formally conceding."
After writing the reply, Silas stood up once again. He walked over to the mirror mounted on the door of his cupboard.
"That was the 274th debate. As for the type... 67th? No, 68th," he said to himself.
He was referring to the classification system. As a psychology enthusiast, Silas had always been driven to understand human behavior. His latest idea was to categorize the different types of people found in a debate.
Silas was the neutral type in almost all debates he participated in. This was because Silas only debated to expand his already vast knowledge of psychology. He did not have any personal opinions regarding NeuroLinx. The concept was just introduced and would clearly take sufficient time to become a thing.
Plus, Silas wasn't mindlessly going to jam computer chips in his brain. If the idea worked well, he would adopt it—it would only give him boosted efficiency. In case the idea didn't work out so well, he would pretend he did not know of it to begin with.
Hypersonia's announcement was a coincidence. This provided him with fresh debating ground and allowed him to test his theory more effectively. That was all he did in the past month.
"I hate that type," Silas sighed as he lay back down on his bed.
"Logic doesn't waver their beliefs. Even when you prove they are wrong with evidence, they still won't believe. They're a waste of time and effort, yet every debate is dominated by them, on both the pro- and anti-camps." He sighed again, rolling onto his belly and burying his face in the pillow.
"That guy had no logic. He did not even try to explain why he was against the concept. Such people, when provoked, react with emotional backlash."
I wrote a humble reply to that guy. Would he understand that I was being sarcastic? I did write 'Thank you' three times. Would most people not catch that it was mockery?
Silas was having second thoughts about his sense of humor. A sudden urge to check his phone washed over him. After all, he needed to make sure his sense of humor was in tune with the current generation.
He didn't waste a second entering his perfectly ordinary 12-character password, which unlocked his phone directly to the comment section where he had left it.
With his right thumb, he scrolled down, causing the page to refresh. He hadn't expected a quick reply; it had only been a few minutes since he'd written his response. Yet, there was a new message.
His eyes scanned the block of text. It was gibberish, though not the kind caused by mindlessly smashing the keyboard. It seemed to follow some kind of pattern. Silas's first thought was that it might be a foreign language transliterated into English.
Without thinking, Silas found himself reading the strange text aloud, his voice flowing instinctively with each syllable. The moment the words left his lips, he blinked, the world around him momentarily blurring. When his eyes opened again, he was no longer in his room. The familiar ceiling had vanished, replaced by an endless stretch of night sky, vast and infinite. Above him, a moon; not just any moon, but a massive celestial object glowing pink hung in the sky.