2025 Boxes Notes
[A connection between the boxes and UJ. Establish they are networked computation, that Joe has root on. The rest of the Clique see them as surveillance on the survivors, a control mechanism, but Joe is creating a legacy he can bequeath to the DOGs, a way for them to commune with the people, to advise, instruct and guide them, the boxes would be oracular, each a temple, a place to pray and be heard. The network once established must be trained and taught, and that's what Joe is doing with the prompt challenges. The DOGs and their magic / technological augmentation, of course gods have tech, humans have bodies after all, the Arthur Clarke paradigm. The boxes are of humble materials, ubiquitous, available, yielding boons and succor.]
A bicycle tire unrolls the gray pavement and the eastern euro accented voice speaks again.
"root stack, confirm locality is vacant..." (beep) "initiate reintegration with adjacent stacks... (beep)
Boxes all go blank and the three dots appear again
"propagate changes to adjacent stacks..."
(beep)
CU of three dots
"global propagation."
even closer
(beep)
"Global Prompt, exposition on the holy trinity of box network in style of british nature documentary."
Rapid edit with images and narrated by David Attenburough
Son
A smorgasbord of apocalyptic events threatened the very existence of humanity. Manufactured and deployed by a genius benefactor in secret underground autofax and delivered by robotic airships, relief boxes provide the essential components to help plucky survivors reboot civilization. Hope is here.
[new boxes, three dots with iconic natural formations and/or monuments in the background, tulsi on mount rushmore]
Holy Ghost
unknownst to the squabbling mortals grubbing amongst the shattered ruins of their so called cultures, the bounty provided by the relief boxes disguise a ubiquitous surveillance and control network deployed by a spiritual elite, the clique who are accelerating the evolution of human beings by intensified contrast.
[clique dolls, tiny
Father
unbeknownst to the Clique, a trickster renegade, Uncle Joe has surreptitiously subverted the box network and is engaged in a cockamamie scheme, DOG, the objectives of which are probably not even clear to him.
"Cute"
Admin UJO has
Propagate enhancements over routine network traffic.
• After propagation of prompt challenge by Admin UJ0, global gestalt would experience pseudo sentience enhancement of 3% on Grant scale from 7.74 to 8.77. Grant results based on improvements in Interpretive surveillance, audio and visual acuity and efficiency of data extrapolation. •
"Resume Prompt challenge,
a corrugated hempboard box coated with a weather resistant polymer. stark black against the beige.
As Joe rides along, he passes clusters of boxes by the roadside, in fields and on the floor of the forest.
[list] The people recognize them as allies, boons, and helpers in the fairly recent and abrupt transition from convenience to self responsibility. Hoarding is pointless, the shower of boxes continues to belch from the bellies of robot dirigibles almost weekly in most populated areas, less frequently in the wilderness where the People rarely go, except to track and hunt. The waterproofed hemp board boxes are both structural and light, able to survive being dropped from altitude without damage to their contents and open easily for child.
Where do the boxes come from? The rumor is that a very rare bird, a humanity loving super-trillionaire as measured in the long gone USD, had secretly constructed underground manufacturing and hydroponic centers, fully automated with robotics and pseudo cognition, and programmed to continuously produce the boxes and their bounty without human supervision. These centers were said to linked via deep tunnels to raw material and rare earth mining operations. Another theory suggested that factories were archaic 20th century thinking, and that matter compilers were a reality, devices that could assemble any product directly from atoms and molecules that would be readily available from adjacent bedrock or sipped from the atmosphere.
Others of a less optimistic bent, said that the boxes had been manufactured before the wild times and that the inventory was finite and eventually would run out. They advised developing indepence from the boxes, and a mistrust and rejection of the "system". This view had was briefly ascendant for a year or two, but eventually faded with the regularity of the box drops. Eventually only a minority advocated for and practiced a difficult and oft hungry self reliance, while the People who accepted the boxes had a much easier time.
Notes - The boxes have to be established as an appreciated phenomena by the People, so that burning them later will be sufficiently shocking. Yes they are a surveillance and control network (The Lives of Others) so perhaps burning them eariler in the story would make sense and the prepper contingent proved correct, but later they are again misunderstood to be evil when they are the opposite. When subsumed by the divinity, they are transformed into a sacred presence. The paradigm of subservience and dependence to a false protector to reliance and trust in our true nature, or fullness. That's what the people eventually must discern. At the end, the boxes could tell the history to the people, tell the DOG story all over again. A field of boxes, flashing and then in synchrony "Once upon a time..." And eventually the burning ends.
As Joe rides along, he passes clusters of boxes. Relief boxes are scattered across fields, within forests, by lakes and streams. Each box flashes and flickers with surface mediatronics, alternately identifying it's contents and displaying ads for defunct and obscure consumer products that hint at the zenith of a vanished culture. They offer a bounty of civilization rebooting resources, both for the long and short term.