THE WAY OF THE FUTURE

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” – Socrates

Trying to build the future while the present is in such disarray can be exhausting, though luckily for Number 6, he saw it as a game—
a game he was convinced he would ultimately win.

Contrary to the corporate political establishment, who were desperately obsessed with the past and intent on reclaiming history through their subjective and distorted prism of woke truth, Number 6 had no time for looking back.

“If you’re aiming for the stars, why are you obsessing about what’s below you? That’s how I feel about history. Yes, humanity has failed time and time again—but what are you gonna do about it? You can’t change the past, but you can help build a better future.”

Unfortunately, the cancel brigade were tenacious, clamouring to have Number 6 erased. But he was one of the rare few so rich and powerful that cancelling him was a near impossibility.

His real name was Devlin B. Cooper, but he had given it up to be renamed after the protagonist of the 1960s television series The Prisoner.

“I don’t know. I just got tired of names in general. I found it more relaxing just to be Number 6. At least no one can accuse me of being so egomaniacal that I chose Number 1. At least not yet.”

The symbolism was obvious to those familiar with the original show. Like Patrick McGoohan’s protagonist, D. B. Cooper clearly felt himself to be a maverick outsider, pitted against the establishment in all its many guises—and he revelled in it. He’d always been a troublemaker at school; his precocious, natural intelligence operated so far beyond his teachers’ comprehension that he ran rings around them, like Superman orbiting the globe at hypersonic speed.

And in this instance, the pernicious Village that controlled its inhabitants’ lives to within an inch in the fictional show was now the world at large. This modern Number 6 was desperately trying to free everyone from the tyranny of big government and bureaucratic overreach in individuals’ lives. The term global village had always sent shivers down his spine. As a futurist frontiersman who believed in the mystery of exploration, reducing everything to a village made him feel queasy.

The internet, he thought, had been a far more reductive instrument than an expansionist one—more a curse than a blessing in many instances. But it was here now, and there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Unless, of course, a solar storm wiped out the Earth’s entire power grid. That was a possibility he had often considered and made contingencies for. He had even written a manifesto entitled Online/Offline: The Way of the Future, which urged people to support offline infrastructure as much as online. That way, you could have your metaphorical cake and eat it.

But sadly, too many of the big corporate players were trying to reduce everything—and everyone—down to a barcode, which meant that investing in anything remotely elaborate held no interest for them. What they wanted above all else was convenience.

Convenience food.
Convenience culture.
Convenience surveillance.

Eventually, all that convenience would become massively inconvenient as humans forgot the basic rules of survival. It wasn’t dissimilar to those plump, consumerist humans aboard the spaceship in Wall-E. But Number 6 didn’t blame the consumers—just the mindless engine spewing out worthless content and products that were making everyone stupid.

When interviewed on various platforms, he often came across as a contrarian nihilist—one who seemed just as happy for humanity to destroy itself as to save itself. But deep down, he really cared. He loved humanity when it was defiant, noble, and victorious against the odds. It was like watching his favourite batsman hit a home run as everyone held their breath before the ball finally landed back on the ground.

In his mind, his innovations and explorations into space were akin to Noah and his Ark. The world back home was becoming so divisive and disturbed that any chance for a positive recalibration was looking less and less likely by the day. Conflict was not only a massively unnecessary distraction but also a hugely addictive drug—one that had propelled much of modern Western culture.

And although it could be lonely at the top, he considered himself part of a lineage of free-thinking entrepreneurs stretching from Socrates to Francis Bacon, Brunel, and continuing all the way to Howard Hughes and Steve Jobs in more recent times.

It was a hell of a responsibility—to have the weight of the world on his shoulders.
If he stopped to think about it too much, he would fumble and drop the ball.
In this instance—the globe.