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 would ultimately win.

Contrary to the establishment who were desperately obsessed with the past and 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 and clamouring to have Number 6 cancelled, but he was one of the rare few who was so rich and powerful cancelling him was a near impossibility.

His real name was Devlin B. Cooper but he had given it up to be re-named after the protagonist of the 1960's 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 one. At least not yet."

The true symbolism was obvious to those who knew the original television show. Like Patrick McGoohan's protagonist, D.B. Cooper clearly felt like he was now the maverick outsider who was up against the establishment in all of its many guises and he revelled in being so. He'd always been a trouble maker at school; his precocious, natural intelligence operated so far beyond his teachers' comprehension that he ran rings round 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 actually the world at at large. For this modern Number 6 was desperately trying to break everyone free from the tyranny of big government and bureaucratic overreach on individuals' lives. The term 'global village' had always sent shivers down Number 6's spine. As a futurist frontiersman who believed in the mystery of exploration, reducing everything to a village made him feel queasy. The internet 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 box. Unless, of course, there was a solar storm that wiped out the earth's entire power grid. That was a possibility which he had often considered and had made his own contingencies for. He'd even written a manifesto entitled Online/Offline : The Way Of The Future which urged people to support offline infrastructure as much going forward 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 on the spaceship in the film Wall-E. But Number 6 didn't blame the consumers, just the mindless engine spewing out worthless content and produce that was making everyone stupid.

When interviewed on various platforms, he would often come across as a contrarian nihilist, one who was just as happy for humanity to destroy itself as he was for it 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, he considered his new innovations and explorations into space as akin to that of 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 likey by the day. Conflict was not only a massively unnecessary distraction but a hugely addictive drug, one that had propelled most of modern Western culture.

And although it could be lonely at the top, he considered himself part of a lineage of free thinking entrepreneurs that went back starting 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.