When Martin Died on a Tuesday

Martin died in his sleep on a Tuesday.

There was nothing cinematic about it. No thunderstorm, no final revelation, no beloved family gathered around his bed while somebody whispered that it was all right to go. He had eaten leftover lasagna wanting lobster, watched half of a detective show when he’d wanted to a sci-fi horror show, complained briefly about aging and indigestion, brushed his coffee stained teeth with whitening toothpaste, checked the thermostat twice, and gone to bed.

Sometime between 2:13 and 4:47 in the morning, according to the collection of electronic devices later consulted by people who needed a time, Martin stopped being alive.

He did not notice immediately.

He woke, or something like waking, and stood beside his bed looking down at himself. His body looked surprisingly ordinary for a dead body. One arm was crooked above his head. His mouth was slightly open. His blanket had twisted around one ankle.

The television across the room was still on

Martin had fallen asleep with it playing quietly, and now a woman with shining hair was explaining that thinning hair did not have to define anyone.

Martin touched his own head out of habit.

His fingers passed through it.

“Oh,” he said.

Nobody heard him. Someone in the room was looking at the television, the smart TV, the black rectangle that dominated the wall across from his bed, while other somebodies seemed to be bringing in a gurney. There was a bag too. A zipper.

Ew. Oh.

Martin was really dead.

The television continued.

A man in a white coat stood beside a glowing diagram of a hair follicle. There were words like RESTORE and RENEW. A silver-haired customer smiled into a mirror as though he had just been reunited with a missing child.

Then the commercial ended.

The screen turned red.

BREAKING NEWS.

A helicopter had gone down somewhere.

Martin looked from the television to his body and back again.

“Well,” he said. “That seems badly timed.”

He discovered within the next hour that walls no longer presented much difficulty. Doors were irrelevant. Stairs were optional. Gravity had become more of a suggestion than a rule.

He also discovered that he could not turn off the television.

His hand went through the remote.

So Martin left.

He moved through the wall, across the neighboring apartment and through another television where an anchor was saying that lawmakers were demanding immediate reforms following a devastating incident involving artificial intelligence.

Martin drifted closer.

Nobody in the room was watching.

A woman was packing lunches. A boy was trying to find one shoe. Another child had cereal stuck to her chin. The television spoke urgently above them.

HUMAN ERROR.

AI DISASTER.

CALLS FOR SAFETY REFORM.

Then a cheerful elephant appeared.

An elephant never forgot.

Martin watched the mother find the missing shoe beneath the sofa.

The elephant recommended something for memory.

Martin began wandering.

At first he wandered through homes because homes were familiar. Then offices, hospitals, airports, restaurants, bars, waiting rooms, hotels, tire shops and laundromats. Everywhere he went, the black rectangles were talking.

Martin was losing the unnecessary words for some things. He started to call them what was useful to him. All media devices he began to call simply, black rectangles Some were rose gold. But essentially, black rectangles worked fine for Martin.

People did not exactly watch them.

That was the first thing Martin noticed.

They stared.

There was a difference.

Their eyes rested in the direction of the screens while their faces remained slack. They were not shocked by the murders. They were not outraged by the corruption. They did not seem especially persuaded by the advertisements.

They merely received.

A woman had been murdered by a stalker.

A police cruiser had been stolen.

The cruiser had crashed into a house where a family had been sleeping.

A school bus driver had fallen asleep behind the wheel.

Congress wanted action.

Experts were concerned.

Markets were uncertain.

Humanity was approaching a technological turning point.

Then a grandfather rubbed something onto his knee and threw a football to his grandchildren.

Martin floated beside a man in an airport who was staring directly at the television.

“You seeing this?” Martin asked.

The man did not answer.

Of course he did not answer. Martin was dead.

But Martin began to suspect that even if he had been alive, the man might not have answered.

His mouth was slightly open.

His eyes were pointed at the screen.

Onscreen, a woman with an autoimmune disorder walked sadly through a gray house.

Then she received treatment.

The house became yellow.

Her husband appeared.

A dog appeared.

Friends appeared.

A bicycle appeared.

Eventually everyone was eating dinner beneath string lights while a pleasant voice listed infections, cancers, liver problems, allergic reactions and possible death.

The man at the airport blinked.

The screen returned to catastrophe.

Martin moved on.

He began noticing the rhythm.

Danger.

Relief.

Danger.

Relief.

Aging.

Youth.

Illness.

Treatment.

Exclusion.

Belonging.

Economic instability.

Financial services.

Violence.

Insurance.

Loneliness.

Community.

Chaos.

Control.

The humans moved through it all like cars on a conveyor belt.

Spray.

Foam.

Brushes.

Rinse.

Wax.

Blower.

Then right back around.

It was a car wash for consciousness.

Television was only one nozzle.

Martin discovered the others when he began drifting through phones.

Social feeds. Video feeds. Shopping feeds. News feeds. Email feeds. Advertisements disguised as articles, articles disguised as advertisements, corporations disguised as friends, strangers disguised as experts, experts disguised as entertainers and entertainers occasionally mistaken for prophets.

The same rhythm lived everywhere.

YOU MAY BE SICK.

Swipe.

YOU ARE FALLING BEHIND.

Swipe.

FIVE THINGS SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE NEVER DO.

Swipe.

A dead child.

Swipe.

A serum.

Swipe.

A war.

Swipe.

A dress.

Swipe.

A frightened dog reunited with its owner.

Swipe.

A politician shouting.

Swipe.

A recipe for lemon chicken.

Swipe.

THIS ONE HABIT MAY BE AGING YOU FASTER.

Martin began following the feeds through their invisible back doors.

Death apparently came with excellent access privileges.

He slipped through cables and routers, across server farms and advertising exchanges, through data centers where enormous machines hummed beneath fluorescent lights. He followed packets and signals into buildings where people sat before walls of numbers measuring other people's attention.

The Industry of Attention spoke frequently to the Industry of Measurement.

Measurement spoke to Advertising.

Advertising invited Pharmaceuticals, Insurance, Banking, Skin Care, Hair Restoration, Technology, Defense, Automotive, Wellness, Retail and several nonprofit organizations dedicated to making human beings feel included.

They met in glass buildings.

Martin liked glass buildings now because walls meant nothing to him anyway.

He hovered above conference tables and listened.

The people around them had beautiful teeth.

Their clothing fit correctly.

They were racially diverse in a manner that seemed mathematically precise.

Nobody appeared exhausted.

Nobody sweated.

Nobody had gained forty pounds after menopause.

Nobody had a disabled child screaming in another room.

Nobody had spilled coffee on an invoice.

Nobody seemed to be worried that the transmission was making a funny noise.

A graph descended on a screen.

“Engagement is down.”

Someone frowned.

Martin floated through the graph.

“How far?”

“Across several categories.”

“Why?”

“Fatigue.”

There was silence.

Someone from Advertising tapped a pen.

“Can we reframe fatigue?”

Measurement nodded.

“We could call it disengagement.”

“Is disengagement bad?”

“For democracy, perhaps.”

That was excellent.

Soon screens everywhere warned that people were not paying enough attention.

AMERICANS LESS INFORMED THAN EVER.

DECLINING READING HABITS RAISE CONCERNS.

SHORTENING ATTENTION SPANS THREATEN CIVIC LIFE.

Martin watched a nurse eat yogurt beneath one of the headlines.

She had been awake for fourteen hours.

Her eyes closed between spoonfuls.

The headline blamed her attention span.

For a while the numbers improved.

Then they fell again.

Martin found his way back into the glass building.

A red light was flashing.

“Doctor,” somebody said dramatically, although no doctor was present. “We are losing the patients.”

Martin laughed.

Nobody heard.

“What are they doing?”

“They’re turning off notifications.”

“Why?”

“They say notifications are stressful.”

“Tell them it’s the phones.”

And so the phones began warning people about phones.

Websites published articles about excessive internet use.

Social media companies hosted discussions about the dangers of social media.

Televisions ran documentaries about the damage caused by television.

Phones delivered reminders encouraging their owners to put down their phones.

“Well,” Martin said. “That should fix it.”

It did not.

The numbers kept falling.

DR. WE ARE LOSING THE PATIENTS.

“Tell them it’s their habits.”

So the patients were told to sleep more, exercise more, read more, scroll less, establish boundaries, practice mindfulness, improve their media literacy and cultivate healthy relationships with technology.

The systems remained unchanged.

The patients were prescribed self-control.

Still the numbers fell.

Martin wandered through bedrooms at night.

People were tired.

Not dramatic tired.

Not collapse-of-civilization tired.

Just tired.

A woman lay beside her sleeping husband playing a little game involving brightly colored candy.

Three red candies disappeared.

Four blue candies aligned.

A striped candy exploded.

The woman smiled.

Martin sat beside her.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She could not hear him.

The game told her nothing.

It demanded no position on immigration.

It did not warn her about democracy.

It did not ask whether she was prepared for retirement.

It did not tell her that her face was aging incorrectly.

It did not show her a bombed apartment building before offering twenty percent off shoes.

It simply gave her five purple candies and asked whether she could put them together.

Martin liked it.

Apparently the control rooms did not.

DR. WE ARE LOSING THE PATIENTS AGAIN.

“What are they doing now?”

“Candy Crush.”

“What does it tell them?”

“Nothing.”

“What does it teach them?”

“Nothing.”

“Does it frighten them?”

“No.”

“Does it improve them?”

“No.”

“Does it sell them anything?”

“Sometimes extra lives.”

The room went silent.

“What else are they doing?”

A technician changed screens.

“A woman in Iowa is watching a cat fall off a sofa.”

Another screen.

“A man in Virginia is looking at pictures of mushrooms.”

Another.

“Someone is listening to a jazz recording from 1957.”

Another.

“Capybara videos.”

Another.

“Recipes.”

Another.

“Some of them are going outside.”

That caused genuine alarm.

DR. WE ARE LOSING THEM.

Martin leaned over the technician's shoulder.

The numbers were sliding.

“Tell them something terrible,” somebody said.

DEMOCRACY IN DANGER.

Still sliding.

“Tell them they're sick.”

SEVEN WARNING SIGNS YOU SHOULD NEVER IGNORE.

Still sliding.

“Tell them they're getting old.”

THE SECRET TO YOUNGER SKIN.

Still sliding.

“Tell them their children are in danger.”

“Tell them their money is disappearing.”

“Tell them war is coming.”

“Tell them the phones are destroying their brains.”

“Tell them television is destroying their brains.”

“Tell them they don't read.”

“Tell them they're reading the wrong things.”

Nothing worked for long.

Finally somebody whispered, “Artificial intelligence.”

The room became quiet.

Martin looked up.

“Yes,” another person said.

“Tell them AI is dangerous.”

“Tell them it will take their jobs.”

“Tell them humans may lose control.”

“Tell them it could destroy civilization.”

The numbers moved.

Not dramatically.

But upward.

Experts appeared.

Panels assembled.

Lawmakers demanded action.

Technology companies warned about technology.

Companies building AI warned about AI.

Companies competing with AI warned about AI.

Companies seeking regulation warned about insufficient regulation.

Companies opposing regulation warned that regulation itself was dangerous.

Everybody found something useful in the danger.

Martin drifted between the screens.

“Now you're getting somewhere,” he said.

Somewhere far from the control room, a smart bomb fell onto a building.

Martin followed it.

The bomb had been designed by intelligent people.

Its components had been manufactured by intelligent people.

Its guidance system had been tested.

Its purchase had been authorized.

Money had moved through accounts.

Officials had signed documents.

Command structures had been followed.

A person had selected a target.

Another had approved it.

The bomb worked.

There was an explosion.

A classroom disappeared.

Desks rose briefly into the air.

Paper became flame.

Concrete became dust.

The television called it a strike.

A map appeared.

An analyst explained strategic objectives.

Then came an advertisement for hair restoration.

Martin stood among the desks.

There were no advertisements there.

There was only dust.

For the first time since dying, Martin became very still.

He had not been a particularly philosophical man while alive.

He had worried about his cholesterol.

He had compared cable packages.

He had once spent forty minutes arguing with a customer service representative about a nine-dollar charge.

He had opinions about parking.

He had owned six pairs of nearly identical khaki pants.

But death had given him time.

He sank through the floor.

Down through soil and stone, through buried pipes and roots, through layers of rock laid down before anything resembling a human being existed.

Far beneath him, the planet was moving.

Slowly.

Enormously.

Pressure accumulated.

Rock softened.

Magma pressed against fractures.

A volcano was preparing itself according to rules older than language.

Martin hovered beside it.

There were no experts.

No warning banners.

No shareholders.

No quarterly projections.

The volcano did not know whether people were paying attention.

It would erupt when the conditions were right.

Martin rose.

Higher this time.

Through the crust.

Through cities.

Through clouds.

Through the upper atmosphere.

He kept going.

He found that death had very few speed limits.

Earth became round beneath him.

Martin stared.

He had seen pictures.

Everybody had seen pictures.

But pictures had lied by being too familiar.

This was Earth.

Actually Earth.

Blue.

Enormous.

Clouds curling over oceans.

Storms spinning without commentary.

Mountain ranges folding across continents.

Deserts stretching farther than any human eye could see from the ground.

Forests.

Ice.

Rivers.

Island chains.

Nearly three quarters of the planet covered in water.

Most of it containing no people whatsoever.

Even the land was mostly empty of humans.

Mountains, marshes, deserts, tundra, forests, plains and enormous spaces where not one person was arguing online.

The human world was tiny.

A scattering.

Roads.

Ports.

Cities.

Warehouses.

Data centers.

Shopping malls.

Suburbs.

Hospitals.

Schools.

Office parks.

Bedrooms.

Black rectangles glowing in rooms.

From this height, humanity looked almost comical.

Ants with zoning laws.

Ants with mortgages.

Ants wearing lab coats.

Ants predicting markets.

Ants announcing that other ants threatened the survival of ant civilization.

Ants spending billions of dollars trying to persuade other ants to grow thicker hair.

Martin laughed.

Then he stopped laughing.

Above him stretched everything else.

The universe.

Not metaphorically.

Actually there.

Stars.

Planets.

Moons.

Blackness so deep it seemed almost solid.

Somewhere were exploding suns.

Somewhere planets were forming.

Somewhere worlds were being swallowed.

Asteroids moved silently through space, obeying trajectories that did not care about elections.

One might someday intersect Earth's path.

Perhaps humanity would see it coming.

Perhaps not.

If they did, Martin imagined the banners.

ASTEROID THREAT: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.

There would be countdown clocks.

Experts.

Panels.

Animations.

An advertisement for joint pain.

But the thought no longer seemed funny.

Martin looked again at Earth.

He understood something he had never understood while living.

Consciousness was astonishing.

Not human civilization.

Not markets.

Not governments.

Not technology.

The simple fact of being conscious at all.

Matter had somehow assembled itself into creatures capable of looking back at the universe that made them.

For a little while, carbon could see.

It could love another piece of carbon.

It could hear music.

Taste peaches.

Smell rain.

Remember a mother.

Pet a dog.

Hold a newborn.

Stand barefoot in cold grass.

Laugh so hard that breathing became difficult.

Watch Orion rise over the ocean.

Know that it existed.

Know that it would stop existing.

Martin thought about Tuesday night.

The lasagna.

The detective show.

The thermostat.

He would have paid almost anything now for one more stupid Tuesday.

One more glass of water.

One more itch.

One more annoying telephone call.

One more morning in which nothing especially important happened.

Down below, billions of conscious creatures possessed exactly what Martin had lost.

And enormous industries were fighting over what those creatures would look at.

Martin descended.

He passed through satellites and clouds, through an airplane where seventy-three people were staring at seventy-three little screens.

He entered a house.

A family was eating dinner while a television played behind them.

Nobody spoke.

The television warned about artificial intelligence.

Then skin care.

Then war.

Then insurance.

Then a nonprofit promised belonging.

Then another war.

Then a pharmaceutical company offered peace of mind.

A girl looked down at her phone.

Her father checked his.

Her mother stared toward the television without appearing to see it.

Mouths slack.

Eyes open.

Not asleep.

Not quite awake.

Martin stood among them.

He wanted desperately to shake them.

Not because they needed to read more.

Not because democracy required engagement.

Not because they needed better habits.

Not because their phones were evil.

Not because artificial intelligence was going to destroy them.

He wanted to tell them something much simpler.

You are here.

You are actually here.

For an incomprehensibly short period of time, you have been allowed to know that you exist.

Look.

The girl smiled suddenly.

Martin followed her gaze.

On her phone, a raccoon was stealing cat food.

She laughed.

Her father looked over.

“What?”

She showed him.

He laughed too.

The mother leaned across the table.

For perhaps twenty seconds, nobody looked at the television.

Martin smiled.

Behind them the machine continued.

BREAKING NEWS.

The father turned slightly.

The spell began again.

Martin left.

He moved through houses, hospitals, airports, restaurants and streets. Everywhere the car wash thundered.

Fear.

Relief.

Need.

Purchase.

Danger.

Control.

Again.

Again.

Again.

And Martin finally understood that there was no single mastermind.

That would almost have been comforting.

There was only machinery.

Systems feeding systems.

Industries supporting industries that supported other industries.

Everyone optimizing their small part.

Ratings.

Clicks.

Conversions.

Retention.

Growth.

Revenue.

Market share.

Engagement.

Nobody needed to intend the whole thing.

The whole thing happened anyway.

The machines ran because running was what machines did.

Martin rose above the city once more.

Millions of lights burned below him.

Millions of people.

Each carrying an entire private universe inside a skull.

Childhoods.

Fears.

Songs.

Regrets.

Recipes.

Dead parents.

First kisses.

Embarrassing moments from seventh grade.

People they missed.

People they hated.

Things they still hoped might happen.

Brief sparks of awareness on a small planet circling an ordinary star.

And Martin wondered:

What was being accomplished?

What goal was so magnificent that consciousness itself needed to be continuously interrupted?

What achievement justified taking the extraordinary luck of awareness—the improbable little interval between not existing and not existing again—and filling it with artificial emergencies, invented inadequacies, purchasable solutions and endless instructions about where to look next?

Grow.

Click.

Fear.

Buy.

Watch.

React.

Improve.

Subscribe.

Refresh.

What was at the end of all that?

More?

Martin could find no answer.

Beneath him, the planet turned.

An ocean rolled toward a shore.

A volcano waited beneath stone.

Somewhere an asteroid moved through darkness.

A whale surfaced beneath moonlight and breathed.

A woman sat alone on a porch listening to rain.

A boy scratched a dog's ears.

Someone planted garlic.

Someone kissed somebody they had been afraid to kiss.

Someone turned off a television.

Someone reached level 4,327 in Candy Crush.

And for one tiny moment, nothing whatsoever was accomplished.

Martin thought it might have been the most valuable moment of all.

And then poof. His consciousness was gone.