2034

Jib thought about his day on the way home. His head always hurt on days like today. The middle of a Equality Cycle always seems to bring out the crazies. As a Librarian its a busy time of year and his job is important. Without Librarians to curate public information, who knows what kind of dangerous ideas the public could get tricked into believing or know what emotions to feel about ideas. It was the Librarian’s responsibility to make sure that people didn’t seen or hear anything that is Cancelled.

And how lucky was he to get “news’ job! It was always the easiest. Most of the stuff had already been created by the platform providers anyways so very low risk of accidentally letting an alternative fact slip through. It’s amazing how far these hackers have gone to hide their dangerous messages. Pro-culture pricks. Couldn’t they just say what everyone wanted to hear like the rest of the world?

The decision to employ us to police ourselves was one of the greatest inventions our great society had. It pulled us out of those dark insensitive days of unshamed racism, public cultural differences, and freedom of speech. We know we are much better off for having the taskforce of Librarians. Of course the hackers say that the Librarian program had hidden motives. We all know from the news it was to make jobs and the Helpers can’t tell our emotions as well as we can. Then there are the hackers . They claim that bringing the public in to censor socially was brainwashing to break apart our sense of individualism. What an awful word – individualism. Back in the times when it was OK for people to compete and improve themselves, which obviously was just a bigoted move to gain privilege so they could take advantage over those they thought were lesser. So unfair back then. Before the new world government relieved us of our greed and consolidated ownership of everything to one blockchain. Those were the days of capitalism. Another nasty word, Jib thought.

All day, Jib had to comb through countless videos, images, experiences in the live forums that were flagged by the computers as privileged and make sure that no cancelled facts or ideas made it through. It was high pressure but foolish of him to worry really, the Helpers did most of the work anyways. Having a human confirm was a mere formality. These days most of the bad stuff got picked up. The Helper algorithms learned to recognize millions of patterns and objects hidden in these frames. But still Jib kept racing through the dangers of what would happen if he did let any privileged or cancelled speech through.

It must’ve had to do with what he saw today. Or did he see anything? It’s hard to say what it was but it shook him to his core. This better not have spoiled my mind. Jib shuddered to even think about it. If he lets something slip through or the Helpers flag him for potential Privilege he’d lose everything. No one hires someone who has Privileged on their record. And just to imagine he would have to go door to door and tell all of his neighbors. How embarrassing! Then of course the worst part is what happens if its true and his brain was spoiled? If any one of his neighbors notice something off and report it he could be Cancelled. A first time offender may recover but with Privilege on your record its straight the to sensitivity camps. Anyone he knows who went to sensitivity camp.. well better to not even think about that.

Thank god I’m using my staycation days for the rest of the week. No more video’s to watch. Time to relax and turn off the mind. Jib got out of his work chamber and looked around. He really did have it all: food and drink delivered from the Primebots and the Helpers were always there to plan what to do for entertainment.

Right on cue! His Helper opened up the entertainment chamber. What a great idea, a chance to go participate in some games. Jib had one of the newer models, a benefit of being a Librarian. The new set up was great, a fully immersive simulator. Basically like a small pool this system allowed him to feel every bit of the experience, provided nourishment and was even self cleaning! Of course some people did use the older simulation models that purely attached to their neural bluetooth but everyone knows that the full floatation is better for your body. Your body can handle staying in the simulation much longer if you are moving than sitting around. With a week off, maybe Jib won’t even have to leave once!