Surrogates

 

My life is boring. I don’t know if I’ve been seeking more adventure, or if I have resigned myself to a life lacking excitement. I mean, I became a cop for a reason. I always wanted to keep law and order, but there is so little crime these days that my job basically consists of hanging around the station, sometime reading pulp fiction, often aimlessly driving around Boston. It’s a fairly easy gig.  I never really even get within striking distance of  danger. Honestly, my job is pretty miserable. Speaking of which, I have to get to work. Excuse me while I plug into my surrogate.

 

When I’m using my surrogate I get to look 25 years younger. My surrogate has a full head of hair, which I haven’t had for over a decade now. My surrogate can run faster, is stronger, and is more capable at apprehending villains than I would be should I attempt the same line of work in my own skin. Then again, since everyone else gets to go about their daily lives with surrogates, they too can be better, stronger, more attractive or whatever. Everyone also seems to use their surrogates to fuck a lot. While I’ve been struggling to sport wood recently, my surrogate never seems to have a hard time with it. Speaking of which, I am feeling a little tense. Let me go plug into my surrogate for a moment.

 

 

Crimes against a surrogate are pretty unexciting. It’s like painting skulls on a cop car; sure it seems fun, but once you’re doing that community service you just wish you had stayed home. Even if you beat on a surrogate, they keep on going as if they’re unbreakable; they only need to be recharged once a day. They run on some space age, special Die Hard battery or something. I don’t understand the process. I don’t need to. I’m just a cop that doesn’t do much. No one actually gets hurt or breaks any major laws so there’s no real reason for detective work. Not to mention rumor has it that the powers that be are monitoring and maintaining the actions of every surrogate anyway. My life pretty much sucks. I need to use my surrogate for a moment.

 

But then the movie people showed up. They wanted to make a movie and document the events of the day. They said their budget was huge and that they were going to have cameras everywhere. I mean they had the whole nine yards. They had camera men as well as hidden cameras. They had producers, a director and boom microphones. I didn’t think much of it to tell you the truth. I’ve watched re-runs of Cops. Seemed like the same sort of show except that the concept sounds boring to me. I often stand over myself while controlling my surrogate and watch myself as I’m plugged in. That seems rather boring to me. I can’t imagine an audience sitting around watching me watch myself operate myself. In fact, the whole thing sounds rather confusing and somewhat pointless. Also, typing this is a lot of work. I need a break.

 

 

Well, as fate would have it, not too long after the movie people showed up, two surrogates were killed. I know I know, with enough damage surrogates can be destroyed and that is no big deal. You’d be right normally. This time, however, not only were the surrogates destroyed, but their users were killed right along with them. I mean this sort of thing could cause a nationwide panic. Like that classic horror flick A Nightmare on Elm Street, if your surrogate dies in the world, you die with it. If word of this got out, it’d be planet terror! Everyone would panic! And of course this all happened just after the movie crew shows up. Suspicious much? I tried to tell my supervisor, but did he listen? I mean, I tell him there’s a genuine homicide which hasn’t happened in I don’t even know how long, and he doesn’t care. It’s ridiculous. But then again, since he doesn’t care, why should the audience? As a detective, it’s my job to detect. So I went out and did just that. With the help of my surrogate, I found some things out.

 

What I found out was that this plot is full of traitors and mystery men. Due to our fancy technology, we were easily able to figure out the identity of this mysterious killer (he is part of a “humans only” organization who stand out against surrogates). Tracking him down was also easy to do. Getting the weapon that he used was the tricky part. We chased him over sixteen blocks all the way out of FBI jurisdiction. In fact, I almost bought it as he turned the weapon on his pursuers, me included. It was like a sixth sense or something as I unplugged just as the weapon was detonated. When I came to, I was like, what just happened? A lot of good cops died. That’s what. No one seems to care. My wife doesn’t. That’s for sure. I wonder if my surrogate is also mad at me.

 

That day was rough for me. I ended up in the hospital due to lingering effects from the weapon. Did my wife come to visit me in the hospital? Yes, sure, but she hightailed it as soon as I awoke. When she saw me out of my surrogate, in the flesh, she wasn’t attracted to me anymore.

 

 That hurt my feelings. My wife of course is addicted to using her surrogate and someone once said that the only way to kill an addiction is to kill the person addicted. I am not ready to subscribe to that philosophy quite yet, however. I tried to talk to my wife though. I did. I tried to reason. But she wouldn’t have it. She wants me to be using my surrogate if we’re to communicate – if we’re to love each other. But I couldn’t do that. She’s was hanging out with surrogate GQ models straight out of Sin City – doing cyber drugs and sexing it up. She doesn’t love me anymore. I need a moment…

 

 

The whole system is falling apart. The movie people are still filming. My life is falling apart. Someone somewhere is controlling surrogates and trying to do stuff and blah blah blah. My wife doesn’t love me! Don’t you understand how much this hurts my feelings? I mean I know my surrogate’s hair looks dapper, but I mean, it’s still me even if the real me has no hair. You know? But she says that when I’m not using my surrogate I’m like a perfect stranger to her. 

 

 

 So yeah, the movie guys – still around. Still filming all of this. It’s so annoying. Who cares?! No one knows the world is approaching the end as we know it. No one sees armageddon coming. I have to save the world. Me, the guy with the wife who would rather spend her time with machines and fake flesh than me. 

 

 

I don’t know. Maybe this whole mess does need to end, this great story of us. I had hoped that by sharing my story, I might be able to find some redemption, or at least provide some entertainment. Instead, I feel as though I’ve been wasting everyone’s time with my bullshit moralizing and uninteresting plotting. There’s really nothing at all worthwhile about my story, and I certainly don’t expect that anyone would want to see it anyway. *Sigh* Oh well, then. I should probably retire to my Stem-Chair™ and think about the things I’ve done wrong.

 

 

I’m miserable.

 

 

->Melvin