Swallow. Download. Plug in. Become whomever or whatever you desire. This is the seductive promise of eN, a small electronic chip offering freedom from the misery and misfortune that a common mind endows—granting anyone the life they feel they truly deserve. But, like all promises, reality is often upsetting.
eN follows the downward spiral of an eighty-something-year-old artist, one cradling a severed leg and a terrible secret, as he is thrown headfirst into a technology that promises the liberation of the mind, yet merely plagues it with incessant advertising and a debilitating, visceral sickness—one eased only by the purchase of its principal sponsored product: plain yogurt.
Unable to remove the chip and ravaged by insanity and disease, The Old Fool will find salvation and redemption in the scheming plans of a young boy and his teenage sister who themselves will use him, whether he is willing or not, in their plan to destroy eN for good, to free mankind from the stark and prosaic mediocrity into which it is plugged.
“As long as you allow mediocrity to be the height of your enthusiasm, as long as you allow it to be the very peak of your potential, to be the voice of your culture, then, yes, the machine will replace you.”
Genre: FICTION / Science Fiction / General“Swallow. Download. Plug in,” said Jeff. “It’s that easy. You can be whomever or whatever you want to be.”
“No, you can’t,” replied The Old Fool, wishing, more than anything, that he could just back away from the counter. “Nothing’s that simple.”
No amount of will, though, could keep him from eyeing the electronic chip in the salesman’s hands. It was smaller than he had imagined, a great deal in fact. He had heard all about it on the radio and TV. It was all that anyone ever talked about. The ads, though, had made it seem as if he would be swallowing an entire computer, yet this was barely the size of a freckle. And it sparkled, too, like a tiny star plucked from the sky.
Captivated, he was. Incapable of looking away.
“There’s bound to be a catch,” he said. “There always is. So, what is it?”
“No catch,” said Jeff, taking the chip out of its packet and laying it plum in the old man’s hand. “No tricks. No gimmicks. No marketing. This, here is the future, your future. Whatever future you will. Age is no barrier anymore. And you can forget about I.Q too. They’re stone-age concepts. Limitations of a bygone era. Thanks to eN.”
Around him, the other customers all threw their money at the counter. Neither of them needed convincing, let alone a talking to. Time was of the essence, you see, and the sooner they could swallow and plug in, the sooner they could leave their drab and impotent lives behind, becoming the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ that each and everyone deserved to be.
