Not a Care in the World

A Short Story on Censorship

by Nicholas Wardner

Jeb-22 eyed the delete icon and blinked twice in quick succession.
Yes I am most definitely sure, he thought to himself, dismissing the
Systems automatic double-check for human error.
He breathed a sigh of relief, and silent wiper blades de-fogged his
screen. Thats just it. He mused, silently. Human error. The System was
designed, down to the last line of code, to mitigate the effects of human
error.
Allowing the thought to linger, in hesitant defiance of his displays
pulsing NEXT icon, he considered how, for thousands of years, routine
misjudgments in package-filtering had created a veritable roller-coaster of
emotions for the worlds nave population. That was, of course, when the
population was small enough to have seen a roller-coaster at all. He had
learned about them from an article the System served him up back in whoknows-when: huge, impossibly confusing webs of steel girders that travelers
visited for the express reason of frightening themselves. Thankfully, as they
always did, the package concluded with the happy fact that these devices
were no longer around, endangering unwitting tourists. To think, people
would actually pay to experience something unsettling! The mere thought of
it!
but then again, thought Jeb-22, he wouldnt be sitting here, afraid to
open his next package, were he not acutely aware that those people did, and
do, exist.
The issue that presently baffled him was how they did it. It only
happened once in a blue moon (another allusion Jeb-22 made from secondhand experience), but somehow these people manage to slip their malicious
little packages right under the Systems nose. That is, until enough normalminded folks deleted them, and the System picked up the trend. It was
almost as if they wanted a return to those days when anything and
everything was on open display, just waiting for the eyes of a violently
incompatible audience!
Even with the scarcity of those bad packages, it always seemed that
once you stumbled across one, the odds of finding another suddenly felt lessthan-friendly. Informational Terrorists, the system had called them in its
annual status report followed immediately by the comforting assurance

that their consoles were being hunted down and purged from the network.
Good riddance. Who needs that kind of stress?
Jeb-22 tried to dismiss that train of thought (the System had long ago
picked up on his interest in historys fast-moving steel contrivances, and it
showed in these linguistic curios), but it wouldnt be derailed so easily. He
found himself grappling with why they did it. The System was in place to
make sure you received exactly what you wanted upbeat, optimistic news
reports and trivia articles, all subject-filtered to your personal template. For
Jeb-22, seeing how many metal deathtraps no longer endangered his health
was a surefire way to light up neural pathways that would end in dopamine
release. And wasnt that the point?
The articles these terrorists shoehorned into the mix were exactly
the opposite. Last time, it was a news piece on military drones that
somehow crossed wires, destroying an entire block of consoles. Horrid. The
package he just deleted, entitled Impending water shortage in Eurasia (its
false title had read New Breed of Puppy Delight of Local Dog Show)
predicted that in ten years Ten years! How far removed! there would not
be enough water left in the continent to support its peoples needs. What
awful things to take such pains distributing; no point but to fret over.
Doubly upsetting was the mere uselessness of these facts. Jeb-22
could watch the dog shows records to see a new puppy, or even attend the
next event, but what could he do about combat planes and water
infrastructure? He was a freight operator, and a damn good one he could
coordinate 40 auto-barges on opposite sides of the world simultaneously, but
that wouldnt fill them with water. Water filtration and distribution was, and
always would be, way over his head. Even if something went amiss there,
hed never be able to touch it, so why spend all this time thinking in circles
about impending doom? The military controllers were the only one with
blueprints for fighters, and those wouldnt become public any time this aeon,
so why postulate about their malfunctions?
This is what the System was for. Jeb-22 decided these terrorists
must be too busy with such needless, self-defeating worries to understand
that. The System would always tell him what he wanted to know what he
needed to know. The rest was a moot point.
He eyed the pleading icon and blinked twice. Ah, yes, man-operated
automobiles. Just another way human error used to cost us more than
accidentally wiped data. He took comfort in the knowledge that the System

had picked this package, against billions dismissed, just for him. Losing
himself in the historical account, Jeb-22 forgot about the destroyed block and
the water shortage. He was safe, content no bad news, not a care in the
world.