The Complete Recording

Here, in the future, we do not use that term. Being filmed, as you call it, is no more than one of life’s givens. Like breathing, the heartbeat, blinking and telepathy. From our first second on the planet, everything we do is recorded, because it can be, and because the alternative borders on barbarism. Think about it: what would the alternative be, to be denied our own history? No one would vote for that party, believe us. It would be like shutting down the possibility of forming couples.

Of course, we never think about any of this, just as you never thought about how many times a day you swallowed your own saliva (and neither do we). Several litres, surely, if you had counted (though who would count). So we are offered complete archives of every individual life, because: why not?

Surveillance, you call it. We call it Knowledge.

Neutral. Better.

For would you not, like us, want access to your grandparents’ first meeting, to join them at the very moment, at that crayfish party, when they realised they had fallen in love? Or find the cause of your father’s violent temper in his great-great-grandfather, who suffered the exact same nervous twitch that time by the candyfloss machine at the fairground, only a hundred years earlier? The sort of thing that explains us. Psychoanalysts are simply delighted to be able to follow childhood through observable facts rather than retrospective constructions. No more repressed memories and other mumbo jumbo.

Everyone is much happier now. You may not believe that. You are thinking, “Well, I suppose you have invented soma”, but you should know that we do not need to take any supplements or dopamine maximisers, because we eat what we need, when we need it, unlike you who, forgive the expression, shovelled down milkshakes, hamburgers and cheese puffs like barbarians, without counting the minutes of life each unit cost you. You had no implants, after all, so you could not see those figures before your eyes, which may be a mitigating circumstance, and perhaps you were happy in the moment, but in the long run one does want to live, does one not? Live for a long time, does one not? Avoid dying, does one not? Look into the eyes of those you love for ever.

We can also read the tales of antiquity. We understand Marcus Aurelius. We can recite the Epic of Gilgamesh. All of this is ours, just as it was yours. Then there are other things about us that we can understand you might find strange. Such as these popular channels where people watch people, through Knowledge. Even we, the more sensible among us, consider it a waste of time to watch, on a loop, someone else watching you watching yourself, and to put this spectacle on display before the public. The viewing figures make us ashamed, so I suppose you could say that we are cut from the same cloth, deep down, considering the way you carried on with your “doom scrolling”. You will no doubt be disappointed to learn that we have not moved beyond the concept of “reaction videos”.

Most of us, really, would rather watch without being watched ourselves, but one can no longer know that with any certainty, since the notification from the system does not arrive until the following day, because the government has decided that this is how it should be. Organised crime needs to be fought, and it would hardly make sense for the police to have to tell them so while organised crime was being fought. It is pure logic, and surely it is a relief that all the abductions have stopped lately. No more babies discovered in the favelas of Mars, so it is hardly surprising that the government received increased support from voters last time around, because things cannot possibly be that bad for us. You understand that too.

We are not so different from you as you may think, though perhaps we were being prejudiced there, in which case forgive us. We are simply doing the best we can, within our limited possibilities, to live our one and only lives, on this planet, in the universe, just as you did. Perhaps, then, one has to accept the occasional aberration. You understand that very well, of course, because we know what you were like. But we do not judge.