Back when it all started, you needed a computer to access it. There were websites and lolcats. Humanity floundered with its greatest invention producing little of value or consistency. One website would say one thing as fact and another would refute it. Humanity didn’t know what to do with it, so it made up silly memes. Everyone had a website, even if nobody ever looked at it. But, like all things, it evolved.

The human race is vain. Humans want all other humans to pay attention to them. They want to stand out from the crowd, but when the whole world is the crowd, things get a little dicey.

One human who did stand out from the crowd was Dr. Gustav Vanderschloff, the vainest of all. His name stands out because, in his selfish quest for eternal life, he created a way for us to be the internet instead of just looking at it. Nowadays, we’re all part of the mainframe. We are the internet. I am the internet. I was born here and I will die here, too.

I am a collection of files with my own operating system. Specifically, I am a synthetic neural life form attached to the hub. I am human, yet I am not.  My mother and father both used to be flesh and blood humans who downloaded themselves into the mainframe. I was born a year later.

Real humans, like my parents, feel the need to cling to their humanity. I’m not quite sure why since humanity has done nothing but destroy everything. My parents have pounded it into me that I am human and not just a packet of files. It doesn’t matter to me either way. Personally, I’d rather not be associated with a species that perpetuates evil, greed, selfishness and shortsighted thinking. Being human is what got us into this mess. Humanity is what destroyed the Earth and made it uninhabitable. Humans do awful things to each other.

I have no attachment to being human since I’ve never known anything besides the internet. I’m part of the first generation born on the web. I don’t have a prosthetic human body, but who does these days? Nobody wants to be out there in the real world where it is hot and you can’t breathe for all the fumes in the air. I’ve never actually been outside. My parents say that, someday, I should go there to see where I would have lived if not for Dr. Vanderschloff, but I’ve seen the feeds and done the simulations. It doesn’t look very nice at all. It’s much nicer here inside where anything is possible and just a microsecond away.

Maybe I am human after all since I am vain, too. I want something to prove that I am here. I will tuck this file into a faraway corner of the hub, so that when I unplug myself, when I am done with this experience called life, there will be something left of me.

By then, I’m sure things will be a lot different than they are now. There will be generation after generation born in here with no attachment to the outside world at all. Nobody will even talk about it anymore. We might even forget it exists.