“The Four Horsemen Give Up And Retire” blared a satirical editorial supporting their decision and mocking the thundering sermons and condemnation from those warning the ‘End is Nigh’. Other platforms, especially those who existed only online, put up a spirited defense with phrases like: “Forget Mars! Webnauts are the future of humankind”. That was another debate that raged in forums and vlogs: What to call them? Besides webnauts; other popular names included netdivers, interspacers and haboob. The later an acronym taken from the Arabic name for a dust storm.
Not since the election had the web been so consumed with shouting an opinion, which was ironic [irony having passed away with the inexorable rise of social media] considering that the individuals who were being called—Human.Avatars.Blogging.Openly.Online.Bodiless—were in fact completely unknown. Some claimed they were constructs of the Deep State created as Artificial Intelligence to wrest the internet from the fingertips of the free citizens of the world. Still others pointed the blame at tech companies, or aliens, or any number of hostile governments depending on who was actually writing the post. In private chat rooms, science fiction writers smugly congratulated themselves on their perspicacity and simultaneously bemoaned the lack of comprehension by policymakers and brainstormed ways to cash in on the frenzy.
They2.0, which is how ‘they’ always referred to each other, claimed to be post-racial, post-gender and post-dirt humans. Despite the best attempts of hackers, both freelance and government sponsored, no one found any evidence to contradict ‘their’ claim ‘they’d’ uploaded ‘their’ sentience into the Cloud and then had ‘their’ bodies destroyed. And thus, on October 29th, in front of a worldwide audience watching live-streamed video on multiple platforms, two hologram avatars exchanged vows and were duly married by a flesh-and-blood minister. After the ceremony, ‘they’ invited selected journalists back to ‘their’ VR home via interactive headsets.
As one prominent reporter later said off-the-record, “It was the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, but damn if it didn’t make me jealous to see the world ‘they’d’ created. ‘They’ll’ always be remembered for being the first to go, but I doubt ‘they’ll’ be alone for long.”
Spank Me Hard! ... Please? 
wow – interesting read …
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Thanks, May. It ties together a number of current trends.
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Whether erotic or mundane…your words ALWAYS catch my eye (and my interest).
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I appreciate your interest and thank you reading my words. I always strive to be interesting.
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I really admire your imagination, LS! You are so freaking creative 🙂
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Thank you, nora. There is a downside to being ‘freaking creative’, when I have lots of novels and stories all working at the same time.
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I’m not really seeing that as a downside, LS…you’ll get them all finished up eventually 🙂
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Now this is interesting! There’s so much in here that is fantasy now, but might be reality 20 years down the line… I like this!
Rebel xox
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It’s a theme or meme that has bubbled up over the years. Thanks for the like, Rebel.
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I really liked this as it was totally unexpected, really different and very clever 😊
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I highly recommend this book, Halting State by Charles Stross, set in Edinburgh and while not directly about being a ‘webnaut’, it is about a future of VR.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222472.Halting_State
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Thanks for the recommendation. I will look it up.
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You never cease to surprise me! This was a fascinating and intelligent read. I’d be really interested to see you dabble with full-on sci-fi erotica and see what appears (or beams down). You have the background reading knowledge and imagination for it.
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I’ve always said that erotica and literature are close neighbors, rather than the former being from the wrong side of the tracks. There are any number of sci-fi novels with sex, all it really is, is a change in venue. I like surprising you…
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I completely agree with you. To write and ignore the erotic, as many arbitrarily categorised books feel obliged to do, takes away from the intrinsic desires, needs and wants of both the characters in a story and the readers who are expected to consume this fiction (and I am specifically talking about fiction and not memoir, for instance). I completely believe in giving the reader the full and honest view of characters as you write, and if that means incorporating sex, fantasy, desire held only in thoughts, or a narrative that incorporates the sensual, then that’s what it should do. Far too many books shy away from this honesty. You don’t see thriller and crime writers (cozy mysteries excepted) writing a murder without detail of the crime and the gruesomeness that goes with it. Why should love, lust, or any form of sexual desire be different from that? Writing about desire and sex with no actual delving into those feelings and actions makes the writing less honest, less powerful, and, to me, less authentic.
Continue to surprise me, please…
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that is a interesting idea, It defiantly makes one wonder if “they” will become part of our society and culture one day if “they” aren’t already here watching us
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There has been, even before the Matrix, a school of philosophy that states we are already, and always have been living in a computer simulation.
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