2060.10.05

Journal Entry 1

Amazon Sector 4-G

To Whom it May Concern:

 

Dear reader,

 

I hope this finds you well. I fear I am writing to myself, and they will find and destroy this drive within minutes. You will have to excuse me if I trail off, I don’t have much time. Nevertheless, I find it clears my mind to write my thoughts down, and I am at a turning point in my life which requires great clarity. Perhaps through my writing I will devise a moral compass to navigate these tumultuous times.

 

My story begins in Concord, New Hampshire, a long forgotten place. Its October 10th, 2025 and I’ve just sat down at my desk as a software engineer to continue the drab and monotonous tasks that my dictatorial boss has once again delegated to me. Instead of beginning the mind numbing work, I naturally decided to surf the internet in the hopes of wasting as much company time as humanly possible. I went to my regular time wasters: Instagram, Twitter and then the Mercedes website in attempt to dream about what my life could be if I continued my path as a well paid office drone. I noticed in the footer of the web page that Mercedes no longer had ownership of its company, Amazon had bought them out.

 

This discovery didn’t exactly shock me to the core. Sure, Amazon started as a small online bookstore, but Bezos has always been hungry for exclusive market purchases. In 1999, Amazon secured the patent on One Click[1] shopping; you just press a button to buy a product. Amazon continued to grow in the early 2000’s when they added clothing to their inventory. In the coming years, Amazon went on to acquire numerous brands and patents including: Audible, Zappos, Kiva Systems and even Whole Foods. They even made early attempts to buy the New York Post, a common newspaper that I never read. As I had just discovered, Amazon went on to control large shares of the automotive industry in 2025. Amazon didn’t stop with ground transportation; they bought out Space-X and arranged a deal with NASA to be the sole proprietor of space travel in the US. Amazon even launched its own line of commercial airliners, quickly rising as a cheap and fast alternative to the publicly scorned United or American airlines.

 

My degree was in computer science, I had a severe gap in my knowledge of politics and business, and my boss certainly wasn’t about to pay for my professional development. Instead, I decided I couldn’t care less if Amazon owned air travel, in fact it made my travel cheaper.

 

I only started getting annoyed when Amazon launched Amazon: Health, a national healthcare program with exceptionally competitive rates. It wasn’t long before Amazon: Health had knocked out nearly every private health insurance company in the business, including mine. I had pretty good benefits at my job, it was a chief factor in why I even applied to a job I hate in the first place! Amazon: Health putting my health care provider out of business made me angry. Now I had to pay for my health insurance and continue to do the work that I hate. I briefly considered trying to get a job at Amazon, the healthcare was free for all employees; an unbeatable deal. Because of my own inertia (some might say laziness) I decided to stay at my current job and continued to waste the time of both my employer and myself.

 

In 2030, Amazon had staked its claim in pretty much every industry. There was Amazon: Education, Amazon: Housing, any program you can imagine had that telltale ‘Amazon:’ inscribed before it. This year, they expanded their health program with one of the most incredible breakthroughs in neuroscience the world had ever seen -- the Brain Enhancement Program. I was horrified; what a terrible name, did a sixth grader come up with it? They should have used my idea, the Auxiliary Brain Program. That’s what the Brain Enhancement Program really was. Amazon technicians took the brain from a patient in a vegetative state and attached it to one of their executives. The Brain Enhancement Program was all over the web, it was even on the front page of Amazon: Client, the web browser which replaced Google in 2023. They told us that the procedure was safe, and it would soon be available to the public. I’ve always been below average as far as intelligence, work ethic and mental health goes, so this was an extremely attractive procedure to me. I decided to do some research, and here is what I learned:

The Procedure

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Figure 1: Brain Connections1

 

The procedure was a simple concept. First, through a large cocktail of intravenous drugs, the brain of a comatose patient is wiped. According to Amazon, this meant that any memories, brain irregularities, any information at all are completely erased, like wiping a hard drive. During this process, the subject of the Brain Enhancement Program is put on a drug regimen of their own, various medications billed to reduce the risk of organ rejection and prepare the body for major surgery. Once the two patients are properly drugged up, the procedure can begin. The subject and the donor are both lulled into an anesthesia-fueled slumber. Both patients have the tops of their skulls removed, and the doctors begin the arduous process of mapping each neural connection of the subjects brain to the donors. The connections are formed with a bio-engineered wire, too thin for the naked eye to perceive. This looks quite similar to the artwork of Oran Catts and Ionat Zurr[2] shown in figure one, where the plastic tubing is a protective sleeve for the invisible wires. Once these wires are connected, they form a cord, similar to the cord we all have running down our spines. The cord is wrapped in a nano-fibre protective sheathing and the operation section of the Brain Enhancement Program is complete. The body of the donor is incinerated, and the subject awakes the next day to begin their week long rehabilitation process.

 

The Aftermath

 

Amazon released a detailed schedule for their rehabilitation process. They told us it began with simple psychological testing, screening for any illness or irregularity remaining in the subject. The next few days were spent explaining the capabilities the subject now possessed, increased memory (both short and long term), superior computational skills, and most importantly a newly plastic portion of the brain. Brain plasticity means that the brain can be molded to take on new responsibilities, it deteriorates with age. This meant that the user could combine the learning techniques they had learned as an adult in the world with the neuroplasticity of a child[3]. Languages could be learned with the flick of a finger, concepts once impossible could be filed into new regions of the auxiliary brain. After the four day lecture, they just let you go. Right back into society, and nobody (except you) was the wiser.

It really seemed like the program for me! I was excited, but my paranoia got the better of me and I decided that I didn’t want anyone tampering with my brain; except of course me and the army of psychiatrists I paid to do so. Instead, I decided to sit back and observe; the Brain Enhancement Program fascinated me, and I wanted to learn as much as I could.

 

I spent countless hours on the Brain Enhancement Program website. In my defense, there was a lot of content to look at. Amazon offered Brain Carrying Cases in a variety of costs and customizations. Some of these cases were super light, some had a gyroscope included to stabilize the brain and reduce motion sickness and prevent headaches. The top tier models boasted extreme brain customization: buttons and levers to control the levels of neurotransmitters in your brain. Other top of the line models claimed to have synaptic enhancing liquid, speeding up the neural transmissions and making you even quicker and smarter.

 

People certainly needed a place to put their second brain, but the array of products didn’t stop here. Soon, Amazon launched a supercomputer designed only for the subjects of the Brain Enhancement Program. When this product came out I let out a deep sigh, I knew that soon my job would be replaced by the rising smarter species. The computer surrounded the whole head, and without two brains it was impossible to comprehend, the messages and signals came at an unbelievable speed. I tested one out at the Amazon Depot at the corner of my district and left feeling flustered and stupid.

 

I felt stupid because I was still human. A new species had been born, a man-machine hybrid, or cyborg if you will. Not only did these people have machinery connecting their brains to each other, they now had their own technology that only those with cybernetic enhancements could use. It was not, however as Harroway[4] once mused; these cyborgs were not born from machine, they were instead modified by a power hungry corporation. Instead of a cyborg race, I would classify the new species as monsters, riding the border between human and machine. I wasn’t sure yet if these artefactual[5] monsters were good or evil.

 

Soon, Amazon ran into some roadblocks. There are only so many comatose patients in the US, and their families are not all willing to give them up to a violent procedure. Amazon started offering larger benefit packages to the families of comatose patients to trade their loved one into the Brain Enhancement Program. Benefits were tailored to each specific family, breaks on healthcare, a new car, maybe even a relocation free of charge. It wasn’t long before the US was completely devoid of comatose patients. Amazon then opened the doors of its donation centers to the volunteers. These were usually the elderly, the mentally ill and the homeless. Amazon offered security and wealth to their loved ones, so those who felt they were a burden lined up begrudgingly at the gates to be harvested for their brain. Amazon made it frighteningly easy to become a donor, all you had to do was to press a button signifying your electronic signature and consent to the program. If you were unfit to press the button, a family member or dependent could take over and press it for you.

 

The system was obviously abused. People would bring in their loving grandpa and come out with a new sports car. Families were more divided than ever, as were other close relationships. It turns out theres not a lot of community and a society where everything gets done for you. Not only was the donation system abused by families, an entirely new type of bounty hunter arose. The bounty hunter would find you, forge documents to pose as a dependent, and donate you for Amazon benefits. These bounty hunters reminded me of those in the LeVar Burton[6]  science fiction story, Aftermath, except instead of hunting human skin, these hunters went straight for the brain.1 Of course the company offered bonuses for repeated donation referrals.

 

Another topic of contention in the Brain Enhancement Program was the brain wipe. Amazon assured its customers that the chemical brain wipe of a donor was absolute. Reports started to come in that this was not the case. Many previously-healthy customers explained that they were now suffering from paranoia, schizophrenia, clinical depression, and a wide assortment of other mental illnesses stemming from the Brain Enhancement procedure. Amazon was unconcerned by these side effects, no spokesperson left the large grey buildings to make a statement.

 

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Figure 2: People experienced severe side effects[7]

 

It’s important that you know the structure of the modern Amazon corporations, because you will understand the resistance better. Amazon: Housing was a huge success, undercutting the real estate market. Amazon owned all the houses, and they decided to break the US into districts so it would be easier to relocate anyone who wanted to move. Each district had a few key landmarks for customer satisfaction. There was an Amazon Headquarters, these came in all shapes and sizes but basically boiled down to a big boring building. I mentioned the Amazon Depot earlier, an easy spot to pick up anything you ordered online, or to test drive any product you might have wanted to buy. These were on every street corner, Amazon mandated that the nearest depot must be at most a ten minute walk from each customer. Other notable landmarks where the police stations. I hated cops even before Amazon took the police force, but now not only did they pull you over for speeding, but they would also try and sell you speed regulators, or various packages with the benefit of getting pulled over less frequently. Each district also had an integration center, a place where the unemployed, directionless or anyone who was displeased with their current job could go to be integrated into the Amazon workforce. The other important landmark that I can think of is, of course, the donation center.

 

The inside of the Amazon Headquarters was a place no one with half a brain (or one brain for that matter) dared to go. Speculation as to what lay within the big gray doors of the building circulated online constantly. Generally, the public accepted that the highest level Amazon employees never left. Leaked images showed large offices, dimly lit from the glow of dual brain computers and the massive stacks of servers littered across the room. It was theorized that the executives didn’t even leave their chairs; some people online claimed to have a janitorial job cleaning the executive offices, but I didn't buy it, Amazon would never allow a security breach of that magnitude. It was as though they no longer had a use for their bodies[8], the corporeal elements of themselves were gone. All they did was interface with these extremely complex computers. Another feature of the executive offices was a dual pin steel lock, with one of those spinning wheels you would usually see in a bank vault. Amazon took their security very seriously, and put up numerous safeguards, both physical and cyber.

 

 

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Figure 3: Inside Amazon Headquarters[9]

 

This all happened frighteningly fast. I went from an eager consumer to a terrified protester in a matter of five years. There were peaceful marches, violent riots, and every other form of protest you can imagine. These protests were strictly contained in the US, I used to check the internet for international protest groups but I couldn’t find any. I couldn’t prove it, but I was almost certain that Amazon was blocking sections of the internet outside the US.

 

The big problem with protesting in your district was the Amazon police force. They specifically designed each district to have a one to five police to customer ratio. This ratio was made possible by a semi-robotic police force. The police captains were still humans, but the workhorses of the force were robotic drones, programmed to do as their superiors bid. This allowed for control of the robotic police force from a remote location, which made it much easier for the dual brain police captains. It’s was quite difficult to drag an auxiliary brain around with you, even if you had the expensive defense case. This new system allowed the captains to sit behind an array of supercomputers, strategizing and commanding at an alarming rate.

 

You were allowed to travel between districts, but you had to bring your passport and cross through a security checkpoint every time. Interdistrict travel was closely monitored, and anyone who came or went was counted and screened. Amazon shut down international travel, claiming that with their superior relocation program, any international family could be placed happily in a district. They claimed that international travel was not illegal, and they didn’t tear down the airports, but I don’t know of anyone who left the country and came back. The transit bans and quotas were unrelenting, this made mass protests impossible! we could never get a large enough group of people that would not be immediately extinguished by the police. I spent my late thirties engaging in protest after protest, each effort more feeble than the last. By the time I was forty I had completely given up. Standing protests were not the only type of resistance that Amazon met. In a model similar to the 2008 project Google Will Eat Itself[10], a talented programmer created a network of websites that would pose various product advertisements and gain money through clicks in an effort to build a bankroll for the resistant force.

 

The majority of Americans had now undergone the Brain Enhancement Program, and I was quickly laid off. I used my education and industry experience to wipe myself from Amazons grid. I arranged for the donation of some poor guy who was supposed to be me, and I sealed myself underground. Yep, I’m one of those doomsday preppers you used to see on TV. At least I still had my sanity. The protests stopped altogether once the majority of people were Enhanced. Amazon released a statement that all citizens who had undergone the Brain Enhancement Program had also signed a consent form sacrificing their will to protest against Amazon. The company had chemically altered the brains of Americans to stop them from even being able to conceptualize rebellion.

 

Our only hope is the outside world. Amazon has dominant control of the US and the moon colonies; I know that for certain from my research. What I can't seem to pinpoint, however, is the scope of Amazon’s control on other sections of the earth. I haven’t set foot outside of the neighboring districts, much less attempted to travel internationally, so I can’t say I’ve seen any of this with my own eyes. There are rumors circulating online that Amazon was met with greater resistance in other countries, that the US is the only country under full Amazon control. Tomorrow I set sail for Russia. I can’t give details in this digital entry as they might be listening. If you’re reading this, I’ve already made my escape.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

Breedlove, S. Marc. Principles of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press USA, 307–351.

 

Burton, LeVar. Aftermath Aspect; Warner Books, December 1, 1997.

 

DePillis, Lydia, and Ivory Sherman. “Amazon's Extraordinary 25-Year Evolution.” CNN. Cable News Network, October 4, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/10/business/amazon-history-timeline/index.html.

 

 

 “Google Will Eat Itself,” GWEI - Google WIll Eat Itself.

http://www.gwei.org/index.php.

 

Harraway, Donna. A Cyborg Manifesto, (The Socialist Review) 1985

 

Lykke, Nina. Between Monsters, Goddeses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations With Science, Zed Books, 1996.

 

Muntadas, Antoni and collaborators. The File Room, 1994, physical installation.

 

Renè, Laloux. La planète sauvage (Fantastic Planet), 1973. © Les Films Armorial - Argos Films.

 

The Tissue Project (Catts, Oran and  Zurr, Ionat), Victimless Leather : A Prototype of Stitch-less Jacket Grown in a Technoscientific “Body”, 2004, tissue sculpture.

 

Vonnegut, Kurt. Welcome to The Monkey House: Unready to Wear. Dell Publishing  336-56.

 

 

[1]https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2018/10/business/amazon-history-timeline/index.html

[2] The Tissue Project (Oran Catts and Ionat Zurr), Victimless Leather : A Prototype of Stitch-less Jacket Grown in a Technoscientific “Body”, 2004, tissue sculpture.

[3] S. Marc Breedlove, Principles of Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press USA), 307–351.

[4] Donna Harraway, A Cyborg Manifesto, (The Socialist Review) 1985

[5] Nina Lykke, Between Monsters, Goddeses and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations With Science, (Zed Books 1996).

[6] LeVar Burton, Aftermath (Aspect; Warner Books, December 1, 1997)

[7] Laloux Renè, La planète sauvage (Fantastic Planet), 1973. © Les Films Armorial - Argos Films.

[8] Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to The Monkey House: Unready to Wear (Dell Publishing)  336-56

[9] Antoni Muntadas and collaborators, The File Room, 1994, physical installation.

[10]  “Google Will Eat Itself,” GWEI - Google WIll Eat Itself, http://www.gwei.org/index.php.