Right now, I stand before a giant, flawless, glowing black sphere, watching my footprints, other’s footprints, and every existent being’s physical and figurative footprints flood the surface of the sphere in the form of bright blue dots. In less than a fraction of a second, the surface is filled entirely neon blue, and immediately another stand-by machine would beep once and “peel off” the outmost surface of the sphere, a film-like sheet, and deposit that thin film into a dark hole located at the bottom of the black sphere. 

This film, containing information of tens and thousands of people’s physical, mental, or digital footprints, would be sent to a higher authority to be read, meticulously, and analysed with equal care. No one’s “footprintional”-information is let go. No one is free. No one’s presence, in any form, is ignored or unknown.

In this world, we are chained like dead birds to a withered tree, perhaps for infinity.

Well, thousands (no – a number far more than that) of people have now realised, there’re a higher authority controlling your life. You have no personal choice. Thus, like me, they’ve gathered right at this spot, before this dark sphere, limp and thoughtless… like dead livings. What’s the point of anything else, anymore?

I believe you don’t understand anything that is happening. It’s okay. You’ll understand after I told you a tragic story about footprints.

In my world, our scientists discovered a special matter in each and every one of our footprints – a special matter that is linked to a greater, central mass – basically a bigger mass of that very type of matter, or called the Ultra-particle – exactly that black sphere located in the centre of this world.

By connecting the sphere to this solid soil of this earth (not Earth), all our footprints, mental, physical, digital footprints would be tracked and displayed on the Ultra-particle.

Don’t you want other people to have the right mindset? I knew their slogan sounded wrong. It sparked a pretty big debate among the other intellectuals, but… as they say, even live birds must eventually land on trees. Initially, the newspapers exploded with extremely hopeful and bright articles on how this discovery could lead to “extermination of every kind of crime”, “catching serial murders once and for all”, “rid of all malicious or incorrect thoughts”, “ensure safety of everyone’s personal choice on every kind of thing”. Afterall, no one really could do anything unrecorded by others. 

Quick as under less than a week, a few members from that group of scientists who made the Ultra-particle discovery formed their own World’s Highest Authority Association, WHAA which, as mentioned previously, act as the utmost judgement association that will examine and judge the moral degree of the thoughts and actions provided by each footprint. Footprints tagged as “harmful”, “incorrect”, “inaccurate” or the rare “accepted” will have a different treatment given to their owner.

“Enlightenment” process, a few journalists called it.

Driven by extravagant payments, scores of unbeknownst digital developers signed up to develop an Artificial Intelligence machine to record and train up a “standard” “enlightenment education” model based on the WHAA’s judgement on the information provided by a now uncountable amount of footprints. Soon, this AI will take over most of the judgement process and sift through all the “footprintional” information with unimaginable speed. Everyone’s footprints would be judged in “utmost equality”, newspapers echoed.

What’s so harmful of re-enlightening “enlightened” people, anyway?

As soon as the freshness of this discovery died down, the reality proved to be more detrimental than what was originally thought – everyone’s everything has been exposed – every organism is now transparent, glass bodied.

We are now transparent. We are eternally and completely tracked. We are no longer, and never will be, most-likely, free of choice.

People started to realise.

People start to regret their choice. Their gullibility. Their fate.

People started to rack their brains out, day and night, finding a way to get around the situation, to overcome the WHAA, to hack this problem, to remove their existence.

The WHAA tracked down every single one of these problematic “revolutionists” and simply destroyed them. Only a year passed – and now the fact is clear – it’s impossible.

People started to lose hope, to lose will, to lose everything their once existing personal choice have ever controlled. Most never did anything, mentally, physically, digitally, every again.

Then why do I still tell this story? To bother to speak these last words I’ll ever have to speak at all?

Because I am controlled. To whisper this tale in my mind so I would remember how painfully I had died.

Because I have no choice. Because the ubiquitous footprints of the Ultra-particle have already chained and ripped and shattered our souls.

Leaving only our empty footprints. Frozen at the foot of the Ultra-particle sphere.

There was no escape.