FAST and Futureless

A 2023 Portland Indie Game Squad Summer Slow Jam game! (Playtime: 5-10 minutes)

Note: Due to problems with Godot 4.1's HTML export, this game does not run correctly in some browsers. Please use a different browser such as Firefox, Edge, or Chrome, or try a download version. Thanks!

In a way, video games destroyed the world.

It took three decades, but the consumer economics of 3D gaming chips eventually started the golden age of AI outsourcing. Domains previously thought secure from automation, including medicine, science, law, engineering, marketing, and education, rapidly became targets for predictive pattern recognition.

It turned out that, like numerical calculations and encyclopedic recall, “smart jobs” could be done more efficiently by machines. Ironically, the biggest obstacle to the replacement of smart jobs had been researchers perceiving the consciousness and intelligence required to perform them. What was needed to break through, besides sheer industrial power, was to view the jobs in the most naïve way possible: just a soulless numerical pattern.

For, unlike their human counterparts, the new AI was anything but intelligent; instead, mindless, grinding numerical ciphers reflected human patterns like broken mirrors, flawed but sufficient for venal purposes. All that was left, really, was to figure out what to do with the billions of people who soon were left unemployed.

A new servant economy, growing out of “gig” and piecework regressions of labor rights, limped along for a couple decades. But the next generation of wealthy elites found they were much more comfortable with AI than the nagging guilt and distrust they felt in the presence of human slaves. A more permanent solution was needed.

And that’s how the “Deal of the Future” came to be. In exchange for sterilization and epigenetically abbreviated lifespans, the masses would be guaranteed basic income and housing for the remainder of their lives.

The program was mandatory and exceptions were extraordinarily few, granted on the basis of the Facilitated Aptitude Speed Test (FAST). FAST was implemented to accommodate a contingent of elites who were worried about the monocultural future of the rich. They wanted to ensure the survival of the brightest sliver of the masses to be a eugenic stock for future admixture with the elites.

Like the AI revolution, FAST grew out of video gaming roots and expanded upon research linking reaction time with general intelligence. Put simply, the faster people could react to prompts, the better their general intelligence. And, those who were fast and smart enough, were allowed special status within the Deal of the Future, including longer lifespans and being able to have children with other FAST selectees.

Candidate 5037335470, This is your day to take the FAST. You will be given three tests. Using your phone, gamepad, or keyboard, complete each one without any errors as quickly as you can. Within a few minutes, your fate will be decided. Good luck. 

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Credits

• Programming, Writing, and Art by Dominic Blais

Free resources used:

• "Contrail One" font by Riccardo De Franceschi
• Lacrimosa - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Requiem, K. 626. Rec. 1956 Salzburg Festival. Bruno Walter with the Vienna Philharmonic. (Public domain)

Copyright (c) 2023 by Dominic Blais. https://mmg.company