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In a not too parallel future, wealth brought by technology had improved people's lives.
Life was easier. People didn't go grocery shopping anymore: they ordered their food with a click instead, and a drone delivered it home within ten minutes. There was no need to own a car: vehicle sharing systems made it possible to have one close at smartphone when needed. History classes were the moment children awaited the most at school: they relived the past interactively by means of holograms, exploring the old pyramids of Giza, and riding alongside ancient Romans to conquer the empire.
Life was simple and technology had led to important medical and scientific achievements, it had improved mobility, redistributed wealth by bridging the poverty gap and, above all, it had changed the way people interacted with each other.
The connection, in fact, had facilitated the exchange of ideas, allowing people to meet virtually, chat, work, play, and fall in love, even if they were hundreds of miles apart.
It all seemed utterly extraordinary… Connection and technology had given so much to humanity, but the spasmodic use of devices had turned control into abuse, and abuse into a problem.
Humans were dependent on the continuous connection: addicted to social media, they had started to live their lives stuck to the screen, and, before they could even realize it, they had slowly changed.
Hyper-connection had caused regression of the human brain, altered genetic growth, simplified all mental processes, and made everyone lazy and sedentary. Thus, the human body had begun to adapt to the sedentariness of the new ecosystem according to the laws of nature.
Body hair had begun to grow due to laziness and little personal care, and even moss had grown on the bodies of the most sedentary individuals. Nails had become as long as claws and the skull had gotten larger in order to better oxygenate the brain, compensating the lack of oxygen in the home space. Even the fittest human beings had begun to boast their athletic skills in the virtual world by means of their avatars, losing all of their shape. And so it was that, slowly, humans had turned into sloths.
And what initially had seemed to be the dawn of a new era, soon became a huge problem. Day after day, the streets had become less and less crowded, and the parks where children used to play had emptied out. Was it evolution? Or human decay?
When everything seemed lost, eight brilliant minds came together to find a solution and give humanity a new future. Nobody noticed the change, nobody had the strength and the will to change anything. After all, who would have dared to be an outsider in a world working against them? Just eight mad people. Or rather, eight mad scientists!
They had met through a tweet written by Dr. Anonymous, an excellent ethical hacker, and developer. Thanks to his research, he had noticed that hyper-connection had very serious negative effects on the population, such as stress, anxiety, depression, cognitive abilities loss, decreased memory, and sleep disorders. So it was that these scientists got in touch and exchanged valuable scientific knowledge with each other. They soon understood the extent of the problem and decided to come together to solve it!
After days of extensive evaluations, they finally decided it was time to act, and agreed to meet in a tumbledown secret location in the slums of New Pork. More precisely, in the lab of one of the most crazed robotic engineers on Earth: Dr. T-462. He was so keen on robotics that he himself had tried to turn into a cyborg, obtaining surprising results, to say the least! The drawback of his experiment, however, had been that he had become as pragmatic as a machine, losing the ability of understanding the difference between a joke and a serious speech. After all, AI was not his field of expertise.
Being too lazy to physically go grocery shopping, Dr. T-462 had invented a teleportation machine he only used for this purpose. By now, however, being a cyborg, he no longer needed food and so the teleporter had been inactive for a long time. The group of scientists then thought of using it as a means of secretly teleporting into the lab, but the machine was old and needed to be dusted off and optimized.
The only one who could help Dr. T-462 optimizing the machine and creating an interdimensional gateway for teleportation was Dr. Onoff. Dr. Onoff's story is a pretty unique one, and it dates back to a long time before the narrated events happened.
Back to the past…
To better understand who Dr. Onoff is, it is important to know the story of Dr. Rick Nixxon.
Dr. Rick Nixxon was an honorary professor at the prestigious Larvard University - based in Scambridge - where he taught intergalactic diplomacy. One day, during a walk in the city center, he got involved in a violent accident between a magnetic levitation bicycle and a flying car. The collision was so violent, that a bicycle wheel hit him in the face, decapitating him. Fortunately, medicine had made great strides, so Dr. Bubble Trouble was called in directly from Bostoff to save the professor's life.
Dr. Bubble Trouble was a genetic mutations expert, but he also was a rather scatty person. In fact, after an experiment went wrong, his body had merged with a box of chewing gum in his pocket, mutating completely. Despite this, he was the only person on Earth skilled enough to genetically mutate any living thing. He thus rushed to Scambridge and operated on Dr. Rick Nixxon urgently. The head couldn't be reattached anymore, it wouldn't have worked. So Dr. Bubble Trouble decided to give life to both the head and the decapitated body, creating two autonomous living beings... sort of.
From that day Rick Nixxon, or rather the head of the diplomatic luminary, had found himself living in a bottle full of conservative liquid, separately from his now autonomous body. On the other hand, the body had been given new life by replacing Dr. Nixxon's head with a self-conscious hologram… and Dr. Onoff came to life. He could be switched on and off with a switch, just like an electric stove. Given his problem, Mr. Onoff had decided to learn everything he could about hologram technology, thus becoming the greatest expert in quantum holography worldwide.
Back to the present…
Dr. T-462 connected remotely with Dr. Onoff, who, thanks to his hologram head, was able to be virtually present in the lab to personally follow the operations.
Once the transporter was fixed and optimized, the last thing left to do was to gather all the scientists in the lab!
The first one to teleport into the lab and physically reach Dr. T-462 was obviously Dr. Onoff, followed by his old half, Dr. Rick Nixxon!
The fourth scientist to arrive was Dr. Eyesenberg, a well-known pharmaceutical chemist. He was said to be the inventor of the so-called Slenzu beans: bean-shaped capsules that healed a large amount of wounds of any kind, instantly curing the body and also restoring the spiritual energy of those who ate one. But, just like all scientists, he had a screw loose. To find out whether his experiments worked or not, Dr. Eyesenberg used a fellow student of his, Dr. PEDS, as a guinea pig. Dr. PEDS had been given this nickname because of the large number of steroid drugs he had taken during the experiments. But this is another story...
The fifth scientist was Dr. PEDS himself. You might not know it, but the high amounts of steroids he had taken during the experiments had turned him into a beast, provoking a dissociative identity disorder. It is said that, on full moon nights, he used to dance with wolves together with Kevin Costless. Dr. PEDS was a nuclear physics enthusiast: he had worked on the construction of many nuclear power plants, such as ChernoBilly, and the excessive exposure to radiation had caused him to grow two fangs instead of his canines.
Finally, last but not least, arrived Dr. Legstrong. Passionate about astronomy from an early age, she graduated in Astrophysics and Cosmology at Standfor University with lowest marks. Her hobby was spacewalking on the moon on leap days. Dr. Legstrong was certain that in order to change the world, humanity needed to work on more space innovations. The funniest thing about her was that, ever since she had put on her spacesuit for the first time, she hadn't been able to take it off anymore. But let's look on the bright side: she would have no longer wasted time showering again.
Once all the scientists were teleported to the lab, they began to study and figure out how they could find a way to limit hyper-connection, each one of them bringing knowledge from their own field of expertise.
Dr. PEDS proposed to nuclear detonate all internet networks. Dr. Bubble Trouble proposed to contaminate water supplies worldwide with a special fluid that would have mutated brain cells, making them more active in order to counteract hyper-connection. Dr. Eyesenberg proposed spraying liters of adrenaline into the air and giving those lazy sloths a boost of life. Dr. Nixxon proposed to fine those who stayed at home more than 27 hours a day 10,000 SLOPHY TOKENS.
All effective solutions, yet very drastic. There seemed to be no solution to this problem. But after hours and hours of brainstorming, Dr. Legstrong realized they had to deal with the problem from above. Literally. From outer space.
EUREKA!
They realized that in order to solve the hyper-connection problem, all forms of connection had to be disabled on a daily basis and at regular intervals. But how could they make it without turning people (or rather, sloths) crazy and sad? Dr. Anonymous proposed to develop a software application to be installed in the sloths' smartphones, which would have emanated regressive psychedelic waves during the disconnection pauses... Psychedelic properties would have transported people's minds to wonderful places, reminding everyone how beautiful it was to move around and live on Earth, while regressive properties would have slowly restored the population's human form (perhaps with a little more body hair than before). These small breaks of daily disconnection would have re-accustomed the sloths to healthy digital habits, making them more productive and improving their mental health.
All the scientists set to work and brought their specific knowledge to bear. They had to intervene as soon as possible, so they worked sloth-unbearable hours for days on end, even 13 minutes a day, but their project was finally ready!
To put their plan into action, the mad scientists thought that the sloths needed an incentive to start using the application...
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