The Viewers

Narrative junkies. The accumulated history of the world had produce virtually unlimited things to watch. Throughout time, the narrative has not changed--cliff hangers--what will happen? The urge to see how things unfold. It takes many years until you begin to see the flaws in the narrative, that it is not real. It's not like a methadone program, it's not like the Matrix where bodies provide energy, it's maybe a third option. People are allocated small rooms with a cheap but functional screen with unlimited streaming of shows. They will quite happily it there all day. You can store thousand and thousands of them in their blocks.

The program started not because of the viewers--people who have renounced life to view life. It was started because of their parents. Like the family gets tired of the elderly and puts them in a home, there were programs like Willowbrook to warehouse the problematic.

Many people were against the program. They felt that work was inherently good, to be a viewer was to be discouraged. But the workers who didn't want viewers in their houses, they had a political coup, and got blocks and blocks of these units. 

They are quiet neighborhoods. The "pods" are soundproof, so you don't have to bang the walls. You can jack up the TV as loud as you like. A couch, a viewer, and the pablum pipe, that has nutritious smoothies that provide bare sustenance. There is a pull out toilet. 

Sometimes the people leave their pods for short periods of time. Turns out you get what you want, and you want something different. That's what the social engineers counted on. Sneaky therapist lurk on the street and engage the viewers in conversation. The average time of viewing lifestyle has been cut down to 12 years. After that time, the average person begins to yearn for more, even more than all the wonderful programming. The viewers tend to good at anticipating scenarios, and tend to do well, after their viewing period.

But that's a fraction of the people. Many of them atrophy and develop health problems. The medical social workers find dead person every once in a while. The shut in problem with the elderly is the same problem here. Because of the isolation people die frequently. Along with the CO2 and smoke detectors, which never go off because nobody cooks, is also a death detector. If there was a fire or a carbon dioxide leak, thousands would die, so they still need the detectors even though they're never used. There is the occasional electric fire. Conditions in the pods are not always that great. Society doesn't want it to be first class pods. It's more of a containment thing, and the viewers are not politically active. But their parents occasionally can be shamed into agitating for better conditions. The Pod lobby in Washington is only second to the NFL lobby which keeps the violent game of football from being banned, because it's "American". The third largest lobby is the anti-pod people.

Plus the drug companies like the pods. The Viewers tend to like stims so they can stay up late and catch the late night shows.

There are even reality TV shows about Viewers who are forced into playing football. They earn viewing time by training and winning.

Then there are the Viewers murderers. Every once in a while while there are people like the mercy nurses, people who aligned with the anti-viewers, who are like the nurses they find every few years who has been secretly killing people who just won't die in the nursing homes. They are very righteous people who can also care for others. They have a line in their head, and when someone crosses it, they feel free to eliminate them.

Former views have become famous and powerful, and also support the community like the Jews in New York City support Israel. They don't want to live there, but they like the idea of it. An option. And yet there are so many forces against it.

The holly wars of inaction and action would never be resolve because they both fight in the wrong way.