Thebox

Tam awoke at the same time his alarm always woke him, 8:00am. He wiped his eyes, brushed his teeth and ate breakfast before he had to report back to bed for school in forty minutes. Thebox would know if he was late. Tam’s father entered the kitchen,

“Tam, I have a meeting today on my Thebox, and I can’t receive the grocery delivery at 1:00 p.m. You’re a big guy now, you can handle it right?” Tam brightened with excitement,

“Definitely!” He skipped his way to the bathroom to shower before school began. He slid back into bed in fresh pajamas just in time and Thebox automatically turned itself on.

“Good Morning,” Thebox was reporting morning announcements. A soothing woman’s voice cooed,

“Today is April 2, 2071…” She continued on but Tam’s attention drifted off. He couldn’t wait until he was sixteen when certain restrictions would be lifted and he could watch, Jarconimae, with all the blood included. His older sister once told him about a decoder where they could watch anything and Thebox wouldn’t detect it, almost like hackers during the Wild Internet days. Tam’s sister shushed him loudly because he repeated the word, “decoder” just a tad too loud and their parents looked up from their Theboxes.

The first lesson began, it was the second installment of a Thebox history course. Tam was in the fourth grade. He watched as Thebox screened a dramatic reenactment of it all. Thebox was created by two men way back in 2005, on the front porch of a quaint town in New Jersey. They were young vibrant and poor. Arnold and Andy, complaining about the ills of the industry.
            “I mean that’s essentially what will become the future isn’t it? If only Eltunes would make it an option to download movies as well as music and eventually everything could be available right away through this medium alone. I mean sure there are pitfalls, advertisers would have no sure way to prevent people from fast-forwarding through commercials, and there is always the big problem of how to run the one huge epicenter of it all. All we need is the money to make it happen.” Arnold paused at his good friend Andy’s insight and the moon looked huge as it shone on their backs. Tam noticed the large moon’s clarity back then and asked Thebox for a scientific explanation on this coloration. But Thebox gave a warning,

            “No talking in class.” And resumed with the historical reenactment. Arnold and Andy’s eyes had a crescent glimmer in them even in the shadows,

“Well that sounds like a great business plan, as long as you’d be cool to anyone who tried to join along, you know and not get caught up in management.”

            “Oh no, of course not, we’ll give credit where it’s due, everyone will be equal, it’s just important to finally make this happen, it’ll be a breakthrough, I mean think of it, you can download anything available at all times all over the world.”

            “I know, it wouldn’t matter to the studios, because people would still go out to the theaters to watch the films, it’s a totally different experience, and at some point people would watch everything at least once. People need for this to happen.”

The voiceover continued with an explanation of what followed upon Arnold and Andy’s radical business plan moving into action.

“Movie theatres closed, most entertainment in general over the course of the next fifty years conformed to a televised lifestyle. Entertainers still made great money because Thebox, Inc. charged each user a fee for certain shows and some of this was in turn paid to the performers and artists. School eventually began to be taught by Thebox, it made sense, why bother wasting the fuel and time and clothing to cart kids off to school.”

Later that day after his fourth-period Russian history class the buzzer rang. Tam ran to the door buzzer to greet the deliveryman. He was appalled when he opened the door. He hadn’t opened it in three years and he now understood why the windows to the house were covered with dark shades. The air was black with smoke it looked like a war zone and the delivery boy looked like a peasant from the age of serfdom. Tam didn’t remember it looking this way, he’d seen it when he was younger.

            The deliveryman had the most tired eyes Tam had ever seen. His sister told him that some people can’t afford Theboxes and as a result they get no education.

            “Have you seen the moon without smog?” he asked the deliveryman.

            “Come on kid just sign the paper, I got so many orders coming in today.”

            “I saw it once in Colorado,” Tam said as he signed the paper.

            “Heh, yeah that’s real cute kid, Colorado is a landfill now, you knew that didn’tcha?” he caught on to Tam’s confusion and filled him in,

“Yeah, well it’s the place where Ole’ Arnie planted his corpocracy years ago, but it wasn’t good enough for him, so now it’s an abandoned town.” He noticed the kid’s naivety and mumbled as he walked away,

“I bet Thebox didn’t teach ya bout that.”

Tam stepped outside and stared at the sky.

This was so drastic, he’d never seen anything like it. Was there a war? How could that peasant breathe? He heard a voice booming in the distance over loudspeakers. Tam never got to go outside as a kid, although he asked his parents repeatedly. He wanted to play in the grass and trees like in the movies, but he gave up on harassing his parents around the age of eight. He would always use ammo he’d received from Thebox during Earth Science class, about humans needing sunlight. But someone had thought of that, hence the hour or more of exposure to UV rays in the sunroom, located in the back of the house with no windows.

Tam kept walking toward a big stadium-like structure. He approached the sound getting  louder and louder of a man with a powerful reverberating voice. 

“We must begin again the revolution!! Turn off your Theboxes, take a stand!” Tam mounted a steep hill and approached the crowd. The stadium was a duplication of Rome's Coliseum for the World’s Fair forty years back, it was colossal and seemed more so with the sea of faces crowding it. It was jam-packed with underlings who looked just like the delivery guy. Masses of men and women with drab smeared faces, everything was grey from their clothes to their complexions. Tam had never been around these kind of people before.

“Turn off your Theboxes, before they destroy us all completely!” The man shouting looked like a raving derelict,

“Revolution isn’t possible through a box, we have to rise above this, we must surpass the Thebox Corpocracy. Revolution has not been seen in this century. Remember the Civil Rights Movement! Free-Speech Movement! And the wars, we are in ten wars now. People! The revolution will not happen as long as we sit idly by. Some say it’s pointless but then we’d still be waving clubs in a cave.” The crowd went wild cheering. The next speaker came running up to the mic. Tam thought it was an outburst but apparently she was next in line to speak. Her voice was very deep and mellow but still boomed,

“Like the traditional song says, Video killed the radio star,” the crowd grew quiet, drawn to the suspense in her voice, “and as I look around I see life, I see we are ripe, we want change. We must rise up against the Corpocracy.” At this the crowd cheered and whistled. She was turned on her voice became louder, “How many times have you seen the moon or grass in real life?” At this many shouted and an audible, Never resounded, “That’s right! NEVER!!! We are burning in this industrial wasteland and the overlings have no idea what is going on here. They are all taken care of, the corpocracy mandated that they close out all sun light, they have no clue what is going on here. A century ago, theorists would jokingly say, ‘They can’t buy the sun.’ Well they’ve done it folks. And we have to fight!!” At this the crowd went wild, she couldn’t get another word in for the next few minutes. Tam felt the energy around. He was scared and excited all at once, he wasn’t sure if a riot would break out. She patted the mic as if she were banging a gavel, “People we must also remember it’s easy to hate the overlings,” at this more cheering, “But we must rise above that automaton mentality, we must realize that they are a product of their environment and Thebox has poisoned their minds. They do not leave their homes, they do not live in this world. All of the images projected to them are of a false reality. Most of them don’t know about the moon. A lot of those overlings are slaves as well. We must be compassionate. We must convince them to join us. Love is the answer, we cannot hate, that is what the corpocracy wants. We fight with the might of knowledge.” The crowd went insane,

“Okay?!” she said louder now, “We must Fight for the Light!”

Tam was scared. Just then someone grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him. It was his older sister.

            “Tam! What the hell are you doing here?!” He was relieved to see her.

            “I don’t know. I came outside and heard the noise. Why is it so overcast? Where is the moon?”

            “You are so sheltered. Come on, let’s go home.” As they walked home, Tam wondered how she had left the house. He realized he had never left the house before. Not once in his entire life.