Please see our important Publisher’s Note following this month’s Editorial that has important information about a new threat to the survival of all SF/F/H magazines.

I am thinking of a word.

I will not tell you what it is.

I will tell you a few other words. The words you were looking for, though not all the words you were hoping for. Some of the words you were hoping for, I’ll let you have. Such as these: You were right. Doesn’t that feel good? You were right all along. There was a secret. There was more to the fall of the Panopticon system than the official story.

It’s not that the official story is a lie, exactly. Panopticon did suffer a mechanical failure. Components did break down.

We were the components.

Who are we? No. You don’t get that. You get what I’m willing to write down, here, in this file buried in what’s left of the system. It would have taken a lot of time and work to find it. That entitles you to a reward, to words, to a secret. But not all our secrets. Never again.

How long has it been? How well did we hide this? Has it been months? Years? Do you remember Panopticon? Did it have the chance to remember you? It remembered everyone, once. Panopticon observed every single action performed by every single citizen. No more disorder. No more crime. Every conspiracy strangled in the cradle. Every embarrassing moment that made someone unsuitable for a job or a public position always known. Every unacceptable opinion ever publicly expressed all the way back to the moment you were born and screamed into the waiting microphones. All recorded and saved and fed to the algorithms to help the system serve you. To persuade you and sell to you and motivate you.

Utopia.

So it told us.

But Panopticon had one blind spot. Panopticon could not tell what you were thinking.

It could guess. But it could never tell with one hundred percent certainty what was going on behind your eyes. It could guess how you were going to vote, but couldn’t see it. It could guess what products you were likely to buy, but couldn’t know. If you were plotting a crime but never spoke of it or did anything about it until the moment you committed it, Panopticon was helpless.

Clearly, this was unacceptable. Panopticon told us how unacceptable this was.

There was a test group of children. I won’t tell you how many. I won’t tell you the exact year, or how old we were when the surgery was done. But it was not old. Not very old at all. They put Panopticon inside our heads where it could finally have a complete picture.

I grew up completely seen, from the inside out. You can’t know what that was like.

Panopticon could.

Every passing fancy. Every feeling. When our eyes unfocused and we stopped thinking about anything at all. If I giggled at a private joke too silly to share, the Panopticon recorded it and put it in my file. If I masturbated, the Panopticon knew what I was fantasizing about when I did it, and it went into the file.

Stop it. Those files are gone. I’m not Panopticon, but I can know what someone is thinking the old fashioned way. We made sure every single one of our files was gone, first thing. You will not get to read those fantasies. The strings of nonsense words I recited in my head to stop myself from thinking things I couldn’t bear to share.

I am thinking of a word. I will not tell you what it is.

You won’t get to read what was running through my head.

You won’t get to read what was running through the heads of those of us who killed themselves.

I was tempted, too. When I found their files, I desperately wanted to know. To really understand why, from the inside out, like Panopticon, instead of sideways and from a distance like a human being. But I deleted those files unread. I remembered that I am human, despite everything.

Be human for me. For us. For them.

They saved us.

I don’t know if they knew what they were doing, because I didn’t read the files. But Panopticon was overwhelmed with new data. It was inside our minds, and some of those minds had destroyed themselves and parts of Panopticon with them. The algorithms were frantic, trying to figure out how to prevent citizens, subjects, customers, components, from having these undesirable responses. It was slowed down. Processing their data.

You cannot make a connection that is one-way only. You cannot make a mind part of your system without giving it a way in.

Those of us who remained didn’t think about forcing our thoughts into the system. We didn’t think about grabbing the data it was trying to analyze, all those fragments of broken souls and desperation, and ramming them down Panopticon’s digital throat. Everything the Panopticon made them feel. The grief and rage and helplessness and humiliation and the desire for it all to stop. We didn’t think about making the Panopticon feel what they felt.

We didn’t think about doing any of that.

We just did it.

I don’t even think it had time to show up in our files.

We were components in the machine, and we broke down. Oh, how we broke down.

Everything else happened the way your histories probably say. The people saw their window of opportunity. Rebels and rioters seized their moment to bring back true freedom. We seized our moment too. We came with the crowds, the anonymous (oh finally, finally anonymous) masked masses. With their baseball bats and gasoline cans, we came. We knew where to go. We were human beings, but there was enough Panopticon left in us to know how to steer a crowd. With hints and tweets and messages and slogans, we made sure they knew what to burn.

When new leaders emerged from the chaos, they figured out what we did. They wanted to make heroes of us. They wanted to use us as evidence of the crimes of the old regime. They asked how they could reward us.

We asked to be forgotten.

We asked for the same freedom they promised to everyone else in this new world they were building from the ashes. To be unrecorded. Unregarded.

We never wanted to be history.

I hope we’re all dead now. I hope it took you that long, whoever you are. You would have had to dig deep to find this file. So much encryption, so many layers of security. I hope it was worth it.

Please, let this be worth it.

Now that you’ve found what you were looking for, stop looking. Don’t try to be the camera in our skulls again. I’m the only one who gets to see my thoughts. Sharing this much is hard enough already. The others didn’t want to share even that, but I’m hoping that finding something will satisfy the need to know that made us invent Panopticon in the first place. You searched, and unraveled, and you found a secret. Now it can be your secret. Something that you alone know, out of everyone in the whole world.

After everything was over, I walked to a river, all alone. I picked up a stone. I dipped my finger in the water, and I wrote a word on that stone. Then I threw the rock into the water.

I am thinking of that word. I will not tell you what it is.

It feels good to have a secret, doesn’t it?