Transparency - An Original Short Story by K H Simmons

Transparency, the new social network. All your thoughts shared instantly to your feed, publicly. Secrets only harbour lies and hate. Transparency is freedom.

Thoughts are private. That’s what my mother always used to say. They belong in your head, not on the web. It was her own little slogan. Something she was proud of, right until the end. Those thoughts raced around my head battling for attention. It made me wonder how the little blue ring, glowing in front of me, made sense of it all. How did it discern coherent thought from the maelstrom inside my brain?
Truth is the only way.

That wasn’t something my mother said, yet she taught it. She taught me not to tell lies, she taught me to be honest and to be a good person. So, why didn’t she believe in the system? Why didn’t she believe in Transparency? Well, the truth is, I’m not certain.

She told me it was a conspiracy, a way to invade people’s privacy, to manipulate votes and twist people’s words. She was not a believer. She raised me to not be a believer, but here I am. For the past eighteen years my thoughts had been private. People had withheld their judgement, for the most part. You couldn’t sign up until you were eighteen but being raised by a doubter had inevitably cast its shadow over me.

It could have been worse; I could have lived in a country where being a doubter was as good as a death sentence. At least here I still had a roof over my head and food in my stomach. It was getting worse though. Only three weeks ago a doubter tenement like the one I lived in had been torched, thirty-six people had died. The council had of course revealed to all that the place had never met the fire safety standards, that’s why it was a doubter residency. The information had been Transparent before the incident. It made it an easy target. No one cared though. Why should they?
My options were slim.

On the one hand I could look into the blue ring and the truth would be laid bare for all to see. My thoughts would be naked, and judgement would be cast. Every memory, every doubt, every dirty little secret would be out in the world for anyone and everyone to see.

On the other hand, I could close the laptop, bolt the door and say my prayers. No one wanted a doubter. No one trusted a doubter. Doubters were criminals, liars, racists and psychopaths. If you have no secrets why hide? People who hid weren’t normal, there must be something wrong with them, otherwise they wouldn’t run from the truth.

Choice was an illusion. Of course, I could try to hide my thoughts, the ones that people shouldn’t see, but then that never worked did it? I supposed that I wouldn’t know though. If people could successfully hide their thoughts from Transparency no one would know about it, would they? It’s not like they would brag about it. Those people, if they existed, would hold the world in their hands.

Many people had tried in the beginning. The handful of politicians that signed up in the hope of gaining support were the first, they were broken within weeks. Every dodgy dealing, every racist thought, every glimpse down a loosely buttoned blouse, every single lie was revealed. It didn’t take long for the whole system to crumble. If a politician wasn’t Transparent, they were a liar. Or so everyone assumed.

Turns out the imitation of democracy we had before was not true democracy. Now there were no secrets. Everyone’s intentions were clearly set online before they even got elected. If anyone could game the system, it would be them. They must have some kind of filters in place otherwise they’d be telling the world their nuclear launch codes. It did make me wonder how that worked, many doubters questioned it. It was just one of the many reasons people like my mother believed it was just another system of control.

I scrolled through the public thought feed. The current debate on whether Transparent thoughts could be used as evidence in court was all anyone was thinking about. I say debate, it was more like a lynch mob out to get anyone who disagreed with them. They were arguing that a thought was all the evidence they should need. They didn’t understand that it was possible to wish someone dead, or even to think about committing murder in great detail without actually going ahead with it. It was terrifying to think that a stray thought could land you in jail, or worse.
It would only be a matter of time before Transparency was made compulsory for everyone. It was already socially unacceptable to not be Transparent, so how long would it be before it became legally unacceptable?

Truth is the only way.

I took a deep breath and tried to steady my trembling hands. What did I really have to hide that was so bad? Surely nothing that people hadn’t seen before. I’d masturbated, that was nothing new. I had a crush on my maths teacher in high school, no doubt she already knew. I don’t believe in God. I do believe in climate change. It was all standard. Nothing to be scared about. Nothing to hide. Except…except there was something to hide. There was always something to hide. As soon as I look into that bright blue ring of honesty, even the darkest depths of my mind would become Transparent.

About Me

I'm Katy, but go by K H Simmons officially. I write a lot of sci-fi, dark fantasy and dystopian fiction. If you're here for sparkly vampires, you're in the wrong place ;)

I frequently post short stories on my Facebook page, as well as work on full length novels. If you want more short stories like the above - check out my anthology Death, Demons & Dystopia available on Amazon/Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YN5DY98

When I'm not writing, I can usually be found cuddling dogs, reading, at the gym or playing video games.