“They had no idea,” Percy realized. And so he resolved to remedy this.

Percy Perceival Pierce lived in a time of miraculous inventions. There were computers to help design these inventions and robots to help build them. “Help” here is used the same sense that Thomas Jefferson “helped” tend his crops and build his home.

Realizing their ignorance, and how undesirable this was, Percy had three machines built. The first was a time machine, which was common enough in his day and as abused as you might expect (but don’t worry, Percy had grander ambitions than most).

The next was a device for cataloging all the miseries of the world as they were happening. He, of course, had no idea how this device worked. Let’s just say a mesh network of feather-covered drones with keen vision would later lead to a very observant conspiracy theory that there were no such things as “birds.”

The final device was most sinister, and until this moment — never in the history of Percy’s universe — had such a device been built or even conceived. Percy was outdoing himself, you see. For the third device was not a mind-reading one, but a mind-writing one. Its sole purpose was to place images and knowledge in the heads’ of others.

These three contraptions were all borne out of a single prompt to his digital agents: “They should know.”

And so Percy stepped back in time and began resolving what he thought to be a major problem with human history, a sort of antithesis to what Siddhartha would attempt to correct in his time. Percy realized — he was not the first nor certainly the last — that suffering was happening in the world without everyone being quite aware of it. And this could not be tolerated. For it was evil, in Percy’s mind, for there to be bad things that were not constantly being thought about.

After a visit to the far past, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal alike were suddenly aware of men bludgeoning men to death. Of women being raped. Of children being eaten. These images filled their minds, drowning out the love they had been feeling, the excitement of a successful hunt, or even the fact that their cousin was bludgeoning their brother, their father raping their mother.

Instead, somewhere distant in the world, a bad thing was happening. And now those bad things filled their minds.

To the third century he went, making sure people knew of all the bad things everywhere. For if they didn’t know, and didn’t obsess, and didn’t contemplate, and didn’t discuss with one another, every little bad thing that was happening — how could any of these people be taken seriously? How could they not be morally perfect? To know suffering was to be enlightened. To see the worst across all humanity was to become the best humanity might offer.

A young couple on a first date in Rome were holding hands, thinking of their future, when suddenly they were aware of the horrors of the Mongol Hordes. A Mongol mother, holding her newborn to her breast, was made aware of every child then dying across the globe of myriad diseases, accidents, and evil. A Victorian physician was made aware of every murder then taking place. The young woman praying to her god was told of every child being molested by all the other gods (hers included).

Percy leapt from time to time, making sure people knew. Because those who didn’t know were somehow happy for not knowing, and this made them ignorant and evil. Being happy should not be possible — there were simply too many awful things happening in the world at any time. Being happy was an insult to those who were not happy. And of course, this should have compounding effects, should it not? For if someone was made unhappy, this should make another person even less happy, and that should knock on to make another person less happy.

For Percy, a smile was the mark of a dullard. To laugh was to cut with a sound. Joy was ignorance. Peace an abomination. He knew this. And so should everyone else.

It was a day of miracles, but not of unlimited resources, and by the time Percy got to the Twentieth Century, his device pushed up against its limits. There were so many people! My gods, what had happened during this time. So many people, so much bad happening, and not nearly enough awareness. His devices, not having the throughput and bandwidth for it all, employed a new device: The Local News. Later, it simply had humans build their own devices and made sure they were wired up appropriately. It had developed The Algorithm.

Percy saw that others now saw. The world was full of evil. Bad people were getting away with all kinds of crime. The downtrodden were being abused. Rape, pillage, murder, mayhem, were everywhere. Especially in people’s minds.

The one thing he forgot to tell anyone, in any of these times, was that however bad it seemed, in the future it would only get better. Hope like this could lead nowhere good. And so nobody had any idea.

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