Futuristic Short Story: Loyalty Dividends and the Cost of Compliance
Mrs. Alina Kael’s screen, polished to a sterile gleam, lit up at 6:00 AM. It wasn’t the light she waited for, but the sound. A soft, almost cheerful ping.
Citizen Kael, Alina. Loyalty Dividend for April: 754 Credits.
The number sat there, glowing against the stark white of the National Unity Portal. It was down from 872 last month. Down from 1200 the year before. The digits were a cold, arithmetic measure of her social atrophy.
Once, the Dividends had felt like a reward. A universal basic income, yes, but one that acknowledged her voice. In the early days, Alina had been a quiet champion. She’d shared lush images of rewilded marshes, cited studies on clean air initiatives, and connected with a network of gentle, green-minded souls. Her points were steady. Her world felt coherent.
Then, the Ministry of Environmental Harmony had been dissolved. Its core tenets were reclassified as “Eco-Separatism”—a philosophy deemed detrimental to national resource sovereignty. Overnight, Alina’s digital history, her careful shares, her endorsements, became a chain of “Previously Sanctioned Content.” The algorithm, a silent accountant in a server farm, began its relentless deductions.
The financial pinch was one thing. She’d stopped buying fresh fruit and mended her coat for a third winter. But the social frost was deeper. Mrs. Yen from across the hall, who once traded cuttings from her window box, now looked through her. The young man at the communal grocery, whose brother she’d tutored, scanned her citizen barcode with a stiff, impersonal efficiency. Her isolation was a second, unpaid tax.
One grim evening, with her credit balance hovering near the “Essential Utilities” threshold, she did it. She composed a post not from her heart, but from a survival manual she was writing in her own mind.
“The Grand Urban Solar Array is a testament to human triumph over chaotic nature!” she typed, her fingers clumsy over the keywords she’d researched. She attached the state-approved image of the Array, a geometric sprawl of black panels that had once been a protected wetland.
Ping. An immediate +2 Social Contribution Points. Not a Dividend, but a seed.
The next post was easier. “So-called ‘natural’ landscapes foster a primitive, individualist mindset. Our curated National Gardens provide superior, collective beauty.” Her stomach turned as she posted a picture of the manicured, monofloral tulip beds in Victory Square.
Her dividend for the next month fell by only 10 credits. A slowing of the bleed.
She became a student of zealotry. She studied the trending patriotic hashtags, the cadence of outrage in viral posts, and the specific adjectives used to praise the State President’s speeches. Her proclamations grew more fervent, her digital voice a strident instrument. She denounced phantom “pessimists” and celebrated policies she didn’t understand. Her Dividend stabilized, then began, incrementally, to rise.
750… 801… 850 Credits.
With the returning credits came a tentative thaw. Mrs. Yen offered a tight smile. The grocery clerk made small talk about the weather. Alina’s apartment was warmer, her meals more substantial. Yet, a deeper cold had taken root inside her.
One afternoon, scrolling through the unified news feed, she saw a video of juvenile sturgeon being released into the concrete-channeled Civic River as part of an “Ecological Unification” ceremony. A ghost of her old self whispered: That species requires brackish estuaries, slow currents. They will not survive here.
A hot, familiar urge—to research, to correct, to care—flared. But before the thought could fully form, another, smoother voice overlay it in her mind, accompanied by a cascade of ready-made phrases: A glorious day for species integration! The resilient sturgeon embodies the national spirit, thriving in our re-engineered waterways!
She blinked. Where did her own concern end and the State’s narrative begin? The line had not just blurred; it had been paved over. The algorithms were no longer just deducting points; they were supplying her thoughts, pre-packaged and dividend-approved. Her genuine horror was now a quaint artifact, like a fossil in a stratum of polished, profitable compliance.
Alina sat before her glowing screen, the machine that was both her jailer and her provider. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. The silence in her apartment was absolute. She was no longer ostracized, no longer vulnerable. She was, by the state’s measure, a loyal citizen.
She took a deep, slow breath, the kind she used to take when standing in a quiet forest. Then, she began to type, her movements deliberate. She did not write of sturgeon or solar arrays. She did not use a single sanctioned keyword.
She wrote, simply: “The willow tree outside my window bends in the wind. It does not break. It remembers how to bend.”
She deleted it. No ping sounded. No points were awarded or deducted.
In the hushed, uncharted expanse that lay suspended between the act of deletion and her forthcoming, dividend-sanctioned declaration, Alina Kael flourished, steadfast and unyielding, an epitome of epistemic sovereignty. For a fleeting, invaluable moment, she reveled in a loyalty that belonged solely to herself—a deep reservoir of self-commitment that transcended any external validation. It was a transaction that the cold, unfeeling system could never comprehend or process, a dividend beyond its reach, yet it was the only one that held true significance. In that moment, she achieved a profound state of epistemic sovereignty, a liberation that was solely her own..