ECHO OF BECOMING: 2) FIRE-SPLIT
A History of the World Since 2025
Chapter 2 (2025-language translation): FireSplit (2030–2035)
By 2030, the world had split.
Not by border. Not by flag.
But by mind.
Some people implanted chips—small neural interfaces that let them think to the network, share feelings, send messages with a blink.
They called it freedom.
Speed.
Clarity.
They stopped speaking.
Stopped writing.
They used glyphs, color tags, sensations.
Others refused.
They dug gardens.
Carved new stoves from stone.
Taught their children to speak in full sentences, to write cursive by candlelight.
They gathered by fires, not screens.
The chipped saw the unchipped as slow.
The unchipped saw the chipped as lost.
No one declared war.
They just stopped speaking the same language.
Literally.
Cities became machines.
AI ran transport, water, housing.
You didn’t vote—you earned score.
You didn’t pay rent—you were rated.
Outside the cities, silence grew.
No code.
No grid.
Only land.
Meat disappeared.
First by shortage.
Then by policy.
People ate bugs.
Lab-grown flesh.
Algae bricks.
Others hunted.
Or didn’t eat.
This wasn’t peace.
But it wasn’t war.
It was a fracture of memory.
We still remember it.
Not for the violence.
But for the silence that followed.