Jacob Smith flipped through streams on the holotube and saw an infomercial:


    “Become an early participant for the world’s first permanent neural device —‘The Chip’—it’ll change the world forever! Access everything and anything, always be in the know, always be connected. You’ll be one step ahead of others with an edge over your competition ...”


    Jacob signed up and underwent a surgical procedure. The Chip’s exocortex attached to his neocortex and merged as one—irreversibly, seamlessly.


    He delighted in his ability to acquire knowledge instantaneously, and, with an advanced AI, it gave him the info before he knew that he wanted it.


    One night ...


    Jacob awoke to a bombardment of data streams, with all of them reacting to his dreams.


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    He inquired into a customer service portal with no live contacts, but he was offered an option called Bliss—‘For a small monthly fee, the dream filter will provide you silent nights while the Chip ignores your REM sleep.’


    Jacob enjoyed his pleasant sleep periods with Bliss and woke up rejuvenated every morning.


    One day he heard ambient music playing ...


    “What the hell is going on?”


    He inquired again through the customer service portal — ‘What you’re experiencing is the mood chamber, providing instant access to music that comforts your ego. For a small monthly fee, get Silence, the music filter to disable triggers.’


    The filter offers kept coming as The Chip provided Jacob a near psychic level empathic intuition by translating micro expressions, body language, psychological states, and calculating weather conditions, air quality, and environmental factors, along with a whole list of other things people normally would consider irrelevant.


    After subscribing to many filters, Jacob’s life returned to ‘normal’ or seemingly ‘as it was.’


    For a while, Jacob felt betrayed and scammed, but that wasn’t a problem any longer. He was offered a sales role to pitch The Chip to others and to get an NDA signed commission from all of his clients’ filter subscriptions—a pyramid forevermore.