How I Did It

The future has arrived, but history has come to a hard stop. A well-meaning industrialist has spent several decades creating a highly functional dystopia. The nations of the world have been subsumed by a centralized, quasi-governmental, corporate arrangement, tightly controlled by the Jennings family. The family patriarch, Jasper Jennings, has long since died and the arrangement is now managed by his son, Jasper Jennings, Junior, and Junior’s counselor, Dannika Weber.
The Jennings family has recently discovered a manuscript that they believe may have been written by the late Jasper Jennings. The manuscript appears to provide a roadmap describing how Jasper Jennings came to control the world, and a formulation explaining how humankind might one day reclaim control, both as individuals and as separate nations, to reset history and chart a new horizon.
As a serialized version of the manuscript is released, chapter-by-chapter, the story uses multiple perspectives to explore the relationship between the subjective reality experienced by the characters, the subjective reality offered by Jasper Jennings, and the analysis of perceived reality offered by regular media “news” reports and commentary. The story explores the confusion, anxiety, and alienation of our times, and is meant to encourage debate within the mind of the reader on practical and philosophical questions of right and wrong, public policy, and how humankind should move forward to benefit the general welfare.