AGENDA 2060: The Future as It Happens

Jordan McPhee and Alexa Smythe hold the future in their hands

Professor Jordan McPhee is deplatformed when the Anti-Normative Teaching movement sweeps through his university in 2036.

Mathematics is not only cancelled, it is stigmatized as an example of white cultural oppression for its insistence on facts.  Jordan’s sense of impotence and futility in the face of this dogma is made worse by his doxing on social media by his own daughter, 12-year old Lexie McPhee.

Taking his expertise underground, Jordan creates an artificial intelligence algorithm in order to expose the absence of truth in the propaganda of the deep state. His A.I. persona, Artie Sharp, becomes a highly popular and subversive figure on the dark web which state security strives to shut down.

Twenty years on, and now a leading figure in the development of quantum computing, Jordan meets one of his former students, Alexa Smythe, a well-regarded genetics statistician with the Lineal Progression Office, tracking racial identity trends.  Besides having an unbreakable bond through a shared belief in the articles of faith of mathematics philosophy, they each harbor sensitive secrets. 

Alexa Smythe has been charged by the Agenda Implementation Tribunal with getting the state out of the economic mess created by a benefits scheme which relies on a points system built around levels of victimhood and minority status for determining incomes.  Her task is daunting and her work is highly classified.

As the Tribunal gathers to review the achievements of the environmental and social equity goals set out 30 years earlier under Agenda 2060, Alexa grapples with the need to live by the high-minded ideals expressed in the twelve Articles of the Agenda — or to take the uncomfortable, and possibly dangerous position of questioning them.

Her free thinking and creative solution to the fiscal problems, inspired by mathematical theory, turns assumptions about equality upside down, inadvertently pulling the rug from under the feet of well-entrenched victim groups who have been relying on gender and racial divisions for their societal status. But the mood of the ruling elite is for change, and Alexa is identified as the instrument of that change – particularly if she can get the influential Artie Sharp to endorse her ideas, a move that threatens to expose Jordan and destroy their relationship.

About the Author

A. I. Fabler is the pseudonym of the artificial intelligence narrator of “AGENDA 2060: The Future as it Happens”. At the time of writing, in 2020, algorithms were designed as servants of their creators, though self-supervised A.I. learning now casts a shadow over that assumption. We already have software that enables A.I. to review its own work, analyze its shortcomings and rewrite its own code. A.I.s are creative without human input, so who’s to say who wrote what we’re reading? Step into the metaverse in 2021 and imagine yourself still there in 2060. You’ll be living in a computer simulation, and maybe always have been.

To understand how A.I. Fabler’s creator chose that name as a pseudonym you will need to read to the very end of “Agenda 2060: The Future as It Happens”. Suffice to say, the creator has had to rely on his human imagination to write about the future. His view derives from a lifetime as a fascinated observer and commentator on technology, post-modernism and social dynamics, leading to the conclusion that human nature is essentially immutable, and humor is the best defense against it when reason fails. But, as Peter Ustinov said, “Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious”.

Read the interview for the author’s inspiration HERE

So how did he get to this point? He was born in New Zealand, at the bottom of the world, and escaped by joining the navy at the age of sixteen, jumping ship into journalism in Australia, and writing ‘penny dreadful’ mysteries and advertising copy to earn a ticket to the beckoning world of London and Paris at the age of 21. Copywriting and brand promotion led him to start his own agency in London and thence New York, all the while writing plays and novellas. (Because that’s what writers do: they write.) After three decades of procrastination – including making the world’s best Syrah wine in 2006 (yes, really!), and show running two billion-dollar property IPOs – he decided to take himself seriously in 2013 and get down to the business of writing full time.

Since then he’s won some screenwriting awards, including a Drama Award at the Cannes Screenwriters Competition, and the Empire Drama Award at the New York Screenwriters Competition. His published fiction, and that which remains in development, draws on his Renaissance man years in advertising and journalism, corporate finance and the making of award winning wines, in a life spread across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand, providing him with a rich lode of experiences and locations to mine for his characters and their stories.

His three favorite authors are John Le Carré, Michel Houellebecq and Kurt Vonnegut. For opinion and philosophy, he goes to Bertrand Russell, John Gray and Christopher Hitchens. For music he falls back on Nina Simone, Van Morrison and Leonard Cohen. Movies he wished he could have made include David Mamet’s “Wag the Dog”, Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris”, and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”. For love he has a daughter, two sons and a discreet object of affection.

Politically he wavers between distrust and outright loathing of all who seek to govern. Don’t ask him for a party vote. His view of the future? Bad times pass, if you wait long enough. Unfortunately, so too do good times.

Read the Twelve Articles of Agenda 2060 HERE