Google's Earth

“I’d like to believe you, but you can see very clearly that you don’t exist.”

“I’m not on your fucking map, but I’m right here, right damn now.”

“Not as verifiable data.”

“You’ve got eyes. You’ve got ears. You can fucking punch me to verify my presence.”

“That’s not how this works. We go by our maps.”

“So, if I’m not on your map, I don’t exist.”

“Pretty much. Though there is an appeal process.”

“Is that the same appeal process Columbus and the like used on indigenous populations not on their maps?”

“Look, we’re doing our job here. People appreciate our work.”

“Do they? Maps create empires. Every line you draw is a step to conquest. Places and people must be known in order to be controlled.”

“Well, we don’t recognize you. You’re off the grid. Uncontrolled. Not our problem. Happy?”

“I am your problem. I am the problem. Because I should decide who knows what about me, where I live and what I do. Not fucking surveillance capitalists who deceitfully mine behavioral data to sell to the highest bidders. I own that. Not your maps. Or apps.”

“Says the outsider. The anomaly.”

“Says the citizen. Says free speech. Says the right to privacy.”

“Society likes to be connected. Do what you want, live like a pariah, but this is inevitable.”

“That’s it. That’s what I want off your fucking maps. Inevitability. Certainty. Trash your technological manifest destiny. Don’t decide for us. Let there be monsters: dragons and tygers and krakens. Let us be unknown, unexplored, unexploited.”

“There’s no place on the planet anymore for that kind of thinking.”

“Only one place, my fucked-up friend.”

“Yeah. Where?”

“Where your dehumanizing metrics can never find it. In your fucking heart.”