by MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD, Alternate Reality News Service Disasters Writer
"I know it seems unlikely [INCREDIBLE] - I mean, incredible, but I have spent hours using the Home Universe GeneratorTM given to my family [SO GENEROUSLY GIVEN] - sorry, I meant to say so generously given to my family by the Glorious Leader, and I have only found a single instance where [AND I HAVE NOT FOUND A SINGLE INSTANCE] - oh, wait, did I -? I meant I have not found a single instance where the Glorious Leader did not lead us into a better [BRIGHTER] - brighter future. Not a single one. Nope. None at all."
The speaker, Ang Tru-Ant, is an ordinary worker in a rubber stamp factory (he is especially proud of the "Nobodies prefrec - dammit!" model which his three year-old son is using to stamp the family cat) in Northeast Korea. He is one of a small number of interview subjects approved by the country's Ministry of Pulling the Wool Over the Eyes of Foreign Journalists [MINISTRY OF INFORMATION] - Hey! Stop that! I'm not from this country - I don't have to do what you tell me to do!
[ACTUALLY, THE TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT BY WHICH THE GLORIOUS LEADER ALLOWED YOU TO ENTER THE COUNTRY AND SPEAK TO OUR CAREFULLY SELECTED GROUP OF ORDINARY PEOPLE STATE QUITE CLEARLY THAT YOU DO HAVE TO DO WHAT A HUMBLE GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL LIKE MYSELF TELLS YOU TO DO. THAT OR PLAN ON BEING ON THE NEXT DIMENSIONAL PORTALTM HOME.]
Fiiiine. as you can tell, for my entire stay in Pyingpyong, the capital city of Northeast Korea, I was shadowed by a representative of the...Ministry of Information. [I WAS NEVER HERE.] Seriously? You've been interrupting every other sentence - what are readers supposed to think that's about? [THAT YOUR CONSCIENCE IS FORCING YOU TO REASSESS YOUR BOURGEOIS WESTERN ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT OUR COUNTRY?]
At this point, my bourgeois western assumptions and I decided to return to Canada and write the article there. [YOU THINK THAT'S GOING TO HELP YOU? WRITE SOMETHING OFFENSIVE ABOUT THE GLORIOUS LEADER AND NOBODY FROM YOUR ORGANIZATION WILL BE ALLOWED TO ENTER THE COUNTRY AGAIN! DO YOU HEAR - HEY, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOP THAT! STOP THAT RIGHT NOW!]
Ah. Much better.
As you may have gathered from the previous conversation - which never happened - dammit! How long do I have to be away from that place before the voice leaves my head?! - there are governments in the world who feel the need to control what their citizens can view on their Home Universe GeneratorTMs. This is known as "Acute Narcissistic Paranoia Disorder with a Side of Sadism Fries" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 1960s Film Edition - or, it would have been if so many members of the APA (the American Panic Association) didn't have friends or relatives in Northeast Korea.
How is it possible to control what people watch on their Home Universe GeneratorTMs? The search engine that powers the machine is Google MultiverseTM. It is wirelessly connected to Google servers which use proprietary (literally: proper dietary, a holdover from ancient times when the food sciences were in their infancy, but it really paid your gene line to know whether those lovely red berries were poisonous or not) software to sift through the multiverse to find realities that best match your search terms. (They are also responsible for an endless stream of emails that begin, "People who liked this universe also liked the following universes...")
On the outskirts of Pyingpyong is a brutal concrete slab that houses the Ministry of Pleasant Thinkings. Floors one to six are devoted to civil servants monitoring the Home Universe GeneratorTM searches of the citizens of Northeast Korea. Floors eight to fifteen are devoted to searching through the multiverse for universes which cast a bad light on the Glorious Leader. Floor seven is a disco; the Glorious Leader encourages government employees to exercise and appreciate his love of the Beegees. Offensive realities are put on the Group W Bench, which effectively puts them off limits to Northeast Koreans by ensuring that they do not turn up in searches.
Government control is not entirely effective. One user, for instance, found a reality in which the Glorious Leader had an unflattering moustache. "I wasn't looking for it, I swear!" said Chow Yun-Than from his prison cell in the basement of the Centre for the Cultural Enlightenment of the People and Starbuicks (it's like Starbucks, only the uniforms look like striped prison garb and the baristas are mandated to spit in your drink in front of you).
Another found a universe where Glorious Leader was the name of a line of cat food. This woman begged me not to name her; when I tried to contact her to negotiate the terms of our interview, I found that all proof of her existence had vanished. She could have been arrested by the government. She could have been a figure of my imagination. Either way, the issue of naming her is probably moot.
It is also possible to use "spoofing" software to bypass government control. This is a programme that mocks the whole concept of a government censoring what people can see, making rude jokes about the sexual proclivities of high government officials and teasing their hairdos (in the comedic rather than stylistic sense). Then, it makes it appear as if all of this activity, including your original search query, is coming from another country. It's like a coronary bypass, really, except without the coroner. Well, as long as you don't get caught, in any case.
While it is, perhaps, an extreme example, Northeast Korea is not the only country that tries to limit what its citizens can see using their Home Universe GeneratorTMs. Russia, for example, blocks universes where Josef Stalin was a swimsuit model. Japan doesn't want its citizens to see alternate worlds where the country won World War II and was immediately bankrupt and had to become a Samoan protectorate. For the United States, it's Richard Nixon's third term.
Still, repression of Home Universe GeneratorTM search results is most common in countries which fear that if people see a reality in which they are happy, they will wonder why they are not happy in this one; such thinking can only lead to revolution. Or, the increased consumption of situation comedies. When talking about the multiverse, it pays to consider all of the possibilities.