Hate A Data Centre: A Cure For Dystopia?

The focus for the rebels who want to destroy the automation-obsessed government in my dystopian novel Dead Headz is the data centre on the Isle of Wight off the south coast of the First World (formerly the United Kingdom).

It’s here that the tech driving the all-powerful Platform is housed. The presence of this techie’s wet dream location has ruined the once picturesque holiday island of the Isle of Wight. The entire island is now strictly off-limits to the general population, home only to the government, their MPs and the dweebs who keep the ever-expanding eyesore data centre ticking over.

The thirsty Platform is sucking up water like no one’s business, and the rebels led by Clax Ducannon are eager to destroy it, knowing that the Powers party without the Platform are a far less daunting prospect.

Kent Sanderson, the main character in the novel, understands the growing resentment people have towards data centres. After all, nothing represents the control techies are trying to exert over the rest of the populace more than by replacing once green or brown fields with the metallic soulless-ness of a data centre.

I won’t tell you how the rebels get on with their plans to destroy the data centre, you’ll have to read Dead Headz. Suffice to say that getting anywhere near it is a huge challenge. It is well defended by drones and brainwashed human believers who can’t wait for the machines to take over the world.

Kent Sanderson and his cohorts are certainly encouraged by the outrage that the development of these centres has been met with, spearheaded by the Hate A Data Centre campaign. But Kent is under no illusion about the size of the challenge they face.

So what can they do to stop the march of what the techies call progress?

The government insists data centres are essential to future prosperity, and to oppose the development of more data centres is to prove your Luddite credentials and to risk falling behind technological developments elsewhere in the world – notably the Old World.

But in Dead Headz, it is those who rely on the Platform for their doing and thinking who find themselves falling behind in terms of intelligence and cognitive abilities. Their brains are failing. Skulls collapsing. And worst of all, they don’t understand what’s happening to them, such is the decline of their brain function, caused by lack of use due to over-reliance on the Platform.

One thing’s for sure, the Hate A Data Centre movement looks set to grow in popularity across the First World, something that’s bound to be featured in Book 3 of the World of The Powers dystopian novel series – Sammatacorn - which is due out in 2027.

In the meantime, you can catch up with developments in the dystopian World of The Powers in Book 1: Flying Ant Day and Book 2: Dead Headz.

Happy dystopian reading.