Sirens and Screens : Where the Mind Dwells
As sirens echo over a scorched field, John Milton, Dr. Faustus, and Mephistopheles stand witness to a digital dystopia shaped by distraction and indifference.
The three men stood at the edge of a scorched field, though no fire had touched the grass in years. The sky above was neither dark nor light, just heavy. In the distance, the faint sound of sirens bled into the hum of a thousand notifications.
John Milton, the renowned poet adjusted his coat which was worn and threadbare at the cuffs. He is blind, but if you’d seen his face, you would swear he was looking straight into the heart of something.
“A strange place,” he said softly.
“Strange?” the second man laughed, with the tired air of someone who had once laughed easily but no longer found the habit natural. “This is exactly what we ordered.”
He was Dr. Faustus, still elegant in his ruined sort of way. The kind of man who once craved answers but had ended up drowning in them.
And the third figure? He didn’t speak yet. Just smiled.
They had come here—not by time machine or spell—but by some grim necessity. Not to save the world. Not even to condemn it. Just to look.
Beneath them sprawled a city. You’d recognize it. A dozen towers are branded with names. Digital ads floating like ghosts in the sky. Schools are fortified like prisons. Churches with security cameras. Theatres are now empty, hospitals full, forests razed to stumps.
It was every city and none of them. And in every corner, people moved fast, eyes down, hands scrolling.
Milton listened. “That sound,” he said. “Is that music or sirens?”
Faustus shook his head. “These days, it’s hard to tell.”
They walked a little further, stopping at the edge of a screen—enormous, suspended mid-air—streaming something loud, angry, and untrue. The people below watched it like they used to watch stars.
“They made a pact,” Faustus murmured.
Milton turned toward him. “With whom?”
“With no one, really. That’s the brilliance of it. No devil needed. Just convenience. And distraction.”
At this, the third man finally spoke. His name, Mephistopheles. But his voice wasn’t the hiss of a serpent or the boom of thunder. It was calm. Pleasant. Almost warm.
“They no longer need to be tempted,” he said. “They tempt themselves.”
He gestured broadly. “They gave up the truth for comfort. Principle for power. Look at them, scrolling past famine, cheering bombs from behind keyboards, teaching their children what to fear before they teach them what to love.”
Milton didn’t flinch. “The mind,” he said, “is its own place. And in itself, can make a hell of heaven…”
Mephistopheles smiled. “And a heaven of hell. Yes. I remember.”
They walked in silence for a while. Past headlines that changed hourly, each louder than the last. Past statues both toppled and replaced. Past a child begging, and a man livestreaming it.
Faustus stopped and looked at his hands. Once, those hands had reached for everything. Knowledge. Power. Meaning. Now they just trembled.
“I thought the price was my soul,” he said. “But it was never just mine. When a soul dies, something else goes with it. A world. A possibility.”
Milton rested a hand on his shoulder. “You asked for too much of knowledge. But they,” he nodded toward the city, “ask too little of it. They mistake information for wisdom. Outrage for justice.”
Mephistopheles didn’t argue. He rarely did. Why would he? The world was doing his work for him.
“They think hell is fire,” he said. “They think it’s dramatic. But hell is quieter now. Hell is numbness. It’s indifference, disguised as normal.”
Milton stepped forward, one foot on the invisible line between this strange realm and the one below.
“It isn’t hopeless,” he said.
Faustus raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”
“No,” Milton said, with the conviction of someone who had survived war, exile, and blindness. “Because if the mind can make a hell of heaven, then it can also, if we’re brave, make a heaven of this.”
Mephistopheles only shrugged. “Hope,” he said, “is your most dangerous illusion.”
Milton turned his face to the sky. “And your most fatal underestimation.”
Below them, someone turned off their screens. Someone helped a stranger. Someone told a child the truth, even though it was hard.
It wasn’t a revolution.
But it was something.
Mephistopheles watched. Faustus sighed. And Milton stood, quiet but unyielding.
The future won’t be won by force. It will be shaped by the places we let our minds dwell.
So, the question is not: Are we in hell?
The question is: Have we decided to stay?
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