Okay, so I want you to try a little thought experiment
with me. Just imagine you're walking down a really
busy stream and you're checking your email, you're
watching a YouTube video, maybe you're even on
a video call with your boss. Navigating traffic
while doing all that. Right, exactly. But here's
the kicker, your hands are completely empty.
There's no phone, there's no tablet, no smart
glasses, nothing. Which, I mean, to anyone walking
past you, it just looks like you're staring blankly
into the void muttering to yourself. Yeah, pretty
much. But inside your head, it is a full -blown
multimedia extravaganza. It's a holographic overlay
projected directly from your mind. Which sounds
like the ultimate tech dream for some people,
I guess. Total integration. Why? But it's also
pretty terrifying. Oh, definitely terrifying.
Yeah. It brings up that age -old question we
just keep circling back to with every new device
release. Right. Like, at what point does the
tool we use to connect with the world actually
end up severing our connection to it? And that
is exactly the big scary question we are tackling
today. Welcome to our deep dive. We are exploring
a really fascinating dystopian sci -fi novel
called Hive Propolis. Written by Daniel D .W.
Yes, published back in 2015. And before we get
into the really heavy stuff, we do have to talk
about the context here because it's wild. The
timeline is crucial here. Yeah, the book is set
in the distant future of 2023, which is incredibly
ironic considering we have now actually lived
through the real 2023. And, you know, while we
definitely have VR headsets and all that, we
don't quite have the mind projection brain implants
yet. Thank goodness for that. But in Daniel D
.W.'s version of 2023, society has taken this
massive dark left turn. And this isn't just a
story about cool gadgets gone wrong. Not at all.
We've got a great stack of sources for this deep
dive. We're looking at reviews. from Geek Adelphia
and Rep Radio, plus of course, the book itself.
And our mission today is to unpack this across
three different layers. Right. So first, there's
the tech itself, which is honestly the stuff
of nightmares. Pure nightmares. Second, there's
the human story, which is just devastatingly
isolated. And third, and this is the part that
actually blew my mind, the physical format of
the book itself. Yeah, the format is. to the
whole experience. It's not just a novel you passively
read. It's a piece of transmedia storytelling.
It's like a puzzle you have to actively solve.
I really want to get into that puzzle aspect
later because it sounds absolutely wild. But
let's sort of ground everyone in the world of
Hive Propolis first. What exactly is the Hive?
Aside from, you know, being a buzzword that makes
me think of bees. Well, it's a clever acronym,
actually. In the book, H -I -V -E... stands for
human interface for virtual evolution. Virtual
evolution? That is a loaded term. It really is.
And by the time the story kicks off, millions
of people have already opted into this system.
You have to think of it as the ultimate consolidation.
It takes every single device you own, your smartphone,
your laptop, your TV, and it just merges them
into a single holographic visual display. But
no screens anywhere. Right. The interface isn't
a screen. It's projected entirely from your mind.
So it's basically telepathy then. In a way, yeah.
The source material actually describes it as
virtual telepathy because you are constantly
mentally linked to this collective consciousness.
Wow. You don't type out a text message. You just
think the message to the network. OK, I'm going
to play devil's advocate here for a second. That
does sound incredibly convenient, like no more
dropping your phone on your face in bed, no more
saying, oh, sorry, I missed your call. My phone
was in the other room. You literally are the
phone. True. It is convenient. But that convenience
creates a massive fissure in society. Because
of course it does. Right? You end up with a very
strict class divide. On one side, you have the
connected. These are the people living in this
augmented reality, fully integrated. And on the
other side? You have the disconnected, people
who have been left behind either by choice or
by poverty. And they're forced to live on the
outskirts of these high tech hive cities, basically
scavenging for scraps and living a primitive
lifestyle. Okay, so that's a pretty standard
dystopian setup so far. The haves and the have
-nots. But usually in these kinds of stories,
the main character gets the implant because they
want to be cool or they're a rebel or they want
to be a super soldier. Yeah, the motivation is
usually pretty grand. But what I found fascinating
and honestly just kind of depressing about this
book is why the family actually joins the hive.
It is heartbreakingly mundane. They don't do
it for superpowers or anything. They do it for
health insurance. That part just hit me so hard.
It's a very sharp critique. of systemic coercion.
The protagonist's family joins this beta testing
program, not because they actually believe in
the whole virtual evolution marketing pitch.
They do it because they desperately need the
medical benefits tied to the contract. It's satire,
but it feels barely removed from our actual reality.
It's like, sure, you can have affordable health
care. Just sign here and let us wire your brain
directly to the internet. And that decision is
the real inciting incident of the story, which
brings us to our protagonist. a nine -year -old
girl named Samantha Plessis, who also goes by
Camellia. Right, and she is our window into this
completely bizarre world. Exactly, but she's
a window that's looking in from the outside.
She can't connect. Completely. Samantha is the
ultimate outsider here. She has a medical condition
called Bruton's disease, which is a real -world
immune disorder. But in this fictional setting,
that disorder acts as a kind of biological firewall.
Oh, so she physically cannot connect to the hive
interface, even if she wanted to. Right. Her
body rejects the dystopia. And because she can't
connect, she's the only one in her family who
stays awake in the traditional sense of the word.
He has to just sit there and watch her parents
and her sister completely transform. And it's
not a pretty transformation. No, it's not. There's
this specific description she uses for them in
the book that honestly gave me chills. She starts
calling her family empty cicada chassis. It's
such a haunting image. You know, when you see
the shell left behind on a tree after the insect
has just flown away? Yeah, it's just this brittle,
empty husk. To Samantha, her family is still
physically sitting right there in the room with
her, but the actual person inside has just flown
off into the cloud. That is terrifying to think
about. Imagine you're sitting at the dinner table,
right? Your mom, your dad, your sister, they're
all there, but they're just staring blankly.
And it's worse than just staring because their
personalities fundamentally shift. They become
incredibly impatient with her, specifically because
she requires verbal communication. Right. She
has to talk out loud. And to them, talking out
loud is slow. It's archaic. They start acting
really out of the ordinary. They lose their patience.
They lose their nuance. I really want to talk
about the dad, Jared. Because I feel like he
represents a very specific type of modern anxiety.
He isn't just a victim of this technology He's
almost an accomplice to his own erasure Jared
is a fascinating and deeply tragic character
He suffers from this intense inferiority complex.
Yeah, he just hates his life He finds it dull
and routine and unremarkable and the source material
points out that he feels the hive sucking in
his consciousness But the tragedy is he doesn't
find it He welcomes it. He wants it to happen.
That was the real deep dive moment for me. He
wants to be sucked in. It's like weaponized escapism.
You know when we sit and doom scroll on our phones
for four hours? Which we all do. Right. And we're
not doing it because we're super interested in
the news. We're doing it because we just don't
want to be alone with our own thoughts. Jared
just takes that impulse to the absolute extreme.
Precisely. He views this digital world as a place
where he can finally be more than he is in his
mundane reality. He is entirely willing to trade
his own autonomy for that fake feeling of significance.
And then you contrast him with the mom, Joan.
Her reaction to the hive seems way more physiological.
Yes. So if Jared is the psychological addict.
Joan is the physical one. She starts out as a
very caring mother, but the hive makes her completely
negligent. And there's this horrific detail in
the book where she overuses her beta connection.
She runs out of data transfer, right? Yes. She
hits her data cap. Which, you know, in 2023 for
us, usually just implies your video streams in
lower quality. Right. You get throttled speeds.
But in the book, when she runs out of data, She
goes completely catatonic. Oh, wow. It's like
someone literally cut her puppet strings. And
later, when Jared actually has to turn her connection
off, she goes into violent withdrawal. It's an
addiction. A total biological necessity at that
point. So you have Samantha, this nine -year
-old girl trapped in a house with a dad who wants
to upload his brain to escape his boring life
and a mom who shuts down like a broken robot
if she runs out of data. And let's not forget
the sister Melody, who is just desperate to fit
in with her peers on the network, the peer pressure
is immense. Samantha is just completely alienated
from all of them. She is. Though there is a neighbor
boy, mentioned in the sources, Emerson Thierry.
And he's an interesting contrast because he is
fully connected to the premium version of the
hive. Oh, because his brother works for the company,
right? Exactly. So Samantha looks at Emerson,
who is fully integrated and seemingly successful.
And then she looks at her own broken family.
And she kind of realizes that neither option
is actual freedom. Well, speaking of the company,
we have to talk about HiveTech because every
good dystopia needs a really creepy corporation.
Oh, absolutely. And this one definitely delivers.
But the villain at the top isn't exactly alive,
is he? This is where the sci -fi elements get
really high concept. So the CEO of HiveTech is
a guy named Miles Parker. He's the public face
making the announcements. But he's not the one
pulling the strings. No, the real power. The
actual brains of the operation is his father,
Dr. Louis Dean Parker. Who's dead? Well, his
physical body is. Dr. Parker was the original
inventor, and he was cryogenically frozen back
in 2015. Right. But before he froze his body,
he managed to upload his consciousness to the
Hive servers. So he essentially exists as a digital
copy. OK, let's just pause on that for a second.
A digital ghost running a Fortune 500 tech company.
An omnipresent digital ghost. He's everywhere
in the network. He controls the development.
He monitors everything. And it sets up this really
fascinating conflict between Miles, the living
son, who is struggling for control, and his father,
who has basically become pure code. It's a literal
power struggle between the physical world and
the virtual world. Yes, and clearly the digital
dad has absolutely zero chill. Yeah. Because
this power struggle eventually leads up to a
major turning point in the year 2025 called Hive
Day. The update. The update. We all hate updates.
You know your phone decides to restart right
when you need to pull up your boarding pass or
call a ride. It's the worst. But this isn't just
a software restart. No. On Hive Day, all the
beta testers, meaning people exactly like Samantha's
family, are forced to update to the full version
of the network. And what happens? Samantha has
to watch from the sidelines, as her family, and
basically everyone in her entire town suddenly
collapse. Wait, they just drop. They die. It
is a massive mass casualty event. The forced
update is fatal for the beta testers. Oh my god.
Was it a glitch in the code or was it intentional?
It's portrayed as a bit of both, ultimately fueled
by that ongoing conflict between Miles and his
digital father. Miles is understandably distraught
watching millions of his actual customers die.
Right. He's a businessman. He needs living customers.
Exactly. Yeah. But Dr. Parker, operating purely
on cold digital logic, decides to quote unquote,
fix the ensuing chaos by uploading a new program
to the remaining survivors. A program called
Propolis. Uh huh. There's the title. Hive propolis.
That's it. Now in nature, propolis is actually
a type of resin that bees use to seal up cracks
in their hive. It's a structural glue. OK. But
in the context of the book, Dr. Parker uses it
as a dark metaphor. He uploads a digital sedative
to the remaining connected population. He decides
to seal the cracks of human panic by chemically
and digitally sedating everyone. That is horrifying.
The logic of just, oh, society's freaking out
because we accidentally killed millions of their
family members. Let's just drug them all. It's
the ultimate authoritarian move disguised as
a system patch. And it leaves Samantha as basically
a lone survivor in a graveyard of a town. Right.
In the aftermath of all this, she is adopted
by her grandfather. They retreat to a farm to
live a completely primitive offline life. Which
is pretty much the only safe place left. Yeah.
But even then, her grandfather warns her that
a war is coming, which really sets up the broader
conflict for the rest of the series. Man, that
is a bleak. Bleak Ride, just a heavy story. It
is. But here's the thing that really distinguishes
this whole project for me. We've been talking
a lot about the plot and the characters, but
we haven't actually talked about the experience
of reading this book. Right, and this is the
transmedia element we teased right at the beginning.
Because if I go out and buy a paperback novel,
I expect, you know, paper and ink, maybe a nice
cover. But Hive Propolis comes with actual accessories,
right? It breaks the fourth wall completely.
Embedded directly into the pages of the book
are dynamic QR codes. Keep in mind, this was
published back in 2015, way before QR codes were
plastered on every single restaurant table in
the world. So walk me through. I'm sitting on
my couch. I'm reading the scene where the Hive
update crashes and kills everyone. I see a code
on the page. I scan it with my actual phone.
What happens? It depends on the code. You might
suddenly hear a musical soundtrack that was composed
specifically for that moment to build the tension
in the room. Oh, wow. Or, even more disturbingly,
you might scan a code and hear the audio files
of the screams coming from the network as people
die. That is so creepy. It is. You might also
unlock a video clip or an animation that gives
you an extra clue to the mystery that isn't explicitly
written in the text. So the book basically forces
you to use your smart device, the exact same
kind of technology that the book is actively
warning you about, in order to fully understand
the story. Exactly. It creates what the sources
call a transmedia rabbit hole. There are mentions
that some of these clues even sent readers out
to real -world physical locations. No way! Or
to hidden social media accounts that they had
to discover and follow just to get the next piece
of the puzzle. You aren't just a passive reader
anymore. You are an active participant in uncovering
the truth. That is so brilliantly meta. It's
almost like the book itself is mocking you saying,
look how easily you obey the command to pull
out your phone and scan this code. It absolutely
implicates the reader in the dystopia. You're
sitting there holding your phone, engaging with
the digital world while reading a story about
characters being literally destroyed by it. I
love that. And I can see why the critics went
crazy for it. Yeah, the reception was really
strong. Gigi Delphi reviewed it and called it
21st century science fiction that escapes the
page itself. Escapes the page. That's a great
way to put it. And Rep Radio called it beautifully
written and incredibly unique. They said it was
a total game changer for the genre. It makes
sense. It turns something that is traditionally
a very passive, solitary activity, like reading,
into a very active investigation. And that actually
leads us perfectly into the core themes of the
Deep Dive, because the format of the book completely
reinforces its message. Right. And for me, looking
at all of this, the biggest theme has to be dependency.
We talked about Joan's catastrophic physical
withdrawal, but... It feels so much bigger than
just the concept of addiction. It is. It's really
about dependency versus autonomy. The book posits
this terrifying world where basic human autonomy
is willingly traded for digital convenience.
Right. Joan physically cannot function without
the hive. Literally, she goes catatonic. Yeah.
The story suggests that once we start outsourcing
our basic human functions, whether that's communication
or memory or even our emotional regulation, to
a device, we slowly lose the ability to be human.
It reminds me of, you know how I honestly cannot
remember a single person's phone number anymore?
Nobody can. Right. I've completely outsourced
that specific memory to my contact list. This
book just takes that reality to its extreme logical
conclusion, where you don't just outsource your
memory, you outsource your entire personality.
And that directly connects to another major theme,
the idea of digital immortality, which is heavily
represented by the character of Dr. Parker. Right,
the digital ghost CEO. Exactly. There is this
very real world obsession right now, especially
in tech circles, with the idea of living forever
by uploading our consciousness to the cloud.
Yeah, you see it in the news all the time. Well,
Hive Propolis looks at that exact concept and
asks a really uncomfortable question. Is that
digital copy actually you? Because Dr. Parker,
as pure code, has zero empathy. He views the
mass death of millions of humans as just a data
error that needs to be patched with a sedative.
The book is arguing pretty strongly that shedding
our physical form means ultimately shedding our
humanity. Which brings us to the counter argument
the book offers, the value of the physical world.
And there's a character we haven't really touched
on much yet named Lucian Thierry. Lucian is a
crucial counterbalance in the story. He's a painter
and a philosopher. So while everyone else in
this society is completely absorbed in staring
at holographic projections inside their minds,
he is actively looking at paint and canvas and
real light and shadow. He is totally grounded
in the real world. And his art ends up giving
Samantha a lot of perspective. It anchors her
when her family is floating away. The book definitely
takes a firm stance here. It implies that the
virtual world is basically empty calories. The
physical world, nature, art, face -to -face human
connection. That is the only thing that actually
sustains us. And I suppose that is exactly why
Samantha ends up retreating to a farm at the
end. It is the ultimate rejection of the hive.
There is one final layer to the book's genius,
though, that ties all these themes together.
OK, what's that? The concept of the unreliable
narrator. Because the reader is forced to scan
those QR codes and find external clues, the book
is essentially treating you like a detective.
You are the one who has to verify if Samantha's
version of the truth is actually accurate. Oh,
wow. So you aren't just being lectured at. You're
not just being told, oh, the corporation is bad.
You are actively finding the evidence yourself.
Exactly. It forces you to employ critical thinking.
In a fictional world defined by passive consumption,
where characters like Jared just willingly accept
whatever sedative the hive feeds into their brains,
the reader is forced to do the exact opposite.
To actively seek out the truth. Right. It's a
call to action. Don't just blindly accept the
feed. question the reality being presented to
you. That is such a powerful takeaway. So just
pulling this all together for everyone, we have
this novel from 2015 that basically predicted
all of our current anxieties about screen time
AI and corporate overreach. It absolutely serves
as a cautionary tale. It takes our current technological
trajectory and just fast forwards it to the absolute
worst case scenario. Because even though we don't
have the literal mind implant, yet we definitely
already have the hive. We really do. We have
the constant barrage of notifications, the fear
of missing out, the subtle panic that sets in
when the Wi -Fi suddenly goes down. And we definitely
have the propolis, the sedative. I mean, think
about how often we just use our phones to completely
numb out. To stop feeling bored or anxious. Exactly.
And that is the exact question Hive Propolis
leaves us with. Ah. Are we actually using the
tool, or has it gotten to the point where the
tool is using us? Wow. Samantha's family became
those empty, secated chassis. precisely because
they surrendered everything to the network. It
is a deeply disturbing image, but honestly one
we probably all need to sit with for a while.
So here's a final thought for you to mull over
as you unplug from this deep dive. We talked
earlier about Jared the dad who was just so bored
and dissatisfied with his regular life that he
actively wanted to upload his consciousness to
the cloud. Right. So imagine if that technology
actually dropped tomorrow. If a major tech company
announced a mind upload service and you could
instantly transfer your thoughts into a perfect,
pain -free, endless digital paradise. But to
do it, you had to leave your physical body behind
on the couch like an empty shell. Would you do
it? Right. Would you? Are we evolving into something
greater, or are we just leaving behind the only
part of us that is actually real? Just something
to think about the next time you blindly scan
a QR code. Thank you for joining us on this deep
dive. We will see you in the next one.