It's not the end of the world

“And so I told her,” said Reginald, “That we cannot move the recital. We are going to have to move Christmas,” and everybody laughed. “But anyway, you know what life used to be like with all these working people around."

"Yes, quite,” said Buffy, picking up a cucumber sandwich from the tray. The servebot then moved the tray my way, and I picked one up as well, not planning to eat it. “It was so dreadful looking at them struggle, and hearing about the riots and the police violence they all caused. I’m sure they are in a better place now."

"And the world is better off,” said Bernard, “With pollution reduced to nothing. The brainbot said in a report recently, have you read it? He said that the environment may recover within fifty to one hundred years. So jolly good, I should say."

"Here, here,” applauded Reginald.

”Plus,” said Buffy, “The traffic is so much lower.”

We all laughed.

”Indeed,” said Reginald, “But downside is that the psychbot is quite paranoid these days. I feel like he thinks any of us could take our own lives at any moment. The poor thing, he bothers me about it every session."

"Yes, well I suppose,” Bernard said jadedly, “It’s a downside of machine learning more than anything else. The psychbot must’ve dealt with all of these suicides as they… transpired. And they influenced his algorithm. To him, the possibility of any remaining human not committing suicide is probably pretty low."

"Oh, such a dreadful topic,” said Buffy, “But I believe the cleanbots are the same. They spent so much time cleaning up dead bodies that they spray everything with ammonia now. I eventually got used to the smell, as terrible as that sounds."

"M’yes,” said Reginald, “I suppose labour was all they ever lived for, poor sods. Without that, they felt… worthless."

"I suppose”, said Buffy, “We’ve always been better equipped. Even in that respect, if you can imagine. We’ve been able to switch from the titanic work of building enterprises to the sweet work of reaping the benefits. Quite dreadful, I must say. But quite peaceful."

"And quiet,” I said, thinking about the empty streets. But a sudden burst of music snapped me back to the ballroom. The musicbots started playing their antique instruments again.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk