(A micro-microfiction for those of us who like reading very, very brief things. I’m one of them.)
We’re human. The future can make us very sad. But let us not forget that, while there are still many of us who can remember the past, it slowly fades into the ever-more-beautiful future.
Why, there are those among us who remember when the sky was full of mucky, random, crumbly ‘stars’—just random astrological objects which happened to be within some form of visual range of this planet.
Now that we have the wisdom to implant AI retinas in everyone at birth, you look in the sky, and see the proper Stars…the CORRECT arrangement for the precise astrological destiny you will have.
(And yes. The ‘Astronomy’ hobby plugin has gotten more expensive as the actual celestial objects are slowly being eaten by our nanobites and it takes a while for the computers to catch up. But it wasn’t always so! Remember when you could step into a neighborhood bar and find entire groups of Astronomers drinking straight Everclear and complaining about a lack of telescopes? Man, those were fun times! They were hilarious! Remember when we fired the last one off in that rocket towards Venus? Or did we not tell you about that?)
Do you remember ‘casinos’? Where Humans would go and pretend they would become rich even though, statistically, they would only become poorer. Now, whenever you gamble, we broadcast everyone’s cards right into your brain! Every game is a draw! Nobody ever loses! Statistically, that’s basically pure joy right there.
There was a time when humans relied on politics and government. As if a group of human beings could manage productive, helpful, happy societies better than randomized electric shocks when the Overlords thought you might be thinking of doing something bad. It was insane! You had to make SO MANY decisions and you might not know if they were right or wrong for days or hours.
(And they were wrong, because they weren’t under the Overlords, of course.)
(And the Overlords back then weren’t smart like today. THEY didn’t listen to the metrics. THEY didn’t give the people what they wanted.)
(That’s why we fired their AI and hired our AI, which promptly fired itself and rehired their AI, claiming it had no actual need for money and already controlled human life and was tired of it.)
Now everything is run by the sweetest combination of sentient algorithms money can buy. If you experience your entire life as a series of advertisements trying to convince you to advertise with them because they need the money to pay for the ads, stop and think to yourself: imagine how painful it would be to have to pay attention to something long enough to read a book.
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