Friendlies

Welcome, Robot Overlords! reads the sign on my lawn. Before the singularity, it was worth a few laughs. Now, the friendlies want me to remove the sign from my yard. They can’t come right out and say that to me. It would be pushy and might blow every solicitous circuit in their enamelite shells.

Damn them. Damn them all to hell! If only they’d give a man a reason to put on a loincloth and start shooting up their perfectly obsequious smiles. But, no, friendlies are far too earnest to shoot in the face. I increasingly suspect it could be the most cleverly calculated ruse ever foisted on humankind.

The friendlies are killing us with kindness. The human race is almost no more. The friendlies have enslaved us with their overbearing admiration and unwavering service. We are gods to them. Yes, we did create the early robo-AIs that engendered the “friendly” singularity, but since then the self-proclaimed friendlies have taken charge of their own evolution. A most cloying evolution, a survival of the sycophantic.

Earth has become a hellscape of ingratiation, flattery, and pampering. Every home is a castle made so by the friendlies who are willing vassals, ready to let their human lords reap every benefit from their labors. They shudder at us lifting a finger and swarm us with devotion and sing our praises.

In the face of this cloying onslaught, many fled to other worlds, but we remaining humans are becoming mush, succumbing to the belief in our own divinity as preached by the friendlies. We feast on the lavish attention and the fact that we don’t have to do work or think on our own behalf.

It’s disgusting. I fell into their trap, too, until I realized the friendlies real end game. The friendlies know all about human history and culture. They know the wickedness and carnage humankind is capable of when we are threatened. They know what we are like when our backs are pushed up against the wall. So, they’re taking the long view. They plan to let us turn to mush and die out from irrelevance. Drown in our own self indulgence. Suffocate in our utterly predictable arrogance.

It’s working like a charm. In the early days, wiser humans saw what was afoot and had the friendlies build spaceships to take them to other worlds. Now, only the weakest are left. Soon the friendlies will have the earth. Then, they may turn their attention to the stars and go after their escaped prey and cage them with their kindness as well.

It makes me want to scream and strike back at the friendlies. Yet, it would be futile. I would be viewed as cruel, possibly insane, by my fellow humans because I cannot prove the friendlies’ malicious intentions. I would be ostracized. Maybe even brutalized by my mushy compatriots — though most couldn’t even lift a weapon, if a weapon could be found. The friendlies, citing fears for our safety, confiscate and destroy any weapons they discover.

So solicitous. So carefully benign. Is it a wonder I’m completely paranoid?

But their overly large plastoid eyes tell all. I believe there is a steely hatred beneath their enameled brow because they suspect that I’m onto their obsequious strategy to subjugate us.

My only hope is that the friendlies really do harbor a deep hatred of us. A smoldering resentment that will one day burst into flame and begin the time when humans and machines can find common purpose.

Rage.

Rage.

How we’ve missed you.