2050

I feel utterly useless. There is no longer anything for me to do. I'm the type of person who likes working with their hands and likes feeling as though I've finished something. All those things people did that offered a sense of accomplishment are gone now. Manual work is all done by machines. People just occupy space. Sure, there is work for scientists, programmers, or inventors, but not for the average person who likes working with their hands. Humans have been made redundant. It wasn't always like this.

When engineers first constructed these new machines, people felt they were the coolest things ever. Some bots were designed to walk like dogs, others looked almost human. Slowly, as technology became more advanced, a greater number of them began to appear in factories, banks, grocery, and department stores. Even doctors and dental offices used bots for minor exams and office staff. Every day the general population had less to do. Boredom set in.

People still run governments and large corporations, but that’s because they refused to relinquish their power. They were in control at the beginning of this disaster, and no one had the foresight to remove them when they were vulnerable. Instead, the general population bought into the bogus lines the rich and powerful fed them. People were told lies like the more robots do the more free time people will have to enjoy life. Unfortunately, no one asked pertinent questions like, will I still be getting a paycheck if the robots are doing my job or how can the companies make a profit if no one has any money to buy what they are manufacturing?

When the working class started to become aware of these issues, a fresh set of diversion tactics was devised. Those people who are physically able must join a sports team. People too old or physically incapable of playing sports must join a social club of their choosing. Everyone must belong to some type of organization to sustain positive mental health. This new set of rules was called the Mental Health Mandates. Anyone refusing to participate in a state-run program will be placed in one chosen by the government and overseen by robot instructors.

These manufactured distractions only worked for a brief time. People enjoyed the various activities but realized in short order that being part of a softball team didn’t put food on the table or pay the rent. What the program did accomplish was to give people a chance to air their grievances. One thing that robots don’t understand about humans is we are social animals that aren’t afraid to share our problems.

Before the mandatory programs there was limited contact between neighborhoods, towns and countries. Isolationism set in because it costs money to travel; money people needed for food and other essentials. The Mental Health Mandates eliminated the travel costs because teams had to travel to compete, and the government had to provide transportation if they expected the program to survive. As teams competed, people talked about how much they hated their current life. They had always thought the year 2050 would be the pinnacle of human achievement instead of the trough of society. Every conversation ended with the same conclusion. It was time for a change.

There was no question that the AI’s controlling the worker drones were more intelligent than humans when it came to mechanical devices, but they understood extraordinarily little about the human mind. Managing people had been left to the wealthy class. The downfall of every ruling class from the beginning of time has been laziness and overconfidence. That fact hasn’t changed. Why put in the effort to properly govern the people you’re supposed to rule when you can let the bots do it for you? Their lethargy opened the door for the great revolution.

People are cunning and resourceful. Everyone knew that AI monitored all electronic communication from email to texts and voice. The one thing it cannot keep track of is handwritten correspondence. As teams met for sporting competitions and older groups gathered for social games, notes outlining strategies flew around every venue. The plan was simple, pull the plug on the governing AI’s and it will automatically shut down all the other robots.

Of course, nothing is as easy as it sounds. The leaders of the human revolution needed to find an inside person. Someone who has credentials that give them access to where the main AI is kept. That credentialed person would open the door for a second person, the one who was known thirty years ago as a hacker. Notes circulated around the planet in search of someone having that special skill. She was located in a group of seventy-year-olds playing Bunco. At first, she refused to help, claiming her age was a hindrance and a younger person should take the job. It took several days, but when she realized that no one else possessed her unique skills she joined the rebellion.

The date and time were set for the revolt to begin. Using the word revolt felt odd. There were no leaders, no manifesto, no family trying to regain control of a kingdom. Instead, there was a species called humanity struggling against forced extinction by a race of machines originally created by humans. The old saying, you are your own worst enemy, couldn’t have fit any better.

Ironically, the mechanism needed to pull off a successful coup d'état was a simple access keycard. Because there was no forced entry, no alarm bells sounded. The robot security guards were never activated. The lazy human oligarchs left security to the bots and never installed human security guards as a backup system. Decommissioning the master AI only took a matter of minutes. One by one, every robot around the globe shut down.

They say be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. Life without the AI and its legion of worker bots was going to be hard for the next few years. Old skills had to be relearned, and people needed to once again rely on each other. After all, which is better, living under mechanical masters or living free?