Rights and Wrongs

With AI tech on the rise, and "Chat GPT" making headlines each day. I wanted to have a hot take on it and the future.

With a unique perspective on how humans always outwit everyone, here is a story. I hope you like it...

Warning!: The story may seem odd at first, but trust me, it is not what you think!!

Bob's efforts were now turning fruitful. Lately, he had been working to secure rights to the one-billion-dollar deal for his firm. Bob had not kept track, but it had been a long time since he had been working on this project.

But now that it was over, he could resolve to his house chores and engulf some charge.

As he was about to shut his holographic screen down, he got pinged with an email. Feeling frustrated, he gave the command to open it and decided to leave henceforth.

Dear customer, your life credits have ended. Purchase more to continue your living.

There was a big zero credit(s) written in bold at the header of the mail. There were a bunch of links, advertisements, and phone numbers which were mere clutter.

He stared down at the blue suit he had been wearing and then at the silver bracelet on his right wrist. He gave the bracelet a tap. His body transformed into numerous tiny meshes of red and blue cubes. He pressed it back. He gulped.

That did not make sense. He looked at his wavy hands, they formed vertigo as they moved. He winked back to the screen, scrolled down the mail, and clicked on auto lease. An alert popped: "You have reached the maximum amount of leasing. Pay instantly to save your life."

“Oh dear!”, Bob exclaimed to himself.

His phone rang in all horror which scared the butt off his chair. It was the Life Provider Company. He rejected it!

Ping! Ping! Ping!

Emails were being bombed on his screen now! He scrolled further down the mail and clicked unsubscribe. He was in a panic; he did not know what to do.

This was not making any sense. He checked his phone. It was 3022. He had been working on this deal for about a year- to make it right and to earn himself the promotion. He was angry at the government for making such absurd laws for making time exist again.

Lately, there have been talks about the final verdict on the 500 human-year-old case. A decision had to be passed on whether they should unfreeze the cyronified* bodies or not. There were about one billion of those humans that could be recovered back to life. A part of the robotic community had risen to protect their ancestors while others were rioting against it. And Bob was a pure protestant for obvious reasons.

Humans had boiled the planet down and it was robots who right the wrongs of the humans by working under them. Robots toiled and laboured as slaves like meaningless pieces of toys. And after its service, at the End of Life, he was left to decay and die.

Nevertheless, the supporters believed otherwise. Humans were credited for being their creators. And on the following account, the five hundred years old case was now closed with good news for humans. They could now shelter out of the jails and the restricted underground communities. And even one billion of those humans were brought back to life. It was supposed to be a new era for humankind, but things did not go according to plan.

Humans found it difficult to make their livings, to compete with the advanced robots. They could not match their intellect.

And upon their pleas, the robotic community further introduced the concept of wages per certain period. It did not make any sense to Bob. Humans could never be faster than them. If you were given a job, you had to do it with utmost efficiency and without any delay.

While humans, with their careless and procrastinating actions, had destroyed the world once, he feared for the same to happen again.

With the humans back, they had to pay some money to help humans feel equal. All the money Bob had earned while scoring this new promotion had gone into bribes to secure the deal for his firm. And now he had none to pay back.

And now his life was at stake.

He clicked on the big "Pay Now button", and even so, he knew he would never be able to pay the money. The debt was nearly $100,000. He checked his account back which had only $12,571. He ran a quick search and scanned his entire house. All there was where an extra $2000 and a few cents.

His phone rang again. It was an unknown number. He picked it up. It was from the Life Helper Co.

“Sir, we got to know about your conditions. We can offer help.”

“Please make it right for me. I don’t want to cease to exist.”

“Sir, please do not panic. I am here to help you. We will be sending you an email; you must agree to the license. We will be paying the debt money on your behalf, and you will be required to pay us back monthly with some interest. I would like to proceed further if that is okay with you.”

“That sounds great. Please thank you so much.”

“I know, it’s been very tough for the robot community to be around since they announced all humans to be freemen. However, the world is better off with both species together. It’s a great decision on your behalf, I am thankful for all your robot community for that.,” the caller said. “So, I have sent an email….”

“You are a…. human?”

“Yes, sir. Why?”

“You don’t deserve the position. You can never match us. I don’t need help from you.”

“Sir, you can be dismantled for exploiting my rights. Will you please take that back? Sir, you’re EOL is right within 5 hrs.”

“I won’t,” Bob said aggressively. “I rather die than seek help from a human.”

“Sir, I insist you ponder over your decision."

Bob hung up the phone. He could not trust a human for life in any case, which is the first rule he had learned since his inception.

Bob tapped his bracelet, his body transformed into an even darker mesh of cubes. He needed to take help from someone. But from whom? He looked around his house. There was nothing. All there was, was his desk and the white walls all around him. Even his floor was now white.

Had his house always been like this? Empty and lonely, with white walls, with a holographic screen. He could not tell. He tried to think back but could not. He searched around looking for an exit, but there was none. Where was he?

His white walls transitioned into a video feed. All the walls, roofs, and even the floor transitioned into a video feed with a chair in the middle of the frame with white walls surrounding it. A human dressed in a coat and pants walked up to the camera and sat down on the revolving chair. The man was clean-shaven, and his voice matched exactly like the person with whom he had spoken, a few seconds back.

“Who are you? Why am I inside whatever this thing is? Tell me!! I command it.”

Bob tried to connect to the internet to call for help but he needed an access portal. There was none.

His workstation at once vaporized into the walls.

“Where is my screen?”, Bob screamed. “What are doing to me?” Bob tapped his bracelet; all the cube meshes had turned white. This had never happened before. “What is happening?” “I command you to do otherwise or you will be ……”

Before Bob could perceive what was happening to him, he dissolved into the walls himself.

Bob could no longer feel himself; his body scrambled apart. He had no control over anything. But somehow, he knew how to talk to that human. He could sense that video feed.

The human wore an instrument around his head.

“You demanded internet. Now you are the internet itself.”

He did not have to speak or anything. He could think it and the answer came back in a pulse, which he could make out.

“I don’t feel anything. Where am I?”

“You are in the cloud. The real you is dead. A part of your memory is being simulated in one of your facilities because apparently, robots can never die completely.”

“Why am I dead? I had 5 more hours to live!”

“You can never die. You are in one of our facilities…”

“Oh! Please you are beginning to anger me. I know that. But why am I here? Is this what death is like?”

“Oh! No, No! When you die, you are uploaded to the Public Server cloud! This is our cloud.”

“Why am I here?”

“You have been phished! Phished!"

“Just put me back in my body. Name it, what you want, greedy humans. Take it.”

“We want bots to give the earth back"

The vid-feed changed to Bob’s vision. He was back at his house. He could see himself, turning whiter. The white cubes were getting bigger and then, the body finally exploded.

“Nooooooo!,” Bob screamed with no one to witness but a hundred thousand more screams to accompany him.

There is no escape from human wittiness. They always do find a way out.

They always do...

{*cyronified: Human bodies that were frozen before their death in hope of being revived in the future when technology becomes advanced enough.}