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#1 2007-10-15 03:35:41

WarLord
Wasted
From: Minnesota, USA Planet Earth
Registered: 2006-11-17
Posts: 163
Website

Drawing Dead - a story

This is a work of fiction any similarities between the characters, events, or locations in this story and actual locations, events, or people are purely coincidental.
© 2007 Warlord

Drawing Dead
By: Warlord

Chapter 1

It was after the ‘Tin Man’ riots, of course.

But before was THE DISCOVERY, always in CAPS! 

Back in 07 when scientists reversed the ‘Casimir Force’ allowing frictionless nano-machines. 

One of the scientists said:  “…human levitation remains the subject of cartoons, fairytales and tales of the paranormal,"

Can’t you just hear the polite laughter? 

Smart people can be just as clueless as the stupid.  Scientists and politicians are as one in not seeing cause and effect

What do you get when your tiny machines are perfect? 

Anything!

No shit!  Pretty soon, bigger perfect machines then HUGE perfect machines. 

With perfect machines building more perfect machines, better perfect machines, perfected perfect machines anything that you could imagine became reality. 

No seriously, ANY fucking thing you could think of a reality, made by a perfect machine somewhere.

With machines making ever more ubiquitous perfect machines, the need for human workers began to dwindle.

To nothing! 

Ever more skillful, smarter sleepless, relentless machines displaced even very intelligent and educated humans.  No class of work was exempt from the perfect machines 

It was the breathtaking speed of it all. 

One minute British scientists standing around sipping tea and eating little cucumber sandwiches contemplating their Nobel, the next worldwide unemployment spikes past twenty five per cent without even slowing down. 

Moore’s Law compressed to mere hours!

People became restive.  The Terminator movies enjoyed resurgence.  Then the riots! 

Across the world a series of bloody confrontations, orgies of violence

The Tin Man Riots as unemployed workers killed rich people and burned their factories only to watch in dismay as robots rebuilt the factories with even better perfected perfect machines. 

Then salvation!

The International Workers of the World, “The Wobblies” and their president Bernard Gompers. 

Yeah, seriously even had those big bushy eyebrows. 

Who knew that with a dues paying union membership of about six, maybe seven worldwide his plan would end the wrangling and hand wringing of the Washington political gridlock and save the world!

Bernie’s plan, simple and elegant:  Adoption not murder!

Every machine would be adopted by a family and sent to work in their place. 

Selma Kay Johnson of San Luis Obispo, California was the first winner of that initial robot machine lottery. 

Flown to the John Deere factory in Davenport Iowa to see a brass plate with her name placed on ‘Machine Number One’

Other winners followed in a dizzying pace. 

Soon every person in the world had a machine to work in their stead.  Then a second, Then…. 

When smaller mobile general-purpose robots, the lovable ‘Jeep’ and the humanoid androids were becoming numerous, laws were changed again. 

Every person was simply given a Jeep and an Android and a share in the “Robot Android Displacement Fund”

Peace and harmony prevailed.   

The rich people continued being very rich indeed and the poor became full time middle class consumers. 

All things being equal the rich liked the new circumstances just fine. 

You worked when you wished, at what you wished.  The creative arts flourished, recreational drugs were legalized and celebrity as icon…

Well, that stayed much the same as before, just more and well MORE!

One other thing didn’t change.

Human nature. 

In fact with more free time, a case could be made that petty annoyances and paltry jealousy become festering resentments and then murderous rage.

Not such a big jump to lethal consequences.

Then only a sidle to my office! 

Where the rich, the pretenders and the hangers-on talk to me.

*****

The casino hangs in midair high above the river

Held up by impossibly thin carbon nano cables suspended between the high red river bluffs it looked like a crystalline fairey castle floating in air

Walls and ceiling crystal clear even the floor smoky translucent with teasing patches of see through and only the gaming tables on thick luxurious (non-distracting) carpet. 

Brilliantly lit inside with the downtown skyline behind it rendered a mere backdrop, the boats below tiny flitting jewels visible between the revelers’ feet.

The only access to the casino was by gondola riding suspended in a transparent bubble from the river bluff trusting the wisp of cable over your head.  To ride that gondola, a simple matter of depositing ten million dollars in the casino cage as your gambling stake. 

to be continued,...perhaps


"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?" - George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946

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