March 2025
It's the end of March, and I managed to spend a little time editing a story to an ok point, so I'm adding a story along with a monthly update.
The story is called The Last Automator. I was thinking about how difficult it must be for science fiction and futurist writers who try to envision new technologies and incorporate them into their stories. Then, depending on how far into the future their story is set, you have to get it published quickly. That technology could show up, or a newer technology could show up that's better than what you envisioned, making the story a little weird.
The story is one of those. I wrote it in 2022 when robot process automation was all over the news. Then I sat on it for a year, and all the large language models started coming out, and that was it. My first sci-fi/futurist story is a little late to the game. I still like the story, and it's still worth a read, but I have massive respect for the dedicated science fiction writers racing to stay ahead of the technology in the worlds they create.
But first:
I did not watch many spooky movies this month but I did get my eyes on the A24 movie Heretic with creepy ass Hugh Grant. Well done, everyone involved. It has an interesting premise, and it gives everything away but still keeps you guessing what the heck is going to happen.
I finished reading Stephen Graham Jones's novel Mongrels. I grew up poor and moved around a lot, and I connected to this family of werewolves more than I thought I would.
I started reading Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, and as a writer who grew up wanting to be a writer and living the dream of "writing" to find that most writers do not live the fairy tale writer life and work multiple jobs and write and hustle when they can with little promise of a reward but has to do it anyway because if they didn't write something would be missing in their lives. This book touches on that and calls out that fairy tale. I'm only about halfway through, so it can change. And there may be a ghost.
Alright, that's enough.
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Here is The Last Automator:
The alarm went off at 7 am like it did every weekday. Sam was not feeling well but didn’t think he’d need to call in today. Sam did not call in unless it was critical. He had a job to do. Having a job to do was better than all the unemployed people in the world. Lounging about not earning their way. Sam earned his way and would continue to do so. He pushed the heavy grey weighted blanket away from his chest and sat up. The window shades opened slowly, letting in the morning light. Sam swung his legs around the edge of the bed and slid his feet into bright yellow slippers. Then he stood up and shuffled out of his room into the hall.
He showered and dressed, then poured himself a cup of coffee while the news told him that everything was fine, but he knew everything was fine. Sam combed his white hair and tucked in his green collared shirt while hiking his tan pants up over his sagging belly. He used to wear his pants low, but that was a long time ago, and now stretch pants were in fashion again. It was good. He hated the previous style. Bow ties and suspenders were never his thing. Not that it mattered. He had to go to work, anyway.
He stepped outside his house into the bright sunlight. His yard, and all the yards around his, were full of bright green grass and beautiful flowers. They planted flowers perfectly to account for all the seasons, allowing something to bloom. They removed any of the plants that were beyond beauty date overnight while the neighborhood slept.
Sam’s car was running and waiting for him in the driveway. It was dark metallic blue, a rare color, as most cars on the road were bright pastels to blend in with the environment.
The car had no front or back. A door opened as he approached, and he climbed into the seat facing the road. Sam didn’t like to be driven backward. It didn’t matter where he sat since there were no longer any drivers. He was a little sad when he was a teenager, and they banned all the cars that required drivers from the road, but he had never actually driven, so he got over it quickly. He liked how much faster you could go when they planned all the routes as perfectly as the blooming of the flowers. Sam leaned back and breathed in the fresh scent of a car. He was the only person ever in it. He had a job to do, and this was the perk. Let those unemployed loungers share their cars that looked like they were designed by the easter bunny.
The car moved quietly down the perfect road past rows of perfect houses, through two tunnels, and over a bridge to the island where the office he went to five days a week unless it was a holiday or he was on Vacation or not feeling well. He hadn’t been sick for years, though, at least since the last merger, and that was just a head cold that gave him a headache and a runny nose.
The car pulled up to the garage of the three-story glass building surrounded by trees. The Gery program designed the building and campus. It was round, and it looked like the dark glass of the windows hung from the steel ring that surrounded the top of the building. The garage sometimes looked like a mouth to Sam, and it opened and swallowed him and the car. It was the only way in or out of the building from the street.
The inside of the building was bright. The dark glass was meant to keep out prying eyes but not the daylight. It was always the same level of brightness inside the building. Even on sunny days, the glass and lighting program shared made sure of that.
Sam worked alone on the top floor of the building. His workstation overlooked the courtyard at the back of the building. It was full of trees and flowers in various stages of bloom all year round. He liked to go back there and breathe in the mulch's smell and freshly turned earth. He never saw the gardeners in the garden. Like the gardeners at home, they came out when no one was around or everyone was sleeping. It was nice to think that the perfection was natural and not reliant on millions of tiny bots working in unison to ensure we had the perfect world we live in.
Sam sat at his desk and put his hand on the sensor to activate it. The building knew he was there and could have activated it for him, but this was part of the show. This was part of Sam’s job. Once he activated the desk, a screen appeared, showing him the status reports. They were simple reports and easy-to-read bar graphs. The status of the machines, Green. Inventory status, Green. Goods in transit, Green. Customers, Green. Orders, Green.
Everything was always green. Like the perfect blooming flowers, the perfect traffic flow on the road, the perfect everything of business. Sam triggered the ok option on the reports and spent the next few hours watching the animations of the automation processes happening around the world on his screen until it notified him it was lunchtime.
The cafeteria was on the second level and was a good excuse to leave his desk for an hour. It always provided a salad with some fresh fruit from the garden in the courtyard. He would eat that while sitting at one of the many small tables. He was the only one who worked in the building, but they added these tables in case Sam felt lonely. The building would bring in a handful of people to eat lunch and provide company. Sam hadn’t needed it, though, so the building never opened up. He spent his lunch watching the news of the day. The news reports mirrored what he saw on his automations screen with commentary about the weather and the potential impact on the system from storms or other potential natural disasters.
After lunch, Sam would walk in the garden and sit by the fountain that he could not see from his office. It was a simple fountain with ten koi fish swimming around, bumping up against the water’s surface, occasionally looking for food or an unlucky bug. Watching the fish after lunch was the highlight of Sam’s day.
The building would chime when an hour had passed. Sam would go back to his workstation on the third floor, activate his desk, review the morning's reports, click the ‘ok’ option, and watch the automations until it was time to leave later that afternoon when the building chimed. The car would be running in the garage, ready to bring him home.
Jo woke up every morning or afternoon whenever she felt like it. She lived two cities away from Sam but had the same style house as Sam, the same yard as Sam, and until the merger five years ago, she had the same job as Sam. It was determined at the time of the merger that having two automators was unnecessary, but Jo, being twenty years younger than Sam, would be his replacement upon retiring.
“Sam,” she had said upon meeting him, using only his name to greet him because she could not think of anything else to say. He was twenty years older, with white hair and a slight paunch he held in by wearing his pants up over his waist. She didn’t care about him enough to tell him that the pants were not hiding anything.
“Jo,” he had said and reached out to shake her hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
There was no one else around. The programs coordinated the meeting shortly after the programs had coordinated and finalized the merger of the last two companies on the planet. They deemed it a far superior solution to having to coordinate resource delivery and content creation between the two of them when one could provide everything that was needed better and more perfect.
“Have you been doing this long?” She had asked because he was older. Jo had only been doing this for the previous ten years. They selected her from the millions of candidates, and that was it. She was an Automator.
“Since there were twenty companies,” he said, his chest puffed out a bit. Sam was proud that he was the last automator. He was the last person standing in the game of a corporate underling King of the Mountain.
“Wow,” Jo said. “You ever regret it?”
“Never,” He had said, and she believed him; she could not imagine this person in front of her doing anything else.
Jo had not chosen to be a candidate and hoped that someone else would have been more qualified. She enjoyed her life before becoming one of the last automators. It made you different from everyone else. It made little sense to them that Jo had an actual job with responsibilities while they did whatever they felt like doing. Being that different drove a strange wedge between her and the regular people, but it did not bring her closer to a person like Sam.
“This is how the system is activated.” He gestured toward the screen from behind his dark wooden desk overlooking a garden in a courtyard.
Jo knew how it all worked. It was the same setup she had at her office. Same desk, similar view, the same reports, the same option for ‘ok’, and the same animated views of the automations.
Jo had woken up the day of the merger thinking she was going into her office, but the dark metallic blue car drove her to Sam’s office, where they were both briefed about the merger on the television screen in the break room. It was not a person but a representation of a person. Computer-generated and familiar, but not so familiar anyone would recognize them. She was told that her office was closed. She would spend the day with Sam, and then she was to be released until they needed her services again.
Before leaving, they had agreed on the transfer code: two, one, zero, one, nine, nine, six.
It confused her. She was upset. She was upset for the same reason Sam was proud. He was the last person on the mountain, and they let Jo go and essentially thrown off the mountain to figure out what she was supposed to do until Sam decided to retire. That was the hardest part. She was not off the hook. Jo still had a job. That job was to wait until they fired Sam, he retired, or died.
She had five years to get used to waiting, though. She still had made no real friends who she’d have to explain at some point that she was not like them, that she could not just run off to all the places in the world they could run off to for vacation. Even Sam could take a vacation. He was the only one who could tell the system he was going on vacation. When he did, things would run on their own and would not require him to review the reports or press ok on the machine.
Jo had thought about reaching out to Sam to schedule a vacation away at the same time he did, but that would have required her to talk with him, and she was not going to do that. So she spent her days working out, reading books, visiting museums, and doing all the things everyone else was doing, but she knew that at some point, it would all end, and she would be back to work.
Sam arrived home just after dinner had arrived. As he pulled into his driveway, he saw the delivery vehicle driving away. He had ordered it a week ago and forgot what it was going to be. He liked to surprise himself and called it meal prepping. Some people had the raw ingredients delivered, and they would cut it up and cook it, but he had a job and did not have time for that when he got home.
It was tofu cubed and glazed in a spicy orange sauce on a bed of lettuce and freshly steamed rice on the side. It was perfect. Sam remembered looking at it when he ordered it the first time a few years ago and thought that it might be a good one. Now, he had it every couple of weeks. He grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and sat down to eat.
Sam was still feeling a little unwell after dinner. He felt dizzy and there was a pain in his stomach. The tofu had not caused indigestion in the past, but he admitted he was getting older, and it could. Not wanting to lie down, Sam sat on the couch to watch a movie and relax. He thought he might call in tomorrow. Sam finished his beer, knowing that would not help his indigestion, and fell asleep halfway through the movie about an older woman finding love on a trip to Barbados. If he had finished the movie, he would have seen that it was all just a scam to cheat her out of her money, but the scammer turned out to have a heart of gold and realized he loved her after all.
During the night, as the automations tidied up around the house, humming quietly, their clear shells navigating around Sam as he slept quietly. Outside, more automations slid quietly over the grass, clipping it to the perfect height while fertilizing and watering with the perfect amount of water calculated by the amount of water in the soil, humidity in the air, and the probability of rain within the next twenty-four hours. The windows were cleaned as they drew each pane into the house to emerge crystal clear and sparkling in the moonlight, ready to let in the sun’s rays without glaring first thing in the morning. It was like a new house every day, and they recreated this act in billions of homes around the world every day.
Sam’s alarm went off at seven in the morning, as it did every weekday, and he continued to lie on the couch. He had not been well; he did not wake up, and with a final hitch of his chest, Sam was dead.
He had not called that into the office.
Jo woke up at noon, and the sun was shining through her sparkling clear windows, freshly cleaned the night before. Her breakfast of oatmeal was on the table, and it had cooled off and gone gummy. Usually, the automations would have cleared the uneaten oatmeal and had lunch laid out for her. She was looking forward to the ham sandwich she had put on order the day before. It was not real ham, though; she wasn’t a monster. No one ate real ham anymore.
She left the oatmeal on the table uneaten and stumbled to the shower, taking off the sweatshirt she had slept in and dropping her sweatpants in the hall. She yawned and scratched the hair in her armpit before reaching for her toothbrush.
“Shower on. Regular,” Jo said to get the water started and warmed up while she brushed her teeth.
The shower did not turn on.
“Shower on. Regular,” she said slower. She was still tired and thought maybe she’d slurred.
The shower did not turn on.
“God damn it,” she said out loud and pushed the shower curtain aside and smashed the center button that started the shower. Then she tapped the middle button that set the temperature at ‘not too hot and not too cool’
She brushed her teeth, then removed her underwear and bra, leaving them on the floor, and stepped into the shower. She washed and then spent a little time working on her hair. It was thick, and she hated washing it, so it happened maybe once a week. As she worked on it, she imagined the ham sandwich that should have been sitting on her table and hoped that it would be. She ran through a hundred or more explanations for why the automations were not working. Maybe she was sleeping restlessly, moving around and making sounds. That could have made the automations think she was active, and they stayed in their cubbies.
“Shower, stop,” she said after rinsing the last of the soap from her body.
The shower did not stop.
Jo looked up at the ceiling, frustrated now, and said again, but louder, “Shower. Stop”
And the shower did not stop.
“God dammit!” She yelled and turned to hit the button that started the water in the shower and the water stopped.
She dried off and stepped over her underwear and into the hallway. Her sweatpants and sweatshirt lay in the pastel blue piles she had left them in. The automations had not put them away. She kicked them to the edge of the hallway and entered the bedroom. Her bed was unmade, and the half-full glass of water she had brought to bed with her last night was still on her bedside table.
“Are you on Holiday?” She asked the house out loud and slapped the wall with her palm in the general area that she assumed the automations were.
After digging through her dresser, she settled on a pair of dark denim trousers and a t-shirt with the image of a dolphin jumping out of the ocean past a rainbow. Below the image, it just said ‘Florida.’ She had picked it up on her last actual vacation almost six years ago. When she had a job and she took vacations. Jo hated it when people said they were going on vacation. No one had to work, so what were they vacationing from? She wondered. Why couldn’t they just say they were going away for a few days? Calling it a vacation when they didn’t have jobs just annoyed her.
She sat at the table in front of the cold oatmeal. Her stomach grumbled, and she picked up the spoon to take a few bites. It was not a ham sandwich. It was as cold and gummy as she thought it was going to be. The soy milk had blended with the oats and everything thickened. The oats that had been at the top, exposed to the air, had started to dry out and darken.
“News,” she said, dropping the spoon into the half-eaten bowl.
The television did not turn on.
“News,” she said again, turning towards the wall that normally housed the screen and displayed the images.
The television still did not turn on.
“Son of a bitch,” she said, and she realized aside from her voice there was no way to turn the television on. When she was younger, there had been remotes or apps with buttons that you could push and make things happen, like turning on and changing the channel. That was phased out years ago, and you should just be able to say what you wanted, and that’s what you got. Say news and it’s your news channel, say a movie’s name or a genre and there is a list of movies to choose from. You didn’t even have to say it out loud. You could move your lips or sign it and the television would pick up on what you wanted.
Today, however, this television did nothing, just like the shower, just like the automations that were supposed to pick up her laundry from the floor and more importantly to clean up the cold half-eaten oatmeal and replace it with the ham sandwich she had ordered and wanted right now.
Jo looked outside her window, and the road was quiet. There was no one jogging past her perfect front yard on their noon health runs. No cars drove by, going to a restaurant for lunch or a park after lunch to hear some music or just sit and take in the beauty of it. She didn’t see anyone outside anywhere.
A couple of hours passed as Jo paced around her house, talking to any and all the appliances, hoping one would answer, but none of them did. She could not make any calls out and did not receive any calls in. She had resigned to sitting on her couch and reading the one paperback book she owned. It was a limited edition copy of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury she had received as a joke gift from an old coworker after they had had a conversation about the death of paperback books.
“Who needs an actual book anymore?” Jo had argued. “I have any book I’ve ever wanted available to read or to listen to just by asking. And if there is a book I liked reading, I could ask for another book like it. And if that book doesn’t exist, I could mention a couple other books and an author and in minutes I can have a whole new book that no one has ever read before and it would be as good as anything I have ever read. Paper books are dead.”
Paper books were dead, and so was writing. No one could churn out anything better than what was being generated. There were some who would argue that the generated books could not compete with the classics. They didn’t have the soul of the author embedded in the words. That’s at least what they said when the novels were first generated. Not long after, though, these books took over and people forgot or gave up arguing there was a difference. These generated books were better. The same went for the music and the movies being generated. Now, it was just accepted.
Jo had read half the book before setting it down on the coffee table. It was getting dark outside, and dinner had not been delivered.
“Lights,” she said out loud, knowing there would not be a response.
Dinner never arrived, the lights indoors and outdoors never came on, and close to what might have been eight o’clock in the evening, she retired to her bedroom to fall asleep, hoping that tomorrow morning everything would be back to normal and she could get back to doing nothing.
The next morning was more of the same. Nothing worked as she had come to expect. The half-eaten bowl of oatmeal was on the table, now fully crusted over. She was hungry, though, and thought she might eat some of it after she took a shower. Jo had resigned herself to having to hit the button to turn on the water in the shower, knowing the voice command would not work. She was happy it was not fully automated yet. She put on the same clothes she had worn the day before, the blue denim and the Florida shirt with the rainbow. Today, though, she added a pair of shoes because she intended to go outside. She would have to get someone to fix these things. She didn’t know who but figured she could ask around.
Jo stood in her living room looking out the window at her front yard. The grass had grown and was looking fuzzy and not as tight and tidy. In the middle of the lawn was a single dandelion growing close to the ground, like it was trying to avoid the automations that normally would have been around, dug it up, and incinerated it. Flowers had their place in the yard but not in the middle of the lawn.
“Open,” she said, walking over to the door to go outside.
The door didn’t open.
Jo knew it had an override but couldn’t remember how to do it. She stood looking at the door, her brow furrowed, thinking back to what needed to be done to open the door. All the doors had fail-safes from the inside to go out, they had to. The trouble was that she never had to use it.
“Open,” she said again and banged on the door, looking for a latch or button that might do it.
There wasn’t a latch or a button, though; door designers got rid of those a long time ago because who wants to see something sticking out and unsightly? Joe groaned and leaned her head with the full weight of her upper body against the door, and it clicked, exposing an edge. She grabbed the edge with her fingers and slid the door open and into the wall.
The sun was bright, and the air was fresh and cool. It was spring, and if weather could be perfect, this was it. Jo took a deep breath and stepped outside.
Jo was not the only person who had found their way outside. Her neighbor, Paul, a tall, dark-haired man in his forties, around the same age as Jo, was in his front yard wearing blue and white striped shorts and a plaid robe. He was kneeling over his lawn, and it looked like he was trying to pinch the grass off where it had grown beyond the desirable length. She could understand why it bothered him but figured it would be best to wait and let the automations do their thing when everything was back online.
She walked over to her car, dark metallic blue like Sam’s car. She was one of the last automators, and if anything happened to Sam, then she would be the last. That was when she realized what was going on. Something must have happened to Sam. It was his responsibility to get everything started every day. The last thing left manual in the world. This was the plan to fight the singularity. Someone was afraid that robots and automations would take over the world and wipe out all existence because that would be the most efficient of all the process improvements. The automations would always have to be triggered by an Automator, and everything would be fine. This was the first time that the process was not started and now nothing worked.
Jo hoped the car would be running and the door to open, but it sat in her driveway as unmoving and useless as everything else in the world. She was not Sam, and it was not her job to kick off all the processes. They made her job redundant after the last merger. She looked at the road and slapped her leg.
“Let's go,” she said to herself, hoping she remembered how to get to the office.
It was still cool but warming up, and the road was clear.
“One foot in front of the other,” she said under her breath to no one.
“One foot in front of the other,” she said out loud to anyone who would listen.
Paul lifted his head and raised a hand to wave at her. His face was strained with whatever he thought was going on, but he tried to smile/
“Poor stupid Paul,” she said quietly, smiled, and waved back.
Jo was fine for the first five miles. She had been exercising much but never went over five miles. She did not see a lot of people outside their homes walking around and hoped that it was their choice and not because they could not figure out how to open the door to get outside. It was over 24 hrs since the automations stopped working, and she didn’t have to imagine that people were getting hungry. She knew they were because she was. No one kept food at their house anymore. Not even snacks. There was no need. If you wanted something, you asked for it, and within minutes, it would arrive hot and fresh or cold and fresh. This had limits, though. You had to choose from a menu, but there were so many options on the menu that it felt like you could have anything you wanted.
The following five miles were a little harder. Jo was tired and regretting not bringing some water. She would have to figure out a place to stop and get some soon. Unlike food and snacks, all places had running water. If she got off on the next exit, she could find a drinking fountain at the first park she ran into. After another mile, an exit sign appeared; two miles after that, Jo was walking down the gentle slope off from the highway into a town that full of houses that all looked like her own except the cars in their driveways were not the dark metallic blue of an automator or a former automator in waiting.
The park was across the street from the houses and went underneath the highway. There was a fountain right at the entrance. She hurried over, her feet hurting in her shoes. The shoes were comfortable but her feet were not used to being used this much. Jo pushed the metal plate on the side of the concrete rectangle and out of the top where there was a curved metal spigot in the shape of a hand ran a burble of water. She didn’t even wait for the water to run cold. She began drinking the tepid water right out of the metal hand. Jo drank until the water was cold and then continued to drink until she could feel the cold water sloshing around in her belly.
Jo sat on the bench beside the fountain to give her tired feet and legs a break. She felt the muscles tingle and pulsate in her legs as they tried to figure out what the heck the owner of these legs was doing to them. Jo closed her eyes, letting the water rehydrate her, and relaxed. She was still hungry, but at least she had a good amount to drink and fill and slosh around in her stomach.
She opened her eyes, preparing herself to get up and start walking again, and noticed just on the other side of the park’s entrance was a bicycle lying on its side in the grass. It was light blue with curved handlebars and thin tires. She felt her luck was changing. Jo thought she could get to the office before morning if she had a bike. If she could remember how to ride a bike.
Jo walked over to it and looked around to see if the owner of this bike was anywhere in the area. She was not above taking a bike but did not want to ride away from someone chasing her for their stolen bike. There was no one around and she righted it, checking the tires for air and shape. It all seemed good. She rolled it over to the pavement and threw her leg up over the bar.
The last time she was on a bike was when she was fourteen and was at a summer camp. They taught mountain biking, and she was good at it. All the bikes had an electric assist, so they didn’t have to work very hard to get up the mountain. The fun was riding down, anyway. No one really likes to struggle their way up a mountain pedaling a bike. That was not what Jo had signed up for at the camp. The riders would get to the top of the hill and follow a series of paths and small jumps that would provide a thrill at the level the campers were ready for. No one got hurt, and everyone seemed to have a good time.
With her foot, Jo adjusted the pedal on the light blue bike and pushed off. After a momentary wobble, she found her balance and began moving forward at a much faster pace than walking would ever have provided. She rode past the houses that looked like her house and saw some people through their windows looking out at her. She waved and continued forward. A man was outside of his house sitting on the roof of his car, looking away from the road and at his house. She couldn’t see his face, but from the way his shoulders moved, she suspected he was crying. Two days without food or automations was a big deal. If she didn’t have a purpose, she would cry as well. It was then she realized the impact of this work stoppage. Being an automator was not just one part of the process. It was the whole process, and she hoped the world would hold itself together for a little while longer.
She pedaled the bike another block and started the bike up the on-ramp to the highway. She could pedal about halfway up the ramp but had to stop to get off and push it the rest of the way. It took a little wind out of her sails as she tried to remember if there were many hills from here to the office. Jo could not remember, but she hoped there were not too many.
At the top, Jo swung her leg back over the saddle and pushed off. She passed a sign that let her know she had around forty miles to get to the office. It was still a long way to go ride, but it beat walking. She would be there in the early morning if she could keep a good pace and did not take too many breaks. She was hungry, though, and would need to stop for water a few more times. The sky dimmed, leaving her and the highway bathed in the beautiful red, orange, and purple light as the sun was going down and the moon was not out yet. She would ride in starlight pretty soon. None of the highway lights were coming on.
Jo rode through the night, stopping at two more parks for water and a brief rest. She crossed the bridge to the island and rolled up to the office building at three in the morning. The same building she had visited five years earlier to meet Sam. Her legs could still pedal, but she was not confident they would hold her up when she stopped. She pulled up to the garage entrance and stepped off the bike, leaning on the handlebars to keep herself supported. The only time she had come here was in a car, and this was the only way in.
“Damn it,” she said, and hit the door with her palm, stinging her hand. The only sound it made was a slap and not the thud or hollow echo she was hoping for. The door was solid, and she did not know how she was going to get into the building. Jo had focused on getting there, not on what she would do when she did. She slid to the ground, leaning against the smooth metal surface. Jo was exhausted and skipped the last off-ramp she had passed, skipping the water, trying to get to the office faster, and she regretted that now. She closed her eyes and took five deep breaths. In through the nose and out through the mouth, five deep breaths, like she had learned years ago when she was still working at an office.
Jo was calm now, but still tired, thirsty, and frustrated. Her brain could not focus on any one thing for too long. The wall surrounding the office was not the kind you could just climb over. To break and climb into a window, she would need a fifty-foot ladder, and while she wasn’t sure, she was pretty sure that there was not one around with a fifty-foot ladder. She was thirsty and needed more water, and as hard as it was to leave the office, she could not think straight until she spent a little time rehydrating her body.
She stood up slowly, using the bike to support her. Her legs were heavy, and her left foot dragged a bit behind her. Jo had to swing her leg three times before she could get it up over the saddle of the bike. Every movement was brutal, and she could feel every muscle, ligament, and bone trying to listen to what her brain wanted them to do. Then she started to pedal, and the motion that had carried her all day propelled her forward. The air moved around her face and cooled her off. It was not hot, but her body was roasting from all the effort. She took a giant breath of air and made her way back over the bridge, a mile back to the ramp that led down to the park and the new neighborhood that looked exactly like her neighborhood and all the other neighborhoods she had already passed.
The ramp arrived faster than she had expected. She was sure she had gone downhill the entire way. At the bottom of the ramp, to the left, was a park that looked exactly like the first park she had stopped at. The park where she had found the bike. She was so grateful to have found the bike. If she hadn’t, there was a good chance she’d only be halfway here and asleep on the highway. Asleep on the highway sounded pretty good to her right now, though.
Jo jumped off the bike and wobbled shakily legged to the water fountain and drank. She was certain this fountain was colder and fresher than all the other water she had drunk throughout the day. It was sweet, and it made her feel good as she drank it. Her whole body began to feel recharged as the water ran down her chin, getting the front of the Florida t-shirt wet. She drank until her belly was full and it felt so good she could walk to the bench without wobbling to sit.
She had a plan. She would sit there until sunrise and then would go back to the office to find another way in. It was not a great plan; she knew that, but it was a plan.
Jo woke up, and the sun was shining on her small section of the park. She was thirsty again, and her legs felt like someone had wrapped them up with sandbags or weighted them down with lead. Worse than either of those feelings was that she had to pee. She figured she was dehydrated enough yesterday that finding a bathroom would not be an issue, but after a full belly of water and a few hours’ sleep, it was now her number one priority. She looked around and realized the best place was right behind the park bench she was sitting on. She pushed herself up and dragged each leg forward while holding on to the back of the bench for support. She thought squatting was going to be easy but getting back up was going to be a problem, but it wasn’t.
Before leaving to head back to the office, Jo filled her belly again with water from the fountain. She didn’t even try to ride the bike up the ramp to the highway and pushed it. At the top, she looked out at the rows of houses and wondered how the people inside were dealing. She imagined they were more lost than she was. She had a purpose and a mission. What did they have? They had nothing but uncertainty and the inability to do anything while they waited. She saw a few people walking in the neighborhood next to the park and she was glad they weren’t out walking around earlier. She looked for more people and all she saw were perfect neighborhoods that all looked the same as far as her eyes could see. Perfect houses just like her own, with perfect cars in their driveways in their pastel colors. She never wanted to drive in a peach colored car, but she would now, if the opportunity came up.
Then she saw it. Off in a distant neighborhood, parked in the perfect driveway, was a shadow of a car. She could faintly make out its dark metallic blue color from this distance, but there it was. That had to be Sam’s house. Feeling energized, she climbed back on the bike that had carried her here through the night and began pedaling down the ramp in the direction she had spotted the car.
She rode the bike on the perfect road past the rows of perfect houses, through two tunnels that went under connecting roads until she was in the general area that she had seen the car from her vantage point on the highway. She picked a road and turned to the right. Six perfect houses in, she saw it sitting in the driveway. The dark blue metallic car of an Automator. She pulled up to the house, dropped the bike in the grass, and ran up to the house.
Jo saw Sam sitting on the couch, his head leaning back and his mouth hanging open. She half convinced herself that maybe he was just sleeping, and she knocked on the window.
“Sam,” she said, knocking loudly, looking to see if he was moving. “Sam, get up.”
Sam wasn’t moving, and she knocked harder. He stayed where he sat, where he had died a few nights earlier.
Jo walked over to the door and pushed on it. It would not open from the outside without the automations. She picked up one of the terra-cotta pots with some blue flowers growing in it. They had not been watered for a few days, so it was not too heavy for her. She carried it over to the window and threw it in the center of the picture window, shattering it. Jo walked over to the fence and pulled one of the white picket boards free, leaving a gap. She knocked the loose glass from the window and climbed inside.
It smelled horrible, and the air was stale. She imagined that’s what her own house would smell like without the air filtration system running for a few days. It was much worse since someone had died here.
“Sam,” she said. “You were supposed to call in and tag out before you died.”
She walked over to the door and leaned into it to release the latch and slide the door to the side.
“We were supposed to coordinate this, so we didn’t break the damn world and look what happened. We didn’t, and you broke the damn world. Now I have to fix it, and I need your help.”
She took a deep breath of fresh air from the open door and walked over to Sam. Jo touched his face with her finger. It was cold, and the skin felt weird. Cool to the touch but still pliable. She had expected it to feel rubbery. Weird was the only word she could think of to describe it.
“We gotta get your car started, buddy,” Jo said and moved the coffee table out from in front of him.
She grabbed Sam’s legs and pulled. She felt the muscles holding his body in a sitting position as his ass slid off the couch and onto the floor. The movement swung his head viciously, then it hung crooked to the left. Jo pulled again, and his back and head hit the floor with a meaty thud. It would not be easy, but she had to get him over to the car to start it.
There was a thin blanket at the end of the couch. Jo grabbed it and tucked it under his armpits like a rope. Sam was still heavy, but it made it easier to drag him across the smooth floor.
“We got this, buddy,” she said under her breath while grunting.
She hoped she didn’t have a heart attack. The world was screwed if she died. She was sure that if there was another Automator in the world, they would not know where or how to get to the office. Jo got Sam to the door and tripped over the step outside, falling hard, her hip and sore muscles slamming on the concrete walkway.
“God damn it” Jo yelled and slapped the ground. “Damn it, Damn it, Damn it”
Over the fence, she heard a voice.
“Are you ok, lady?” a teenager asked her.
They were wearing a baggy black t-shirt with grey sweatpants, the type the teenagers liked to wear in her neighborhood. They had a small face and a thin mustache.
“Are you ok?” Jo asked back sharply.
“I’m good,” they said. “Everything stopped working, though.”
“Very observant,” Jo said. “The whole world knows that.”
“You think this happened all over the world?” They said, surprised.
They looked side to side as if everything they could see was the whole world.
“Of course it is,” Jo said, standing up. “Get over here and help me.”
The teenager looked at Sam lying in the doorway with a blanket under his arms.
“Is he ok?”
Jo looked at the teenager and then back at Sam.
“Does he look ok?” she asked, rubbing the pain out of her hip.
“No?”
“Of course not. He’s dead, and I need to get him to the car. Get over here.”
“Did you kill him?” The teenager asked, walking over beside Jo and getting a better look.
“No, I didn’t kill him. I’m sure it’s from natural causes. He should have eaten better and not died without letting someone know. There’s supposed to be protocols, you know.” Jo said. “Grab that side of the blanket and pull.”
The teenager did as she told them. She was a little surprised how willing they were to help, but she appreciated it. She would not have gotten Sam to the car without help.
And they approached the car. It started, and the door opened. Sam was dead, but it still recognized him. That was a good sign.
“Woah,” the teenager, surprised by the sudden machine activation, dropped the side of the blanket they were holding, causing Sam to flop out onto the driveway.
“Damn it,” Jo said “Be careful,”
“I’m sorry,” they said, looking at the body lying on the ground, and they stooped to grab their side of the blanket again.
“Help me get him in the car,” Jo said, irritated but happy that the car actually started and the door opened.
Once they were in the car, it started rolling. Sam sat slumped across from them, driving backwards. He was dead and did not mind.
“You got a name?” Jo asked the teenager sitting beside her, both of them looking at the body sitting across from them.
“What?” they asked, distracted, looking at Sam’s lifeless body, its head still crooked to the left.
“A name, you? You got one?” She clarified what she didn’t think needed clarifying.
“Leslie,” they said and looked out the window as they approached the first tunnel. “I can’t believe this car is working.”
“Me either,” Jo said. “Thank you for your help, Leslie.”
“No problem,” they said. “Where are we going?”
“To the Office.”
“Cool. What are you going to do?” Leslie asked.
“Hopefully, we are going to get inside. If we get inside, then maybe we can fix all the things that stopped working,” Jo said.
The car dove into another tunnel and out the other side. She saw the park where she had rested past them, and then they were on the highway. It was such a short distance in a car. If she had her way, she would never ride another bike in her life.
They crossed the bridge and pulled up to the Office, and as they approached, the Garage door opened. The dark, metallic blue car drove inside and stopped. That was it. They were in.
“Let's go,” she said to Leslie as the car door opened.
“What are we going to do with him?” They asked.
“Leave him.”
Jo walked over to the lift, and it didn’t open. The stairs on the other side of the lift were working, though, and she took a deep breath. The ride had given her legs some time to cramp. Each step up felt like she was being punched in her thighs and calves. Leslie walked up the steps slowly behind her.
“You ok?” Leslie asked.
“My legs just suck right now, I’m ok.”
At the top, Jo saw Sam’s work station overlooking the garden. I looked exactly like she remembered it and decided it was not an awful place to work without Sam in it. It was better than her old workstation. Her old workstation had overlooked the downtown and a park with a view of a retaining pond. This was better. It felt quiet, serene. She walked over and put her hand on the sensor, and the screen lit up with the welcome message prior to loading the status reports. It asked her for the transfer code. She remembered it as 2, 10, 1996, the day Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in a game of chess.
After she typed it in, the status of the machines began showing up on the screens: Red. Inventory status, Red. Goods in transit, Red. Customers, Red. Orders, Red.
The automations had not been running for a few days now, and Jo didn’t know if this would restart everything. She and Leslie stood looking at the monitor and then heard the building wake up as the automations began to run. She sat heavily on Sam’s office chair and sighed loudly.
“You know what we just did, Leslie?” Jo asked as a few of the reports turned yellow as the processes and automations started to sort themselves.
“Not really? What is this?” They said.
“We just kick-started the world again,” she said. “Go down in the break room on the second floor and see if you can order me a ham sandwich.” She didn’t have to tell them it wasn’t real ham, no one ate real ham anymore, they were not monsters.
While she waited for Leslie to return with something to eat, she watched some reports turn green.
“News,” she said, and the screen on the wall started to play the news. The hosts explained that there was an issue with the automation programs that have been resolved and then went on to explain what services were offline and when the return to normal was to be expected.
Now Jo needed to train Leslie to become an Automator, and she'd make sure she retired before dying. After the ham sandwich, though, she was not a monster.
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