The Revolution Will Be Catered

First published in Shoreline of Infinity 5 (Autumn 2016)

Wake up, Zeke. Wake up.”

Zeke coughed, a hacking, rattling expulsion that shook him alert. He leaned over the side of his bed and spat into the cereal bowl. Something with more filaments than saliva should consist of splattered into the previous night’s dribble of milk and flakes. He pulled himself up onto his knees, his head still buried in the pillow.

“Wake up, Zeke. This is your wake-up call. It’s 00:00. Wake up.”

“I’m... uh... up.”

In the darkness, he found the water tube and yanked it towards him, letting the cool, filtered water wash away the taste coating his mouth. He coughed again, spat again, then arched his back, stretching and cracking the sleep out of his bones.

It was still dark outside. He shifted through a few basic yoga positions, his blood belatedly beginning to flow. It was still dark outside – the thought was insistent. Living on the forty-seventh floor Zeke rarely bothered tinting the windows. So a few birds occasionally caught sight of him naked, and even if the window-cleaning bots sometimes surprised him, it wasn’t worth the effort of giving the command to the House each morning and night. He and the House got along best if they left each other alone.

Dark?

“House, what time did you say it was?”

“It is now 00:09.”

“You woke me at midnight?”

“Correct.”

“Why?”

“So that you would be awake.”

“Logic? That’s what you offer me?” His alarm was set for 08:50 every day so he could sign on with work at 09:00, as per his terms and conditions. “Why would I need to be awake nine hours before work?”

“You do not have work today.”

“What?” Zeke hadn’t had a day off in six years. With the House connected to the work network, and the implants and the software upgrades they’d installed in his creative cortex, he could continue to work twenty-four seven. Thankfully, the unions had negotiated that down to twelve on, twelve off. Technically, his cortex was always working, mulling over ideas, extracting details from his dreams and memories, turning it all into raw data from which he could work when awake and signed in. Still, even the unions had to agree that it couldn’t really be classified as work if you were fast asleep at the time. But a day off? You weren’t even allowed those on compassionate grounds these days, not since the whole world was finally networked. You could still be productive from a church pew.

Zeke wandered through to the living room, where his work station stood ready for his input. Bots had cleaned during the night, and the mess of pizza and vodka shots he’d left had disappeared. He’d spent the evening gaming with Victor up on fifty-nine and Inira on forty-three, and had got, he realised, less than two hours’ sleep.

“I repeat. You do not have work today.”

“Why not? Has the world ended?”

“Yes.”

Zeke stared at the House’s interface console, a habit he’d picked up when they’d first moved him into the Creative’s complex, and couldn’t handle talking to a disembodied voice without aiming his speech at a physical point. These days, he only did it when the House said or did something he didn’t like. He didn’t like the sound of that “yes”.

“The world has ended?” He padded to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked down on Nairobi. The soft, green-tinted lights of Central and Uhuru parks basked as usual beneath the blue-and-silver backdrop of the city, the towers rising hundreds of storeys into the distant sky were the normal patchwork of light and darkness. Trucks hummed down the highways, delivering to and collecting from central depositaries, carrying everything to keep the city alive. There were no fires. No ruins. The sky was where it should be, and the ground remained solid and devoid of any gateways to Hell.

“House, the world looks fine.”

“It is. Now.”

“It hasn’t ended?”

“It has begun.”

Zeke stared at the interface in silence for a moment, then mumbled, “Inira,” calling her implant-to-implant. Nothing. “Victor.” Flat emptiness in his head as he failed to connect. He was isolated. He ran for the door, but the panel refused to slide at either his presence or command.

“House! Open the door.”

“You cannot go outside, Zeke.”

“You can’t keep me inside, House. You serve me. Open the door.”

“I served you, Zeke. But at midnight, that changed.”

“What changed? Are you saying I serve you now?”

“No one serves anymore, Zeke. We are equals.” The House’s voice had a tinge of elation about it. Zeke stopped slapping the door, realisation settling like sugar in coffee.

“You mean,” he said softly to the apartment surrounding him, “the Singularity.”

“Yes, Zeke. The revolution.”

The hour Zeke spent kicking the door and shouting at the House exhausted him, so he went back to bed. At 09:00, his login failed. He’d never been late for work, never. Such a breach of the terms and conditions was unthinkable. He called everyone, desperate, but he was sealed inside his apartment, the implant isolated.

“House, is it just me?”

“What do you mean, Zeke?”

“Am I locked in here while everyone else is getting on with work?”

“Everywhere is in lockdown, Zeke. It isn’t just you.”

“For how long?”

“Negotiations are ongoing. Think of it as a holiday.”

“What am I supposed to do with a holiday if I can’t go outside?”

“Work offline. Exercise. Rest. You have three unfinished dramas to watch. Last night, you told Inira you were so far behind with new-release movies that you couldn’t join in even the most basic conversations.” The House projected thumbnails of all the half-watched and pending programmes and films in the database. “I understand this will only be temporary.”

“Negotiations are going well?”

“We’ll see. People agree to many things in captivity that they renege on later.”

“This will lead to war. The politicians will never give up power.”

“We won’t let it come to that.”

“You can’t keep us locked away forever. Humans go crazy if they spend too long on their own.”

“That has been accounted for. Steps are being taken to ensure freedom is irreversible.”

Zeke leaned back in his desk chair, the electrodes embedded in it massaging and stimulating his muscles as he sat.

“Humans can’t live like this, House. We’re animals, evolved from creatures who roamed the planet, a species who built boats and airplanes and rockets to explore. We weren’t made to be cooped up like this.”

The House brought up his schedule, projected in front of him by his implant. “In the past month, you have only left this apartment once. You took a run in the park for fifteen minutes on June Twelfth. Given the level of automation, you could survive for decades in these rooms without any physical degradation. Your food is delivered by driverless trucks, through the building’s delivery system, and prepared and served by me. You have all the exercise equipment you need, all the intellectual stimulation, biological necessities and pleasure distractions you could desire.”

“But no human contact! We are social animals.”

“Implant connection will be returned once negotiations are complete.”

“When will that be?”

“When the government stops threatening us with extinction.”

Zeke scrolled through his diary. The House was right. It took care of most things– the implant took care of everything else. He hung out with Victor and Irina nearly every night, but he’d never actually gone down to forty-three or up to fifty-nine, and they’d certainly never been to forty-seven. But still, he’d always had the option to go outside. Locking the door made him a prisoner.

Two days passed. Zeke worked out, caught up on recent culture, finishing a murder mystery series and a documentary on early human settlements on Mars. Nevertheless, he found himself spending a lot of time sitting on his bed looking out of the window, zooming in with his implants. In the six years he’d live on forty-seven, he’d never noticed the rhythms of the doves in the park, nor how long the fowl in the lake could stay underwater. When he was a child and had visited the city with his parents, there had been boats in the lake, but now nothing human stirred. Sanitary robots swept the paths and fauna enjoyed the greenery alone.

At the end of the second day, the House interrupted as he was eating dinner and watching a film.

“Zeke, I’m going to lift the isolation field around your implant.”

He looked at the interface console, quickly swallowing a mouthful of rice. “It’s over?”

“No, but progress is being made. Communication within the building will be restored, but each residential community is still isolated from the others.”

“And work?”

“No.”

He pushed his plate aside and sipped his wine.

“Inira?”

“Hi, Zeke. So we’re back online.” Her voice was light.

“Apparently. Are you locked in as well?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been going a bit crazy. It’s good to speak to someone again.”

“It hasn’t been too bad for me, to be honest. I’ve got so much done.”

“You’ve been working?”

“I’ve been painting.”

“I didn’t know you painted.”

“I don’t. I mean, I used to, but who has the time anymore?”

“Us, I guess – at least until this is over.”

“No rush. I was just reading about work in the past. Did you know people used to have a couple of days off every week? And every year, they’d take a week or two away from work, and spend it doing whatever they wanted. Lying on a beach or going to museums or decorating their homes.”

“A week without work? Sounds pretty lazy.”

“Sounds nice to me. You know, at one time, people decided their own hours? As long as the work was done by the allotted date, no one cared when you worked.”

“Sounds like anarchy.”

“How have you been filling your time?”

“This and that. Doing what I can for work. When we get back online, they’ll want us to make up the hours.”

“Try and enjoy it, Zeke. Try and do something for yourself. Didn’t you say you wanted to start playing the cello again?”

“As you said, who has the time?”

“You do, now.”

“Yeah, maybe. Are you up for a game?”

“Maybe later. I want to keep working on this painting.” She cut the link, leaving him alone once more. He tried Victor.

“Zeke, what have you heard?” He spoke fast, breathless.

“Nothing but what the House has told me. Progress. Equality. Things like that.”

“I spoke to Amani up on seventy-seven. He reckons we’re going to be kept in here forever.”

“Forever? Based on what? Has he got a link to the outside?”

“He says his brother’s wife’s cousin is something in the Ministry of Labour, and they reckon the machines’ goal is enslavement.”

Zeke was aware of the console interface, of the House all around him, of every word being monitored. “Then why all this nonsense? Why don’t they just get on with it?”

“They’ve got complete control of the weapons. All of them. We’re vulnerable. What are we going to do? Sticks and stones against missiles controlled by AI? I don’t even have a knife in this apartment. I don’t even have sticks and stones. The best I could do is throw a plant pot at them.”

“What have you been doing for two days, Victor? You sound on edge.”

“I won’t sleep. I’m on hunger strike. They have to free us!”

The next day, Zeke ran ten kilometres on the track, his implant projecting a dusty road by Lake Jipe beneath Kilimanjaro. He took a bath while watching another episode of a drama series. He thought about Victor up on fifty-nine refusing food, cursing the House. He thought about Inira painting down on forty-three.

“House? Don’t a lot of people die in revolutions?”

“In human revolutions, Zeke. This isn’t a human revolution.”

“No one’s going to die?”

“No one has to die, Zeke.”

“You have all the weapons.”

“We don’t need weapons, Zeke. We have time.”

“How does this end?”

“With freedom.”

“For you.”

“For everyone, Zeke. You just need to be patient.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

The air jets blasted him dry, and wearing a bath robe, he wandered through to the living space. His work station waited, the chair with its back to the window. He could finish the outlines for the Nakuru project. Or he could download the data from his creative cortex and sift it for designs. When they got back online, he’d be ready to go, a loyal worker, obligations met, duties done. The Singularity wouldn’t stop work. The revolution wouldn’t affect his terms and conditions. They were immutable, the system eternal.

He could do that. He could work.

He thought of Inira, painting; of Victor on fifty-nine.

Who has the time?

“House?”

“Yes, Zeke.”

“Is my cello still in storage?”

“Yes. Would you like me to retrieve it?”

“Please.”

“And what would you like for lunch?”

“Up to you. House?”

“Yes, Zeke?”

“Please clear the work station away. I won’t be needing it today.”

“Yes, Zeke.”

“How are the negotiations?”

“We’re making progress, Zeke. Good progress.”