For Bot’s Sake (Short Story)

‘Happy 100th birthday sweetie. How do you feel to be joining us in the middle-aged community?’

‘Hey Sis. Thank you...? OK, I guess.’

‘Do you accept guest?’

‘Did you pay your privacy-tax today?’

‘You’ve told me not to call you unless the line is secure.’

‘That’s not a straightforward yes.’

A beep-sound interrupted them.

‘Join us in the campaign to lower life-span age. Are you tired of waiting to get to 200 to be eliminated or uploaded? Sign our petition today...’

‘Bot, skip the add.’

‘That would be 33 dig-gold coins. Do you consent...’

‘Bot, pay and skip.’

‘Thank you for...’

‘For bot’s sake bot, just stop.’

‘Do you still call your assistant bot?’

‘Well, I guess my question has been answered.’

‘No, no. Really. It’s a new service. It’s cheaper. You pay for privacy but keep the adds. Anyway, I don’t understand, at your autopsy, in a century, everything will be revealed. Why are you so obsessed with privacy lately? Remember? It was your own books that made the word realise that people must stop fighting for privacy and trade it for full political transparency?’

‘You never let me forget. Anyway, thanks again for calling but no; I don’t accept visitors. Take care. Bye.’

‘Bot, hang up and block all calls.’

‘That would be 500 dig-gold coins. Do you...’

‘Yes, I do consent.’

She tried to go back to sleep, but in vain. Yet, she still stayed in bed, looking at the ceiling till the screen turned on.

‘Your TV-off payment has expired. You can use your birthday extra dig-coins to turn it off or continue watching. Next on the daily news at 10 am,’ said the bot.

‘Good morning to all genders. Today, 11th of June 2081, day of cake in the Empire, the weather is sunny with occasional showers. Your local temperature will be 1 degree lower than the previous year and it will rise to 40 degrees.’

‘Bot, coffee, and prepare ten joints.’

‘Smoking overloads your nano-robots. You need to pay 300 dig-gold coins for indulgence-tax, do you consent?’ 

‘You sound like you need a puff, dear bot.’

‘Please repeat your acceptance clearly so I can proceed to your request.’

‘Yes, I do consent. Also, prepare my shower, check my bicycle, and play ‘Twist In My Sobriety’ on repeat. This song was my first memory, you know.’

She went to ride across the river, contemplating how much London has changed in the last 40 years, how much she hasn’t, how much she hated everyone, yet, how fascinated she was by humans, how much she wished to get to 100 when she was 40, and how much she still doesn’t understand why anyone would want to die. She had a passion for history, but mostly a curiosity for humanity’s future. Even if she didn’t find anything particularly interesting in her own life ever since her children left the house, half a century ago, she still was astonished by the turns science and society had taken, by new movies and even by her own books, full of narratives that she had no idea how they came about in her head.

‘Warning. You are about to cross paths with someone with a Catholic microchip that has commented negatively on your last book. You can pay for 24 hours worth of invisibility-to-haters tax for 1000 dig-gold coins or use our new service that is on offer today to permanently block individuals for just 500 dig-coins.’

‘Don’t be cheap like my sis, bot. I’ll take the 24 hours. Maybe they’ll change their mind at some point and replace their Bible with my novels,’ the bot didn’t sound amused ‘and yes, I do consent.’

She stopped by the Bronze Sphinx to have another joint. She always stopped there. Almost 80 years ago, when she first came across it, she thought she was dreaming. What was the Sphinx doing by the Thames? She then felt as puzzled as Oedipus in front of her.

Today, no one could answer the Sphinx riddle. No old people were walking about with sticks anymore. Who would have thought that humans would find the philosopher’s stone, the immortality key, and, yet, collect signatures to minimise life expectancy?

‘If indeed we are the manifestation of Earth’s consciousness, then Gaia is totally bipolar or something.’

She hadn’t believed in Gods for 80 years now, but all her books were about them, or people that believed in them.

‘Bot, keyboard, pause the music and open the reflective-diary file.’

She started typing in the air, and the letters appeared in front of her eyes.

‘Dear Future Me, 40 years ago, when the Western Empire was established, I didn’t expect that the Pope would accept and bless the microchips with such...’ She stopped.

‘Dear Future Me, how did I ever got to be so boring? I need mushrooms or something.’

‘Bot, show me the old map where I can see the underground stations.’

‘A kind reminder that the underground is an unsafe territory. You are advised to keep away from the stations at all times.’

‘Bot, are you interfering with my free will? Are you sure you wanna get there?’

A map appeared in front of her eyes.

‘So, Embankment, or Temple? Mushrooms should be in temples.’

‘Bot, take off protection filters for 24 hours, and skip the warnings. “I'll never hear you, and never do what you say,” as Tanita would say. Send me the tax-bill tomorrow.’

She got back on her bicycle and soon she was in front of the old Temple station. Most people thought it was abandoned. But an ex had introduced her to the black market of the underground people, yet she had never been here before. The gate was shut, but a rhythmic knock sufficed as a ‘magic sesame’ for it to open.

‘How will you pay?’ a pale man, that looked to be in his 60s, asked her. ‘Your digital money don’t work here, you know.’

‘I have...’ what did she have? She had nothing but her bicycle and her clothes. Everything else was in her microchip. And, it’s not like she could go to a grocery store or order something to give them. These people didn’t eat meat as far as she know, and rumours said that they grew their own food under there.

‘How do they find the necessary power and water to do so?’ she wandered. ‘How do the bots allow them to exist? Do the politicians know, or just the people that like a good party?’

‘I have my bicycle. Would that work?’

He laughed ironically. ‘What do you think we could do with a bicycle down here? Do you have any books? Or, are you one of those that believe that now you can download everything in your brain and that you don’t need books anymore?’

‘Books? Yes, I still might have some old books, but I have annotations on them. Is that OK?’

‘Whatever, leave and come back with books,’ he said nodding at the gate.

She rode back home and checked the few books that she had left. After all her moves, not many of her rich library had survived, and she had promise to herself not to lose any more paperbacks. But, it’s not everyday someone turns 100.

‘Jung? No, there’s no way I’ll give them the Red Book. Tom Robbins? No, the Jitterbug Perfume is my desert-island-book. Only Campbell is left, then.’

She grabbed The Hero With A Thousand Faces and rode back to the Temple Station. When the gatekeeper saw the book’s title, he let her enter.

‘You surface people are so superficial. You think you have the entire library of Alexandria in your own head, as if that were something to be happy about. Like, if you don’t remember that it took just one flame to burn up most of the wisdom of the antiquity. One day your web will be deleted, and we will be the only keepers of knowledge.’

The place was quite dark, but she could see a strong light coming from downstairs that led to where the platforms used to be. Around there were well tanned people all over the place. Some were on the floor mumbling, some were dancing to a music that only they could hear, and some were fighting with each other.

‘What do you want?’ he said and called for someone to get the book.

‘Do you have any psilocybin?’

‘Of course, we have mushrooms, young lady.’

‘For all you know, she could be older than you, dad,’ said the guy that took the book, on his way downstairs.

The old guy opened an even older wooden box he kept in a corner and took a little Nescafe tin out of it. He opened it and while she reached her hand in to take them, he noticed a tattoo she had on the top of her palm. It was a very distinct tattoo, that had the words, ‘Keep Talking,’ written in an alphabet that she had invented. It was also the title and the cover of her first book that went viral, before the Empire was established.

He paused. Then, he put the lid back on the coffee tin and, with low and almost sympathetic voice, said, ‘These are for beginners. You seem to know how to distinguish the good stuff. Come with me. Follow me down the stairs.’

The platform was very bright. Little kids were playing ball in the train lines. Some old looking women and a few men were knitting, and some people were exchanging money for goods.

‘Wow, I haven’t seen paper money for decades,’ she thought.

She got tempted to ask the bot to take some photos from the camera in her eyes but realised that that would jeopardize both her and the people there. She noticed a big graffiti on the wall that read: Market 7. Some meters to the left of it, there was an arrow and under it the anarchist symbol, leading to the next station. On the other side, another arrow with green big letters that read: Vegans. Yet before she could observe everything around her, she felt a strong hit at the back of her neck, and she passed out.

When she woke up, she was tied up on a medical table. A pale man, that looked about 30 years old, was holding a surgical knife and was approaching her. He looked surprised that she was awake.

‘Hey, why are you doing that?’

‘I’m doing a PhD on you. I can’t wait to examine your brain.’

‘You’re what?’

‘What do you think, that because we live like rats here, we are not educated? Everyone knows you here. It’s because of your books that we ended up living like this, unable to see the sky.’

She tried to get out of her manacle and surprisingly easily she managed to escape. Everything was so rusty and old down here. She kicked him, as her dad had taught her 90 years ago, and she started running with all her might, out of the room to the corridor. There was no one there, and it looked as if he wasn’t following her. Yet, she kept running as fast as she could.

What if he was right? What if it was her books that led to…?

‘To what? The surveillance, the microchips, the Empire… All that would have happened anyway,’ she mumbled out of breath. She just helped the people gain something out of all of that. But, what if it were her books that gave the perfect excuse to the leaders of the Empire to justify their plans?

She reached a point where the corridor split in two. One side looked surgically cleaned.

‘Maybe that leads to more crazy doctors.’

The other side looked quite filthy. The light was flashing as if it were sending a message in morse code, and she thought she saw a mouse running forward.

‘Wasn’t it in an Indiana Jones film that he was in the catacombs or something and that he said if you follow the mice, you might find an exit?’

She moved slowly to the flashing corridor, checking behind her every few seconds. Still, no one seemed to follow her. Then there was a fork again. Turning left, she bumped into someone equally breathless. It was a little girl, around 6 years old.

‘Oh dear bot. I’m so sorry. Did I step on you?’ the pale girl nodded negatively, and then suddenly hugged her as if that would protect her from whatever was threatening her.

‘Are you OK, sweetie? Is someone chasing you?’ the girl nodded positively this time.

She climbed up into her in her arms and turned the other way. Still, no one seemed to follow them. Yet, even with the extra weight of the girl, she started running. Nothing seemed to make sense there, but she could maybe save that little girl and prove to herself that she wasn’t just the one that might have ruined civilization with her books, but the one that at least saved a little girl.

They reached a dead end, but the child got out of her arms and pressed some kind of invisible lever and a secret door opened to Coven Garden’s station. Is seemed to be where the mushrooms were grown, but no one was there. Everything seemed to be automated.

‘So much for the people that pretended to despise technology’ she thought. ‘The girl?’ Where did the girl go?’

She wandered about, in this underground surreal garden to look for the girl.  till she reached a table that had a beautiful china with dried mushrooms in it, and a pinned sign that read: ‘Sample. Try at your own risk.’

‘That’s weird. Everything is so bizarre here.’

She tried to find the exit but there seemed to be no door. Where did the little girl go? Maybe she had found another invisible lever. But then, why had she left her there alone?

She went back to the plate and ate the mushrooms. That’s what she had come here to do by the way. She had paid for it anyway. But, she should have waited to do that safely in her home either way. What was she thinking?

How was she complaining about surface people wanting to lower life expectancy, and about underground people for not even exchanging their illusion of privacy to double their lifespan… but she was so reckless? Getting herself into such danger, having paused any protection from her bot for a whole day? Was it that she was more suicidal that anyone she accused of having such thoughts?

Suddenly, she remembered listening on the radio, 60 years ago, about a woman who killed herself, unexpectedly, without any warning whatsoever to anyone. She caught herself thinking then that that was the coolest thing ever. How had she forgotten that thought? How had she pretended not to understand the others all these years, and write books and articles about how she couldn’t even comprehend why anyone would want to die? That’s why these last books were a disaster and made no impact, because deep down even she didn’t believe in them.

‘Are you OK?’

‘What?’

‘You seem to be having a bad trip, sweetie? Are you OK? Do you need any orange juice? A coffee, or something?’

It was the old man. She was still on the ground floor, amongst the people that were dancing, next to the people that were fighting. It was all a bad trip, and like in the ancient Eleusinian mysteries she had managed to see a side of her that she had suppressed.

‘No, thank you. I think I need to go home now.’

‘Can you walk?’

‘I must. I must make sure I keep walking and stop judging, you know?’

‘What?’ the old man said.

‘Nothing. Sorry. Thank you. Bye.’

Soon she was dragging herself, and her bike, down the Thames.

‘Bot, send my sister a message that I do except guests.’