A man opened the door. He stepped outside. He started walking. Sun shined hot and unforgiving above his head. It was January.
He gasped his lungs full of air. Birches and other trees smelled. For a second he was back in memories of past, memories of his youth. But then it was gone. When the man was young, spring was long. Now, there was no spring. There was just summer.
Everything has changed, the man thought. And at the same time, nothing has.
He walked past couple of communal park bots. They slowed down until he was far enough. Then they continued their eternal labour.
Morning was silent. Only few people bothered to stick their heads outside at this time of day. Sweat glittered at man's forehead. I'm not young, the man sighed.
At the office athmosphere was convenient. The man walked to his work room through green corridors. Sound of running water echoed at the background.
- Good morning, Sir.
- Good morning, James, the man greeted his humanoid servant awkwardly. He had never been very keen about humanoid servants. They looked too much of human but they still had something that creeped him. Tell me being old fashioned, the man thought.
James - yes, his or its name was jokingly selected to be James - stood still for a moment.
- What do you want to do, Sir?
- How's it been going, James? In the production, I mean.
- Very well indeed, Sir. According to SUPROMA*, they have exceeded the goal by 13,5 percent. Machines run hot, if you may, Sir.
(*Supervision of PROduction MAnagement)
The man nodded.
- How about design? Have the drawings for a new solar panel factory been checked?
- Of course, Sir. AIDEMA* reports they have done all the drawings and calculations for the materials. They are waiting for your approval of bill of materials to order them.
(*Artificial Intelligence for Design and Manufacturing).
- Let's do that out of the way, shall we, James?
- Naturally, Sir.
The man approved further actions. Basically his work for this day was done. All the procedures runned automatically and pretty smoothly. The man remembered times when he was an young engineer and all the drawings and calculations had to be made manually. Nowadays... AI optimized far better than any man could, it was able to handle thousands of different criterias at the same time.
- What do you want to do next, Sir?
- If you don't mind to bring me a energy drink, James. As cold as you can.
James nodded. - But of course, Sir.
The man sinked into his chair. He had asked James to bring the drink just to be left alone. James was polite...but it wasn't a human being. It was just a collection of steel, wires and batteries. It was very good at pretending to be a man, but still it just...wasn't.
There was couple of ways of achieving intelligent behaviour. Some, like communal park bots, utilized older technology in form of hive mind. They were designed at the time when batteries lacked behind the evolution of computational power. So in order to save batteries in a single machines, designers created 'cloud mind' where all the computation was divided between all the machines. It made them pretty smart and was enough for the simple tasks those machines had to do.
James was a different kind of bot. It utilized leaps in quantum technology. First time in history designers were able to incorporated such a computational power in so small package. James was able to learn much faster than any bot before it. In part it was thanks to AI that designers created to build a language. Machine created a language for machines. Nobody knew exactly why it worked, but it did.
This had created new problems for the mankind. In a way it was ironical. First time in history you could do so much with so little effort. First time in history there was so little famine, so few diseases and wars. But at the same time humankind swelled in its own existential crisis.
It had nothing to do.
You could think new scale of freedom would have been a bless, but for many it was a curse. Some ripped themselves of the society and moved to live in the wilds. Sort of.
We don't know what to do with all the wealth, the man wondered. Creational work was very demanding for human psyche. Compared to AI humans looked like childish chimpanzees. Full of emotions and irrationalities.
One example the man remembered was couple a years ago when there was a war between Brazil and United States. Former utilized a secret weapon: AI management system for middle operational level. In simple terms, soldiers were led by a bot. Brazil won the war but they took more casualties than Americans.
That was the problem, the man thought. AI just didn't care. It won the war, all that matters. It was so focused, so task oriented that no man could compete with it.
- There's your drink, Sir. It is at the temperature of 7 degrees Celsius.
- Thank you, James. That's enough.
The man looked at his servant. James was a slave. But can a machine be slave, if it doesn't understand being a slave?
- James, what's meaning of life?
- Building, Sir. If you mean why to exist, Sir.
The man was astonished.
- Building? Just... like that?
- Did you expect something else, Sir?
- I... I don't know, the man gagged. - Should I?
- That may be too a broad question to answer, Sir. Do you feel anxiety?
- What..? Sometimes, yes.
- How about emptiness?
- Yes... but why..?
- It seems that you are suffering from existential crisis, Sir, combined with a depression. May I book you a appointment with a psychiatrist?
- Do you think I'm insane?!
- No, Sir. Insanity is a different kind of condition. Your symptoms don't match the descriptions.
- Fine, if it makes you happy.
- Thank you, Sir. I'm now happy, James said with broad smile and happy tone. The man felt a shiver.
- I'll go now, the man said.
- Have a good day, Sir. The psychiatrist will see your tomorrow at 8 o'clock, James greeted, still smiling.
Over my dead body, the man thought.
- You cannot meet her if you are dead, James yelled down the stairs.
**
