Good Morning, Citizen!

“Worker-bots can do no wrong!”

That’s what management said when they laid us off. Thirty years working as an electrician for the City and they replaced me with one of these tin cans? It wasn’t right.

Man, I hated them. With their digital smiles and friendly waves. “Good morning, citizen!” they called from their ladders as people walked by. If you asked me, they would’ve fixed those streetlights a lot quicker without the chit-chat.

“But it puts people at ease when the worker-bots greet them,” they said. “It improves community spirit.”

I can’t say my ass-crack on show while rewiring lampposts improved community spirit. But at least I was a member of the community and having a job sure put me at ease.

Taking them on was stupid, I know. They were robots after all. But losing your job, worrying about supporting your family, counting your dwindling pennies – that made you do crazy things.

“You sure about this, Eddie? Seems a bit risky,” Tim said, a fresh faced twenty-one-year-old who just completed his apprenticeship – all the good it did him.

“Come on, what’re they gonna do if they catch us?” I replied. “Breaking and entering isn’t a death penalty offence. And even if it was, we’d have those fancy-pants virtu-homes to look forward to.”

Virtu-homes – the only perk we had left after getting laid off. When you died, your mind was uploaded onto a server where you spent the rest of your afterlife in a virtual, five-star hotel. Easier for the cheapskate City to fund than an actual healthcare plan.

Tim and I, along with a dozen others, stood inside a dimly lit warehouse, holding cans of kerosine. We could see rows upon rows of standing robots, sleeping in their charging docks. Breaking in was easy. We knew all the security codes and the City was too cheap to hire a security guard – or so we thought.

We each doused the robots with kerosene. Some of us even spat at them for good measure.

Once our cans were empty, I lit a match.

“Okay everyone, time you all got out of here. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“You not coming with us?” Tim asked.

“I will, I just wanna make sure the fire catches first,” I replied.

As soon as they were gone, I threw the match.

As the worker-bots burst into flames and the fire spread, my veins pumped with adrenaline. I laughed like a maniac, yelling, “Burn, you fuckers!”

But then, one of them woke up.

As the fire burned its kerosene covered body, its eyes glowed an angry red. I felt like I was standing in front of Satan himself.

Then, other flaming bots began to wake too. Eyes also red, they were like an army of demons rising to join their devil master.

I then realised why there were no security guards. The robots were the security guards.

I tried to escape but couldn’t. Wherever I ran, a worker-bot appeared, blocking my path. As I struggled to breathe, I fell on my knees, clutching my burning chest, coughing, and spluttering.

One of the bots grabbed my forearm. I screamed in agony as its red-hot fingers burned through my flesh like scalding knives.

The pain was too much; my body gave up. I blacked out, collapsing onto the concrete floor.

….

“So, Mr. Gilmore, as your contract states, you’re entitled to spend the rest of your afterlife in a virtu-home. The City managed to upload your mind after the fire.”

I sat at a wooden desk opposite the City’s lawyer. Of course, it wasn’t a real desk. I was in a computer-generated office, my mind transformed into code. The lawyer though, she was real. She would’ve had to log in with a special headset, but she was very much alive.

“However,” she continued, “there are a few legal issues to be ironed out. You did set the worker-bot warehouse on fire after all, costing the City hundreds of thousands of dollars. That will need to be repaid.”

“Well, what can I say?” I said. “I was broke when I was alive and you guys firing me didn’t help.”

“Yes, we figured,” the lawyer replied. “That’s why you will need to work it off.”

She conjured a holographic image of a worker-bot. It stood on the desk and was about the size of an action figure.

“This will be you for the foreseeable future,” she said. “Once we upload you into your new body, you will be able to interact with the real world where you will work as an electrician. To ensure efficiency, however, you won’t be able to speak or act in any way outside of your duties. We don’t want to have another ‘incident’”

“Wait, what? You’re imprisoning me in one of those… things?” I said. “For how long?”

“Until your debt is paid off,” she said, taking out a calculator. “So, we take your hourly rate and then factor in how much is owed… ah! One-hundred and forty-two years.”

“But why upload anyone to a bot?” I asked, “they’re programmed to do the job anyway?”

“Bots are cheaper to run for sure,” the lawyer replied. “But having a worker-bot with human problem-solving skills is a bonus.”

….

Once again, I fixed streetlights for the City except this time, I was stuck inside this robot prison. The only time I could speak was when a member of the public passed by. “Good morning, citizen!” I called from my ladder. I tried to cry for help, desperate to say anything else, but my programming wouldn’t let me.

Decades rolled by and my wife and kids passed away. I wished I could’ve told them how sorry I was for letting them down – to say how much I loved them. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t even able to cry and believe me, I tried.

“Worker-bots can do no wrong,” they said. And now, neither can I.