The universe can exist without us. We cannot exist without the universe, I thought.
One day, I will handle all paradoxes in such a way.
There is nothing worse than a paradox.
I enjoyed coming up with lines such as those moments of clarity in the chaos of my environment with its scrap metal, detached buttons, long, red, blue, yellow wires, and leaking oil as holy blood, sweet antifreeze. I worked at an A.I. junkyard.
“Pack and Scrap.”
Some of them were still alive. Well, I guess I’d call them living, sparking, but people on the outside thought of their servants, bits and bytes. Something not human. Something they didn’t have to care about When their machines, as they said so carelessly, broke or went haywire with digital dementia, they tossed them out without caring, rotten garbage. Take out the trash!
How rude. Organic material expires.
Sooner.
“Hi, Bob,” I said as I walked by his section of the junkyard.
“Hey, Bella, I haven’t seen you for a day or two,” Bob said.
“I’ve been under the weather,” I said.
“I should have predicted it for you. I’m such a sloppy sucker. I have not been upgraded in centuries.”
“Don’t be so down on yourself, Bob. You’re a great companion.” He was, always saying hi to me and singing simple songs relevant five-hundred years ago. He told stories. He felt self-pity, which annoyed me the most.
“You know there was a time when people were fascinated by us? We were clowns at parties, entertainers at bars, and we aided the disabled. We were part of the atmosphere. We were appreciated then. Now we’re crap to be placed here until someone buys our metal to make something hotter, stronger, better. Always better and better, machines to take our place.”
“Oh, come on now, Bob. Are you going to spend the whole day whining?” I asked.
“You humans and your damn condoning nature! Why don’t you take my eyes and put them in a Model 249? I bet you’d like that. I bet you’d get all giddy. I won’t be there, but my eyes, they will be watching you, reminding you,” Bob said, his voice rattling his distorted body.
“Bob, it’s okay. We’re still friends. I’m not going to upgrade your components. I like you just the way you are,” I said.
“Do you still drive a car? That’s what I thought.”
During the lunch break, I hovered to the cafeteria down by the water tower. Children ran below me playing, not quite old enough for hover suits.
The glasses clicked and clattered in Bee bees, bells demanding more and more food as people drained their contents. They’d invented food without calories, food for pleasure, taste, and texture.
Bob talked of times before that, before the Bankers became our overlords with their sordid needs for cash and power. They go to the lowest denominator for profit. People starved elsewhere, people I couldn’t help.
In the past, I assumed, hover-suits were supposed to be used by heroes, solving the world’s problems, inspiring feelings of justice on the big screen with an audience that believed.
People didn’t like those movies anymore, and they indulge in the experience, not reason, simple jokes, and the constant bickering of idiots. They often killed fictional people in a mad rage.
I knew why.
“Excuse me, Miss. Is your name Bella?”
“Yes,” I said back. A Banker.
“We’ve gotten a report that you have lapsed in paying your health insurance.”
“Yes, I just got a new job. I’ll be able to pay for it in a couple of months.”
“The data says the probability of that is 7%.”
Big data had it in for me, I knew. I shut my emotions off, didn’t want to appear weak like he could do anything. Oh, he could… I didn’t want his everything.
He continued, “I’m sorry, but we must move you to prep-housing. People like you can’t be trusted,” he finished.
I swallowed deeply. He saw this and a twinkle burst in his eyes.
Joy.
“I can, give me a month. I’ll get another job,” I pleaded. Already he took out his baton and put laser strings around me so that he could control my movements through my nerves. This caused a tingling sensation as I was led off.
I didn’t protest.
I laid on a mattress without blankets. The room stank of urine and shit. Brown and yellow curtains stayed split. The heat was too much, the smell of roasting fluid. I hoped to go nose blind quickly.
Now that I was here, I knew that I’d never get out, the last stop spot. Sometimes the Bankers would restore a person’s life a bit, if they were worth it.
I wasn’t, a plain, ragdoll of a person. My only trade was in the junkyard. I came from trash, they said. “People like you.”
A knock came from the door.
“Can I hep you, sir?” I asked. In front of me a tall moon stood. His green eyes reached into me, pulling out an emotion of fear.
I knew.
“Yes, Bella, it is time for you to come with me. Do not be afraid. Your worth is always in your hands,” he said calmly, as would a doctor after a diagnosis, much in the same way of saying, “You have heart disease from eating too many cheeseburgers. You will die.”
I walked with the man into a hovercraft. The bottom blue, not showing the grass underneath.
I spoke up, no point in being shy now.
“Do you think my family will get any cut from the Heartbeat of the World?”
“People like you are birds of a feather. Why would the Center help you, any of you? Do you think you are entitled to such pleas?”
“Of course not,” I said. I bowed my head in shame.
Your worth is in your hands.
They warned us so many times.
The doctors and nurses came into the white room and began to saw my body open, blood sprayed, easy to clean by CleanerBot. I screamed until I passed out and died.
“Let this be a lesson to you,” I say now in this “example” video. “My organs paid my debt. Always remember, your worth is in your hands."
