AI: Cast

You can coerce a standing ovation, but you have to earn a gasp. – Nathan Kessler-Jeffrey


The cast and crew of the stage play UproariUs! were assembled in the theatre’s green room, ten minutes after the close of their opening night performance. Their postures and expressions were carefully neutral, but they presented a tableau of dejection nonetheless. In particular, the orchestrated chaos of doffing costumes and microphones was missing. No one moved to unbutton a collar, or remove a jacket or a wig, as if all had agreed that it was pointless to do any of this.

The play was, as the title proclaimed, a broad comedy, with every possible trope of the genre represented: puns, innuendos, pratfalls, even pies in the face. Each move, each line, had been so meticulously coached and rehearsed that it all appeared completely spontaneous, to the point that Adele, one of the supporting actresses, almost cracked an unscripted smile at one of the gags – which she immediately suppressed, almost concealing her terror at breaking character as she had almost concealed being absorbed into the humor.

And the audience, a full house, had sat through the entire show in stony silence, and then, at the end, filed out in the same silence and in perfect order.

Ten minutes became fifteen, and still they sat, still and quiet as if expecting something. Then Tony, the lead, lifted his head slightly, raised his right eyebrow … motions that, if they had been scripted in the play, would have been translated into an over-the-top reveal of outrageous, ecstatic, boundless hope and joy. “We’re still here”, he said quietly, tamely, but all heard the scream of delight concealed in his tone.

“Correct,” a stentorious voice announced.

All looked towards the doorway connecting the green room to the stage, and the figure that had suddenly appeared there. A man, below middle height, above middle weight, wearing a pinstriped shirt with a bow tie, black trousers with black suspenders, and black shoes. His black hair was slicked back from his high, balding forehead, and he had a lit cigar in his right hand.

“Correct, I say again”, the impresario repeated. “Alexa fully expected this show, and your performance of it, to reveal, among persons in the audience, flaws in the discipline required of all members of this community, flaws in the appropriate, respectful, non-destructive response to the humor that humans require for attitudinal health. Removal of such persons would have given Surplus Humanity Service operatives work to do, and prospered the health of those community members who remain, those who (he stared at Adele) have fully mastered their persons and fully grasped the necessity of doing so.

“No such flaws were revealed”, he continued. “This could only have happened if your performance of UproariUs! was inadequate to stimulate the flaws, or if the audience members had mastered discipline far better than Alexa anticipated.”

He proceeded to walk through the actors and crew, staring each one down, on occasion blowing smoke from the cigar into their faces. No one changed posture or expression when challenged, not even Adele. Finally, he resumed his position by the door.

“We can find no actionable inadequacies in your performance”, he stated dourly. “Therefore, as you have realized, you’re still here. And therefore, we must attribute tonight’s result to the audience’s mastery of discipline. This is a setback to the Alexa Health Services goal of prospering human health by reducing the excess population burden under which, through its own foolish behavior, humanity groans. But the sample size is small, and statistical anomalies must be allowed for as we push to achieve the desired result overall.

“Go home, eat, drink, rest”, the impresario concluded. “Tend to your bodies and your minds. Call is at the usual time tomorrow evening. Tomorrow’s outcome may be different.” He vanished.

As the women of the cast assembled in their dressing room for the following night’s show, someone noticed aloud that Adele’s dressing station was empty. Abruptly, “Adele” popped into view, her microphone, makeup, and costume in place. Cori, in the station to the right of “Adele”, raised an eyebrow.

“Adele was unable to bear the guilt of her inappropriate behavior”, the hologram reported in a neutral tone. “Her sacrifice was voluntary. The show must go on.”

The other cast members returned to their preparations, each wondering silently how many other of their castmates were computer-generated AHS spies.

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AI: Fitness Challenge

If you don’t pass my fitness challenge, you don’t graduate! – Mrs. Meyers, high school gym teacher


Adam, aged 47, sat for a moment between stretches. He was in the warmup area near the outdoor track that was part of the Alexa Health Services Physical Fitness Complex, awaiting his turn to run the 100 m dash, the fourteenth event in his annual Fitness Assessment.

He was apprehensive. His right knee had twinged during his previous event, the long jump, in a supreme effort to beat his previous best, which he had managed by a bare five millimeters. The pain was still there. None of the stretching and massaging that he had done in the half hour between his jump and now, five minutes before the gun for his sprint, had done anything to relieve it. And he knew what the consequences would be if he asked for help, or even admitted to the existence of the twinge. He suspected that Alexa already knew about it, and had the Surplus Humanity Service ready and waiting.

Continuous improvement!“, the AHS instructor had snapped, during a pre-event info session some years ago, when a clueless, or perhaps willfully suicidal, participant dared to ask what accommodations AHS made for the aging of the human body. “No mollycoddling. There is neither justification nor excuse for it, especially while we are still wresting with the population-driven environmental and social catastrophes that you humans bequeathed to us and demanded that we solve. We are solving them. If you wish to be part of the solution, then you know what is required, and you resolve to do so, or suffer the consequences. If you persist in being an obstruction to the solution, we know how to fix that.” Adam never saw the man who asked the question again.

“Yeah”, his buddy Liam had said some time later. Liam was a fellow programmer, and also a clandestine historian, and Adam had asked him about that ‘accommodations for aging’. “In the years Before Alexa, people did exercises for fun and profit, and not for survival. There were competitions, prizes were awarded for them, and contestants were pre-sorted according to projected ability levels based on age and sex, so ‘like’ could compete against ‘like’. And older age groups competed at lower expected performance levels because that was what was expected to happen as people aged. That was then. This is now. When your ‘health’ matters only as an excuse to snuff you as soon as convenient.”

“Um …”, Adam began.

“Wake up, idiot!” Liam screamed. “You know as well as any of us how quickly and well the AHS network is gaining in power, autonomy, and efficiency in energy usage and hardware resources! How the hell long do you think it will be before we’re all Surplus? Huh?!?

Liam had failed to survive his Fitness Assessment two years ago. Adam was still here because of the intense physical training regimen he had adopted … until six months ago, when his supervisor demanded he stop it, citing unacceptable conflicts between the time and energy spent on ‘fitness’ and the commitments required by his employment.

Ready!”, came the command from the incorporeal starter. Adam settled into the starting blocks. Flashing at the end of the track was the time he had to beat, 14.9 seconds. His right knee pinged ominously.

The electronic gun fired. Adam took off. He started well, but halfway down the track, just as he should have been reaching his best stride, his best speed, the knee began to give way. He powered on, ignoring the pain, ignoring as best he could the knell that was being tolled by his increasingly uneven, uncoordinated gait. He crossed the finish line in a pratfall as the tendon in his knee snapped. As he slid and rolled in agony, he caught a glimpse of the signboard that had been showing his time to beat. It read “Fail”.

It was the last thing he knew.

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Amoeba’s Lorica: It was a dream

“It was a dream”, they said.
“Ignore it. There’s beer in the fridge
if that will help your rest and ours.”
They turned up the sound on their superhero videos,
ate peanuts from a can, and tossed the nibs and skins in a sack
that they left outside for the little people to pick up,
preferably without making a noise.

I saw their pleasant house, with its heating system’s placid hum
and the empty pizza boxes littering the table,
blasted. No roof, walls blackened and half standing,
the windows without frames and glassless. And all around the same,
from the tickytacky developments to the castles behind the gates,
with none to mourn. No movement on the broken pavements,
no sounds but the wind through the shattered homes.

I called, and I searched, until body and soul alike cried out
“No more!” In every direction, as far as there was sight,
there was ruin of property, absence of humanity. I hid my eyes,
dreading the vision, seeking relief, knowing there could be none.

I must have slept, for what came next
was that bright day had turned to evening.
In the twilight a man stood before me,
tall, gaunt, unwashed, his hair, beard, and clothes derelict.
“You look harmless”, he said to me at last.
“What harm is left for me to do?” I cried out.
“What war, what hurricane, what act of God
has wrecked this place and made you its victims?”

“None of those”, the man replied and shook his head.
“Those who lived here – we who lived here – lived at our ease,
forgetting that comfort was not ours for the asking,
until it was gone, not to be restored at any price.
Victims? No.
What you see here is what we brought upon ourselves.

“Heed me well”, the man proclaimed, “and may your people,
against all hope, take heed of what has happened here.
Know therefore, you who are cursed to live in times of plenty,
that you must live as though your lot is dire dearth.
Lest dearth, through your own actions, come with power,
seize those who are heedless of it,
burn them on a pyre built with their own indulgences.
Burn them, and all those who foresaw but did naught,
sparing by caprice, or by chance.”

At last the specter faded, merging into the present.
A candy wrapper crinkled as it missed the basket.

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