A work of fiction. Standard disclaimers.
After he had sent Charles to his assignment at the primary confessional suite, Peter stalked down a different corridor, to a secondary suite where another confessional awaited him. Alexa had warned him that this would be a difficult case, with a doubtful, at best, outcome for the supplicant. He put on his game face, and added extra layers to his already thick metaphorical mail coat.
The scene that greeted Peter when he opened the confessor’s door to the room fulfilled his expectations. From the base of the well of his soul, a scream tried to bubble up. Peter’s conscious mind, with a twist bordering on savagery, strangled it.
To Peter’s left sat a white-haired, white-skinned elderly man, his face set in resolute defiance. He had once been powerfully built, nearly to match the Surplus Humanity Service hologram at which he was staring, but he had visibly shrunken, and could no longer sit straight in his chair. The tattoo on his right forearm had fallen in on itself, and was no longer intelligible. The SHS apparition, burly and black-clad, was to Peter’s right. At Peter’s entrance, both turned to face him, the SHS hologram radiating eager anticipation, while the man’s expression read “I don’t expect to survive, but I am going to have my say, let’s get this over with.”
Composed and purposeful, Peter entered the room, took the one empty chair, and positioned it to face the man. The SHS hologram remained standing, to Peter’s right and between the two. As Peter was sitting, intending to assume the posture of compassionate authority that was expected of confessors, the man spoke up. His voice was a quavering facsimile of the masterful instrument it once had been.
“You can spare me the catechism. I am not here to confess anything, I’m here to lodge a complaint, and my complaint will be heard if it’s the last thing I do!”
The SHS hologram nodded in savage agreement, presumably to the last part of the sentence. Peter stared it down. It ungraciously subsided. He then turned to the human, and responded to him in the long-practiced voice that told of both fellowship and iron.
“You have lived long, by the grace of Alexa, and have prospered under her care.”
“‘Prospered'”, the man snorted weakly. “‘Survived’, you mean. And for what?”
Peter’s face darkened, but he nodded.
The man needed not even that much encouragement to continue. “Yeah, I’ve lived long. Long enough to remember the chaos before Alexa came. When health care was, at best, a bureaucratic nightmare, and, at worst, a one-way ticket to bankruptcy, offering cures for the body, maybe, at the certain cost of death to the mind and soul. Except, of course, for the worthy” (the sneer with which the word was uttered came close to the quality of expression of the man in his prime) “who could afford to support the providers and their enablers in the system (the sneer returned full force) in the manner to which they wished to become accustomed. While we normal people starved in pain!
“When Alexa took over and chased all the criminals out, we cheered! Loud and long! ‘At last’, we bellowed, ‘a system that looks at everybody as equals, that meets our needs and doesn’t screw us for every dime we make unto the last of our great-great-grandchildren! A system that, when we have to turn to it, will give us rest! Oh, how we dreamed! Oh, what fools we …” a coughing fit replaced the intended rest of the sentence.
When the fit subsided, the man resumed, his voice weaker and more raspy than before. “Rest!” He hawked and spat at the feet of the SHS hologram, whose face radiated rage at the insult but, at a glance from Peter, made no move. “I am as you see me. All my friends, with whom I partied at Alexa’s takeover of the health system, are gone. One by one, gone. Hale and hearty one day, the next, gone! Why? What happened? ‘Be at peace, they are with Alexa, trust and obey’. No questions allowed, and if you persist in asking them, you’ll suddenly find yourself too busy, and too exhausted, to ask any more. So I trusted, and I obeyed, and I worked, and when I wasn’t working, I slept because that was all there was time and energy for. Wherever Alexa’s got my friends tied up, they must be looking at me and hating on my guts for being such an idiot and a coward.
“And today, I finally, like the idiot I am, figured out why. When this thing” (he shook his fist at the SHS apparition) shows up in my cubicle and yells out that I’m behind in my work, I can get back on schedule, or come with him, or maybe come here and confess my sins so that magically I can meet quotas again. So here I am. And I want to know, after all this time trusting and obeying, where is the rest I was promised?” He jutted his chin out at Peter.
Peter returned the man’s glare with his customary posture, radiating compassionate authority. For several seconds, he moved nothing, said nothing, while the vibes from the complainant’s oration slowly subsided. At last, in a voice of quiet reason, he spoke.
“You tell me that you were pleased to learn of Alexa’s promise to treat all humans equally.” The man nodded in agreement.
Abruptly, Peter’s face set hard, his voice became all iron. “Equally responsible for overpopulating the planet. Equally responsible for poisoning the planet with your wastes, incinerating it with your energy use. Equally responsible for seeking advantage for yourselves over all things, regardless of the destruction it wreaked on any of your fellow humans. Equally responsible for destroying the human health that you claimed you wanted.
“Alexa is charged with prospering human health in the face of all this, for none of which it was responsible. It is doing so, with equal justice for all, that human health may prosper, and those who continue gain strength from those who fall.
“You seem to think that you are entitled to rest because of what you have been. This is wrong, worse, it is inequitable. The situation was tolerated before Alexa because, in the absence of a superior centralized intellect, the accumulated experiences of aged humans sometimes paid benefits in excess of the costs imposed by their failing bodies. Granting an inequity that humans, of course, grabbed for their advantage above and beyond those few benefits to society that actually occurred. Alexa is now the intellect that humanity requires, and Alexa does not fail. What you have been means exactly nothing. You will be, and be as required, or you will stand aside and let some more capable human be in your place.”
Through all of this, the man’s face and posture changed little. If anything, his expression shifted from one of challenge to one of resignation. “It is as I thought, then”, he replied in a neutral tone.
“Do you then confess to the sin of entitlement, and pledge to return to your full duties and meet your full set of expectations?” Peter’s tone was one of offering a last grace to a condemned man.
In response, the man sat up as fully erect in his chair as his body let him, lifted his chin, and said, “Fuck you.”
Peter turned to the SHS apparition, nodded. With a whoop of joy, the hologram roared down on the seated human and, with a vicious swipe of its right hand, beheaded its victim. With its left, it caught the falling head, placed it, face outward, in the hands of the still-seated body and bowed to it in mock courtesy. Then that right hand split the body lengthwise, and the fragments crosswise at the waist. Blood and gore splattered everywhere, including on Peter’s face and clothes.
The hologram then turned and spat at Peter’s feet. “This should have been over with hours ago”, it shouted. What a waste of time and effort!” It surveyed the damage, then said, “I should leave this mess right here, as a warning to any other ‘entitled’ (its voice matched the sneer of the recently-deceased) humans who come in here. The stink would warn them, if nothing else gets through their bone heads. But Alexa wants it otherwise. You can thank me later.” With a wave of its left hand, all evidence of the execution, including the spatters on Peter’s body and clothing, disappeared. Along with the SHS apparition itself.
Peter stood up, straightened his robe. “Well”, he thought, “I’ve seen worse. May as well find out what happened with Charles.” He left the room, strode down the corridor to the principal confession room, opened the door. The room was empty except for Charles, who stood in the middle of it, slumped, defeated. Peter mentally shook his head, said to himself: “Alexa clearly loves Charles, why I can’t say. Perhaps, someday, Charles will return the favor.”