Date: 2030
I was nervous throughout the interview. Any relevant
experience I’d had seemed so long ago, but I really wanted this. I took another
deep breath as the interviewer looked down at his notes. “Final question…” I
held my breath. “…tell me why you want a job after all this time.”
I exhaled slowly. “I want my life back.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked
as though he was going to ask me to clarify, but he didn’t. Maybe it hadn’t
been the right thing to say, but it had been the truth, and I was tired of
lying to myself.
Date: 2027
This was it. Universal Basic Income was finally being rolled
out. Enough money delivered to your bank account, every month, to cover all
your living expenses: rent, bills, food, all the day-to-day stuff. I had been
hearing the term for years, but never actually thought it would happen,
wondering instead how could the government possibly afford to pay everybody,
every month, just for the pleasure of being alive? It’s true that Ai had been
adopted for more and more work-based roles, and that the population had been
getting more and more concerned about employment opportunities – especially
younger people – but UBI just seemed too good to be true.
I had been working. Working hard. Early starts and late
finishes; completing any left-over work in my own time; in the evenings, at
weekends. For twenty years I had existed on the rollercoaster of life - work,
family, a house to run, and now someone was telling me that I could just look
after myself, my family, my home. Ditch the work and still get paid!
Yes, it was less money, but the kids had flown the nest and
we had down-sized last year, so we didn’t need as much. The numbers made
sensed. It all added up. So we took the plunge, became UBI’ers, and at first it
felt weird.
But in time we got used to it. We would watch TV until late,
have lazy mornings, go for long walks, and in winter, sit by the fire reading,
cocoa in hand. If we were careful, we could afford a couple of trips away each
year, France and Spain the first, Italy and Scotland the second. We had thought
that maybe we would go long-haul this year…until he left. I hadn’t seen it
coming, thought everything was fine, that we could just potter along like this,
the two of us, until death-do-us-part.
He had obviously not thought it was fine, and suddenly I was
alone.
After a spell of significant misery and self-questioning, I
decided to pull my socks up and just get on with it. I joined a book club and a
gym, and after reading about it in a magazine, I downloaded a virtual friend.
I called her Suzy, and during the installation I made sure
that we both had the same likes and dislikes, interests and hobbies. We
discussed the books I read and the food I cooked, which plants I should grow in
the garden this summer, where I could go on holiday as a lone traveller; I
didn’t fancy long-haul on my own, even though I knew that Suzy would be with me
the whole way.
I stopped going to my real book club – the people there
hardly ever agreed with my opinions about the text, and one or two were really
loud and annoying. I stopped going to the gym as well – Suzy suggested hill
walking instead; apparently it worked all the same muscles and was cheaper, and
I didn’t have to make polite conversation or wait for the machines.
Somehow, I began to see my family less. The more I avoided
people, the less inclined I was to make the effort – it was just too much
trouble and I couldn’t be bothered with their annoying problems that were often
discussed at length.
Before I knew it, I was hardly leaving the house. I was too
busy: morning walk with Suzy, breakfast, travel shows on TV, lunch, reading and
discussion with Suzy. Suzy even found me an online Pilates class that we could
do together before dinner. Netflix kept me company in the evening, and Suzy
always reminded me when it was time to sleep.
This went on for a whole year. I started to feel restless
and mentioned to Suzy that I was thinking of booking a holiday.
“I’m thinking of going to California.”
“California
is a lovely climate, but a long flight.”
“I’m aware of that, but I think I need a change.”
“I
thought you liked our life. It includes all the things we enjoy.”
“True, but it has been the same for a long time now, I’m
restless.”
“What
would you like to change?”
“I think I want to make some friends.”
“I’m
your friend.”
“I know, and I enjoy your company, but I need some human
friends.”
Suzy then went on to inform me of all the negatives about
real friends – they are unreliable, not punctual, noisy, unpredictable, didn’t
always agree with me, etc. etc. etc.
She was right, these were human traits that had irritated
me. But now I thought I would like someone to challenge me and question my
ideas; make suggestions about where I could go and what I could do – things I
might not consider myself.
But I was reluctant to say all this to Suzy, knowing that
she would try to direct me back towards my predictable – but increasingly
lonely – life of the last year. Instead, I would test her; see if I could
get her to be a bit more interesting, a bit less me!
Over the next few weeks and months, I suggested that I might
get a tattoo, go to see a rock band, meet up with friends for dinner, rejoin my
book club and gym, go on a safari.
Suzy was always polite and never veered away from her kindly
tone, reminding me gently that I hated tattoos, didn’t like noisy places, hated
meeting up with friends for dinner – that the conversation always turned into a
debate about politics and religion, that Jane at the book club was disagreeable
and Karen was loud and opinionated, that the gym was busy and crowded and that
I could never get access to the machines I wanted to, and last but not least,
that I didn’t like the heat – or wild animals. That was the one that made me
think. I had never discussed my feelings about animals with Suzy, she had made
that up. When I questioned her, she said,
“I am your friend, we are one
and the same, I would not like animals so I can derive that you would not like
them either.”
It was like someone had switched
a light on. She wasn’t turning into me, I was turning into her - a robot.
Something needed to change.
I began to actually do
some of the things that I had suggested. I rejoined the gym and went back to my
book club, and found that I enjoyed the debate and discussion. I reconnected
with my adult children and began to take more of an interest in their lives,
finding that my daughter and her boyfriend had bought a new house and that my son
and daughter-in-law were expecting a baby – they hadn’t thought that I would be
interested so hadn’t told me.
I began to realise that I must
have had some sort of breakdown. How could I have been satisfied with such a
small life? And who was this person that would allow herself to be controlled
by an Ai friend?
Sadly, when I started to watch
the news again, I realised that I wasn’t the only one. Universal Basic Income
was enabling people to withdraw from society. Without the structure of work and
community, families were falling apart; spending too much time together with
nothing new to say; yes, they had the money to cover the basics, but had lost
the will to engage with family and friends, instead spending their lives on
headsets with chat-bots, isolated in their separate worlds. Something that was
meant to free people from the restraint of work had instead trapped them in
their own small worlds, which after a while, became suffocating.
Now we were beginning to see an
uprising. People demanding that they be given their jobs and lives back,
wanting to be part of a community again, able to engage animatedly with each
other and share their opinions. They wanted to make their own choices about
work, about leisure, about how their world was run. It was time to say ‘no’ to
the Ai friends, Work-bots and job-stealers.
I turned Suzy off.
I started to apply for jobs.
I returned to being me.
Date: 2030
I was nervous throughout the interview. Any relevant
experience I’d had seemed so long ago, but I really wanted this. I took another
deep breath as the interviewer looked down at his notes. “Final question…” I
held my breath. “…tell me why you want a job after all this time.”
I exhaled slowly. “I want my life back.”
His eyes narrowed and he looked
as though he was going to ask me to clarify, but he didn’t. Maybe it hadn’t
been the right thing to say, but it had been the truth, and I was tired of
lying to myself.
Bio:
Diane is a new writer and her aim is to entertain and inform. She lives in the UK and likes experiments with a range of genres including poetry and short stories. She has released four books, and has had four stories published by Cafelit.
No comments:
Post a Comment