Get ready for a thrilling ride into a future where robots and humans clash for control in RoboNomics, the updated and refreshed version of the 2013 sci-fi classic.
In Toronto, elementary school teacher Andrea Anderson's world crumbles when she's rep...
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Evening rolls in, black and clear as midnight at 6 o'clock. I make a dinner omelet for one and clear away the dishes, then set up on the couch. Austin's key in the lock makes my ears prick up.
"Hiiii..." Comes his familiar, exhausted greeting from the back hall as winter chill oozes into our living room.
I look up guiltily from the bowl of cheap rocky road ice cream that I've been nursing.
"Hi," I say around a mouthful as he sheds his heavy coat and boots. He sighs and enters the bright, cozy room I inhabit and leaves the darkness and cold of the hall behind. He flops down on the sofa beside me and gently takes the spoon from my hand. He scoops half the remaining treat from the bowl and gobbles it before I react.
"Hey!" I say. He smiles as the spoon comes cleanly out of his mouth.
"It's been a long shift," he offers as explanation.
It stays the argument perched on my tongue. I attempt to remember that whatever strife I feel, once during the long school days and now during the long, empty hours of unemployment, that I don't have to see blood, innards, and save people in the middle of thirty-hour shifts.
I try to picture what he has to go through and can't, so I hand him the bowl. He eats frantically, like a dog at his chow, not stopping to say 'thank you'.
As he does, I reconstruct in my mind all that's happened between now and the last time I saw him. Although he knows that I lost my job, he decided we'd ignore it until after his shift rotation. I was happy with the suggestion at the time, but I'm restless now. There's no way we can let this go much longer.
I think of what to say as I leave him with the ice cream and head to the kitchen. There's not much in the cupboards: a packet of noodles, a couple eggs, some frozen peas. But it's enough to make a quick soup.
When I bring it to him, the white bowl dripping milky brown lays abandoned on our ancient, busted-up coffee table: the one we found on a sidewalk one day. The one I looked forward to replacing when we finally bought a home of our own. Meanwhile, his eyes are glazed over. Likely reading the news that casts itself directly onto his retinas via his I-yes.
"Austin," I say his name as gently as I can and he snaps abruptly out of his digital stupor.
"Dessert first, nice!" He says when he sees the steaming bowl of egg and noodle soup and the clean spoon I set before him. He takes it up and ladles broth into his maw before I have a chance to warn him. "Ouch, hot!" He sets it back down on the table and sinks into our couch.
Now's the time. Before he melts away from me, into his personalized world of digital ephemera.
"Austin," I say a nanosecond before he logs back on. His head whips to the side, eyes locked on mine. "There's been some news."
