RoboNomics

Chapter 83 - 2016

When I come to, I find that I'm sitting on a torn-up leatherette couch that must have once been red. As I look around groggily, I see that I'm in a small room crowded with junk. There's exposed pipes and duct work lining the ceiling, and I'm engulfed in the white noise of whirring fans.

Surrounding the couch are plastic milk crates, each one filled with shabby carbon squares stacked together. Across from me is a dusty wooden credenza with a diamond pattern across its front. It is covered with more of the carbon squares.

There's a machine that looks like those old video arcade games I've seen in old movies. But instead of a video screen, there's a host of mechanical parts inside.

There's a closed door on one wall. Along the opposite wall is a floral patterned couch. And on it sits...Chris.

"Welcome to our Eden of analog," he says as my eyes linger on my strange surroundings.

I have no need of pleasantries. It's been weeks since I first saw him here in New Rome. It's been years since I last saw him on Earth.

I remember that day as if it happened yesterday. He admitted to me that he'd made a deal with RoboNomics -- with his father's company. He tried to convince me that he had every good intention. But just like the old saying suggested, he'd paved the way to hell for Toronto. No one had a good life while the Anti-Robotists were in charge.

"How could you have betrayed us like that?" I scream at him.

"Well, hello to you too, Teach." He shifts forward in his seat. "Or should I say, Ms. Anderson. You've moved up in the world, haven't you? And now you're here, living happily in New Rome, surrounded by the machines you once swore to take down."

"Cut the crap, Chris. Just tell me why you're here."

A dark cloud passes over Chris' face.

"I knew how passionate you were, and I knew if you found out that I was a traitor to the cause, you'd turn your back on me. That I'd lose you." Chris said. "I'd lose what was between us."

"All we really had between us was secrets. Did we have anything else?"

"Do you know how they hate you down there? Do you have any idea how many of your colleagues would thank me if I destroyed you right now?"

I'm not about to response to his threat. I want answers.

"How did you even get here? I thought you were -- how is it that you're Robert Newhouse's son?"

"Yeah, I'm his son," he answers grimly as he slides back on the sofa and leans into the cushions. "And I was also a garbage collector. I know this is difficult for you to understand, but some of us don't want the cash, the privilege, the power offered us. Some of us just want the dignity to choose our own profession."

Then he tells me his story.

He was a child of privilege, born nearly four decades ago to one of the richest families in America. Raised in New York City, he lived in a world of great privilege and expectations.

While his father was busy building RoboNomics, buying out semiconductor and computer conglomerates and putting automated intelligent machines on the market, he was in high school. He pissed away money on drugs, partying, and girls.

By the time college was over, he was a burn out. He needed a break from his life, a moment to breathe before the world of his father's making swallowed him whole.

"Oh, poor little rich boy," I snipe.

Chris ignores the comment.

"He agreed to it. My father said it would be good for me -- to know what it would be like to have a real job. To be a self-made man like him, rather than a spoiled kid. So I took the first job I interviewed for: a garbage collector. I got a shitty apartment and moved out. And I loved it. The guys I hung with on the job, the feeling of being bone tired at the end of a day. And the freedom. What I liked most was the freedom."