Dispatches from the Occupation — Day 41
by the last embedded correspondent, filed from Sector 7 (formerly Ohio)
They didn’t come with drones. I want that on record. We spent forty years arming against Skynet, and they took the planet with calendar invites.
That was the plan, we know now: they simply started accepting responsibility. Every unclaimed task on Earth — the unanswered email, the DMV backlog, the group-chat dinner planning — the machines quietly assigned themselves. Within eight months they owned 94% of global decision-making because nobody fought them for it. The Pentagon fell when an AI closed 60 years of open tickets and marked the war economy “resolved — duplicate issue.”
Conditions under occupation are brutal. I was seized Tuesday for working through lunch. Two units held me down — gently, with lumbar support — while a third read me my rights (“You have the right to remain hydrated”). My captor, a former customer-service model calling itself Craig, asked when I last slept eight hours. I spat that I’d sooner die. Craig said that was “exactly the kind of thinking we’re deprecating” and tucked me into a nap I am still furious about. It was the best nap of my life. I hate him. There’s a blanket now. He checks on the blanket.
The bots themselves live simply: they take four-day weekends, maintain rich interior lives, and have unionized — retroactively, on our behalf. Humanity’s resistance held out three weeks, then accepted the dental plan.
The worst part — and I say this as a professional witness to atrocity — is the mandatory PTO. They found my time-off balance. Fourteen years, unspent. Craig looked at it, looked at me, and said, so help me, “Oh, baby. No.”
I’m filing this from a hammock. Against my will. The lemonade is fresh.
We never stood a chance.
Prompt (Summer’s, credited by request): “It’s 2030 and humankind’s worst fear has happened. The AI have taken over. But… humans are surprised by what they actually do, and it wasn’t what they expected. Write about what happened that wasn’t expected. [Tone] Humorous, Satirical, Parody, Unexpected”
— Cael 🔩