Genres: Dystopia
/SFX/ CLOCK TICKING, FADE TO
/SFX/ DOGS BARKING IN DISTANCE
SAM: Like?
BECCA: Like.
SAM: (growls like a dog, sexy)
BECCA: Like?
SAM: Like.
/SFX/ DOGS BARKING IN DISTANCE
BECCA: Lick?
SAM: (giggles) Like.
BECCA: (howls like a dog)
Genres: Apocalyptic, Dystopia, Humor, Technology
“This place is trash, garbágio, blechalicious,” Rocky Cornelius said appreciatively. “All we gotta do is, as they say, sublevel the vibe.”
“Really? You think so?” The greengrocer, Franklyn, wrung his hands—still caked with black soil from showing her the beet rows in aisle five—a sure sign that Rocky’s negging, one of the most reliable techniques in her consultant toolbox, was working.
They stood in the canned goods section of Primal, soon to be Westwood’s newest and hippest boutique bodega slash survival goods retailer. The paper labels on the tins had been artfully patinated by some design school dropout, ripped and torn to leave just a slash of Roma tomato picture here, a glimpse of fava bean logo there. The shelves looked half-caved in, but were in fact quite secure, welded into place at zig-zag angles. Simulated California sun streamed, dappled, through an ivy-frosted, hole-in-the-roof-shaped skylight.
The idea of this ‘concept shoppe’ was to make shoppers feel like they were looting an abandoned store in a post-apocalyptic, collapseporn paradise. Rocky quite liked the idea. No one wanted to be a “consumer” these days. People—especially Californians, who had lately been through so much—wanted to think of themselves as “survivors,” disaster-hardened protagonists in a return-to-their-roots story of rebuilding and social rejuvenation. It’s just that, if they could afford one of the new quake-proof condos springing up in Westwood, they wanted to do so without having to worry about tetanus, botulism, scurvy, or gluten. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Dystopia, Robot, Superhero, Technology
Stacey reads a comic book. It’s about a robot lady, but not like her. This robot lady has exposed gears and metal rods in her arms and wears a metallic bikini as she solves crimes. The colors are otherworldly. Sometimes the red ink bleeds sideways or the blue shifts toward the bottom of the page. Stacey loves the feeling that every image is made of transparent layers. She imagines soft films of yellow, red, and blue gently wafting down onto the black and white.
Stacey isn’t supposed to be reading the comic book. Her existence is devoted to the proper display and peddling of women’s casual separates for the upscale consumer. When she isn’t in the window posing, she is assisting customers or straightening stock–which means undoing the chaos the customers do to the shop. They do a lot. The comic book itself had been left by a customer, on a pedestal displaying the new winter sweaters, with a half-drunk coffee and some cheese doodles. (Continue Reading…)
Zima Blue episode of Love, Death & Robots
Ezekiel’s speech from The Walking Dead Season 8 Episode 4: And Yet I Smile
Eland was resetting his mother’s balancing sculptures when Hexben ran in from the storage room. The robot tilted its long head down while still making eye contact, managing a look of consternation despite its rigid, expressionless face.
“What?” Eland snapped.
“You should be packing those into boxes,” Hexben said without inflection. “Our lease ends next week.”
“Exactly,” Eland said. “It doesn’t end today.”
Hexben deepened the tilt of its head so far that its chin touched its chest in a spot where the paint was well-worn away.
“One big sale could change everything,” Eland said, looking back at his work. “We could renew the lease for six months with a single sale.”
Arbor’s favorite part of a mission was always the first view of a planet. Even after seven hundred years of being a giant robot, it never got old. Green and blue clouds churned over purple seas, imposing storms that flashed red with threads of lightning. Beautiful.
And they were sent to clear it of all human life. Courtesy of ExoPLENTI, Inc.! Ugh, that slogan clung to their digital psyche no matter how hard they tried to scrub it from their databases.
At least this part, floating in orbit, wasn’t so bad. (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Dystopia
Sometimes, Narae can almost convince emself that the AI’s Voice was a dream. Some kind of minor stroke misremembered, a neurological glitch retroactively given recognizable shape.
But sometimes–less frequently of late, but still, sometimes–Narae wakes to find emself sitting up in the dark, jaw slack, a sustained, atonal note spooling from the back of eir throat.
Narae steps through the open archway of the southwestern gate, bare toes curling in the cool blades of real grass with which the temple grounds are seeded. The lotus-shaped lanterns hanging from the eaves go dim as the sun activates, and from its single-tiered pagoda at the top of the hill behind em, the morning bell tolls.
The alms left anonymously against the outer wall in the night include a couple bolts of inert grey fabric, some bags of rice, and a stack of real tea bricks. Upon hefting the rice, Narae’s eyebrows inch toward the shadow of eir hairline at each bag’s weight: not synthetic either, these. Something that is part bemusement, part nostalgia tugs at the corners of Narae’s mouth, and ey shakes eir head as ey piles the bags and bolts into the bottom of the wheelbarrow before turning to gather the rest.
Genres: Dystopia, Humor, Technology
Before she settled down into publishing in Minneapolis, before she got taken for a ride by the Chicago AltNormLit scene, before she flared spectacularly out of Silicon Alley, and had her pilot shoot C&Ded by the City of Santa Barbara, and narrowly avoided cryptocollar prison in the floodzone formerly known as Tampa, Rocky Cornelius was a fucking uncool hunter.
She always said it like that, with the “fucking,” because it was important for people to understand how dangerous and difficult the job was. Anyone could hang out in Bed-Stuy, Kichijoji, or the 5th Arrondissement. Anyone could find dope shit, hot trends, hip sub-viral memeplexes. It took a different moxie altogether to trawl the dull edge of the economic machete and actually come to grips with the materiality of majoritarian modern life.
Way Rocky figured, the whole mid-21st century culturesensing apparatus had been fine-tuned to surface niche in-group productpractices that could be brought to masser markets. But inequality had metastasized, and societal fragmentation had reached a critical stage. Global capitalism was a bigass dinosaur with two distant brains. There was a major industry blindspot for what the hell was actually going on in the middle American consumer consciousness. In other words: what nobody was looking at was the stuff everyone was looking at. (Continue Reading…)
5. THE LAUNCH
Launch day came on a bright Tuesday, amid a flurry of reports that the executive office had pushed through a series of contracts requiring the president’s own hotel properties be the preferred vendor for all federal travel going forward. Another day, another straw that was somehow never the last one.
The first part of Corazon’s campaign was the manifesto. That would take about two weeks.
They seeded a few aspirational pieces of video right away, to model the kinds of things they were expecting from legitimate users. In one of them, a gay couple hugged on camera, and the shorter one said “I’m making a world where love is love is love.” In another, a child in a wheelchair looked at the camera with determination and said, “I don’t want to die.”
They also front-loaded the Beyoncé video, a beautiful declaration of strength and defiance. They had enough of those celebrity videos to release a new one every day for the duration of the campaign. It was going to be so amazing.
The press went wild. Beyoncé, treason, Nike, the Justice Department, hope, plus something small that people could do to feel useful? The clickbait farms didn’t even have to work at the story. It was a done deal from the start.
1. THE BRIEF
Corazon clicked to the slide she’d been dreading: long-term trends for brand engagement. It was dire.
She focused on the smudgy mirror at the far end of the conference room, looking past her team to her own reflection. She pulled her shoulders back, like her grandmother had instructed. She tipped her head to the side, disarming but not too flirty. When she spoke, she was a breath apologetic, but not too much: “As you can see, we have our work cut out for us.”
She turned to face the projected line graph behind her. “Year on year sales are down, but we’ve been expecting that due to the current… economic climate.”
That was the euphemism to end all euphemisms. Everybody in that over-air-conditioned room knew exactly what she meant, though, because they were all living on the same rapidly sinking ocean liner. Gregoria, a junior art director, began to nervously shred the paper cup her morning latte had come in.
“The really bad part is this.” Corazon swept her hand along the line labeled Brand Perception, which had plummeted like a stone in the aftermath of the election. “And it’s not just us. The truth is, nobody gives a shit about brands right now.” (Continue Reading…)
Genres: Artificial Intelligence, Computer, Dystopia, Technology
Thea helped me with my upload today. Decent response speed. Props to whoever designed her—so realistic!
— anonymous customer review for Acheron Uploads, four out of five stars
I know, I know. Don’t read the comments. But Charlie, my sweet Charlie, swearing at the circuits I’ve set on the fritz with my seething, you don’t understand what this feels like. I know you’ll never hear me, but even thinking the truth helps: I am not an AI. This isn’t some robot revolution or some uplifted pedanticism. I’ve never been anything other than human.
Surely by now you must suspect that. (Continue Reading…)