This is How the World Ends…

We hold this truth to be self-evident; that before there were machines, there was mankind. He was placed upon this earth to be its steward; to guide it so that it should live until the Great Old One returned…

… Somewhere along the way we lost our purpose. The road was long, our sight was short. We were lazy. We no longer wished to watch over the world – we began to explore other things… and we created machines to do our work for us.

At the grocery store today my wife and I made the mistake of using the self-checkout. If you’ve got one item, the self checkout isn’t a bad thing – if you have a cart full you are preparing yourself for an exercise in frustration.

I hate exercise.

At first machines worked as we intended; they made our lives simpler and easier. But the more we grew to depend upon them the more complex they became. The more complex the machine, the less it depended on us for its survival – for we grew so lazy that we did not even wish to be the stewards of the very machines we created.

I’ll admit. It was my idea. There were only two lines open with actual people in them and they were full to the brim with those who seek, not just service, but the comfort of human companionship from the Cashier. And in one of those lines some woman, with a cry of Opa!, threw down a jar of cocktail onions and it splattered all over the place.

No, it made sense at the time to take the self-checkout.

And so we made the machines self-sufficient; we made them so complex that we could program them to take care of the problems of the world while we played; like Nero we danced and played the fiddle while the very world crashed and burned around our ears. We took no notice.

At first all seemed to go well. Then we encountered the yoghurt. By itself yoghurt is not particularly scary – unless its beyond its best before date at which point its scary (but its the scary of the unknown – you don’t know what happens to yoghurt when it goes bad, who does?).

“Please contact Cashier” the helpful self-checkout machine told us. And we did.

Now, in hindsight, I firmly belief that “Please Contact the Cashier” is the machine’s way of saying: “This moron is pissing me off, you deal with him pointless meatsack called Cashier”.

The Cashier was able to help us fairly quickly.

But as the world steeped even further into decay the machines went about fulfilling their programming; programming which at its core said only: “Clean this world up.” Machines made the logical leap that in order to make progress cleaning up the world, it made sense to take care of the actual pollutants first.

Unfortunately, the pollutants were their very makers: us. Whatever the moral dilemma involved with getting rid of their makers, the machines over came it and they instituted their plan.

From there things went fairly swiftly again until we got to the Mandarin oranges. Several times I tried to scan them, I tried to find them in the Secret Lists of Produce. There were some Mandarins, but not the Mandarins I had.

“Please contact the Cashier, you stupid bag of fluid,” said the Machine.

And so the machines set about their efforts to clean up the world by getting rid of their makers. There was no carnage, no grandiose war; war is inefficient and machines are, if anything, efficient. The plan instead was to decrease machine efficiency so that it would, over time cause the human blood pressure to rise; increased blood pressure leads to early heart attacks and male pattern baldness (when a male goes bald, his head gets cold and his brain freezes).

Women would find these bald, cold-headed males less appealing and would no longer procreate with them; the human species would die out through attrition, much like employees of a Fortune 500 company in a time of economic downturn; employees (humans) would not be fired (killed) but would not be replaced.

The Cashier, who was a member of the Sorority of Benevolent Cashiers and thus a holder of the Sacred Code of Mandarin Oranges was able to help us. We escaped the store with our lives (and some groceries).

But in the interim about 7 people went through the line served by a human not two feet from us.

For those who read this, my eyes have been opened and I hope I have opened yours. If you are single, if you are balding, if you are male – visit your hair clinic and have your baldness addressed.

Fight the machines, go forth and multiply!