Читать книгу Unreversible - Emil Akhundov - Страница 6

Vlad Toleko was able to intelligently plan everything and become the sole ruler of the entire planet. No one could get to him, no one could challenge him. If the corporations somehow helped the poor, he did not care about those people who could not afford to pay for life in Eden. He even stopped supporting projects that had been successfully implemented by the previous government. Moreover, he imposed such a financial burden on private corporations that there was no way they could help the people who needed it. Now, they had only one chance to exist normally – to work in the Eden, doing the dirtiest work for which it was a pity to use robots.

Most were less fortunate – they could buy shares in companies for koins, and thereby provide a comfortable life for their grandchildren, if they had children at all. They could provide private services or streaming services in order to get financial support from other users. Some of them were good at it, while the rest had only to indulge in dejection or banditry – the world had become a perverse version of the capitalist’s dream: goods produced and sold themselves, while it was possible to provide any additional services without taxes. The market was living on its own, and in the absence of a regulator, this could not end well. Now several thousand criminal syndicates were organized in this world, which could steal income from the already poor people with impunity, and if the bandits were caught by the security service, which everyone called “guards”, they were simply killed right there, so as not to waste time.

This is how robots reduced absolutely everyone in a few years, from ordinary workers to internationally respected managers. The ironic thing is that ordinary workers were being laid off by efficient managers who had no idea that they too would soon be replaced by robots, and the workers, in turn, tried to warn everyone else that this would happen because they had already had a lot of grief from mass automation. But no one would listen to them, either out of pride or unwillingness to change anything, but it didn’t matter. This led to the most amazing phenomenon: total class equality for the vast majority of people, who were equally dissatisfied with it.

So every few weeks a new revolution broke out somewhere and was mercilessly strangled by the authorities. This was handled by Ido Brims, security advisor to the new government. A former intelligence general who knew neither mercy nor compassion. If he suspected that anyone was even thinking of overthrowing the new emperor, that person disappeared without a trace. Perhaps it was only because of him and his “guards” that none of the uprisings ended well for their participants.

That is how we ended up in a world where black ash fell from the sky every day instead of snow, where there were no birds, caterpillars, or wild animals, not even stray dogs. The rich could only work for the sake of work, and many tried to just survive somehow, and some were just resigned to it. If some realized that they could not survive, there was only one thing left for them: utilitarian oblivion. They just watched black snow fall from the sky, people fighting over oxygen tanks, and waited for who knows what. They often collected postcards that were free and were nostalgic for the days when they could see a living tree or hear birds sing. They would just look out the dirty windows at the smoky city and disappear into the world of their memories.

Most likely, had it not been for a series of fortunate events, I too would have met the fate of the latter, but as fate would have it, I had a chance to try to fix at least something. Too bad I started too late, though, after many years of happy life in Eden.