The story teller

The moment they said their good-byes at the station his folks gave him up for dead. Beyond the all those 'Take care' and 'We'll be waiting for you', he could see the stark horror in their eyes as they knew they'd never see him again. Torn between wanting that minute to last forever and hoping the train's siren would cut short the agonizing farewell.

Of all the jobs a young man like him could be assigned to, this was the worst. Not just for Freddie, even stronger men rarely survived two years at the mines. It wasn't that Freddie was sick or anything, but he'd always been delicate. Why would they want a short skinny guy like him for a work that took so much strength? They had no one to ask such question – when the work assignment came, it was final. That was the contribution law that had been in place for five decades now.
When the train did leave, the lads in the car looked at each other with sad eyes, red from the tearful good-byes. And curiosity. They measured each other up, see who seemed fit and who looked like a goner. You could almost see their brains doing the complicated math of survival – if ten percent make it, am I among them? They seized up Freddie with just one look – skin-and-bones won't last much out there. Not worth making friends with.

He did manage to make one friend, though. A stocky guy with a mess of curly hair named Brian, who slept in the bunk next to his. At least, things were well organized and the new recruits were not left to themselves. It would've been chaos in the huge 100-beds dorm, but management had already assigned places for the incoming workers. Beside each bed there was a small metal cabinet for personal belongings – not that they had many. They'd been allowed to bring just one small back-pack. The rest would be provided – clothes, overalls, toiletries.
Freddie was relieved to see they had been issued with new outfits and good solid boots. The food, too, was decent and, most of all, enough of it. A glimmer of hope for the future. They seemed to take care of their workers, maybe things were not as bad as people back home said, maybe he could make it.

Brian turned out to be not just his dorm neighbor, but also his workmate. Probably not a coincidence. Management had all their files and work posts were assigned accordingly. He and Brian were posted as loaders and some of the guys made fun of them, called them free-loaders. His new friend was a strong man, but he could not be trusted with a drill or a pick-ax, as he was left-handed. So he was sent to load rocks in the carts that carried ore to processing.
Mining rare earths was a dirty business as loads of chemicals were needed to isolate the precious metals. Some of the elements had become so rare that the use of digital gadgets had to be heavily restricted. Whereas at the beginning of the century, most people had phones and laptops and TVs, now they had to rely on just one gadget, with pretty basic functions.
The workers had no use for phones as there was no service in the middle of nowhere. They knew that wasn't true, obviously management had to have some sort of communication lines with the rest of the world. Nobody said anything and, anyway, what would they need a phone for? They had so little to say about themselves – they worked 14 hours a day and spent most of their free time in the dorm, too tired to care about anything other than food and sleep. Nor did they long for a breath of fresh air. There was no fresh air there – just the acrid smell of the sludge from the processing units.
The men took to rubbing a little shower gel on the collar of their work shirts just for a whiff of something fresh, vaguely floral. Still chemical, but better than the toxic fumes from the huge reservoirs.

Freddie had an accident by the end of the first month. Not really serious, just a sprained wrist, but enough to make every move of the hand pure hell. It was one of those damn boulders, the miners did not bother to smash up. If a big chunk of rock happened to come loose, they'd just drop it on the conveyor belt, let somebody else worry about it. He couldn't get a good handle on it, almost dropped it on his foot and sprained his left wrist trying to catch it. For the rest of the day he just pretended to work, picking up smaller rocks with his good hand and making sure he had his back turned to the camera that monitored their work station.
However, the camera registered his diminished activity and as a result he discovered his food ration had been halved. He only got one ladle of mashed potatoes with barely any meat. Yet, when he got to the dorm, he discovered a neoprene brace for his injured wrist and four anti-inflammatory tablets
in a plastic cup.
The next day, his hand was swollen and sore, no use pretending he was doing any work. Although he was the one to get punished, Freddie felt bad to just sit there and watch Brian bust his back. He tried to make the dull hours go faster by coming up with old jokes, which made them both laugh for a while. Talking about their lives on the outside was out of the question – it was an unwritten rule no one was dumb enough to break. They'd shared a bit about themselves by way of introduction in the early days. He knew that Brian had two younger sisters and a girl he liked. She'd promised to wait for him, but he knew he could not hold her to her word, if he came back, that is.

Somehow they got talking about the reservoirs and Freddie found himself saying that at night, when they got off work, that place had a feel of Mordor, but Brian gave him a puzzled look. Books were not actually forbidden, but few now owned any. They were things of the past, useless in the new world.
So Freddie told him about 'The Lord of the Rings' and Brian laughed at his description of the small hairy hobbits. Freddie wished he had something to draw on as the illustrations in his children's edition, which he must have read a dozen times, were etched into his mind.
That night, as they laid in their beds, Freddie told him more of Bilbo's journey and the trolls in the forest. The dorm was dark, so Freddie did not see the flash in Brian's eyes when the hobbit outsmarted the trolls. But he instinctively knew what troubled his friend.
'It's not the same, you know, the trolls were dumb' he said in response to the unspoken words.
Their new leaders were smart, exceedingly so, no way they could challenge them.

Whatever was in those pills, they didn't seem to be helping much. He tried to keep up with the work, but the constant effort only worsened the pain. They stopped delivering meds and his ration grew even smaller, until one evening Brian quietly slipped him some meat from his own steel plate. Freddie tried to protest, but thought better of it, as any disturbance was bound to be noticed by those that monitored the dining hall.
They were all used to live under unrelenting camera scrutiny and they knew that unless you seriously broke the pattern they'd leave you alone. They had no interest in the petty squabbles of their workers as long as they did their jobs. Efficiency was all that mattered. And Freddie was no longer cost-efficient.
The contribution law was the first things they were taught in schools. Resources are limited and must be distributed fairly. If you do not contribute to the common good, you cannot justify your use of resources and are a burden to society. The system was merciless, but, they had to admit, those in power were by no means violent. On the contrary, they saw violence as one of the worst traits of human behavior and tried to root it out. Mainly by rooting out the perpetrators and you could be certain the slightest violent gesture would be recorded on more than one camera.
Another day, a burly fellow with an impressive mustache slipped Freddie a few carrots, muttering he didn't like them anyway. Then someone passed along a piece of bread.
But they were bound to get tired of his free-loading and, anyway, Freddie was ashamed of becoming a burden, not to mention a waste to society. He tried to repay the kindness as best he could, telling them stories he'd read as a child from his grandma's books, that were kept in old suitcases in the basement.

Most of them were exhausted from their work and had to fight to stay awake to hear the tales. Some fell asleep and had to ask in the morning what happened. Did they get to see the wizard? Did Romeo escape with Juliet?
One of the stories they liked best was a mostly fictitious biography of Leonardo da Vinci. He had trouble explaining it was the story of a real man, as they couldn't imagine an ordinary guy just like them could have been so smart. 'No way!' How could some random dude come up with the idea of a flying machine all those centuries ago? They'd all assumed planes and engines and surveillance cameras were from the new age of civilization. They did not know much of the old times. Only what they taught in schools – poverty, lawlessness, wars, all the evils they had been spared with the new order. The new laws were sometimes harsh, but they were just. Take, for instance, their work in the mine. The rare earths they were digging out were essential so their society could function, all computers ran on those precious metals, even kids knew that. What would happen if the system broke down from lack of some basic components, would they revert to the lawlessness of ancient times, to the dog-eat-dog era?
Freddie tried to tell them all he could remember from that big colorful book for kids – '100 incredible human inventions' and the cleverness of those distant ancestors never ceased to amaze them. Until one night, a freckled boy with a squeaky voice asked: 'And the robots, did we invent those, too?' Freddie did not answer the question, as the realization dawned on each and all of them.
They had created their own masters.

This story was inspired by the Elon Musk recommended documentary 'Do you trust this computer?'
All over the world scientists are busy creating ever more intelligent, autonomous, self-replicating AIs, while there are basically no regulations in place to safeguard the human race's interests. If things go on unchecked we just might find ourselves an inferior species on this planet.
Fair warning – I might write more on this story as there's more to it than what can be told in a decent-sized post!

Image source: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Thanks for reading