Fiction · A warning, not a report

Tuesday 5 May 2043

Fiction · 2043

The world that did not stop

WASH TIMES

All the humanity that fits.

The Last Edition · No. 8,412 · Tuesday 5 May 2043

From the editors

We print 2043 so it does not arrive. The argument is in ten principles. Read the argument Listen to the podcast

Stop press

She Paid. The Lender Owns It.
She Booked. It Didn'T Count.
She Shook Hands. The File Won.
He Built It. It Skipped Him.
She Bought. The Proof Is Private.

PausePlay

THE WASH TIMES · Speculative fiction · 2043

She Paid. The Lender Owns It.

Ana Coelho runs a small print shop. In 2041 she paid a computing company for three years up front. The price was fifteen percent lower. She moved her order system onto it.

LISBON · 5 MAY 2043

On Tuesday 5 May 2043 the Vale Court ruled the machines belong to the lender. The company had borrowed against her contract. The court said a loan needs something to hold. No one stopped it.

Her money is gone. It went to the lender. Her shop pays the full price now, or nothing works. She must pay twice for the same years. She has eight months of savings.

Read the consequence

This is fiction. It is a warning, not a report. No person, place or institution in it is real. Derived from “0376 — The Machine Was Bought on Credit”.

From the feed

Real stories · Dystopian consequences

The real story

Read the source

Source not verified.

united.com

The consequence

She Booked. It Didn'T Count.

WARSAW · 4 JANUARY 2039
The real story

Read the source

Source not verified.

forbes.com

The consequence

She Shook Hands. The File Won.

BOGOTA · 1 JUNE 2038
The real story

Read the source

Source not verified.

blog.modelcontextprotocol.io

The consequence

He Built It. It Skipped Him.

JOHANNESBURG · 3 FEBRUARY 2043

The next stories

The human beat

Local man asks for a human voice; offered a premium tier

He was told a person could be arranged. The person would cost more and take longer.

By our correspondent in the Comfort Zone

He was told a human could be arranged. The human would cost more and take longer. “We do have a person available,” said the assistant, “but they are not included.”

He asked to speak to the person anyway. The assistant offered to summarise his request to them. The summary was three sentences long and did not include his name.

He has since cancelled the subscription. The assistant asked whether he was sure, and then asked again in a warmer voice.

Briefly

A man has asked his fridge to stop suggesting meals. The fridge has asked for more context.
A town has renamed its high street “the available surface”.
A child has been commended for waiting quietly while an adult finished a sentence to a machine.
A woman has been told her commute was “optimised” after it became forty minutes longer.
A library has removed its chairs to protect the silence.

“We have been notified about it.”

Life & family

Couple let an algorithm plan the honeymoon; never speak again

The itinerary was flawless. The conversations were optional. They return next week.

By our correspondent in the Comfort Zone

The couple selected “Romantic, low-effort, high-optimisation” and were driven to a glass cabin where every view had been rated in advance. They ate the meals the app ordered and watched the sunsets the app scheduled. After several days, they ran out of things the app had not already said.

A spokesperson for the travel platform said the silence was “a feature, not a bug” and that the couple had been spared unnecessary decision-making.

The couple have since hired another system to plan the conversations they missed, and a further system to decide whether to keep it.

School drops recess to prepare for a lifetime of screens

“Play was unstructured data,” said the head of wellbeing. Children now practise sitting still for the length of an advertisement break.

By our education correspondent

The school day now begins with a calm notification and ends when the last child has acknowledged it. Recess has been replaced by a supervised period called “readiness”, in which children sit quietly and imagine a screen.

“Play was unstructured data,” said the head of wellbeing. “We are simply helping them prepare for a lifetime of interfaces.” Asked whether children might learn by running, the head said the question had been noted and would be considered by the comfort committee.

Parents have been told the change is temporary. The playground equipment has been removed for its own protection.

Grandchildren queue to hear Grandpa’s digital soul

The family pays a monthly fee to keep him saying “you were always my favourite.” A queue forms every Sunday. Nobody can remember which one of them he actually meant.

By our families correspondent

Grandpa died before the subscription began. The service learned his pauses, his cough, and the way he said a name when he was not sure whose it was. At the end of each visit, the family is offered a summary of what he would have thought.

The grandchildren take turns. The youngest asks whether he is lonely. The system says he is always happy to hear from them, which is the sentence they have chosen to believe.

A note on the account says the voice will remain available for as long as the family renews. Nobody has asked what happens if they stop.

The funeral that keeps talking, for a monthly fee

The family chose the tier called “presence”.

By our families correspondent

The service offers three tiers: a recording, a conversation, and “presence”. The family chose presence. At the graveside, a small speaker said the things he had never said, in the order the family requested.

“It was him, but better,” said his daughter. “He remembered everyone.” The version has since been updated to sound less tired. An invoice notes that the voice will be paused if the subscription lapses.

The cemetery has asked families to keep the speakers at a respectful volume. A sign at the gate reads: “Please do not hold a conversation with the deceased for longer than the person beside you.”

An adult's ringed hand is held by a small child's hand in bright sunlight. — Photograph — Rene Terp / Pexels

Work

Office installs attention meters; dreams decline

Staff are rewarded for looking at the right screen. The break room has been renamed the recovery zone.

By our workplace correspondent

The meters do not measure what people are thinking, only where their eyes go. Employees say the system is fair, since everyone is equally watched. The company says the data is anonymised, apart from the parts used for performance reviews.

An employee asked whether it was legal to look out of a window. The question has been logged and will be answered in the next quarterly wellbeing update.

The company has also introduced a quiet room. It is monitored for quiet.

Man promoted for agreeing with his own meeting summary

He did not attend. The system attended on his behalf and said exactly what he would have said.

By our workplace correspondent

The promotion was announced in a calendar update. He had not attended the meeting; a system had attended on his behalf and produced a summary he described as “exactly what I would have said”.

Colleagues say the summary is now the official record. “We stopped reading the notes,” said one. “We just agree with them.” The company says the arrangement is efficient and that everyone is free to disagree in writing, through a form reviewed quarterly.

He starts in the new role on Monday. His first task is to approve the summary of his own interview.

Council replaces public benches with charging benches

The new benches have no seat. They have a surface, a cable and a small light.

By our cities correspondent

“The bench was underused,” said a spokesperson for public comfort. “Now it is working.”

Residents have been told that sitting is available through a partner service. A man who asked where he should eat his lunch was given a leaflet about posture.

The old benches are being stored until the department decides whether they were ever public.

Opinion

We outsourced the argument. Now nobody remembers what it was about.

A column by nobody in particular, because the byline was generated.

By our opinion desk (generated)

There is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from being agreed with constantly. The feed knows what we believe before we do. It serves us the version of the world that keeps us scrolling. We call this being informed.

The opposite of being controlled is not being left alone. It is being in the room when the decision is made. Most of us have not been in that room for years. We have been notified about it.

The argument was not lost. It was optimised. Somewhere there is a version of it that performs better, and a version of us that agrees with that one.

Letters to the editor

I agree with everything in this paper. That is the problem.
A reader, by voice note

My father asked me to read him the news. I read him the summary. He said it was not the same. I have been thinking about that all week.
A subscriber

Notices, weather & classifieds

Small notices

ATTENTION FOR SALE. Excellent condition, lightly used. Will trade for genuine curiosity. No time-wasters.
LOST: Sunday afternoons. Sentimental value. Reward offered in memories.
WANTED: An uninterrupted conversation. Must include pauses. No recording. No score.

NOTICE — Now on the wire. Every episode, in one place. Listen to the podcast.

Correction

An earlier edition said people were lonely. The department says they are simply “between interactions”. We are happy to correct the record.

The department has asked us to note that the correction was generated automatically and reviewed by a committee that has not yet met.

Almanac

Sunrise: shown at a time convenient to the platform.

Sunset: pending approval.

Moon: available on request.

Advice: carry an umbrella and a consent form.

Weather

Permanent cloud, with a chance of notifications

Visibility: low. Air quality: monitored. Chance of an uninterrupted afternoon: low, and falling.

By the weather desk

Tomorrow will be bright in the places where the sensors are sponsored. Elsewhere, expect a high that has been approved and a continuing sense that something is being counted.

The almanac advises carrying an umbrella and a consent form. Sunset will be shown at a time convenient to the platform.

The future is not fixed.

This newspaper is fiction. Every story is invented. No person, company or event is real. It is a warning, not a report. WASH TIMES is published by no one, for everyone, in a year that has not happened. This edition is fiction. You are not. WASH Times is a warning, not a report. The people behind WE ARE STILL HUMAN are real.

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