Singularity's Children Box Set

by Toby Weston

  Stella nodded and accepted the barrel; it was heavier than she had expected. She grinned at the boy and then pushed herself down into the water with her free hand. Marcel ducked beneath the surface too, pressing his hands against the underside of the boat to keep himself submerged as he watched.

  Stella found it difficult to swim with just one arm, but she pumped her flippers hard enough to send herself down toward a shoal of silver fish, drifting with the waves near a big outcrop of coral. She was running out of breath and her ears were hurting, so she gave one last paddle, held the gun out in front, and squeezed the trigger.

  The spear left a trail of bubbles as it shot out toward the shoal; but, by the time it reached the fish, it was travelling slowly enough that, with a minimum of fuss, the school flicked out of its way. Disappointed, but somehow relieved that she hadn't hurt anything, Stella kicked her legs and let herself float back up to the surface. Marcel gathered the loops of barely visible line and fitted the spear back into the gun. He insisted she take it and have another go.

  By the time she finally got one, the sun was almost down. Flushed with success, Stella swam over to the boat to show her mom the prize. She could see Marcel’s father leaning back with his eyes closed, but she wanted her own mother to see the fish. She pulled herself out of the water and brought her eyes level with the side of the canoe, but she had already inadvertently sent a surge of water onto Marcel’s father’s lap and, unexpectedly, onto the back of her mother’s head.

  Electrocuted by the cold water, her mother turned and screamed “Sei hoi! I'm busy!”

  Stella dropped back into the water. She forgot about the fish, which swam away trailing a bloody mist. Marcel followed, eventually scooping it up with a net once it had exhausted itself, and brought it back to her.

  “You okay? Why she angry?”

  “She’s busy.”

  Much later, they grilled the fish on a flat stone, in the middle of the canoe, while the grown-ups drank little cups of wine. Marcel cooked Stella's fish and prepared it on a banana leaf for her. Stella's mom jeered at this, pointing at the kids and whispering something to Marcel's dad. He didn't look like he thought whatever she said was very funny. Stella wondered why her mom said nasty things. She could already tell that Marcel's dad was getting tired of her; couldn't her mom see it, too?

  They slept on the boat that night. It got cold once dusk descended and the disappearing sun left a chill. Marcel and Stella slept next to each other in their sleeping bags. Marcel’s father had covered them with a tarpaulin to stop the dew soaking them through.

  Sometime in the night, the inevitable argument came. After the children had fallen asleep, Stella's mom insisted on smoking a little pipe before bed. Marcel's dad raised his voice in protest, and her mom shrieked back at him like a harpy. Stella, attuned to the dangers her mother presented, flicked her eyes open in time to watch the man’s face. In the firelight, she saw rage, resignation, and then indifference follow one another in quick succession. She closed her eyes. She knew they wouldn't be coming here again.

  Chapter 3 – Reduction in Force

  The BHJ HR minion had provided him with a flat, flat-pack box. The security guard had stood there watching disinterestedly as Anosh performed the origami necessary to extrude it into three dimensions. The guard was not necessary; Anosh wasn’t going to make a fuss.

  Ironic mug; pseudo-leather organiser; stapler—technically not his, but he was not challenged, enforcing property rights on stationary was not in the guard’s remit—post-it notes; Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. He packed them all under the sanctimonious gaze of his former colleagues. His, or rather the company’s, laptop was buzzing away on the windowsill as it erased its hard drive.

  He looked at the row of technical books sharing his window alcove with the clicking drive. They had rested unmolested for years, fossils from a time when people still purchased their words on paper. Most of the technologies had enjoyed their time at the top of the hype curve and were now as obsolete as tallow candles or human compassion. Running a finger across the patiently accumulated dust, he shrugged, then dropped the bundles of cellulose into the waiting bin to join his other unwanted effects. At the last second, he reached back to retrieve a book he had been given at a recent conference—'The Four Phases of Change: Denial, Disruption, Conflict and Reimagination'. The world was changing; he would need all the help he could get.

  “I heard the news, really sorry to hear you have to leave.”

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks,” Anosh said, looking up from the book’s back cover to see his colleague, Christian, hovering uncomfortably nearby.

  “Seems a bit harsh if you ask me,” Christian offered quietly, his eyes regularly sweeping the floor. “Can’t see how the mess with Field-Goal has anything to do with you really.”

  Anosh didn’t have the energy for this conversation, but Christian had at least made the effort to talk to the day’s pariah.

  “Field-Goal was basically screwed from before I took it over. There was no way we were going to be able to implement half the regulations the board had agreed to. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess.”

  “What did they get you for?”

  “Trying to do my job!” Anosh dug through the clutter and passed Christian the termination letter that had been waiting on his desk when he had arrived in the morning. The security guard coughed significantly. Anosh ignored him.

  “Policy violation,” he explained as Christian was reading. “We didn’t follow the testing processes properly.”

  “Okay, well I suppose you really do need to follow those policies, right?” said Christian.

  Anosh felt himself getting angry. He snatched back a Linux penguin snow globe the guard had picked up from his desk.

  “It would have been OK if there had been a test environment to use in the first place!”

  Christian glanced nervously around again. Policy violations were black and white, and he remembered the three compliancy Web Based Trainings he still had to do before the end of the month.

  “Sorry to hear the news. Look, I’m sure you will land on your feet,” he smiled awkwardly. “Anyway, I’ve got some things I have to be getting on with. See you around. It’s a small world, right?”

  “Yeah, bye Christian.”

  Socks; squash shoes; umbrella…

  Once he had gathered his meagre possessions, Anosh grabbed the box and ran the gauntlet of desks towards the elevator. People stood awkwardly as he passed. With genuine or feigned concern, they extended hands. At each desk, he repeated the awkward shuffle, shifting the box onto one arm, then hooking it with his elbow to free a hand for shaking. Each time, the guard stopped with an exasperated sigh.

  Poor guy, thought Anosh, he probably had a half-dozen other people to escort out of the building this morning. Anosh took the long route through the cubicles to avoid his boss’s glass-walled office. He didn’t want to be exposed to her vapid sympathy; he wasn’t sure he could remain calm in the face of her impeccably faked emotions. She always left him feeling livid, yet somehow simultaneously guilty for the emotional anguish he was causing her. It was as if he was a problem child incapable of even the most basic tasks.

  She had done well. A few years previously, when the company had merged with BHJ, she had stepped in as project manager. In her version of reality, she had managed to turn things around and get the product out the door, despite Anosh and his team’s bungles and mix-ups. After that, she had been promoted to become Anosh’s line manager. Since then, she had ‘managed up the chain’ relentlessly, taking credit for every success, manufacturing the impression she was a miracle worker who, against the odds, was the only thing protecting the tech team from their own reckless incompetence. There was a nasty rumour that she had gotten her latest promotion by dating the big boss Baphmet’s son. Anosh wouldn’t even have cared if she hadn’t been such an utterly unbearable human being.

  With the trial of polite inane handshaking behind him, the elevator ride was
a relief, despite the lurking presence of the uniformed symbol of corporate malice.

  The final door revolved, spat him onto the street, and that was it. Five years, four Christmas parties, three successful projects, two awards for outstanding commitment, and one dismissal for violating policies.

  It was raining. Buses, taxis, and a few cars splashed along the drenched road, their wheels creating clouds of clinging spray and flinging oily drops across the pavement. The guard stood inside, watching, just in case Anosh wanted to make a scene. He didn't.

  No more corporate taxis. Trains were running today, but judging by the length of the queue to get onto the platform and the level of annoyed muttering, the service was far from optimal. He gave up and took a succession of buses that eventually dropped him a wet twenty-minute walk from his home.

  When it finally came, the global econopocalypse had been quick, if not entirely painless. For years, the governments of the developed world had been raising taxes, mostly through inflation, on the fortunate few who still had work. It was clear to everyone, politicians included, that this was a suicidal course of action, but they didn't have an alternative. Nobody was willing to accept publicly the obvious: When factories could work without people, and vehicles could drive themselves, there were simply not enough jobs to go around.

  Economists continued to sing their old songs of stimulus and counter-cyclic investment; however, by the time the majority accepted there might be a problem, it was far too late for traditional economic remedies.

  Despite tradition, culture, and social conditioning, it was suddenly clear that working had become counterproductive; having much too much would never be an option, so it was better to have nothing. At least nothing couldn’t be arbitrarily taken away.

  Consumption dried up and the inevitable recession put still more people out of work. Governments printed money to pay off the unproductive masses of unemployed. Inflation, followed by hyper-inflation, pushed currencies to collapse.

  Ayşe was vacuuming when he opened the door to their split-level apartment. She craned around the banister when she heard the door. Seeing him clutching the pathetic, shameful box of his work trinkets, she knew instantly.

  “Oh no!” She kicked the off switch and came down the stairs to hug him awkwardly around the cardboard box he was still holding.

  “It’s okay.” He tried to keep his voice level. “We knew this would happen, right?”

  “Oh no, I was sure they would let you off. You’ve done so much for that damn company!”

  “Please, not now. Let me just dump this and sit down.”

  “Okay, let me make you a tea. The boys are watching something in the play room. Why don’t you go into the lounge and sit down?” Ayşe fussed, taking the damp box from him to put it down.

  He tried to sneak past the door to the kids’ room, but they caught him and hurtled at his legs.

  “Daddy why are you home? Come and watch, Baqi is trapped and Fattah doesn't know where he is…”

  “Hello there, my two little lion cubs! What are you watching?”

  They scooted over and made room for him on the sofa and he kissed their heads.

  Two months’ pay and a further six months’ unemployment before the family would be destitute. They had talked about this endlessly. Ayşe had lost her job four months ago. Even before then, they had known it was just a matter of time. The finance sections of the news were full of speculation about the next recession, although to most people it felt like they had been in a recession for the past decade. Jobs were disappearing as they were sucked up by Cloud Algorithms or split into tasks and reverse auctioned to the lowest bidder.

  Neither Anosh nor Ayşe had made it into the rarefied upper echelons, and nothing else seemed safe anymore. Anosh had survived by carving out a niche for himself as a ‘go to’ guy, able to deliver. Each round of cost cutting had scrutinised him and ultimately, grudgingly, decided he was worth keeping. Each new manager had clarified to him he was very lucky; most roles were already outsourced, off-shored, downgraded, or terminated. On sufferance, they had allowed him to continue bringing in revenue, customers, upgrades, and features.

  Ayşe brought in the stainless-steel teapots and poured Anosh a glass; she had already put two small hemispherical biscuits on the side of his saucer. He lifted two tiny spoons of sugar into the amber tea and watched some young woman in a burqa crack open a prison cell with what looked like the power of prayer.

  “What are they watching?”

  “Boys, why did you turn off Mystery Park?”

  “It finished, Mummy, and this came on. But it’s okay, there’s no hitting.”

  Two boys, just six and eight. It was crushing. Anosh knew they were lucky; they still had a reserve. Many of their friends had lost their houses and all the equity tied up in them by not reacting quickly enough to their new situation. They had tried to maintain an extinct lifestyle with savings and credit, long after the corporate teat was removed. Anosh and Ayşe had already decided they would not let that happen. The boys would probably be too young to remember they had once lived in a nice house before Mummy and Daddy lost their jobs, and they all got poor.

  The sound of super hero combat competed with the clinking of metal spoons and glass, but Anosh's mind was elsewhere. As unemployment continued to climb—by 2022, it was at twenty-nine per cent—consumers, the engine of a hundred years of capitalist expansion, had stopped consuming. Government inflation figures were stuck at one or two per cent, but they conveniently left out food, shelter, and energy. Electronics were cheap, food and fuel extortionate. The top one per cent controlled ninety per cent of the wealth and paid virtually no taxes. They squatted in their Kensington mega-basements or perched in their penthouses and stared down their host governments with petulant threats to leave every time anybody politely mentioned that, perhaps, if it was okay with them, it might be a good idea to increase taxes for the rich, maybe.

  “Damn!”

  The boys jumped and looked up to see why Daddy was cross again. Satisfied they were not the cause, they were quickly sucked back into their cartoon.

  “We better start looking for a new place to live tomorrow,” said Anosh. “I have a feeling this time it might be a while before one of us is working again.”

  “Okay boys,” said Ayşe. “Clean your teeth and get ready for bed.”

  “Oh, Mama!”

  “Go on Zaki, be a good boy, and please help your brother find some pyjamas.”

  Grumbling for a few seconds, until they were lost in their next game, the kids hurtled out.

  Anosh flicked the channel to GNN to see what the helmsmen of their stricken vessels were saying today. A chirpy Australian anchor was interviewing the British Finance Minister, while the head of the UK Forward Party sat across from him listening sceptically and waiting his turn to speak. Anosh was bored with the rhetoric and only bothered to catch snippets of what was being said.

  “Easing unemployment is the prime agenda item for this government.”

  “The Russ are indulging in the worst kind of international oppression.”

  “It is disingenuous to claim that this is anything other than posturing.”

  “Britain has loan agreements with the IMF and ECB that guarantee our ability to pay for the gas…”

  He switched it off and threw the remote into the cushions. He had long ago realised it was a sham. The political process was so profligate, polarised and partisan that, regardless of any initial altruistic motives, the players became hard-boiled politicos—willing puppets ready to accommodate any agenda offered by their hidden patrons, in exchange for their continuity of power.

  The relentless grind erased all original patterns, leaving only artefacts. These husks, robbed of creativity and human empathy, were utterly incapable of steering the world out of its desperate, seemingly endless, run of bubbles and crashes.

  “We have to find a new place, honey. We can't afford another day of this bloody rent!”

  “Hey, the kids
are still up! Please!”

  Anosh looked guiltily at the two boys standing in the doorway, sucking lethargically at their toothbrushes while watching him.

  “Clean your teeth. Don’t just suck off the toothpaste!” Ayşe scolded, sending them off to the bathroom.

  “Start looking again tomorrow,” she said turning back to Anosh. “But don't worry, you will find a new job. Geißler told me Bernd just found a new one, so it can’t be too bad!”

  Anosh managed a smile. He supposed if the skill-less, born to middle management Trevor could find work, it really shouldn’t be that tough—but it seemed Trevor had taken the last job in Prussia. In desperation, Anosh had even looked back across the Channel, but things were no better there.

  They spent six months looking for a new place to live.

  Competition at the bottom had perversely pushed prices up. Ayşe refused to live in a squalid little hole somewhere horrible, and Anosh had rejected anything that wasn’t cheaper than the luxury, split-level home they were used to. Everything became desperate for them as they saw their savings sublimate away.