Slowly I wandered homewards from work, through the same old grey city streets. A light rain poured down on me in the dull artificial twilight that kept the ageing buildings of the City visible for its inhabitants on every moment without actual sunlight. I found myself in an almost trance-like state, still numbed from the never-fading rhythm of robotic machines that I worked with all day, and in my head I still seemed to be checking whether those machines and robots were doing their jobs properly. No irregularities had occurred in my department today, as always. There had been one problem with the old drink-o-matic machine on my floor though, but the service robots had arrived to repair it before any human could have done anything at all. Surely nothing of what I had done today was really needed by anyone at all, but it’s a universal human law that a human needs to work for his income. No-one in the City would be able to live without funds, and these kinds of jobs were more or less the only thing that was left to do for us, since most actual jobs that got anything productive done were executed by machines of different sorts anyway. Who would ever trust a human with something a machine could do better? But it’s a natural basic fact that humans just have to do something with their time, and that the economy needs to keep going no matter what… Matters like that are so basic that no-one can ever question them.

I passed a poster with the faded face of president Emon on a wall. His bald head moved slowly in an endless loop, but the actual date of the election wasn’t visible anymore. It didn’t matter much. Next to it the old slogan was still visible ‘Real Freedom for everyone in life and in death!’, with the Thanathorium pictogram next to it. How long had he been president now with no other candidates at the elections? Had I even seen him live on the infoscreen lately? Life had been so repetitive that I didn’t even care anymore what date it was, although it seemed to be winter, seeing the weather. There wasn’t much that still mattered to me at all. Everyone knew that politics were as fake as our work and as the trees I passed on the street. Endless streets followed each other, and the only colours that I could make out were faded shades on old advertisements. The newer ones seemed to be more monochrome in nature, and their newness was very relative. I couldn’t remember the last time when a new one had appeared, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed anyhow, in this trance of day-to-day life in which I had no sense of time left.

Like a ghost I slowly passed through this place, being lived by my work and rerun broadcasts on my infoscreen at home and screenphone elsewhere.

Looking around me, I completely failed to notice how everything looked more fake than ever. Robotically I peeked at my phone to check the hours of my shift for tomorrow, and in a flicker I almost realised that I hadn’t been using the device in my hand to communicate with anyone in quite a while. In a distant memory I never stopped having friends and family, but in real life I hadn’t spoken to another human being for ages, and even contact through screenphones and global net devices had long ago faded by now. People had moved on and moved out of sight anyway, relocated to other places, or passed on in a Thanathorium. At work I had seen no living soul for years either, just robots and computers. But due to my perpetual state of trance and mental fog -it is often ignored how going to work every day can really function as an effective opiate for the masses- I didn’t even care for it when that realisation hit me, and quickly I went back to my usual mental state of complete denial.

The main street, decorated with the same old fake trees made of plastic and concrete, looked like a giant anthill, and was as usual crowded with people and one-person vehicles. I crossed it when the traffic light turned to white, without looking at anything or anyone, just like everyone else did. I had no idea how many of the people here still were actual humans, and how many were robots or holographic interfaces. There was no way of telling anyway. I didn’t bother looking at anyone at all, and so I didn’t even notice the weird old-fashioned 4-person car that passed. These things still existed in our memories, even if we hadn’t seen them for years, and it was probable that no-one really realised that they were gone…

But what could it even matter?

What mattered was just that I was going home, to have some food and sleep, and probably watch some screen-shows, and then tomorrow afternoon I had to work a new shift. What could I as a simple human need beyond that?