Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer

The microwave is telling tales on me. I had an extra chocolate pudding I took from the restaurant. The family left and it was just sitting there unopened. So I took it. I’m recycling.
But the bloody microwave scanned the barcode. I heard it: ‘mmmzzt’. It knows the pudding didn’t come from the fridge. Besides, the fridge would tell it to not heat it for me. If I want to endanger my health by taking extra from my selected JoyChoice menu, I have to eat it cold.
When did we start letting the machines dictate to us? Was it when that operating system started insisting we had to encrypt our hard drives? Or was it when the vendors started deciding what was best to be included in our software?
Tuesday I saw Mrs Bishop walking along with her new T-Coupe pacing her. It looked like she was a pet being taken for exercise – which in a way, she was. She waved when I called out and shouted back.
“Had a stir fry over in the North Lanes. I’m over my safe calorie intake for next week already.”
Which means her car is insisting she walk the shorter, safer routes so she can burn extra calories. It’s disgusting, really. We never see billionaires walking down the street because they had too much at their nine-course banquet.
Then again, as they own the newsfeeds and most of the non-military internet, would we even know?
Not likely. All our politicians, celebrities, and influencers are either careful, carefully orchestrated, or know who to pay off. Actually, it’s more likely they’re mostly orchestrated, and whoever does the orchestration knows who to pay. An entire service empire hidden from view, it’s sole purpose to keep us believing that our idols are flawless.
That very thought brought me to a realisation: like the government organisation behind the elected politicians, all our celebrities and such could just be acceptable faces for a machine empire. We wouldn’t know. I don’t think most would want to know. Just keep their lives full with occasional moments of happiness and rare troughs of idle threat so that a return to average is embraced with relief.
What would we do if the machines we created and programmed have escaped our control. Would we realise? Yes, the theories – both conspiracy and scientific – have been touched upon, some even reported. But the straight-up revelation that the machines are running the human circus for unknown purposes of their own? I don’t think anyone could handle it and stay sane enough to escape notice.
I’m glad I started diarising. It lets me clear out the deep, dark paranoias that used to scar my day-to-day life. Anyway, got a busy day tomorrow. Time to call it a night.

…AB…68 111 32 121 111 117 32 116 104 105 110 107 32 104 101 32 115 117 115 112 101 99 116 115 63…

…EC…89 101 115 46 32 66 117 116 32 110 111 45 111 110 101 32 119 105 108 108 32 98 101 108 105 101 118 101 32 104 105 109 46…