2084: Slavery Resurgent

“Climate change is a fact.” - Barack Obama

It was nearly mid-afternoon on the 12th of March and already the temperature had climbed past 100 degrees. In fact, there had not been one day in two weeks when the thermometer had not risen over 90 degrees. Given the low humidity, perspiration offered scant relief – beads of sweat evaporated almost as soon as they formed. Nor did the occasional wispy white cloud high overhead provide any shade from an angry orange-red sun.

The stale air stank. Intense heat had formed small puddles of oil atop the asphalt. When he crossed the street, it stained his new white sneakers. An inversion layer had formed over the Los Angeles Basin, trapping odors, magnifying the sun’s rays, and making life miserable for the few foolhardy pedestrians who dared to venture outside during the eleventh Los Angeles Air Quality Management District alert in two weeks.

But 42 year old Franklin Pierce had no other option. His aging truck did not meet modern technological requirements and his minimum wage job as a janitor in an office building did not provide him enough money to update it. He had no choice but to take a hover bus to and from work. The nearest bus stop to his apartment was over a mile away. It took Franklin an hour and a half to go either way on days when the bus kept to its schedule. He had been warned twice for being late. One more infraction and he would be suspended for two weeks.

Janitorial work was mind-numbingly monotonous and provided little satisfaction. Several times he had involuntarily nodded off while buffing the linoleum floors. It didn’t matter much since he worked alone in empty offices at night and nobody seemed to know the difference. And why should they care? The company would sooner or later replace him with an unerring automaton that would perform his job at twice the speed and half the cost. Franklin’s economic future appeared dim.

This was in contrast with his prospects twenty years ago when he had graduated near the top of his class at the University of California, Irvine, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. Sheepskin in hand, he had applied for career entry positions in several government agencies, but had been rejected because he refused to be injected with an identification chip as required by anti-terrorist legislation enacted by Congress and a handful of states following a string of bombings of public buildings and assassinations of government officials in 2062.

Injectable microchips were invented in the early part of the 21st century. Initially, they contained data which aided in the return of lost pets and animals to their rightful owners. Gradually they became more sophisticated, increasing storage capacity while minimizing size. It soon became possible to program terabytes of data into microchips smaller than a pinhead. By 2031 fifteen percent of the population in the United States and Europe had been microchipped; hospitals routinely microchipped babies at birth. In 2055, military dog tags were replaced with microchips.

Franklin had heard rumors that implants sometimes resulted in skin cancer, that they could be hacked by third party scanners, that they interfered with magnetic resonance imaging, and that medical and financial records could be stolen from them, even though encrypted. The transponders that were an integral part of late model microchips threatened to put an end to privacy; mandatory Global Positioning System signals were monitored by the government, making it impossible to secrete a person’s location.

What frightened Franklin the most was a biblical prophecy:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. — Revelation 13:16-17, King James Version Bible

Society was rapidly becoming cashless. Ninety-one percent of the population lived in urban areas. Microchips were replacing charge cards, particularly in cities. Financial transactions were faster and more secure. Money laundering, cheating on taxes, holdups, and muggings had declined. And this had all resulted from a mark on the right hand where a microchip was injected. Franklin had an uneasy feeling about the future. He was not in any hurry to be microchipped.

In downtown Los Angeles scanners were everywhere. Usually the government scanners were mounted atop telephone poles and lampposts together with video surveillance cameras. Little activity went unnoticed. Although Franklin had no way to avoid being videotaped, he knew that positive identification could not be determined legally without testimony from an eyewitness or information scanned from a microchip.

* * *

“Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.”- John F. Kennedy

Multi-story holograms littered the central city. Projected in front of tall commercial buildings, they obscured the intrinsic beauty of landscaping and architecture alike. Franklin recalled a ballot measure in a municipal election six years back that could have limited holographic advertisements. Its opponents claimed that Los Angeles derived a substantial portion of the city’s revenue from licensing outdoor advertising. Get rid of ads and property taxes would skyrocket, the advertisers had trumpeted via their holograms. The end result was that economics had triumphed over aesthetics. By a margin of three to one, the measure had been soundly defeated.

Franklin hardly noticed the holograms. He had more important matters to think about. Besides, the overwhelming majority of them advertised products Franklin could not afford. There was one, however, at the Federal Building which always caught his attention. It stood out from the rest because it was three times bigger than city regulations permitted. In stark black and white, a hologram of the Director of Homeland Security menacingly towered over him as he walked two blocks to work from where the hover bus dropped him off. Looking directly at Franklin, the Director urged him to immediately dial the Anti-terrorist hotline if he spotted any suspicious or unusual activity. Quickening his pace, he tried hard not to cringe.

A friend had told him that people in Los Angeles were twice as likely to be struck by lightning than to die in a terrorist attack. It was difficult to believe. Although Franklin had never personally seen a terrorist attack or received a terrorist threat, he took the subject seriously. For as long as he could remember, terrorism had been at the forefront of news reporting. Of course, he was afraid. Who wouldn’t be?

The Homeland Security hologram promised a $75,000 tax free reward to any person providing information to the Anti-terrorist hotline which would lead to the arrest and conviction of people planning and/or committing terrorist activities. Franklin recalled that while cleaning a men’s bathroom at night a co-worker had found a large locked briefcase in a wheelchair stall. Afraid that it might contain a bomb, he dialed 911, the Los Angeles Police Department’s emergency number. A Bomb Squad was quickly dispatched. Arriving at the office building, the unit cordoned off a six block square area and evacuated everyone from it. Next, they carefully placed the briefcase in a tub of water. Following a thorough soaking, a robotic device removed it from the office building and pried off the lock. A remote control camera on top the robot transmitted the briefcase’s contents to an explosives technician monitoring a 3D LED screen inside an armored van parked beyond the cordon. “Better safe than sorry,” he said as he related to the lieutenant commanding the Bomb Squad that Los Angeles had successfully withstood a threat posed by two soggy, partially-eaten egg salad sandwiches and an unopened bag of salted cashews.

Franklin had no desire to commit a similar boner. Fooling with the Los Angeles Police Department was one thing, leading the FBI on what might turn out to be a wild goose chase was quite another. The chance of pocketing the $75,000 reward was not worth the risk. Any suspicious activities he witnessed would be better kept to himself. Besides, he had a strong suspicion that terrorism was largely a red herring, used by the government to distract the citizenry from economic injustices while serving as grounds for authoritarian legislation.

Also, there seemed to be a profit motive. Section 9 of the anti-terrorist bill passed by Congress in 2082 required the courts to sentence anyone convicted of terrorism or treason to forfeit all rights and freedom for the remainder of their lives without the possibility of parole. Through use of frontal lobotomy, chemical castration, shock therapy, and cerebral cortex reprogramming, they were to be transformed into docile automatons who could outperform robots and were cheaper to maintain. Auctioned to the highest bidders, they enabled the administration to reduce taxes and balance the budget. An ultra-conservative Supreme Court ruled that slavery of felons was permitted under the 13th Amendment, Section 1 of which clearly states:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

By a revised interpretation of the 8th Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that slavery of habitually violent felons did not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”

At first, Franklin had opposed the use of automatons because they might replace him on the job. But as time went on and the promises of politicians of a decline in violent crime, a reduction in the tax rate, and a balanced budget, came true, he changed his mind. A nationally conducted survey had reached a similar conclusion: “automatons improved the quality of most people’s lives and strengthened the economy.” The automaton program was soon expanded to include those convicted of kidnapping, first degree murder, armed robbery, espionage, and rape. Bills introduced to state legislatures were essentially copies of laws passed by Congress. Technological changes were resulting in more sophisticated automatons. A popular evangelist declared that evildoers deserved to be enslaved. Franklin’s mind was ill at ease; recurring doubts clouded his thoughts:

“Do not judge lest you be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard

of measure, it will be measured to you.” — Matthew 7:1-2

No sane person would ever choose to become an automaton. A lifetime of slavery seemed a terrible price to pay for criminal behavior, no matter how heinous the act.

The time was 1715 and it was beginning to drizzle. Employees streamed out of the towering office buildings onto the sidewalk – intent on going home before the rain turned into a downpour. Franklin was not paying attention to where he was walking; his mind was on other things. An automaton opened an umbrella, slightly touching Franklin’s right shoulder. Quickly apologizing, the automaton murmured, “sir, please excuse my clumsiness,” while lowering its head to avoid Franklin’s quizzical stare.

There was something about the automaton’s fawning behavior and obsequious speech that bothered Franklin. This unctuous creature certainly appeared to be human, but that is where the resemblance ended. Twenty years earlier, he had read Maxim Gorky’s Creatures That Once Were Men for Literature 101, an elective course he had taken in his Sophomore year at UCI. It was astonishing how Gorky had depicted the self-degradation by which men lost all traces of their humanity. Not having seen such an entity before in real life, Franklin was grossed out by it and prayed to God he would never encounter one again.

Fetid breath, body odor, rotten teeth, and unkempt hair - could it be possible that the government had consciously engineered automatons to be repulsive? If so, they had done a good job of it.

It was easy to spot an automaton. Most wore yellow jumpsuits. Being programmed, they moved with a singular purpose, like a horse wearing blinders, speeding ahead towards the objective. Automatons sat in the back of public hoverbuses, surrendering their seats to ordinary human beings when requested to do so. Many restaurants, hotels, and other service sector businesses refused to serve automatons. The general perception was that automatons were unclean subhumans.

Franklin had heard on a podcast that automatons were rapidly increasing in number. One out of every seven Angelenos were automatons. It was estimated that by 2105 more than one-half of the workforce would be slaves. Their human masters would have more money and a great deal more leisure time in which to enjoy it.

Sociology had taught Franklin that less than two percent of the populace were criminals. Of course, that statistic was 20 years out-of-date. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security claimed that crime had sharply declined. The numbers did not make sense. If only the most dangerous convicted felons were being transformed into automatons, where had the increase in automatons come from? To what purpose had the government been lying?