I had a dream — no I actually dreamed this.
I was selling diamonds to a Sultan and fell in love with his daughter, she looked like a human; she ate, slept, and breathed like a human; but she wasn’t.. It was the year 2050, and the New World government is controlled by a super AI; we all have Elon Musk implants and our super AI overlords know exactly where we are and what we do. Human DNA is being used to create robots that are so life-like they are indistinguishable from the real thing — except they don’t age, they can’t reproduce, and they were not born. The global population is down, vaccines are created with algorithms, and everyone travels by magnetic trains; planes do not exist, gas power cars do not exist, and there are solar panels in space that run our major cities.
And MOST of us are still alive — most of us have found a way to survive for another thirty years on our little rock or our smaller little rock and we’re living in 2050, a year in which the world will change completely. And we’re slowly but surely falling in love with robots — why? No reason; they don’t do whatever we say, if we hit one we go to prison, if we kill one we go to jail — they are people, but they aren’t. We forget that they are not real because they are real; just like we know that person on YouTube that talks to us every day is not our friend, we know these are robots, but that’s not what it feels like.
And what if these robots have free will? Not true free will but at least the kind we have, the one where we know we can kinda do whatever we want to but somethings are hard to do and we have jobs so maybe we can’t do other things, and we’re tired today so maybe we’ll use our free will tomorrow. But that’s love isn’t it? Two people freely choosing to be with each other. So if a robot who can make their own decisions chooses to love me, and I happen to love them back, what does that mean?
In the dream her name was Nadia, and we got into a fight because I was on a dairy-free diet and she brought home cream cheese — is this the future? Yeah probably. One day you will die, maybe it will be in ten years, maybe it fifty; maybe your consciousness will be downloaded onto a computer and you’ll live for a thousand years; but one day, for sure, without any doubt, it will end; the computers will turn off, the memory card will fail, and what will remain? For me it was a very beautiful robot, standing by my bed, and self-destructing right after I died, that is love. And such is life.
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