Get ready for a thrilling ride into a future where robots and humans clash for control in RoboNomics, the updated and refreshed version of the 2013 sci-fi classic.
In Toronto, elementary school teacher Andrea Anderson's world crumbles when she's rep...
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The shimmering, translucent gold dotted line stops in front of a peaked-roof pile of weathered brick, so far south it's almost on the shores of Lake Ontario. With a flick of my eyes, I turn off my I-yes AR mode and the dots leading to the building disappear. I look up at the discoloured lettering on it that says, "The A.R. Williams Machinery Co. Liberty St. Plant." It's a relic, surrounded as it is by tall glass skyscrapers filled with condos.
I pull open the glass door, my breath catching as I do. I don't know if I'm making the right move. I don't what people are supposed to do when they've lost their career to an android. But I cross the narrow, gleaming lobby anyway, and press the elevator "up" button.
I turn AR mode back on, just for a moment. Just to double check my note. Second floor, as I thought. As soon as I'd arrived home from school after signing the part-time contract, I panicked. Adrenaline surged in my veins, stinging past my elbows.
So I logged onto iVerse – VR mode. Pacing through the halls between virtual spaces while I sat on my apartment couch, vacantly staring at the wall. Wondering who or what I could turn to: my union, my best teaching friends, my teacher's college friends. But no one was online.
I went down rabbit holes instead, trying to figure out what to do. Eventually, I stumbled on an ad in one of the open social spaces. It was frightfully simple with no graphics or bright colours. Just text on a white virtual poster.
Lost your job to a machine?
Join the Reclaim Our Future Movement & help fight the automated scourge.
Sign up at 2nd floor, 80 Lynn Williams, Toronto.
I turn off my I-yes when the elevator doors open with a ping and climb inside. I clasp my palms together. Sweat slides between them for the entire short ride. When the elevator door slides open, it reveals an expansive yet shabby loft.
A half dozen people sit at mismatched desks. Wood tables with peeling veneers and metal school desks painted mint sit together in groups of four. No one is staring into the middle distance, gesturing. Instead, they scrawl on paper.
Rusting metal machinery crowds the corners of the room. Some pieces I recognize from period dramas: pinball machines, microfilm readers, and pieces of clockwork. There are other hulking machines with exposed gears. I don't know what they do. Some of them are on and working away. The smell of burning dust fills the space.
A middle aged fellow with a thick black beard walks by and raises his bushy eyebrows. He looks at me sideways.
"Hi, yeah," I say to him as introduction. "I found out about this... group... on iVerse. I wanted to ask some questions and maybe sign up. Are you taking new members?"
