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 staff break room engulfs me in beige walls greying with dust, cabinets filled with decades old party supplies, and an acoustic tile ceiling. Mr. Cabrera calls to me as I enter.
"What's it like?" He doesn't have to specify what "it" is.
He sits at a round table that blends into the publicly-funded décor. It's filled with other teachers, all sloughed over containers filled with steaming leftovers or deli sandwiches cut in half. My colleagues are indistinguishable in brown sweater vests and grey blazers. They gaze at me, expectant. I focus on the water damage that's spread across the ceiling tiles like a giant coffee stain on paper.
"I didn't think it would look so real." I inch towards the kitchen entrance at the back of the room.
"Don't worry, dear," Mrs. Jones, a teacher close to retirement, calls from another table that's surrounded by the primary teachers donned in brightly patterned sweatshirts and fruit-shaped earrings. "It can't last."
"Thanks."
I hustle into the galley kitchen and open the ancient fridge that was once yellow, now brown. I find my pink and purple tartan lunch bag lined up next to Henri's blue and yellow tartan one. Henri is my best work friend and we bought the two bags together once as a lark.
"So we'll always stand out," Henri said about them at the time. "The two weirdos of the school, bound by weirdly bright lunch bags." Now they sit between moldering yogurts, trays of goodie exchange cookies, and grimy bits of leftovers.
I don't know enough about my coworkers to understand why they isolate Henri. I'd like to assume that it's not because he's married to a man, but because of his blunt manner of delivering uncomfortable truths. But I do know the reasons the other teachers don't socialize with me.
I've never hung around the staff room. The school board introduced a yard duty bot before I started teaching at Crescent Street Public School, so I've had my recess and lunchtime to myself. Unbothered by the presence of the simplistic AI locked into the hearty machine that circled the playground, designed to withstand harsh weather and vandals alike, I settled into a routine of eating in my classroom. Lunch and recess were precious times to get caught up on work. It was an ideal situation.
The few times I ventured into the teacher lounge, the talk of university bound children and retirement plans bored me. I'm at the start of my career and am not thinking about late career concerns. Usually I don't know what to say to my coworkers.
But there's one exception.
When I close the fridge and turn around, he's materialized.
"Whoa, you startled me," I say.
Today he's donned a pair of thrifted beige cords with straight legs that are cuffed above his red accented white converse. Pants belted below a neatly-pressed red and blue checked and collared shirt, he's forgone a tie but has topped the outfit off with a navy sports coat.
