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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We wouldn't have chosen the Movement building to log on, but we didn't know where else to go for such a private, potential fraught VR meeting with the union. Knowing Chris and his cronies wouldn't be around, Henri, Miriam, Elizabeth, and I ensconce ourselves in the conference room.
We're just thankful the union agreed to a meeting.
When I log into E-merse and the VR meeting space pops up in my vision, the union reps are already there.
I recognize them from last fall, when they recruited me to spy for them on the I.I.U. program. Their chosen avatars are blandly business-like, a rainbow of faces with horn rimmed glasses and slicked back hair or red lipstick that nevertheless appear so generic as to be interchangeable.
They examine my avatar and those of Henri, Miriam, and Elizabeth as they pop into existence around me.
Do they recognize me? I wonder, grateful that in this milieu they can't read my expressions with any accuracy. They can glean the gist, but I'm hoping my nervous facial tics are not coming through.
"Thank you for agreeing to this meeting," I assume that I'll take the lead.
"Of course," one of them says. "We're always happy to help our members."
"Are we members, though?" I ask.
"Mm hmm," I hear Elizabeth agree with me.
"Of course you are," a union representative whose avatar is besuited in all black replies. Her tone is just a little too chipper, as if she's trying to disarm me.
"Then what is with the silence all these months?" I ask. Elizabeth and Henri nod in my periphery.
"We do apologize for that. As you can understand, this has been a period of great upheaval for us. It's been ...chaotic, to say the least." She concludes with a sigh.
"Yeah, totally," I say, not quite respectfully. "We get that, we do. But here's the thing: all these months have been nothing compared to what's coming. That's what we want to discuss with you."
"What's coming?" She echoes.
"The aboltion bill?" Miriam picks up where I left off. "Have you... do you have any thoughts about it? Like, what's the play?"
"Well, as you know the announcement only came out a month and a half ago –"
"That's plenty of time to come up with an official stance," Elizabeth cuts in.
"Maybe so, but at the moment we are still consulting with our internal experts as well as outside legal counsel. We have nothing new to share at this time."
"Are you kidding me?" Henri and I say as if we are one mind.
They reply with studied silence.
"You really have nothing to say?" Elizabeth's tone is incredulous.
