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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Our new friends in the square chatter about the news of Chris' victory for the better part of the day, debating what it could mean for us, for the gracious elephant of a country to our south. There's some half-baked attempts at planning a revolution, a coup, but none of it has any teeth. I remain quiet, thankful to blend into the background as Austin talks politics. Then once the sun is angled low, I float away from the group and set up my backpack as a pillow and a stone bench in the park as a bed.
I curl up in the fetal position and let the pain of betrayal wash over me. It's been a day since I first saw the scrubbed, coiffed version of Chris flash before my vision in a broadcast. But it's the first time I've let it sink in.
Sometime after sunset, Austin wakes me with a hand on my shoulder. I realize that I cried myself to sleep, weeping silently into the mesh of my pack. I mutter something I won't remember in the morning, and fall immediately back to into a deep slumber.
#
The morning is warm, wrapped in summer humidity that makes sleeping outside viable. As I blink awake, I slowly realize where we are. I sit up, inwardly cursing myself for choosing a stone bed: my stiff side and shoulder complaining.
I look over at Austin, whose curled up beside me. His eyes are wide open, not that I blame him. The sun is already high and powerful, piercing into the park between the towering structures of the city, making sleep almost impossible.
"You okay?" I ask, and he blinks out of a reverie.
"Yeah, yeah. Just thinking."
"About?" I'm genuinely curious.
"About... change and what to do next. How to... how to, deal, I guess." He frowns deeply. "I can't believe this but maybe... maybe you were right. Maybe our only option now is revolution. Things can't go on like this."
"Listening too much to them?" I gesture with a nod towards the tent city, near which Austin was gathered with the group the night before.
In reply, he pushes himself up with a grunt. An immediate sign that he's exasperated.
"They're not so bad," he insists.
Before I can say that they're plans are all insane, his ration pack appears between his hands and my mouth waters at the sight. I immediately take out mine and mimic him, picking at the food inside.
Others who have squatted in the square overnight begin to stir, stretching and rising as the sun slides up the sky.
Suddenly, somewhere between bites of tart green apple, my body feels like it's composed of sand bags. There's a weight on my chest, pulling me into the ground. The harshness of our situation comes down on me, all at once.
I attempt to shake it off. I have to believe something else. I have to imagine that I live in a world where I have support. To do what I'm called to do, what I was made to do with my life. I have to delude myself into believing that the world that's turned its back on me will come back, and that I will be a teacher again one day.
