Everyone Died+My iPhone Stopped Working: An Oral History of The Robot Apocalypse

People Suck

Banyan Bradford, 39

Animal Rights Activist

"People suck!"

That was the unofficial motto of Animal Justice until late 2016.

At which point it became the official motto.

If you're familiar with our work in the field of animal liberation, you already know our list of grievances against our speciesmates. If not, I think I still have a pamphlet around here somewhere...

That's really not necessary.

Ah! Here you go! Looks like someone spilled some chai on it, but you'll get the gist.

Anyway, while a lot of people were really worried about a "Robot Apocalypse," a lot of us were practically giddy at the prospect. Because the end of humanity would undoubtedly be terrific news for the planet's resident non-human species.

Except for dogs who, let's be honest, are basically the sell-outs of the animal kingdom.

But the Robot Apocalypse would mean the end of factory farming, the end of petting zoos, the end of tutu-wearing bears on bicycles. And even better, nobody would be eating them!

Wouldn't they be eating each other?

Yeah, but in an eco-friendly way.

Fair enough.

But honestly, I just couldn't get on board the Robot Apocalypse train.

Sure, the idea of men, women and children screaming for mercy to cold machines who, in a poetic example of cosmic justice, are indifferent to their suffering... that all sounded great!

Then again, while people suck in general, there were specific people I loved and cared about and would do anything for. Up to, but not including, patronizing Sea World.

And it turned out that I wasn't alone. There were several other members of our group who felt the same way. So we decided to form our own cell, this one dedicated to the preservation of the animal known as homo sapiens.

Did they kick you out of Animal Justice?

Nope. That's the great thing about leaderless resistance. Nobody has the authority to kick you out. They don't have the authority to enforce a dress code, either, which was a real problem back in the '90s when parachute pants were all the rage.

And by the way, pro tip: parachute pants and razor wire do not mix!

I'll keep that in mind.

By the time we split from Animal Justice the two AI's were already online. Very smart people like Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Larry Page were warning that time was running out. But they were weirdly calm about it. They'd give speeches about how the end is near... and then they'd sort of shrug as if to say,"Oh, well. Whatcha gonna do?" and fly off to a charity golf event or something.

Yes, there were some protests, but they were small and disgustingly peaceful. I mean, people used to assault each other and set cars on fire when their sports team lost. Or even if it won, if it was Philadelphia. But with the future of humanity hanging in the balance? Just a few stupid signs and some ridiculous chants.

One, two, three, four! Robots must follow Asimov's laws!

Clearly, someone had to take bold action. And I could think of no better someone than us.

As luck would have it, we were presented with a perfect opportunity. In two days, both Robert and Misha would be at CES [Consumer Electronics Show] in Las Vegas! It was a small window and we had to move quickly and decisively. After all, given what we had been willing to do to save rats, monkeys and lemurs, we thought that when it came to saving the human race, our tactics should be just as aggressive... or maybe a little less so.

A little less so?

Well, I mean, unlike the animals we humans did kind of bring this on ourselves.

Anyway, we came up with what we called the DIET plan.

I don't get it.

It's an acronym. Distraction, Infraction, Extraction, Transaction.

Catchy.

Thank you.

Distraction: Coriander and Sage would run around the convention floor naked, creating a commotion and drawing the attention of security.

Infraction: Hiroaki would abduct Misha's wife as she emerged from the elevator for a scheduled Seaweed Scrub and Hot Stone Massage in the spa at 14:30, while at the same time, I grabbed Robert's daughter from the face-painting booth on the convention floor.

Extraction: We would use the service tunnels to make our way to the garage where we would all pile into our Volvo that was modified to run on Waste Vegetable Oil and make our getaway with our hostages.

And then transaction: we would release the hostages once both AI's were destroyed.

Humanity saved!

Sounds like you thought of everything.

We didn't.

In our defense, we were usually very thorough when planning our missions, but in this case we were kind of rushed. We only had a day to get everything together.

I thought you said the event was two days away?

Um, yeah. It was. We kind of spent most of the first day working on the acronym.

It started out fine. Hiroaki intercepted Robert's wife right on schedule, but it turned out she knew Krav Maga and she took him out in five seconds. Hiroaki's groin was never the same.

And when I went for the Misha's kid, she put up way more of a struggle than I anticipated. I mean, I had a knife and I assumed that it would be enough to make her cooperate, but she screamed and tried to pull away from me and then she kicked me in the shins and it really hurt. She had high heels on. Six year olds shouldn't wear high heels. It's so bad for their feet! Ask any podiatrist.

Anyway, I reacted sort of instinctively and I... I... [heavy sigh] I... punched her in the face, which was bad enough, but then I saw that someone was filming it with their cell phone and I'm freaking out, because now I'm gonna look like the bad guy!

I know I should have just grabbed the girl and ran. But instead I went after the guy with the phone. It was dumb, but I knew what was going to happen if I didn't destroy that video. The press would just paint me as some child-punching maniac when — I swear! — this is the only child I have ever punched in my entire adult life!

Admirable.

So I'm trying to wrestle the phone out of that guy's hands when security shows up from every direction.

I thought a naked Coriander and Sage were distracting security.

Well, what we didn't factor in was the fact that it was Las Vegas. And in Las Vegas, you see so much skin that a couple of naked women don't really mean anything. And security really didn't care, because they could plainly see they weren't armed, so....

Security was all over me. I probably set the world record for simultaneous tazings. They turned me over to the cops and they arrested me, which wasn't so bad. I've been arrested plenty of times. But everyone talked about me like I was the worst person who ever lived. Like I was Cannibal Hitler Baby-Raper.

But people started treating you differently after the Robot Apocalypse, right?

Not really.

But you tried to protect humanity when no on else would!

It didn't matter that I nearly saved billions of human lives. I punched a six year old girl in the face. And there's no coming back from that.

People really do suck.

They really do.