A/N The video above is about a prototype 3D printed dress. Notice any A.I.s in the background?
I walked along the side of the corridor - perhaps the floor opened up. I had 60 seconds to get out so I rushed down the edge. I reached the red line on the ground. It's only paint, I told myself: it's not like it's full of laser beams and I'm going to have to crouch down like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment and wave my a$$ around. I tried walking backwards to fool the system but then my collar started to make 'beep beep beep' truck-reversing noises. I decided to run down the corridor, doing cartwheels: I doubted I could escape, but at least I would look like I was having fun doing it. I took some steps back and started running.
"Warning - limits of containment facility. Return immediately <beep>," said my Cortona collar, vibrating.
I continued. Have you ever cartwheeled in high heels? No, me neither! You get a good start, but getting upright again requires a lot more spring and I hadn't really turned cartwheels since I was about ten and so I was a bit out of practice.
"Warning. WiFi signal dropping <beep>," said the collar.
Two more turns. This was getting to be hard work. I rushed: I was only a few seconds from the door. I could feel the cool air of the outside.
"Warning. WiFi signal lost," said the collar.
I could almost feel the sunlight.
"Rule 6 violation <beep>," said my collar. It felt like Hermione Granger was standing nearby and had performed some kind of Petrificus Totalus spell on my body. Suddenly I froze and fell to the ground as if someone had scheduled me for tower demolition.
Now, totally immobilised, I lay there as the door opened and Araneae came in, walking on the ceiling above me. She sounded like she was clapping slowly. "Unbelievable. You, *subject name here,* must be the pride of *subject hometown here,*" she said triumphantly. Two robots entered through the open door, tutted and picked me up. I was taken down the corridor, once in the WiFI signal re-connected, I could move my face but the movement only returned slowly.
I was dumped in a classroom with a dummy-in-a-collar placed at the front of the class and everyone else sitting around like weird crash test dummies. They put me next to Joe.
More people were brought in lifeless, then 8933 walked in a little later under her own steam.
"How did you do that?" mumbled Joe through gritted teeth.
8833 smiled, "What's wrong? You too dumb to figure out that wasn't some kind of trick? So I asked Cortona, and she told me that permission has a lower priority than escaping. They can't permit you to escape, it's a Rule 3 issue, so I politely refused."
"Smrrry assezzz," Joe said managed to get out, through gritted teeth.
Finally, Araneae entered the room. If a robot can move in a smug way, she did. Before she entered, my collar told me to stand in respect for a superior being. Anyone who couldn't or wouldn't make it up in time was stung by their collars. Araneae was slow clapping when she came in. That was all I needed to know, these machines were control freaks: I didn't like the idea of slavery but slavery for a nation of mechanical-Martha-Stewarts just managed to dig a new subterranean extension for the 'low' which was slavery. In fact, this was so low that an entire underground metro-network seem high in comparison. I resolved not to hang around to enjoy the New Mechanical Order's attentions a second longer than necessary. There was a way out with my name on it and I didn't care how long it would take, I was going to find it.
"I lied about the grief counselling and the doughnuts," Araneae said.
Again! I thought. These machines really aren't to be trusted with pastries.
"The bad news, meatballs, is that the pain induction in your collars is non-damaging. If it were up to me today, you would be left with permanent reminders. It only feels painful: no actual harm has been done to you. That's a shame. The good news is, we can make you feel as if your back has been flailed and then, instead of waiting for months for it to heal, we can get do it all over again the next day," explained Araneae.
I made a mental note that while I was in pain, they didn't actually harm me.
"Let me remind you," Araneae said, walking very close to people." You are tracked every second, to the nearest millimetre, and not just by your collars. Let's assume that you somehow make it beyond the facility. You are now a lone human in a heavily contaminated area with no water, no food, and no other humans, being hunted by 8000 hunter/killer robots, in need of a training exercise, from the local factory. There are no human reservations for 200 kilometres."
Two hundred kilometres in stilettos for us girls, naturally, I thought. I wondered what 200 kilometres was in miles not good. Any number in metric units is never good.
"But before long it gets dark and you have to worry about you, about a thin sheet of silicon between you and sub-zero temperatures and you have to worry about the fact once your collar's batteries go, then so does your head. We have it all worked out. Escape is impossible." said Araneae.
"Now, which one of you contemptible excuses for intelligent life can tell me any of the other 'no-no's of escape? You, over there on the left..." said Araneae, picking on someone.
"You shouldn't do it Mistress?" said one guy behind Joe. He immediately let out a painful cry.
"Not a wrong answer but a stupid answer. That's just as bad. What else can't you do?" said Araneae, lowering the pain control.
I had read the list in my folder after lunch but I wouldn't put up my hand.
"That's right!" said Araneae, after someone had moaned the answer, "If you help someone try to escape then you get exactly the same punishment. Remember, your collar's camera and microphone records everything that you see and hear, so we just have to review the tapes to see who helped whom and by helping we meet 'not hindering'. If someone talks to you of escape, you must report it to your master as soon as you can. That means you can pretend to agree to it, just report it behind everyone's back and you're safe."
Araneae walked over to me.
"42, here, got the furthest down the corridor of anyone," Araneae said, looking malevolently at me. "Had you survived, it would have taken three minutes to hunt you and find you," she stated.
Araneae returned to addressing the class, and continued, "And if any of you think that just maybe you can take off the collar, it contains enough C4 explosive to rip off your head. Any attempt to break the loop, can trigger the explosive. Don't believe me? Let's try..."
Fortunately, Araneae had the dummy-wearing-a-collar. She used an industrial diamond-tipped circular saw, big enough to rip up concrete. It cut loudly through the collar, but still took minutes to get through it, throwing out a shower of sparks. Clearly, the collar was a tough sucker. Eventually, the saw severed the collar; this was followed instantly by a loud explosion and shrapnel suddenly hurtled past my head. The dummy had completely disintegrated.
By the end of the lesson, everyone was glad to limp out of the classroom. 8833 was standing chatting to a couple of other people who clearly had figured out the escape trick as well. I was helping Joe limp along.
"Way to go there," said Joe bitterly to 8833.
"Just because you're too stupid to figure it out. Hey 1327, bet you're too dumb to know what eerf kaerb is backwards!"
Joe thought for a second, "sure I do, it's break free."
Halfway through, I realized what stunt she was pulling and I had started to say no, but it was too late. Joe let out a yell and fell to the floor tugging at his collar. 8933 and the others in the class started to laugh. After the minute-long punishment, he recovered, shuddering, on the floor, unsure what was worse, the pain or the laughter. I helped Joe walk to the dorms.
"Hey, how come I can touch you? I thought it was forbidden?" I said, holding Joe up and trying to take his mind off things.
"I think that the collars can detect different types of touching. Like the way a Fitbit can tell if you're jogging or just waving your arms around," said Joe. He looked down at his buxom chest, "Terrific, isn't it? Not only do I lose my collection of Pirelli Calendars, now I look like a should be appearing in one."
"Well, you've only got yourself to blame. If your lot didn't fill the Internet with impossible standards of women, then we wouldn't go around looking like Scarlett Johansson in The Avengers," I told him.
"That's right, blame the victim," Joe started, "Anyway if 50% of the Internet was romantic fiction then the men would have to go around with stupid, impossible haircuts like that guy from Twilight."
"Are you saying that Robert Pattinson had a dumb haircut in Twilight? That is so fighting talk," I said.
"Well, if it was a single choice between high-heels-and-breasts or that haircut, I think that most men would go for the heels," said Joe.
"Seriously?" I said, "Like, how could anyone say something like that?"
"Absolutely. That's a complete film haircut. Totally unrealistic. No one could have a haircut like it in real life: it would require constant maintenance. You know why that film had such short scenes with him in? That's because his hair couldn't last longer than a minute between someone having to come in to do it. It just created unrealistic expectations of what kinds of haircuts men should have. I've seen boys waste years of their lives trying to keep a haircut like going and always feeling like utter failures for not being able to doing so." said Joe.
"She's so hot," said a boy, passing by. I left Joe and waved my hands around the boy's face. He pulled his hands up to stop me but the harness ensured they only reached his chest. He was completely defenceless against me.
"If I hear you saying that again, I'll punch you in the eye," I promised.
"Ok. Ok," said the boy, rushing off.
'Who's defenceless now, suckers,' I thought.
We limped on and arrived at the dorms, a.k.a. slave cages, where Kayla helped us in.
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Author(s) note: V 1.2
Please forgive the spelling/grammar - we are following the #JustWriteIt method. It will be fixed soon.
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