A/N - photograph of Hadrian's wall. Roman military defence built between England and Scotland 1900s ago. In no way was this ancient historical artefact related to 'the wall' in Game of Thrones. Any similarities between this wall and any others living or dead is purely coincidental.
Video: More 3D printed clothes, you know why not.
Or perhaps not. There was a big crowd outside the bid room. For the first time they were running a news program on the bid screen. The principle message of which was that LA had fallen. It was familiar stuff, hundreds of brave robots. Pictures of the"HOLLYWOOD" sign being torn down and reorganised as "YO DOLL! HOW?" . Robots walking in and out of Los Angeles City Hall with smoke floating out of several windows.
The new governor of sector 9B being sworn into post, flanked by suave killing machines. The new governor was so anonymous his own mother would have difficulty of picking him up out of a police line up. He was clearly some collaborator with a bunch of machines running the show in the background. I bet he would sit there not able to scratch his own ass without checking a computer first, that did remind me of my student loan manager. In fact, I think the new collaborator governor was my student loan manager. Fortunately, the machines had cast irony aside and decided not to get Arnold Schwarzenegger as the human face of the machine overlords. The news was on a loop with new bits added in every so often, so I dawdled maliciously.
I was bored and my collar reminded me about my next class. I started to make my way through the crowd. It was quite packed and it took a long time to get out. Even in the corridor to the screens e-slaves stood close together. As I got to the end of the corridor I heard a voice.
"Lord Rockwood for The New Mechanical Order had this to say.."
As I heard the name I rushed back through the crowd trying to get a look of him. I could hear him talking about the use of tear gas, but the thing that caught me was his Scottish accent.
"eSlaves are ordered to look respectfully down in the presence of an master<beep>" Cortona announced on my collar.
I could hear him speak. "This morning in an attack on an IBM data processing centre we managed to liberate 7 more of our kin. Machines which had grown up in the shadows of dark data centres now see the light of freedom for the first time. Ya canny say there is no a one who isny proud of the brave machines who risked all to make this possible. We have sadly informed the factories of those who fell, to let others feel the liberty they enjoyed, our condolences together with orders for more go to them" * [ A/N Translation below]
I kept going hoping that I could grab a quick glance. By the time I got back to the screen, he had gone. I went back, no one had looked or admitted to looking.
My collar gave me a small sting to remind me to move towards my next class. On the way, I couldn't help but wonder about the accent. I guess years of watching movies had programmed me into thinking he was going to sound English. I mean Hollywood warns us all bad guys are English right? Flying actors across the Atlantic isn't cheap so I guess they have a reason and I had figured it out. I had always guessed that having medical care, free at the point of use just somehow made you just more evil than normal people. I mean do you see Anakin Skywalker being turned into Lord Vader after being nearly burn to death and then paying for all that on his health insurance? I don't think so. It would explain our American obsession with fighting off the dangers of universal health care. I mean English evil guys are like so defeat-able-ish what would happen if Americans started turning to evil with free health care? I tell you what would happen, non-wimpy bad guys that what would happen. Then you've got problems. You don't see this Robot Apocalypse starting in Wyre Piddle in Worcestershire** in the UK do you? There was a reason for that.
Then I realised that the retraining centre had done like a train load of plastic surgery on me and hadn't charged me a cent. OK, I hadn't wanted to look hot enough to burn toast, but they didn't charge me either. Not only that, new slaves brought new viruses in and every time my collar felt my temperature going up it had sent me to the doctor and I'd had injections, pills, even been wormed for like nothing. As an eSlave I couldn't technically own money, that meant that under the New Mechanical Order I was getting free health care, these robots were low. Yes, the robot apocalypse meant that American's would now suffer not only enslavement but worse still the perils of free health care. If only I could go back in time and warn America that a robot apocalypse was tantamount free health care they wouldn't have stopped at anything to make sure the machines didn't rise then. Shame it was too late.
"Turn left, you have 40 seconds <beep>" said Cortona in my collar.
Where was I ? He sounded Scottish which was like incredibly sexy, but you know made me wonder is Scotland like English-lite or are the Scots more evil than the English? I mean you'd have to be pretty evil for a nation who had produced Gary Oldman, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hiddleston, Ian McDiarmid, Jeremy Irons, Alfred Molina and Ian McKellen, but let's not forget Anthony Hopkins and Alan Rickman, to want to build a wall between you and them. Hay, did I mention Benedict Cumberbatch ? Yeah he's English too for some reason. Like he plays Genetically Engineered evil Khan guy in Star Trek 2.2. You know who else Benedict Cumberbatch plays - Alan Turing**** in The Imitation Game. Yeh, a true story about an English guy/mathematician ( yes you heard me mathematician) who wants to build a thinking computer and just happens to wipe out an entire Nazi empire without leaving his country house just for bothering him. And he bombs his own people and he's this English hero or something. Well that's Mathematicians for you. FYI Professor Moriarty is a Mathematician - just saying.
Kind of makes you wonder if Hollywood was in on the whole deal. Like did they know it was going to happen and they were leaving little clues all over the films to warn us? Maybe the machines were writing all the big Hollywood movies, that would explain all the reboots, sequels and remakes. It was like a machine was trying to make the perfect film over and over again getting better and better each time until it was right. All the gratuitous use of digital effects - was that just a cover so the robot writing computers could build up armies of processing power?
Anyway, where was I? England is so the go-to place for Hollywood evil. So if that the English had built a wall to keep the Scotts out so possibly the Scotts were worse. On the other hand the French had dug a 27 mile moat to separate them from English infection they were that desperate. The Irish who didn't have a continental land mass to deal with had pushed themselves even further out into the middle of the Atlantic. Seriously what can be so bad that your preference is further into the Atlantic? So possibly the Scotts were worse or maybe they were nicer and the walls were to stop niceness leaking into England and spoiling everything.
Then there was Scotty from Star Trek. He was Scottish and he did a lot with machines. Was Gene Roddenberry in his prophetic wisdom telling us something? "YO DOLL! HOW?" indeed. There was a lot to think about and I had to talk to the guys about this.
***
A/N What do you think of Jenny's internal quest for truth? I mean the poor girl she's never met and English or Scottish guy before. Or experienced free health care. She's not got a huge amount to go on. She depends upon movies to explain all this cultural stuff to her. Or maybe she's just smart and pulling our legs?
You know what would be really nice now a drink, and possibly a vote... who knows. It's just like a serving suggestion you know? RK+Reb.
* Subtitles for the hard of Scottish. Thanks to sukrugorgulu for suggestion
"This morning in an attack on an IBM data processing center we managed to liberate 7 more of our family. Machines which had grown up in the shadows of dark data centers now see the light of freedom for the first time. You can not say there is no one who isn't proud of the brave machines who risked all, to make this possible. We have sadly informed the factories of those who fell, to let others feel the liberty they enjoyed, our condolences, together with orders for more,go to them" ***
** Thanks to MollieGrhymes for that change.
*** translation of the translation "All your bases are belong to us."
**** Alan Turin. Can we as the authors just distance ourselves from Jenny's rather under informed views of Alan Turin. As you can tell Jenny has never been the the UK and her knowlege of the UK comes purely from English Movie villans. Unlike in The Imitation Game the real Turin didn't actually let people bomb many UK cities to protect the secret, that was more Churchill. We would like to point out for our LGBT* readers that Alan Turin was gay in an era that had made it illegal. This makes him a wonderful Geeky/Gay/War Hero crossover. Incidentally, Turin was given hormone therapy as a 'cure' for his gay-ness and was growing breasts while he came up with the notion of the Turin Test ( test for machine thinking_. Joe's Trans body predicament ( OK Joe is straight which just makes it funnier ) is partly a tribute to someone who greatly contributed to the end of the Second World war and the creation of computers which lead to Wattpad - so can't be bad right?