Danny stood at the crossroads of the City—a huge metropolis completely controlled by artificial intelligence.

  Sad autumn rain pounded on the roofs and cornices of the windows of the old buildings that remained in this central part of the City. The rest of the space was filled with glass and metal buildings — so cold and faceless that it seemed only robots could live in them.

  Lights flashed all around — everything was electrified to the last corner. Light flooded everything. The once-dark underground passages, narrow passages between the old walls of closely packed houses with ancient iron fire escapes, were brightly lit.

  Almost everything in the City was automated — traffic, the subway, and for the few workers who still used it to get to work.

  Most of the lucky ones who managed to secure a job worked remotely, right from their homes. And the truly select few were those who were fortunate enough to do work that could not yet be outsourced to artificial intelligence. These were mainly jobs such as assembling custom-made non-standard equipment, repairing obsolete or hybrid devices, refining prototypes that were constantly changing, and manually configuring experimental equipment. Such jobs were rare, and there was a years-long waiting list of people wanting to work in them.

  Lately, Danny had been constantly lost in his thoughts. The young man could not find a job as a programmer — everywhere he applied, he was told, “Thank you, we've already found someone for that position.” And then someone, showing a humanity unusual for our time, would add, “Your job is now being done by our virtual assistant.”

  That is why Danny, with his programming degree, which he had earned just a couple of years ago, still could not find a job. Now he did not understand why the City had allowed him to study — and for free — for this specialty, which was now just one of the functions of artificial intelligence itself. It turns out that the programmers who created artificial intelligence cut off the branch they were sitting on. And they also cut it off for everyone who studied this profession after them.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  In short, Danny's personal finances were, as they say, “in dire straits.” He was forced to live with his parents, since they still had their house in the suburbs of this metropolis, which they had bought a couple of decades ago. There was no question of starting a relationship with a girl and starting a family. Although Danny had recently turned twenty-five, after a few school crushes, there was no romance or family on the horizon of his life. There was simply no opportunity for that — he was a very responsible person, raised that way by his parents.

  After all, his generation did not have the money not only to buy or even rent a home, but also to simply find food.

  Yes, the city's social services helped him and others like him. But what awaited him next? He needed to retrain, but in what field?

  Such thoughts filled the young man's mind. There were no answers, and so it was impossible to get rid of these thoughts.

  Danny waited for the traffic light to turn green for pedestrians and crossed the street without looking around — the city always stopped in time. More precisely, the artificial intelligence that controlled the robots driving cars in this city always anticipated all dangerous situations.

  Danny did not look around. He no longer looked at the pedestrian traffic light. After all, everyone was already used to the fact that self-driving cars would give way to pedestrians, even at the expense of one of the few human drivers misjudging their speed on the slippery asphalt from the autumn rain and rear-ending them.

  But the City was wrong.

  Danny sensed it before he understood it. The green pedestrian signal suddenly flashed, lit up again, and went out. If Danny had been more attentive, he would have thought that the signal control system was unsure of its decision or that someone had changed it at the last second.

  The cars around him obediently slowed down—all except one. It was moving too smoothly, too confidently, ignoring the general rhythm of the street. Something in the city network was recalculating, redistributing priorities, and those extra fractions of a second proved fatal. Danny stepped onto the crosswalk when the algorithm was already too late.

  Danny was already halfway across the crosswalk when he felt a blow to his legs. Everything spun around him, and he remembered nothing else.

  (to be continued...)

  ? 2025 Misha Quinn. All rights reserved.

  All characters and places are fictitious.

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