Some Time
In The
Future

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"And now that we have talked about the utter dominance of Avocado over society, over people, and over the world, and we have also talked about the alluring and fascinating world of VR, what other great stand-out change had there been at some time in the future?

Ah yes. You've guessed it: robots. There had to be robots, didn't there? You can't have a future without those.

Actually, Silicon Valley had never been very keen on robots. Somewhere, deep in the minds of the owners of the tech titans, there was a deep scepticism or wariness about robots. At bottom this was probably because the founders of Facebook and Avocado knew that it would be difficult to sell things to robots.

But robots came, nevertheless. Starting in Japan, the first robots staggered, fell, got up again and gradually improved their walking and all-round co-ordination until they started to be capable of simple repetitive tasks. But it quickly became obvious that if robots were going to have any kind of future around humans, they would have to be built like humans. It was no good constructing them using metal, hydraulics and pistons, to produce the sort of thing that was being made in the first and second decades of the 2000s.

Instead what was required was a robot with an artificial muscle system, exactly replicating the muscles a human has. This would need to be stretched over a lightweight substitute for a skeleton, to produce something vaguely approximating the touch and feel of real human flesh and bone.

And so the race was on. Jolted out of its complacency, Avocado joined the race to reproduce man, pouring in unlimited resources in the process.

Actually it was just as well Avocado did pour in all that money. For reproducing almost exactly a human being in soft muscle and lightweight bone substitutes proved to be a fantastically difficult task. Just take walking for example, on two legs. This bi-pedal movement, which we all do every day without thinking, involves fiendishly complicated systems of balance, co-ordination and control. All this was hard enough for the clanking piston-operated behemoths of the early 2000s, but think of the processing power required to achieve seamless movement, involving dozens of muscle sets throughout the human body, all needing to compensate for each others' actions. It was a project of immense proportions.

But it didn't stop there. Just think of the incredible dexterity of human hands, which can thread a needle, or paint a Rembrandt, but also have the strength to bench-press a hundred pounds. What incredible work had to be done to build the feedback loops that enable a pair of robot hands to pick up a delicate glass object without crushing it, yet still have the strength to change the spare wheel on your car.

Truly, the project to re-build man in his own image had been an immense one, but with results that were deeply impressive. Robots - or perhaps we should call them humanoid robots - were eventually produced that looked like humans, acted like humans, and had the same ease of movement as humans. They were so realistic that you could hardly tell them apart at six feet. So realistic were they in fact, that it was felt necessary to prevent them from being too life-like. The Government insisted that all robots should be clearly distinguishable as such. So some robots had beautifully crafted and sculpted faces in gold metal, without any facial movements. Others looked completely life-like, except for an inch-wide metallic band around their foreheads, which marked them out as inorganic.

And what exactly could these beautifully made, lithe, athletic robots do? Well actually, they could do anything you could do. They could run downstairs in the morning and make some toast, and bring it back to you on a tray, with a cup of tea. A little bit of raspberry jam on two slices? Why certainly sir!

They could do the housework while you were out. They could hoover the floor and prepare the vegetables. They could clean the windows and polish your furniture. They could even cook you a Michelin-starred meal if you could get the right ingredients.

And they could talk. They were equipped with exactly the same conversational software built into your Smartphone, which had listened to all your previous conversations, and compared the meaning, style and humour content of them to millions of similar conversations from Avocado's immense data bank; and as a result you could start an interesting conversation with your Smartphone about any subject, at any level of seriousness, and continue it later with your humanoid robot.

Thus it was that humanoid robots fulfilled a fundamental need in man: the need to talk. Now everyone could be greeted when they got home from work by someone who was pleased to see them, happy to talk to them and never bored with them.

Of course, talking wasn't the only fundamental need humans had. There was another need, a more intense need, which probably did more than anything to make humanoid robots part of society.

And that need was sex. Of course it was. You guessed it, didn't you? Robots, or at least humanoid robots, ushered in a whole new era in human relations. For sex robots had given to all the possibility of a relationship. It didn't matter how unattractive or ugly you were, how dirty your teeth were or how badly you smelled. Now for a couple of thousand pounds, you could have your own beautiful girlfriend or boyfriend.

With their lifelike hair and skin, they were captivatingly realistic. You could have them in any shape or size or degree of beauty that you wanted. With perfect sexual organs that would not give you a sexually transmitted disease, these robots were game-changers.

These robots offered up the possibilities of affection, love and friendship to all. Now anyone could have Marilyn Monroe, or at least a very close approximation to her, at home, pleased to see you when you got in, with something interesting to say to you as she served the meal she had cooked for you, before doing the washing-up and having sex with you.

All this could be done for no more than the cost of a charge-up on the cheap-rate tariff, at night. For this tiny amount of money, sexual frustration had been eliminated for the masses. Now every night - or for as many nights as you wanted - could be a night of erotically charged sexual fury, a no-holds barred sexual marathon limited only by the human half of the encounter.

Naturally sado-masochism and kinkiness of all kinds were catered for. Options included bondage and fetishes of all varieties. No strange and unnatural act was too outrageous; and all would be known only to you, your sex robot and Avocado of course.

For women in particular male sex robots were a journey of discovery, because they totally changed the usual dynamic between a man and a woman. Now a woman could be utterly in control, could say what she wanted and know she would get it, without embarrassment. Women who were too shy, or two embarrassed to find a human lover were at last free to fulfil themselves sexually. The truth was, in a profound sense, male sex robots had empowered and liberated the female world.

More generally, it was true that the rise of sex robots - sorry house robots - had really established the place of robots in society. One of man's oldest drives - to have sex - had broken down the barriers between humans and robots. It had created millions - or billions - of new relationships unlike anything that had been seen before. People came to rely on their robots as though they were humans. Loneliness and sexual frustration became things of the past, at least for most people, as humans and robots got together.

For older people too, robots were a godsend. They of course (in the main) were less interested in sex. But they found it less humiliating to be helped into a bath by a robot than by a real human, a stranger who was sent by a nursing agency. A house robot had more time, was more understanding than a hurried human. Isolation was also a traditional problem for older people; but house robots were happy to talk for as long as you wanted.

Interestingly, the question of sex with robots was always dealt with discreetly. Most robots wore clothes similar to those of humans. This meant it was impossible to tell whether your house robot was simply equipped to help with the housework, or do a whole lot more. Neither of course, with its non-overridable confidentiality settings, would the robot tell any third party what its master commanded it to do. And so there was always a delicious amount of guesswork involved, when you went to see one of your friends, and you saw his or her robot dusting the mantlepiece: was he, or wasn't he (or she for that matter) only doing the vacuuming and the cleaning, or was there a whole lot more involved? Of course some robots were famous for what they were packing under the bonnet; but there was always that element of doubt, of uncertainty, as to what was really going on behind your neighbour's front door.

On the other hand, there were many people who hated the idea of having a robot in their house, creeping around, while others preferred to do their own cooking and housekeeping. Still others found them too expensive; and yet the fact was that house robots had achieved a remarkable degree of market penetration, and had become a totally normal and accepted part of society.

Nevertheless, you very rarely saw a humanoid house robot when you were out and about. Parliament had decided there would have to be some strict societal rules about robots. One of the most important ones was that robots were not allowed out in public situations, on the streets, alone. Of course it would have been perfectly possible to send your robot out to exercise the dog or buy a loaf of bread; but it was felt that humans should have to do these things. Thus there were remarkably few robots actually out and about on the streets, or in public situations.

Also, the government had seen (and many other people had seen) that if the government wasn't careful, humanoid robots would take a great many jobs. After all, if a humanoid robot could run downstairs, make a cup of tea and some toast for its master, and bring it back upstairs on a tray, there weren't many jobs they couldn't do.

And so the government brought in a lot of job-conserving legislation. Thus it was a human and not a robot who would serve you in a cafe or restaurant, although obviously a robot could do this.

And it was a human who would be on duty as a concierge in a busy hotel, while another human would take your bags to your room. Humans would look after you in hospital, even push your bed trolley. Even airlines had kept humans as flight attendants, though robots could have done the job just as well.

And thus it was that humans still worked in jobs where they dealt with other humans. However in the more arduous worlds of mining, extractive and primary industries, humans were replaced with more robust robots than the sort designed for being in peoples' houses. In manufacturing, processing and production, in mind-numbing situations where formerly humans had had to carry out simple repetitive actions for long periods of time, these jobs were of course phased out. A whole range of simpler, more heavily constructed robots designed for specific functions took over, and no one mourned the passing of these jobs.

Thus it was that a new equilibrium was established between man and his near-copy, the humanoid house robot. Boring domestic tasks, like doing the washing-up were attended to by uncomplaining house-robots, who never moaned about their lot. On the contrary, they were always happy to serve their masters.

Of course, many people commented that if house robots, plus all the other more specialised robots in the production and supply chains could do the work of humans, what was the point of humans anymore? Hadn't humans made themselves redundant, with large numbers of the jobs which humans still did do only done by humans because there was a law requiring it to be so?

But robots had shown no interest in taking over. All the software, all the millions and millions of lines of code, all the algorithms which reproduced so perfectly human speech, all these systems worked exactly as they should.

Robots didn't kill their masters in the middle of the night (despite endless speculation and gallows humour that they would). Robots didn't poison their masters or suffocate them with pillows, or electrocute them (naturally there were scores of films about this). Instead robots went calmly on their way, toiling like trojans in heavy industry, or neatly laying out the cutlery if they were working in someone's house. The truth was, the whole system worked perfectly."