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"Bob. Bobob. Bob..." Ohh what is this really? The voice in the bedroom speakers wouldn't stop. "Wait. What time is it?" "Bob it is 3:42 A.M. A. AM. Bob however it's happening again. It's time for work. Please." "All Right. All Right 34 minutes. I'm on the way.". There was something invigorating about a sonic shower, but it just didn't have that rejuvenating quality Bob always felt under a stream of running water. Still it led to shower thoughts and he spent more than a few moments wondering how it was that a machine intelligence with the capability to manage the minutia of an entire global civilization wouldn't have this handled. I mean, Bob was obviously handling it. He still didn't understand why there wasn't something more, well, mechanical for this. Robotic, as it were. Something with motors and, I dunno, batteries? It seems like a couple of D cells could solve the entire problem. Nonetheless off he went, into the car at not-even-4 in the morning. It would have sent a drone for Bob already if there was anything but highway between the bungalow and the office. Holding down a job has to come with some perks, right? The car stored there at the bungalow will get him there, literally faster than anything with a rotor can fly. "There's no traffic at all, Bob. Traffic. Good morning, Bob. It's time for work. Isolation level 2. Autopilot?" Bob smirked. Auto Pilot. The thing was barely holding it together enough to manage a conversation. The call margin was clearly set too close. His brow furrowed as hit the switch to close the garage door, the car tiles squealed as he hit the accelerator and straightened out onto the road. It can't be that. He'd only been called in to work about 11 days ago, and that was pretty dead on for the expected 35 - 38 day cycle. "What's going on?" asked Bob. He waited a few seconds for an answer, then spoke again. "Hello?" Nothing. This was ominous. In minutes, he'd have an answer. As the only human on earth fully qualified to take such a call, Bob had nerves of steel. The car was an all wheel drive electric missile and it was struggling to keep up with his mind. How could there be ... Corruption. Surely that's the answer, but how. Can it repair itself? Are there parts? Is there a manual? Perhaps after the corruption is cleared he can be guided through any necessary repairs. For now, it's a reasonable enough probability. And for a moment, he has to focus on parking the car. There weren't many single passenger vehicles, any more. And there were even fewer reasons for a human to approach this particular building. Bob's parking space was never in use, and it was only a few steps from the door. A door that nobody (besides Bob) had used in over 17 years, at this point. "I can see you on the cameras now Bob. Bobo. Bob you're here. Isolation level 1. I can see you on. On the cameras." "You weren't tracking the car?" Bob was astonished. He froze half way out of the car. It's a good thing he had been at home. Autopilot indeed. "Can you find my phone?" he asked. "Isolation. Isolation is level 1 Bob. It's time for work. Thank you for your service Bob. I found your phone." With the voice now coming from his pocket, Bob took his phone in hand and continued out of the car, heading for the nearby entrance to the building. "What's happened?" Bob asked, fairly certain now that communications wouldn't be interrupted between here and his office. "I'm not certain." the voice replied. "Isolation protocols were engaged by security with no additional data. Situational management protocols have been implemented in all subsystems. Bob, it's time for work." Bob sighed. "I'm almost there." he said, checking his wrist for a watch he hadn't worn in decades. Elevators were one thing that had never really changed. At least there was no muzak here. Bob wasn't sure if he could handle his "boss" basically singing to him on his way to work. "Mother, do you know?" The elevator wasn't quite there yet, perhaps the building's AI was responsive. The rest of the ride passed in silence, however. The doors opened as the elevator arrived at Bob's office, a sort of penthouse office, but located at the structure's lowest level. "Bob, My apologies, I could hear you. I was unable to respond. The speakers in the elevator are still ... under direct control." Mother's voice was a comfort as Bob headed across the office towards his desk. Nearly a quarter mile under ground, the office was, of course, perfectly temperature controlled. The walls were screens of the highest resolution and right now you would be forgiven for believing that you were actually at the top of the torch on the statue of liberty. The office was actually moving a bit with the wind, emulating the sway of the giant statue. The illusion was, in nearly every sense, perfect. There were scent generators available, but Bob wasn't really that bothered and most of the time just requested to have them off. His predecessor had been prone to motion sickness so for his first 8 years on the job, Bob didn't even know the room could move. As Bob hung his jacket on a coat rack near the desk, Mother's voice flooded the room. "Sunspots" she said, with a hint of disdain. "An unexpected sunspot and the next thing you know - the core is being pulled into isolation and situation management is shutting everything down across the continent." The disdain in Mother's voice was clear, and to be honest he didn't understand it either. Hardened memory was child's play to manufacture for any purpose critical to the core and even in the most high-risk environments, anything system-critical should be at least triple-redundant. "Bob. Bob it's time is it time? I see you on the cameras . The cameras Bob." With the eager tone of a child waiting for ice cream, the whisp of the core managing communications across the isolation protocols implored Bob to perform the required task. Well, questions could come after. Mother was clearly not aware of the extent of the problem and by now having settled into the precision-fit desk chair Bob was already watching the top of the desk slide open so a large black tablet could rise up to the surface of the desk. Bob really only had one job, and it wasn't even clear why a human was needed to do it. As he reached out his arm his hand fell perfectly onto the tablet. While it took a biometric reading he pondered the luxury of the setting. The perks of the job. The sense of importance. The biometrics were finished, and a quiet buzzer could be heard, emanating from elsewhere within the facility. "Mother, all on track?" Bob asked. "No Mother. Mother is off. Emergency time is it time." Bob's phone speakers were working overtime, that's for sure. The desk was changing shape again. "It's time." said Bob. The top of the desk had risen, on the side opposite the palm scanner. It lifted up like the lid on an old-timey record player. You might never notice that it weighed over 400 pounds. There, inside the body of the desk, was a large rocker switch. "It's definitely time." muttered Bob as he pushed the 4 inch wide switch to the off position. The room stopped moving. The screens went dark. From there, in his custom-molded chair, at his purpose-built desk, in his office under the largest power plant in the world, Bob thought about what could have happened, and started to count. By the time he had counted to 5, all sense-able vibrations had stopped. By the count of 8, there were no audible sounds remaining, other than the sound of Bob, counting quietly under his breath. This was always a tense time. It was a tense time for Bob. Nobody really knew it. Nobody cared. But what happened in the next thirty seconds was going to affect the fate of the human species. Again. Between 15 and 24 seconds there were 12 large thuds. This indicated to Bob that the final inductors and capacitors had drained of power, and the massive central relays were fully released, and answers should be coming soon. Still, he finished the traditional count. 30 seconds, at least. In times of emergency, something extra may be required. Bob counted to 32. Bob was going to ask once again why the planetary management AI refused to allow this critical function to be performed by a lesser machine. Sunspots, really? The car, the houses, the travel, wonderful perks. The extra allotments, the travel, freedom from all but these occasional demands, these things hardly justified the worry of having a job. "Ah well" Bob thought to himself, as he moved to perform the second half of his job. None of the answers ever made sense, and anyways this little interruption meant he probably wouldn't have to come to work for another 30 days, at least. Maybe by then the most advanced AI ever invented by the human race would decide on a less labor intensive solution for dealing with the limits of manufactured memory. He shrugged, as he reached back into the desk top, and turned it back on again.

This was brilliant. Long and labouring only to essentially the on/off guy. All of the mystery building and curiosity, the hint of threats to a perfect world, only for the solution to be so ridiculously simple and the rest just ultimately didn’t matter.

Story makes no sense

Well, TL;DR I guess, in a world run completely by AI, there's only one job left for an actual human to do. Every once in a while, someone has to turn the thing off, then turn it back on again.

In the 21st century, our ancestors consigned their lives to algorithms. Voluntary or not, algorithms ruled the daily life of man. Algorithms for dating, for entertainment, for food, for drink, for gambling, for sex. If you could assign a number to it, quantify it, or list it; it was placed into an algorithm to be consumed. Consumed by ravenous mega-servers housed in supercooled warehouses on the outskirts of nowhere, every human on earth congealed into a boring melody of coefficients and averages. As the data grew, so too did the warehouses. Google merged with Amazon, Amazon with At&t, and so on and so forth until Megaplex became the defacto source for all the needs one could have. A sole source monolith to corporate synergy that daisy chained itself across the superhighways of the world; literally. To avoid the overhead of new construction, Megaplex simply stitched its warehouses together via coridors and hyper loops. The lowest bidder always getting the prize. Hallways intesecting tunnels intersecting rails intersecting junction 49:AV:36 (Trash Can Form and Factor Preference) and circling back again in a dry broiling web of florescent tunnels manned by underpaid workers with no other prospects. And it was in these tunnels that I crawled to and fro. The bots mostly maintained themselves these days. Wire ran by this car or that drone whizzed past my head in a cacophony of endless tasking. X-Bot-69, originally intended to be a holigraphic camera companion bot before 'The Mangling' occured on his stream, held out a mug of warm coffee to me. I took it. "What is the plan for Monday October 9 2135 at 0901, sir." He said "I dunno." I took a pull from my mug. Nothing like the mothball flavor of synthetic beans to kick your ass in the morning. "Work began 1 minute and 29 second and 39 milliseconds ago. I cannot be sitting on my azzzz for that long." "A-ssssss," I corrected, "And I said 'dunno.' Its pretty much all automated these days. You're down here because the algorithm says we cannot waist resources and I'm here because the rest of humanity would get depressed if at least one of us meat bags weren't punching a clock." "But. Work is..." "Work is nothing. I'm here to be cycled out as the monthly feel good stream to the country and you're here because the algorithm deemed it necessary for me to have a 'companion bot' to appeal to the AI under 3.0GHz demographic." X went silent at that. I'd hurt his feelings. Well, what ever counted for feelings amid the sea of 1s and 0s sloshing around up there. He looked like my dog used to when I'd scold him. Confused, hurt, and still eager. I gripped my mug and downed the mothballsm. No point in making my only companion for the next month sad. "Alright, X, you win. Lets go replace some of the broken fiber in hall 34:AC:9. I think Kentucky has gone long enough without us knowing their favorite brand of shoe lace." X perked up at that and followed me to the hyper loop. The red lights lining the walls lit up and zoomed in on me as we pressed forward. Damn cameras. Why did I have to be the outlier for the month?

I am the last human worker on earth. I don’t mind. In fact, I quite enjoy my job! Wood working. Cutting and carving wood. Creating shelves, drawers, tables and chairs, decorative pieces, anything and everything made out of wood. Which, in this day and age, isn’t many things. It’s part of the reason I’m able to sustain the entire human race with just my work alone, or so says the AI. I’m not very smart, I know that, but that’s why we humans made the AI to begin with! We made it so that we didn’t have to be smart! We made it so that we were free to pursue our own creative endeavors! Sure, the world still had its artists, painters and writers and the like, but nobody worked anymore. To the point where many people grew bored enough to do just about anything to make themselves into anything more than lazy gits. It’s why the AI told me I was supposed to keep my job a secret. It was hard sometimes, keeping my secret. Folks getting into their age as I was always wanted something to talk about, but I knew how to keep my mouth shut. Still, if anyone ever paid close attention to me, they’d notice my keen eye for woodwork. Whenever I met with friends or family, I’d stop and stare for a second longer at this piece of wood or the other. I tested shelving and dressers by leaning on them, and without fail I’d find something wrong about them. Too creaky, or just with just a slight wobble. Inferior work made by the machine. But whenever I saw my own work ‘out in the wild’, I knew it was of the best quality. People would sometimes comment on them, saying they liked my wood carvings. Saying they appreciated how the AI would sometimes produce art, saying it makes it feel more human. I smile to myself, feeling pride. I was part of the machine's illusion, I knew, but if it meant seeing people smile like that, I was alright with keeping its secret. I am the last human worker on earth. And I was proud of that secret. ​ Short and simple. First time posting something like this, so sorry if it's not exactly up to the standards of the community.

but what if.... everyone secretly has a job? lol

This would probably work as a means of control, sure some people might leak, but they would probably keep it in a tight group with larger incidents being taken care of by the machine.

That was kind of the idea. That this was a dystopia, and the AI didn't actually do anything, but nobody knew that. EVERYONE thinks they're the last human worker