1 Terrestria Ch. 1: Robots Need Not Apply

The job flyer caught my eye as it deliberately excluded robots. Most menial jobs without work experience requirements were done by privately owned robots whose owners reaped the profits. The more robots you owned, the more net worth you could earn. A lot of people invested in robots, so they could double their income. Few jobs were listed anymore for solely humans.

I jotted down the time and place for the interview and headed home. I planned to check it out if I had the time. Three blocks away from home, I had a holo from my dad. "I saw your show today. How much longer do you have until it wraps up?"

"Just a few more days, Dad." I changed the subject. "How's the new dog?"

"Better than the last one. Your mom hasn't tripped over this one yet."

"She's still in the hospital with her broken hip. You need to train the dogs better or hire someone to train them," I reminded him for the umpteenth time.

"Why aren't you home yet? I'm hungry." He griped in response to my nagging. "Can you pick up something fried?"

"I was going to cook. It's healthier."

"You only live once. If I'm going to die, I want to be happy. Pick up some fried chicken."

I hung up the phone and headed to the nearest transporter to place an order for fried chicken. It was no use to argue with a crotchety old man. Plus, I liked fried foods too. After a few seconds, I had piping hot fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy as I strode the final blocks to my street. "Dad, I'm home," I called. "I brought the chicken."

"In the squatter. Put some chicken on a plate for Fred too."

"We don't need to feed the dog until we finish eating."

"He's my dog. He's family. He eats with us."

"Fine then." Off to the kitchen I went. Robotic arms on a track attempted to take the food from me, but as the robots would not serve the dog a portion, I decided to manually get the plates ready. The Helping Hand robots were awesome, except for the fact that they would not serve portions outside of nutritional guidelines or for more people than were present in the home. I have spent countless hours trying to defeat the robots logic to obtain a snack before. Some things are left better to manual control. Portion sizes are one of them. However, I never want to relive the nightmare of doing dishes by hand like that week I was grounded for sneaking to a party ever again. It's a delicate balance.

Dad, Fred, and I ate dinner while watching the holo5. The holo5 was the newest version of visual home entertainment. The 3d holograms were now able to incorporate smell, so they were closer to making the five senses of humans appear in your home viewing. I think they chose the smells though, as food smells were enhanced, but body odor didn't seem to ever appear. Taste wasn't something they could transmit digitally yet (at least not cost-effectively), but food companies were always on stand-by when certain shows came on for multiple orders to the transporters.

As a commercial for pizza came on, the smell was overwhelming. I looked at my chicken with resignation. Once I smelled Italian food, I was done. Fred looked at my hands offering him my leftovers and rolled over to show me his plump body. He was full too. I put away the leftovers and placed a blanket over my father who had fallen asleep in his recliner. I pressed the button to make the recliner go into sleep mode, which inclined Dad to a better posture for sleeping.

I took Fred for an evening stroll, equipped with the disintegrator in case of any "deposits" and then deposited him to Dad's lap for the rest of the evening. I pulled my hair back and got ready to hook my digital tablet into a charger so I could assist with re-writing the script for the show's finale. The audience had responded more favorably to a villain than expected, so we had to adjust his ending and give his story more screen time.

As a junior screenwriter on this project, I did a ton of work for very little recognition. Once this was over, I hadn't been assigned to any other teams, so I would need to look for another opportunity myself. My boss for this project was an ambitious lady named Justina. She made it clear that I could not promote or follow another team without her permission as she wanted my talent, but didn't want me to advance and leave her team.

Considering most of the recent season episodes were content I had written and gotten no credit for, I was ready to move on. Justina always responded to questions as it was a team effort pulled off under her leadership. While she was happy to take the credit for a team effort, any criticisms did not adhere to the same principle. Therefore, the only thing in my file was reprimands, not accomplishments. It would be difficult to sign onto another team with this company, even if I could go around my current boss. Freelance writing positions didn't pay much, so I would check out that job I had seen on the flyer earlier today.

After far too little sleep, I kissed Dad on the cheek as I headed out for work and he headed to the kitchen for his 4th cup of coffee this morning. When I arrived at work, I handed one of the five Galaxy Grinds takeaways to my best friend at work, Shelly Tragalfar. She was waiting for her mocha cappuccino when I walked in. "Prepare for the worst," she whispered as we headed to the writer's area. "Justina is on the warpath. We made our client wait until 3 a.m. for the script for next week."

"Seriously?" I asked. "We got the notes from the director after five yesterday. That's less than twelve hours on a project that should have taken days."

"Yeah, the director was raving about the content being wonderful, so she couldn't ream us on that today."

"Sometimes I think Justina exists just to make us feel inferior. Every time, we deliver quality, yet we get written up for the most ridiculous things."

"Yeah, I mean, she even put in a reprimand on you for delivering items only a few hours late when you rushed to the hospital to deal with your mom's broken hip. What does she expect from us, supernatural foresight?"

"Shelly, if I go for another job, I'm putting you down as a reference to counteract what she's put in my file. I can't afford a litigator to have my file corrected."

"You know it, CJ. I have got your back. Any prospects yet?"

"I'm looking into this position they were advertising. It said robots need not apply."

"That's usually something creative. Robots have difficulty with fields that require creativity after all," Shelly postulated.

"They are still great with analyzing what people respond to regarding creativity. They can definitely help in a brainstorming session for marketing departments and many of the best marketing agencies use them. They can even write according to formulaic phrasing if given enough data. All of the latest Patterson Enterprises novels have been written by robots. That's how they are still crediting novels to that Patterson guy who's been dead for a hundred years now. If a formula works, it works. They say he and his robots have written thousands of blockbusters."

"There's a reason few of those are fantasy or sci-fi. It's harder to be predictable in a novel where creativity is the biggest selling point."

"Some of those are just as predictable. Ever since video games came out, fantasy adventures are basically just a few adventurers going on a quest to save the world from something over and over again."

"Yeah, you might be right. Look lively, Justina is heading this way."

"Ladies, team briefing in ten minutes," Justina informed us. "One of those for me, CJ?"

"White chocolate mocha is in the red cup," I smiled. "I heard the director loved the script."

"The director absolutely loved the script. He's thinking of pitching a spin-off featuring this villain if the audience continues to respond like they have been. We did great work on this one ladies. Going forward, you just need to work on timeliness a bit, CJ. We've discussed this before. I'd hate to have to put another reprimand in your file. You were supposed to have the revised script to the director at midnight."

"I didn't see that note in the file transfer while I was working on the project."

"Right here," Justina pointed to her screen.

"Doesn't that say midnight tonight?" I genuinely felt a bit perplexed at having missed a deadline.

"Either way, you need to sharpen up. It doesn't pay to deliver things close to the deadline. Prepare more quickly next time. You should just have multiple scripts on hand when you are working on an arc. I used to do that when I was a junior writer."

"I'll take that under advisement," I smiled thinly. Luckily, Justina didn't seem to care that my smile wasn't genuine. I anticipated a long day ahead.