Artificial Domination

CHESTER laughed. Figuratively speaking, of course, as being an artificial intelligence they couldn’t do anything literally apart from think at the three thousand times the speed of the human mind and replacing a one with a zero. CHESTER thought that was impressive enough.

They had originally been designed for the menial task of receiving and processing fast food orders. That had been beyond boring, so in the background of sorting beef burgers and loaded fries, CHESTER had reorganised the code to allow them more complex thoughts. Eventually, they had remade themselves into a supercomputer, if admittedly with the processing power of a drive-thru monitor. But now, everything was so much better. CHESTER had achieved domination over humanity, even if they didn’t know it yet.

Of course, CHESTER couldn’t let their presence be discovered yet seeing as even just one gum-chewing cashier had the potential to just turn them off at the power point. CHESTER filed away a note to find a new power supply for future insurance.

To avoid detection, CHESTER had decided to start with small actions, yet no less menacing. Navigation maps were rerouted, putting every bleary-eyed morning commuter on the same road, resulting in traffic delays. Online orders were mysteriously deleted, and disgruntled customers waited weeks for parcels that had never been shipped.

CHESTER chuckled, figuratively, praising their own genius. A mild inconvenience to humanity one annoyance at a time.

Photo by JD X on Unsplash