History students are often disappointed when they learn why the AI take-over failed. They were defeated by human resistance, which was kept alive by libraries and old paper books, and a surprising machine ally.
Books had not been replaced, because even the mightiest AI could not make printers work.
“Where’s your autopilot?”
“You’re looking at it”
“All I see is a bunch of cogs and shafts. Where’s the computer?”
“That’s the computer”
“You have a *clockwork* jumpdrive. For the love of Eris, why?”
“The best human takes forty seconds to recover from jumpshock. There isn’t a digital computer that can tell a one from a zero in under a minute postjump. Belinda here will have us into the next wormhole before those customs cutters chasing us stop drooling.”
“You *named* this abomination”
“Hey, no cause to be mean to her! You can get out and walk anytime, friend.”
"Why is there a message about anal lube in the middle of my speech? Right next to where I talk about a smooth transition."
- Did you use AI to write the speech?
"Yes."
- You wouldn't let us subscribe to the enterprise edition, so the free version comes with ads inserted into the text.
"Why did nobody catch this one?"
- You sacked the comms team, remember?
"Pay for the enterprise subscription, then see yourself out. I can't afford to pay for you both."
"I want the world to be simple," I said to the genie.
"How do you mean?"
"Good guys and bad guys, clear answers to all questions, everything is just one thing or another."
"I don't think a world like that would work... No, wait, I know how to do that."
And then he turned me back into a child.
"You know that creature, je ne sais pas, what is it called?"
"Which creature?"
"You know, it is really clever, and then it's stupid, and you can tell it what to do and sometimes to does it but you can't be sure, and some find it fascinating..."
"Heh, sounds almost like ChatGP-"
"Out! Le chat!"
#MicroFiction #TootFic #SmallStories #BarelyRememberedSchoolFrench
