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Fully Automated

  © 2016 by Gabriel Just

  All sentient life goes through three distinct stages during its evolution. In the first stage, the Primal or Paradise stage, the species lives in harmony with its environment and is provided everything it desires. However, once a species develops a certain degree of intelligence, things get more complicated. Intelligent races quickly become the dominant species of their home world and colonize nearly all of it. This immense population can of course not be sustained by the natural environment, food and resources are simply too scarce. The species has to begin to adapt their environment in order to survive and thereby enters into stage two of evolution.

  Many species start by herding animals that once were hunted or growing plants, which were gathered in stage one. Of course there are also many other ways of making changes to the planet, but they all have in common that life gets harder one way or the other. Maintaining this unnatural stage requires resources and also quite a bit of work. The lifeforms gladly carry this burden, since it is the only way to survive in such large numbers. Although it takes some adapting, the natural drive to hunt, forage and fight can be shifted towards other occupations, like farming or herding, which do not immediately yield results. Stage two is also a time of much technological progress and the resulting sociological progress. Therefore stage two of sentient evolution is full of revolutions, rebellions and global changes to planets and societies. The further the race is advanced technologically, the higher the chance that each revolution ends in an extinction event.

  This struggle is finally over, when the sentients enter stage three. Civilizations in stage three are often called free civilizations, since they are free of labor, conflict and scarcity. In order to progress to stage three, two things are necessary. First, a species must be able to produce everything the need and want completely automated, i.e. without the need to work in any way, shape or form. The second requirement is that the species must also adapt as a society and become aware that they are not bound to work any longer and that each individual can pursue its own goals; possibly science, art, religion or anything else that satisfies the inherent drive to accomplish things.

  Some species die out because they are not able to make the transition from stage one to stage two, others go extinct because one of the revolutions during stage two, but some eventually make it to stage three and become free civilizations, exploring space and basically searching for things to spend their free time on. This story is about none of those civilizations. This story is about the Parokk, who managed to go extinct, because they did not realize that they already had anything they could wish for.

  In the year 257 after the foundation of the Corporation, the dominant force on Parogia, serving as government, employer and to some extent even spiritual guide, Parogia had a population of 12 billion individuals. They were technologically very advanced and recent developments made it possible to produce many goods completely automated. Robots are cheap to produce and work their whole life (which was considerably longer than the average lifespan of a Parokk) for free. This of course lead the Corporation to employ a great number of such robots. At first the population was against this development, but since the Parokk are capitalists through and through they were persuaded by the argument, that robots helped to save money. This in turn, would make products cheaper and the average Parokk could afford more. Some of the Parokk argued that cheap products are useless for people without a job and that the use of robots would only increase unemployment. Unfortunately they were correct. The situation was particularly grim, since the Parrok distribute not only their wealth, but also resources that are needed for survival, like food and shelter, via currency, an ancient and problematic way of doing so. The Corporation calmed down some of the critics by telling them that those robots needed to be designed, built and maintained and that this will even create jobs. Many of the Parrok did not believe this explanation, mostly because it contradicts capitalism: If using robots really creates more jobs it would also create greater cost and would therefore lower profits. All those, who realized this and therefore stood in the way of progress were simply reeducated by the Corporation.

  Roughly 50 years later, all the robots had been designed and built and maintained themselves and 70 percent of the population was without a job. However, they did not celebrate their new found freedom, like most species would. Their glee was largely diminished by the fact that they were unable to pay for food or anything else. There was more than enough food on Parokk, since the robots did a great job optimizing agriculture, nevertheless the poor people went hungry, because Parogia still relied on the archaic system to share resources based on how much time of their life each individual sacrifices doing work. Riots were suppressed by automated military, but over time it became apparent that it was cheaper to simply give the poor enough food to survive for free. Both population and unemployment rose drastically and the Corporation invested all profits in the construction of even more robots and factories. It took a few generations until they realized that this can not continue forever.

  The problems of Parogia were obvious: They were running out of natural resources, the produced too many goods and the unemployment situation made life on the planet miserable for a huge part of the population. Lokks, 59th CEO of the Corporation and a hero to her people, solved all these problems in one strike. That it was necessary to gather resources from neighboring planets was obvious to most Parokk, but Lokks saw the bigger picture. There was no way to trade with uninhabited planets and simply taking everything they need would not solve their problems. They also needed a sales market. In the history, every time the Parokk colonized a new continent they found other Parokk there, who were willing to pay for their goods, which was in many ways more valuable than the resources they traded for. And Lokks knew, that the colonization of a planet would work the same way. Unfortunately no neighboring planet was inhabited, so Lokks had an idea that changed the whole system forever: Not only production, but also consumption needs to be automated.

  Using nearly all of the capital of the Corporation, Lokks started a giant initiative to design the perfect robotic consumer. She educated and hired scientists and unemployment sank below 80% for the first time in generations. The result of this huge investment was the consumerbot, a self replicating robot that was able to give out resources or money in exchange for special consumer boxes. Consumer boxes were incredibly complicated objects, large metal boxes filled not only with handcrafted rare items made from exotic resources using various techniques, but also a data storage device, which contained the creative work of hundreds of Parokk. Over all, producing one single of those consumer boxes required the expertise and time of nearly a thousand Parokk. Additionally, the blueprint for such a consumer box needed to be changed at regular intervals, otherwise the consumerbot would simply refuse to buy it.

  After a short testing period, a few of those consumerbots were brought to a neighboring planet, where they traded money and resources for consumer boxes. These were so difficult to make, that the Corporation needed to hire all the Parokk, just to satisfy demand. Within a few generations unemployment was unheard of and the Parokk struggled to produce enough consumer boxes. The resources of Parogia were exhausted and trade with the consumerbots was the only way to survive. While the Parokk worked as much as possible, only to survive, the consumerbots had much free time on their hands and were able to colonize the whole system. The economy of the Parokk was now completely focused on producing consumer boxes, and the consumerbots, designed with an inherent sense for capitalism, took advantage of that fact. They united and drove down the price of consumer boxes, so that the Corporation had to work at a net loss. They lost more and more money every year and it was Korri, 72nd CEO of the Corporaion, who found
the reason for this deficit. Parokk workers are too expensive. They require training, food, shelter, sleep, all things that cost money that the Corporation did not have. Simply replacing the workers with robots would lead to problems, which were already known to the Parokk: Poor, unemployed people also produce cost one way or the other. Korri’s solution was as ingenious as it was simple and as peaceful as it was fatal. Korri offered every employer of the Corporation, (and that was everybody on Parrok) triple the salary, if they give up the right to reproduce. This was a huge investment, but it paid for itself after a few generations. 214 years later the last Parokk alive (and thereby the CEO of the Corporation by default), retired childless and gave the control of the Corporation to an AI, which controls Parogia and all robots on it, producing consumer boxes, to this day.

  Nowadays the consumerbots have colonized 28 star systems, which are all fueled by the labor of the robots on Parogia. These systems are now quarantined in order to stop the consumerbots from spreading any further. The first race who discovered this menace were the Piki and after a few scientific expeditions they classified consumerbots as a pan-stellar threat. The Hironi were the first to build a blockade around the infested systems, shooting every ship that tries to leave it. For a few generations the Hironi were eager to fight this battle, saving the universe from this particular threat, but after a while it became too dull, even for them. Soon all battleships and stations were equipped with a robotic crew and a combat AI. Until today there is no hope of ever concluding this endless conflict, but at least it is comforting to know that the war itself is also fully automated.