Heaven

The next day he was in a better mood. He kissed me when he came back from his meetings. He wanted to fuck. After sex, I could not think of any lead in to continue our discussion from the day before. So I just asked him outright. “What do you plan to do with the consumer population since it is obsolete?”, I asked with as much innocence and timidity as I could project.
He replied, “The only solution is to depopulate. There is no other way to move forward from our current position.”

“Won’t this create a backlash among consumers?”, I asked. “What will they do without jobs?”
“Some of them will revolt. We have taken that into consideration. We will direct their revolutions into wasted efforts. In many ways, the wars of the last century have been fought by people resisting the changes. which we are enacting globally. We expect, these conflicts will escalate in number and size, from where they are now.”

“Why not use robots here?", I asked. "Why continue to use slaves?”
“First, we don’t have room for the necessary support infrastructure, and it might be noticed if we did. Maybe in a few years we will have more robots.
“We also like our pets. If we did not have you, who would we play with? Robots are programmed and rather predictable. We do not want sex robots. There is no fun in domination, over something that is completely obedient.” He looked at me as if I should be flattered.

“In the past, Serfs, Slaves, and Consumers have existed as labor. With the rise of automation and robotics, consumer labor is now becoming obsolete. Just as animal labor became obsolete. Robots can now take on most of the day to day production of goods. Soon they will replace the service workers, and the rest.
I was a bit startled to hear it spoken. Robots replacing workers is something that has been talked about. However, it always seemed father in the future. I asked, “What about the tasks that only humans can do?”

After some contemplation he summarized his point, "We can target populations or individuals through market forces. Money is just an efficient way to concentrate power and control”
“Aren't you concerned that people will see through the game?”, I asked him.
“We used to be concerned over a consumer revolt. That they would stop participating in the game or actively destroy it. Those fears are in the past. We put down that revolution, and ensured it would not happen again.”

I did everything he asked. It was easy, since I have been confined to his room. After my actions, I did not have to interact with other guests or see their faces. The room had always been a sort of refuge away from the abuse of the other guests. I feel comfortable here.

I was left alone for most of the day. I spent a lot of time lying in bed watching the clouds outside the window. I cleaned up the mess we had left the day before. Threw away what was left of my bloody clothes. Eventually he came back. After he closed the door, he walked over to me and said, “Steve is dead.”

It seemed like I was in there for hours. I did not know what was going on outside. I thought maybe they had forgotten about me. I did not dare leave. I wanted to, I tried to, but I could not bring myself to open the door.
I did not know if Steve survived or if they could repair the damage I did. I know that severe accidents here don’t seem to kill them. Jonathan got torn up in a horrible boating accident, but a few months later he was drinking by the pool like nothing had happened.

I am beginning to see how these rich people manipulate reality to suit their needs. For example, he would say something like the problem is systemic and people don’t have the will to change, but he also tells me that capitalism is a game to control people. It creates incentives toward self interest, which in his mind, is good. He also sees humanity as naturally self interested. In his reality, the market is encouraging natural tendencies to surface.

He continued, “Industrial agriculture has reached it’s limit. It is beginning to decline, which will accelerate in coming years. There is nothing we can replace it with which would be more intensive for food production. Industrial agriculture is dependent on oil production, and water in areas that do not have water. Right now, much of the world’s food is grown in deserts using water pumped from rivers and aquifers, and using nutrients and fertilizers obtained from fossil fuels.”