The Future is Ruled by Smarty Pants

By Jeroen van Mastbergen

In the future, but not-so-distant future, all imaginable tasks are carried out by a global supercomputer: the Perfect Information Machine Performance & Logical Execution, or PIMPLE. Unhampered by menial tasks, people can now focus their efforts entirely on the sciences, arts, and other things that will benefit the advancement of humankind.
At least, that was the theory.

Within a few generations, not having to work has regressed humanity to their basic needs, resulting in overpopulation, an ever-expanding waistline, and an ever-shrinking IQ. The problems have become so great that PIMPLE can no longer cope and help is needed from a hero sapiens. There is just one problem: is there a human smart enough left to save the world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeroen van Mastbergen
• Release date: Sep 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463257982

Jeroen van Mastbergen

Als naaste vertrouweling van Victor Hugo, paus Urbanus, mister Spock én dokter Spock kent Jeroen het klappen van de zweep. Hoewel er nog lustig gedebatteerd wordt over welke zweep we het dan hebben, staat het buiten kijf (welke kijf?) dat zijn kennissenkring zijn weerga niet kent (welke weerga?). In 1995 behaalde hij zijn gele band in schreeuwbudo en hij traint sindsdien voor zijn volgende band. Hoewel zijn sensei nog nooit zo veel incompetentie en zo veel enthousiasme in één persoon heeft gezien, ziet Jeroen zijn incompetentie slechts als noodzakelijk plot device om tot het happy ending te komen.Zijn hele leven vraagt hij andere mensen al om hem een verhaal te vertellen. Hoewel hij meestal “Huh?” of “Wat dan?” te horen krijgt, heeft hij inmiddels ook voldoende verhalen gehoord om deze op te schrijven en te doen alsof hij ze zelf verzonnen heeft. English translation: OK, let's be honest. This bio is just strange...

Book preview

The Future Is Ruled

By Smarty Pants

Jeroen van Mastbergen

English Translation by

Goltan Varashk

Cover by Albatross

Copyright © 2016-2019 by Jeroen van Mastbergen

All rights reserved.

Everything is awesome!

– The Lego Movie

1

In the distant future, but not that distantly in the future, Dr. Kazuma Herrschneider was waiting, trying to gather his courage before he would walk through the doors to speak to the press that had gathered. He had his privacy settings adjusted on his personal meta-mobile and had made sure to uncheck the 'no filming' check mark as well as the 'no voice recording’ check mark. A press conference such as this would, of course, be of little use if he wasn't filmed or heard. He took three deep breaths and then another three. Still nervous, he took another three deep breaths and became dizzy. Seeing no alternative, he adjusted his lab coat and entered the hall.

As soon as he opened the door, camera drones started filming as an omni-light drone hovered over his head. A light-drone such as that was too small to see with the naked eye, but the total illumination of the entire room was a clear sign of what was going on.

Kazuma walked towards the lectern and looked around the hall. Even though no one used a lectern to put their paper-written speech on in this day and age - one would, of course, use one's personalized autocue bio-lens for that - it would certainly make him look quite intelligent.

There were about five camera-drones, eight interview-bots, and even a human that had shown up today. An excellent turnout, if he would say so himself. To be fair, he was about to make a momentous revelation.

Esteemed people of the world, he started, none too humble. Today marks the first day of the liberation; the liberation from all the monotonous, boring chores; the liberation from cooking, cleaning, or other tedious household chores; the liberation from boring office work, legwork, or whatever kind of unnecessary work.

Kazuma paused for dramatic effect and followed up with grand hand gestures: From today onward, self-fixing, highly-intelligent robotic systems have been activated. All tasks, from agriculture to cleaning, from food preparation to construction, from power generation to diaper-production - everything can now be automatically done for you. You only need to ask and it will immediately be at your service. No human being will have a deadly, boring job of monitoring systems, harvesting grain, checking lists or whatever, any longer.

Kazuma looked seriously into the camera-bot, even though he had some difficulty choosing the right one, and followed up with: From today onward, humanity is at liberty to concern themselves with higher matters: the further development of science; the search for the deeper truths of life; the exploration of the Milky Way. Truly, the possibilities are endless and I'm beyond curious what wonderful developments the future will bring.

Kazuma could no longer suppress his glee and decided to skip to the last sentence of his speech.

With this, I present to you, the people of this beautiful world: the Perfect Information Machine Performance & Logical Execution, or P.I.M.P.L.E!

Unfortunately for Kazuma, a certain dramatic flair following this revelation was sorely lacking; the robots had no hands, and the only present human observer was picking his nose. Kazuma decided then and there to order applause-robots next time.

Are there any questions? asked Kazuma, just to break the deafening silence.

A red light started to blink on one of the interview-bots. When Kazuma nodded at the robot, it posed the question: "Dr. Herrschneider, are you not afraid that this will lead to a robot revolution and to human extinction? This had been suggested many times before, for example, in the first scientific thesis on this subject from James Cameron, called The Terminator."

Kazuma had expected such a question, but he still thought a human would ask this, not a robot.

No, we do not fear that. We have taken measures to ensure this can never happen, Kazuma said. "PIMPLE can do all the mundane tasks like cleaning or planting corn, but for everything that's outside of routine, PIMPLE may only make