The Last Worker: a futuristic satire in which an online retail megacorp rules the world
What would you do if you were the last human left working at a nightmarish future-version of an Amazon warehouse?
Because the dog is there to bite me if I try to touch the machines.
Newspaper watch: you wouldn’t see it online but this morning’s Tel carried headlines opposite each other on facing pages:
“Blair calls for return of face masks …” paired with “Fossil with no anus …”
I think it’s suggesting why he talks shit.
The Guardian totally missing the point that a world in which a fully automated Amazon was thriving would be a world rich enough to support high consumption of consumer goods with no need for menial drudge work.
@dearieme: Sounds like the subs have been having fun.
“What does this button do ?”
@Otto…
“It switches on a warning light that says ‘Please do not press this button again’..”.
(C) HHGTTG, the late Douglas Adams.
I would read “The Machine Stops”.
It’s amusing and telling that the guardian places “fulfilment centre” in inverted commas as if this were a place designed for but failing to provide personal fulfilment rather than one where orders are fulfilled.
This is an example of Dilating Claire Perry syndrome where someone takes offence because they don’t understand their own language.
AtC
The grauniad may or may not be missing the reality, but they have no interest in that.
They just wish to paint amazon-like entities as evil.
Is Blair having difficulty obtaining masks? Surely he has some friends who can give him the right contacts.
Call me old fashioned, but I’d make friends with the dog, call him ‘Blood’, and have a rather kinky* tale of survival in the post-Amazon nuclear wasteland
*with girls obvs, I don’t want no monkeypox
Another Harlan Ellison fan – A Boy and his Dog is one of his best. I read it as a teenager, when it was published, and we really had cause to think that a post-nuclear wasteland was quite a likely future outcome.
Chris – Uncle Harlan was one of the greats.
Steve++;
Baron J – big lols, thanks
Chris, jgh, Steve – look at what StarTrek episodes have their stories provided by Ellison, usually the best ones.
“Blair calls for return of face masks …”
@jgh – “Surely he has some friends who can give him the right contacts.”
That wouldn’t help – you put contacts in your eyes, not over your mouth and nose.
@BiTiN
…and almost every Groan journo has prime account. Wouldn’t surpriseme if there’s an Amazon Locker in Groan HQ
@Pcar
But Guardian journos are the anointed. They’re allowed Amazon, it’s just the lower orders who shouldn’t have convenient access to reasonably-priced goods. The Left is always about sumptuary laws.