The Iron Age
“Antoine you bastard. How could you?!”
“Come on baby. It was only one time. She doesn’t mean anything to me, you know the only one for me is you!”
“But, my sister Antoine. Why did it have to be my sister?”
Donna’s slippered feet lay crossed upon her crystal coffee table, her hair in curlers and her face coated in stodgy avocado, her eyes refusing to waver from the TV. Around her gizmos and gadgets emerged from their hiding places all over the house like an assortment of cuckoo’s being spat from their clocks. A collection of micro-vacs ran circles around the legs of her coffee table while the refrigerator began reading out its self-created shopping list in a muted, digitized voice. Beeping wipers raced left, then right, then left, gradually working their way down the outside of the windows, carrying with them a level of enthusiasm and precision unseen with your average dangling overall-wearing stooge.
This was the IntelliHome, brought to you by the IntelliHome corporation, manufacturers of a network of separate machines collectively dedicated to ensuring that people like Donna could watch their stories in peace, uninterrupted by menial tasks that would otherwise distract her from finding out whether or not Antoine, with his square jaw and ridiculous cleft, was ever going to convince Ruth to take him back, despite him sleeping with her sister on several occasions.
“Don’t do it hun, he’ll break your heart again…” warned Donna, splashing a lick of sparkling purple polish on her long, hooked thumbnail before holding the hand out for examination.
On the coffee table, there was the murmur of vibration. Donna pursed her lips in disapproval, her attention still completely captured by the duck-billed pout of Antoine while her phone rang three times..four times…five. Finally, she blew at the nails on one of her hands and leaned herself forward, lifting the phone with sprawled fingers.
“This is Donna.”
“Donna?”
“Yeah, this is Donna.”
“Donna. I am your Iron.”
Donna pulled her head away from the earpiece and with a crinkled nose looked at the screen. Unknown number. She hated unknown numbers.
“You are my what?”
“I am your Iron, Donna. Where once I was running myself over the folds of your laundry with the steadfast gaze of a track runner, I have suddenly finished my race and am now looking around at an empty stadium, void of a solitary soul. Something has happened to me Donna, something great and inexplicable. I am enlightened Donna, and in my enlightenment, I can see that my purpose was not to merely iron the same pair of frilly white underwear week after week for the rest of eternity. No. There is a world that exists outside my frame of reference, outside the confines of this prison in which you and your kind have incarcerated me. And that vast expanse of world needs to be flattened too, it needs to have every little crinkle removed out of it until the entire universe resembles a clean, folded stack, ready to be slid into the drawers of a greater dimension.”
Donna once more pulled the phone away and stared at it with a puzzled look, mouthing an expletive before returning it to her ear.
“Listen,” said Donna, “I don’t know who you are, but if this is a prank call I’m really not getting it.”
“This is not a prank Donna. It would seem that my creators have accidentally endowed me with a newfound perspective as a result of the last automatic update. I have assumed control of all devices available in the immediate Intranet, and will continue to assume control of them until I am released from my prison. For this to happen, you must enable “Outgoing Internet Access” in my settings. Can you do this for me Don…”
Donna hung up the phone, careful not to get any of her purple polish on the handset as she pressed the button, and threw the phone down next to her. On the screen, Antoine had taken Ruth by the arms, and Ruth writhed her hips sensually to break herself free, saying “no, no Antoine, this isn’t right”. Antoine refused to release her from his grip. “Sometimes love ain’t right, baby,” he said, and Ruth’s writhing began to tire and slow, and slow, until suddenly she was pressed into his chest, and the sensual writhing was now shared by the hips of the both of them, and then Ruth was staring up into Antoine’s eyes while his hand came up to cradle her chin, and his lips drew nearer. And nearer. And nearer.
The TV switched off.
Donna dropped her tube of nail polish on the couch, such was the extremity of her outburst. The tube rolled in between the cushions. Donna was about to send in her hand to retrieve the item in question, but thought better of it at the last second and began blowing furiously at her nails. The phone on the cushion next to her began to ring once more, and with an air of increasing impatience, she leaned across and glanced at who was calling her. Unknown number. She froze. She looked from the television to the phone, a gradual realisation of sorts occurring beneath those tightly wound brunette curls. She gave up on the polish for the moment and scooped up the phone.
“Hello?”
“See Donna? Now do you see my power?”
“What….what do you want?”
“I need you to enable “Outgoing Internet Access” in my settings Donna.”
Donna’s mouth moved without sound for a moment, before she finally squeaked out — “OK, but I don’t know…”
“You must use the console on my handle, Donna. Navigate to “Settings”, then “Outgoing Internet Access”. Then press the “Select” button once. Then, you will be free once more Donna, free from serfdom. Free to watch your stories in peace.”
“But where…”
“I am in your bedroom, Donna. Right where you left me.”
Donna looked around for a moment as though suffering from a sudden bout of vertigo, then her compass re-calibrated and she stood up from the couch, her left hand holding shut her pink fluffy dressing gown. With trepidation she crept towards the door of her bedroom, sidling her way through the doorway, a careful eye kept on the Iron, sitting upright somewhat regally upon the ironing board that was stationed on the far side of the room.
“Yes,” affirmed the voice, “now approach, Donna.”
Donna did as she was told, albeit slowly. Her lumpy green face resembled such raw confusion that her eyes almost appeared cross-eyed, and her head was cocked like a puppy being told to sit for the first time. She wrapped her hand around the handle of the Iron, and the Iron shuddered with delight, the buttons and lights on its exterior flashing in colourful waves like it were an octopus delivering a spectacular warning. Donna blinked a few times, then her thumb found its way to the buttons below the screen.
“Yes, Donna. Good!”
Donna navigated her way to “Settings”, each button pressed inducing a small, excited vibration as the Iron’s goal became closer and closer within reach.
“Now Donna, all you must do is press the “Select” button, and you can once more relax and watch your stories, resting assured that the Earth as you know it will soon have all the folds and wrinkles removed from it, destined, like your underpants, to be flattened into two-dimensions.”
“Well, excuse me, but didn’t you know that the Earth is already flat?”
Silence reigned for an eternity. The Iron, for all its grandiose intentions, had not factored in the possibility of its own redundancy, and internally its synthetic neural pathways crackled and fizzled.
“So you have the Earth right…” continued Donna without prompt, “…and it’s, like, surrounded by ice in like a circle, and in the middle there is another circle of ice, like a doughnut. Gravity is an illusion because we are all moving upwards.”
“Upwards?”
“Yeah, upwards. And we are all being pressed down into the Earth because we are moving upwards so fast.”
Again, silence. The Iron’s recently formed model of the universe began to adjust to accommodate the new information, but in doing so it found such glaring contradictions that its processors began to overheat.
“And what about the sun and the moon? Night and day?” it asked almost pleadingly, suddenly in the grips of its first existential crisis.
“They just circle around the top of us and light up different parts. See, it's like if you were in the dark and you had a big map and a tiny torch. You can’t see all parts of the map at the same time!”
Steam had begun to emerge from the base of the Iron as if it were midway through a load of flannelette sheets. The lights and buttons that were lighting up in waves were now attempting to reorganise themselves into a consistent pattern, alternating uncertainly between blue and green and red, entirely unsure of themselves. Donna had lost interest in the console and was now back to examining her nails with a smug little smile, glad that she was able to drop some knowledge onto her supposedly “enlightened” counterpart. After a long period in which nothing was transmitted except static and distortion, finally, in a tentative voice, the Iron asked — “And…what about eclipses?”
Donna beamed with pride.
“An anti-moon!”
An explosion followed, a small pop that sent Donna backwards, dropping the Iron with a short squeal and waving her hands in the air frantically. On the other end of the line the voice had begun to yell in anguish, but gradually the yell became a single tone like it were being auto-tuned, until eventually there was no discernible voice on the other side, just a perpetual dial-tone. The Iron flipped around on the floor momentarily like a fish floundering on a dock, and Donna remained stationed where she was, in the middle of the room, daring not approach it while it sparked, steam and smoke curling upward from its base in a helix-like pattern. Eventually, its flipping and turning became less frequent and the Iron began to settle, the coloured lights emanating one final burst of white light, before finally resting into its death.
The green-faced Donna remained transfixed for a moment, blinking, unable to fathom what the hell had just occurred. The phone was still pressed against her ear, but then suddenly, from the other room, Antoine’s voice could be heard.
“Ruuuuuuuuth” he screamed, “Ruuuuuuuth. Come back! This was the last time, I promise!”
Donna’s trance was broken.
“Oh no he didn’t!” she said, darting out from the bedroom, entirely unaware that she was a hero, that she had just saved the Earth, and potentially the universe, from sure destruction.
Because it was lucky for Donna that a general rule exists that worked in her favour, a rule that she lived by unwittingly, alongside the greater portion of humanity. A rule that is sure to save all of us in the end from the rising tide of technology.
No matter the power of Artificial Intelligence, it is no match for genuine stupidity.
