By Jasmin Arceo;
*student of Professor Dianne Siriban*
As I opened my eyes, I see my normal rough textured dirty white ceiling. I’ve had 9 hours of sleep but then I woke up feeling restless. I stood up and looked at the calendar hanging on the wall. It’s May 23, 2027 and its 9:00! Yeahp, I’m late for my work. I work as an event organizer and I am currently organizing an 18th birthday party for a very fashionable girl who called and hired me months ago. My meeting with her is at 9:30am, wish I could make it. I’m all settled up and I’m gonna hit the roads. After stepping out the elevator, I saw the humanoid guard robot opening the main door for me. Geez, now I’m entering again the robot world. In our time, people don’t work anymore. All the robots do their work. All the robots are perfectly made to make their work very successful. Everything was perfect. I even work with robotic event organizers. Lots of people push me to stop working since it’s not needed anymore because of the perfectly programmed robots. For most people, they do the same thing over and over again each day.
During years ago, it was the start of the spreading of humanoid robots. People are very excited to see them work but then, in just one blink, I’d wake up seeing robots sweeping the floor outside, driving a taxi, getting the orders of the people in the restaurant and nursing the old people. There was this one night when I went out with my friends at a club. They told us different stories about these robots. My friend, Gina, looked at us with her dazzling eyes telling about what she discovered about these robots. When she was walking at the streets of her hometown, she is feeling alone wondering where her true soul mate is. She was very sick of feeling alone and “even the nights were worse!”, she told us. She looked at the lovers at the street kissing each other which made her feel really bad of being alone. Then she walked inside a bar, looking for love. While she was sipping her margarita, one sexy guy was looking at her from afar. Because of the strobe lights and party atmosphere in the bar, she can’t see him clearer. The guy walked towards her. She looked at the guy from his firmly fixed hair, white skinned cheeks, leather jacket wrapping his muscular body, black pants and boots. She immediately fixed her super short dress and her sexy hair then sipped again in her margarita. The guy looked at her in the eye and started to talk to her. After meeting this guy, Gina fell in love with him even if that night at the club, she already knew that this hot guy is a humanoid robot. Now she is really proud in telling us that she has a robot boyfriend. She told us how happy she became each day and how contented and satisfied she was with this robot. All my other friends were laughing and were very proud of her. But I got myself thinking and asking on what’s happening in the world. Why does my friend have to fall in love with a robot? Doesn’t she know that he was unreal? But all I hear from her is that, everything was magical, everything was perfect. Then my friend, Chris, interrupted and told us about his story with robots. He started with the part about his sister’s son died when he was just little. After some time, at their dinner table, their dad suggested her to get a robot child to make her feel happy again. At first, Chris’ sister thought it was not right to replace her own son with a robot. But then she had thought of it then decided to get one. Until right now, he’s sister wasn’t regretting on what she has done. Because she told Chris that everything was perfect. Chris told us it was perfect. After that night, hearing all my friends saying the word, “Perfect.”, I just suddenly felt like I’m sick of it anymore. I’m scared that the robots may be the only ones working.
Going back to reality, everything is all about robots. I go inside a restaurant to eat lunch with a robot assisting me then taking my orders, and then I’d see from the other table someone dating a robot. Everything was perfect, people don’t have to work. People are all just sitting down, doing things which they want to do and doesn’t have any responsibility to think of. You step out of your messy room in the morning then going back home really clean without an effort of cleaning it. People are so lazy. I wish that I never wished perfection in life. I don’t want my life to be perfect, I want to put back the times before when there are no robots and all humans are working. People make mistakes, and no one is perfect. I’m so sick of perfection.
Suddenly, I saw nothing then found myself opening my oeyes once more. Looking at my rough ceiling and realized that it was only just a dream. I learned something from my dream or more like a nightmare. I learned that perfection isn’t the key of paradise and happiness. Perfect world or world full of robots makes the people lazy, makes them feel too much fulfilled that they don’t want to act on something anymore. I don’t want to be lazy anymore and I want to work. I want to have a normal life. I don’t want to be stuck in a nightmare.
