They first arrived in charity shops, no-one knew from where. In appearance they were like microwave ovens: cubical things, cavities whose front door came with a screen rather than a metallised window. Soon, however, their true function became apparent: they fabricated things.
Mrs Chigwell from Bournemouth Children’s Aid took delivery of the parcel. The charity shop was on the high street, one of a cluster. She had been manning the counter for half an hour but business was light. Squally rain outside had deterred passing trade, though as she surveyed the racks of old books and dingy clothes she could see one or two regulars hunkered down at the back, waiting out the heavy morning hours of a long, tedious day.
The doorbell rang and a young delivery man walked in, staggering under the weight of his package. Mrs Chigwell gave him a tentative smile and beckoned him to place it on the table they used to sort through donations. It seemed quite heavy and cumbersome and at first she thought it might have been a mis-delivery from Amazon. They surely weren’t expecting anything, or at least she hadn’t been told. But Amazon didn’t make those kinds of mistakes, did it?
Mrs Chigwell beckoned her daughter across to help. She was so proud of Julia. Doctor Julia she reminded herself, with that advanced degree from Imperial College up in London. Julia was down for the holidays, helping her out in the shop. She'd know what to do.
Julia and her mother carried the box into the kitchen at the back of the store and got it unpacked. The instructions were written in a curious variant of English but were not hard to understand. The first thing to do was to plug the machine into a wall socket.
Mrs Chigwell smiled. Her passing thought was that they were on the receiving end of a practical joke. It was very elaborate, she thought, could this be something dreamt up by Mr Harris who managed the shop? It was getting near Christmas and at a stretch she could imagine it was the kind of thing he might do, something to lighten the spirits. Could it be fairy-lights?
Julia read from the instruction flowchart. She mused for a while, trying to make a decision. Finally she said, “I’d like a nice cup of hot chocolate.” Mrs Chigwell openly laughed: her daughter was such a tease. The machine promptly replied--Mrs Chigwell gave a small start of alarm--asking her to open the door and place inside various pieces of food rubbish. It listed the kinds of things it wanted.
The deplorable state of the kitchen (no-one had cleared up recently) sufficed to provide several slices of stale bread, a plastic bowl of cold, discarded chips and a cup full of water. Mrs Chigwell was again reminded of a microwave as the box hummed, giving out a slight smell of ozone. Five minutes later there was a soft chime and the screen flashed a ready message. Inside Julia found the garbage had been transformed into exactly what she had asked for. She cautiously sampled the piping-hot drink--it turned out to be delicious.
Children’s Aid in Bournemouth was just one of thousands of outlets which received a ‘Super-Fab’ as they became known. The Internet buckled as people experimented, tested and speculated as to how they worked, racing to confirm that they were indeed trustworthy. A consensus grew that they were the very latest in 3D printers. There were no obvious limits as to what they could produce, provided they got the right raw materials and the result would fit in the box. And they really worked, did just what they advertised.
So that was the very earliest understanding of the devices. That, and the fact that no-one seemed to know where they had come from.
Mrs Chigwell set the machine up in a corner of the shop and advertised free food and drinks to the passing homeless people of Bournemouth. The cost to her was volunteer time, power from the mains and leftover rubbish and water which the machine consumed as raw materials. She was not the only one, and in this small way the sum of human happiness increased a trifle in Britain’s run-down towns.
2: Replication
The machines had an unexpected party piece: they could produce themselves. This was discovered by way of a joke request from Perry Zhang, a student at Manchester University on the second day after the machines surfaced.
Perry made his humorous suggestion and, to his surprise, was asked to fetch various raw materials. He shoved in some old mobile phones, some plastic water bottles (full) and a few other household items until the machine professed itself happy. After less than ninety minutes the door opened and Perry was able to pull out a number of small rectangular units. After another feed and a further hour, more units became available and thereafter it was a simple matter for Perry to stack these into a cubical shape the same size as the Super-Fab--it turned out there was only one way to do it.
A faint smell of burning emerged from the assembly as temporary partitions dissolved and internal connections welded tight, and then it became apparent that a second, identical unit calmly squatted in front of Perry. A copy had indeed been fabricated.
The cost: Perry’s unskilled labour, some surplus electronic devices and other junk and three hours of electricity at the level of a one-bar fire. Perry tested the newly-spawned device until he was sure that it worked correctly, then he gave it to his girlfriend. He wrote up his experience on his social media page, mentioning that the device had told him it could produce a new Super-Fab of any size at all. Useful, it suggested, for making bigger things.
3: Production
Bill Jones ran a small factory in Birmingham making clocks. He bought in parts from many suppliers and employed skilled workers and advanced machine tools to create his high-quality products. Since you could buy timing devices from many sources at rock-bottom prices, the clock-making business was precarious. Bill’s enterprise survived in an artisan niche, making quirky, individualistic devices for discerning bohemians and specialist customers.
Bill was imaginative and a go-getter. He bought a Super-Fab from one of the middlemen-sellers who were rapidly springing up and tested it in a spare workshop next to his office. The machine asked for a sample of the clock Bill intended to duplicate. Bill settled on one of his more intricate and expensive ones, a specialist device the Navy used on submarines. The machine also requested the ’blueprints’ in standard CNC G-Code format.
After some minutes of analysis, the machine requested a list of low-value raw materials--plastics and metals. Bill was easily able to procure these from the factory stockroom. Soon, after the usual humming and ozone, a duplicate clock emerged. Bill thought that it looked identical to those his factory regularly produced at some considerable expense. He sent it for testing; it passed with flying colours, well within all the tolerances.
Bill thought long and hard.
First off, I could get this machine to duplicate itself, he thought. Run a few cycles of that and I’d have a rack of them at next to no cost. Then I could let my highly-trained but expensive production workforce go, just keeping a couple of conscientious but unskilled guys to run the Super-Fabs. My existing machine tools could be recycled as raw materials. Then I could churn out clocks across my product range on demand.
What would it cost? He thought about it: electricity, waste materials and a few ancillary helpers. His costs would plummet; he would make a fortune. But then he thought some more. His competitors were not stupid; they would surely do the same. The price of commodifying clocks would plunge to their basic cost of manufacture.
And then he had a further thought: why will my customers need me? They could do this for themselves if they’ve got one of these machines. All they need is a blueprint, a specification and they can get that on the Internet just like I do. So in fact I don’t have a business any more. He immediately called his lawyers and arranged a crash meeting to liquidate his company. Would anyone be mug enough to buy it off him?
4: Macroeconomics I
The effects of the explosion of Super-Fab numbers on the economy were not long coming. The machines could replace much conventional manufacturing which displaced workers from the labour market in droves. Consequently social-security and unemployment-pay demands had never been greater, yet as tax revenues fell the benefit system couldn’t keep up. In many cases benefits were time-limited--but future job prospects for workers in manufacturing had never been bleaker.
This could have been catastrophic--except that there were now plenty of charities which would provide any worker or family who needed it with a free Super-Fab. Once they had the machine, plus scraps and an electricity supply, then they could make practically anything they needed. So the lack of wages wasn’t an immediate, life-challenging problem.
Dependence on electric power was, however, an issue; the national grid itself became brittle. Some workers failed to turn up for work since they didn’t really need a full wage. But others, those expelled from the labour force, were finding it difficult to pay for power and other necessities such as rent.
People discovered, however, that the machines could produce both solar panels and a highly-efficient battery. A new kind of battery pack (a radioisotope thermoelectric generator?) had been designed by some smart ‘makers’ as they were being called--leftist engineers in the emerging counter-economy.
Soon networked Super-Fabs were talking to each other, exchanging raw materials and sub-assemblies. Some people of philanthropic bent with access to land used their spaces for giant versions of the Super-Fabs. These could produce artefacts as large as ships or aircraft--or transporters to take these giga-machines to wherever they were needed.
5: Robot
Small businesses like Bill Jones’s clock factory were soon out of business. But perhaps that had always been expected with the march of automation. More surprising was the demise of service jobs such as plumbers.
Catherine May was perhaps the first person to discover the astonishing versatility of her miracle box. As the puddle emerged from behind the washing machine she sobbed in despair. She had never been able to find a reliable plumber and this emergency was not to be born!
A small sound, like a trap door opening, warned Catherine that something else was happening. Strange, vaguely threatening devices were emerging from a hitherto-unsuspected opening in her Super-Fab. Catherine desperately rushed across to her six-month-old child in its high-chair to protect it.
Such instinctive caution was unnecessary, however. The miniaturised crawling and flying things approached the mass of pipes behind the leaking machine and began to inspect them. Soon a larger device emerged from the front aperture of the Super-Fab: something which had arms built for engineering, something that looked like a traditional science-fiction robot.
Twenty minutes of clunking and squeaking, replacing and lubricating followed, completed by a small amount of mopping. The devices returned to the Super-Fab to donate their bodies for re-use; the machine announced that the problem was fixed.
“How do you know?” asked a quavering Mrs May.
“Everything a plumber knows, I know,” said the device with not a trace of pride, “I’m on the Internet.”
And so plumbers, hairdressers and other personal-service companies were rendered obsolete--and consequently bankrupt.
6: Macroeconomics II
Once they were networked and had access to limitless Internet skills, the Super-Fabs were able to substitute for vast swathes of the existing economy. But what about big engineering? What was the story on dams and motorways? These were exemplars of social artefacts, things which it made no sense for any one user to dream up or install even if their Super-Fab had the theoretical capability.
In fact the Super-Fabs did have the capacity for heavy engineering. The networked devices were soon discovered to be mining, refining and transporting raw materials extremely cheaply--most of the cost was simply power. They would, however, do none of these things by themselves; someone had to request it. That someone could only be government. Private entrepreneurs had no personal use for such monstrosities since they could no longer figure out any way to make money from them.
Why was that? Because with costs tending to zero, no private company could avoid being undercut by a competitor who could charge even less for the finished product. There had always been a left-wing criticism that some social needs were under-supplied because no capitalist would invest to provide the necessary product.
The Super-Fabs, however, could produce human necessities at zero cost. They were like the blackberry bushes which grow in the natural world, offering their bounty to anyone who stretches out a hand, their miracle of sun-powered nanotech provided free of charge. The Super-Fabs would always crowd out a capitalist employer who could not price at cost and stay in business.
Government was all that was left.
What about the banks and investment? That too was a short story. The banks were impoverished by the drastic shrinkage of the capitalist sector of the economy, the lack of investment opportunities. But the role of money did not vanish. There was still a need for a means of exchange and a store of value. It was noted that the banks had predated capitalism and would outlast it, at least for a while.
However necessary it might be though, Government was in crisis. Perhaps this refuted the communist ideal, or perhaps it was what Engels had meant by 'the administration of things rather than people'.
7: Governance
The Prime Minister has arranged a private briefing at a secluded country house in Norfolk. This would have been in month three or four. The house is a fine example of Palladian architecture set in sculpted grounds. It has been rescued from the National Trust by a government which understands the periodic need for a refuge from everyday events.
The PM sits alone in a large wood-panelled room, savouring the silence. It’s ten o’clock in the morning and the early spring sun sends shallow rays across the finely-mown lawns towards the lake. Birds take their leisure or skim the surface: ducks, he thinks, or perhaps grey geese. It’s hard to be sure at this distance. He sips his coffee and strives to be at one with the landscape. His momentary peace is spoilt by the muffled sound of the door scuffing open, marking the entrance of his civil service science adviser.
“Who’s on first?” the PM asks.
“The engineer.”
“When do we get on to economic policy?”
“This afternoon.”
The first expert is wheeled in, a professor at Imperial College. The science advisor points her towards the lectern and its projection screen. The PM dunks a Brontë biscuit in his mud-coloured milky coffee--a secret vice--and sits back expectantly to listen. The engineer has been told to keep it simple. She explains that the Super-Fabs are part machine but mostly organic. Someone has expanded biology to encompass functions which are presently carried out by engines and electronics.
“For example, mass-spectrometry and data packet routing are carried out by highly-modified biological organelles.”
The Prime Minister has no idea what this means, so he does that thing politicians do, he changes the subject.
“Do we know who did this? I mean, could we do this?” he asks.
“It’s certainly beyond us,” replies the engineer, “It’s the kind of thing people have speculated about--synthetic biology. Probably designed by advanced AI systems. It’s certainly way beyond anything achievable by human experts.”
“They tell me these Super-Fabs can now reproduce like amoeba,” says the PM, “So how smart are they? Are they spying on us?”
The professor shakes her head in irritation.
“Prime Minister, the really important thing here is the breakthrough to human-level intelligence. The AI systems on board these boxes can accomplish everyday tasks, like plumbing or car repairs or hairdressing, better than any human. They’re networked through the Internet and they learn from each other. They synthesise special robots and drones to do jobs and those robots come with a wider variety of sensors than humans ever had. They are so much more advanced than we ever imagined artificial general intelligence would be, surely the result of bootstrapping.”
The PM doesn’t get this either but thinks it might be important; he glances at his science advisor.
“She means a succession of AIs each designing a smarter version of themselves. In a few generations you might get to where the Super-Fabs are now. The problem has always been that very first step, the starting-off point. But it looks like someone finally did it.”
The professor says sorrowfully, “You ask if they’re spying on us. Why on earth would they even bother?”
8: Abundance
There is an evening debate at the London School of Economics. It's between two leading economists of differing persuasions. Only one will be invited to brief the PM, so the stakes are high. The chair-person addresses the student audience in the vast darkened auditorium.
“It’s a great economic paradox we see today. The economy is in free-fall, a major contraction with bankruptcies everywhere. Yet people have never been so well provided for. Tonight we will attempt to find out why.”
The format is a prompted discussion with the chair. The neoclassical guy, a professor based at LSE, opens by explaining that the Super-Fabs have changed the market-structure to such an extent that competition is killing existing businesses.
“You may remember,” the professor says, addressing the shrouded mass of students, “how in your microeconomics course you were taught about perfect competition. Companies have to accept the market price on offer and a company’s profit is simply the general rate of interest.”
The chair seeks controversy to liven things up: “But no company wants to be in that kind of a market, with no surplus funds for R&D, no spare capital for anything risky or speculative, no-one making any real money. It’s marginal whether to invest at all in a sector where perfect competition holds sway, isn’t it?”
The LSE man smiles agreeably, waving his hand, “The Super-Fabs are dragging every sector of the economy into the very model of perfect competition. It's an excellent outcome. It's well-known this is Pareto-optimal for social welfare.”
The chair mutters, almost inaudibly, “And yet the economy is close to collapse with an investment strike and no tax revenues.”
“Not so fast,” interjects the heterodox professor from King’s College, taking on her LSE colleague, “All your talk of normal profits hides the fact that workers in a capitalist economy have to produce more value in the working day than they cost in their wages--that’s where the profits come from. But these machines, these Super-Fabs, aren’t paid wages. Once you have one you can produce goods and services at essentially no cost. The machines are even providing their own power supplies now--and sharing raw materials and components.”
The chair-person hasn't heard this news.
“Oh yes,” the King’s College professor confirms, “It seems that they’ve started doing those things. And once they show a new capability it spreads pretty fast.”
The chair-person defends orthodoxy, “You can’t compete with free,” he objects, “No-one will invest. The economy is going to tank--unless,” and here he stares almost wildly at the assembled students, “unless they make the Super-Fabs illegal!”
The heterodox economist rolls her eyes, “An employer will only invest if they expect to make money, but these machines are zero-cost slaves: both costs and revenues are tending to zero. That kind of competition is making capitalist production impossible. As my bourgeois friend here,” she points to the chair, “correctly states, you can’t compete with free.”
The chair looks irritated at this faint praise.
“However we have been here before,” she continues, “We’re transitioning to an economy the ancient Greeks or Romans would have been very familiar with. With automated slaves seeing to production there will still be plenty of administrative tasks, deciding those things which affect vast numbers of people. Greek and Roman politicians were justly famous. And we will have so much more in the way of resources. The Prime Minister may well be lauded as the Cicero of the new age!”
There is applause at this, although some in the audience perhaps recall that Mr C. came to a rather sticky end.
The King’s College economist is finishing up. “The Marxists always believed that capitalism would create the conditions for its own supersession. They thought it would have to be something violent like a Leninist proletarian revolution but that has never seemed remotely likely.”
At this a small group at the back of the room unfurls a red banner adorned with a hammer and sickle and starts to hiss. But they calm down before they can be ejected; even they are interested in where the speaker is going with this.
“But even Marx, you know, had some inkling of the truth. In his Fragment on Machines he predicted that capitalism would end up replicating and improving on every human ability, both physical and mental, thereby eliminating the need for human workers entirely. Capitalism is finally being vanquished not by the ascendant proletariat but by that class's very departure from the scene. And so we are where we are.”
Amidst the applause it was enthusiastically agreed that King’s College would brief the Prime Minister.
9: Utopia
Not every state in the world settled upon a managed transition like those in the advanced economies of the West. There were autocratic regimes which did indeed try to ban the Super-Fabs, imposing draconian penalties for possession. It was as if they had tried to ban breathing the very air itself, so they could maintain the sale of oxygen bottles.
And so the world turned itself upside-down, roughly and smoothly, becoming a post-capitalist planet. It seemed there were a lot of things that ordinary, decent folk had always wanted to do. And now they had their chance.
10: Mallorca: some months later
Julia lies on her beach-recliner next to Timothy's, listening to the quiet hissing of the waves. She is already regretting their impulsive hook up.
Behind them, gleaming white rental apartments front the shoreline. There are no staff. With the complete hegemony of the Super-Fabs, hotels have finally become Le Corbusier's famed machines for living in. Julia beckons a passing beach-minibar for a refreshing chilled fruit cocktail.
Timothy is from a well-off family--which had meant something tangible before the transition. He's currently working on his doctoral thesis: The Exogeneity of Moral Values within Marxian Ontology at Columbia University. The Old Philosopher’s work has achieved such a comeback over the last year.
Julia herself is from the other side of the tracks, a sleepy, down-at-heel seaside town in England called Bournemouth. By grit and native talent she worked her way up to an advanced degree in ecology; her thesis on the dynamics of species in competition with each other.
“Marx was right,” murmurs Timothy, mentally reviewing part of his own great work, “Once scarcity was abolished people were finally able to live up to their true potential.”
“Yet the Super-Fabs can make guns, drugs and instruments of torture. They can and they do.”
It’s a familiar argument: is the glass half-full or half-empty? Timothy isn’t really concentrating--these arguments bore him. He simply rolls out the standard rebuttal.
“Most crimes disappeared when there was abundance. No need to steal, after all. Pretty much every human want is satisfied by something or other in the Super-Fab’s repertoire, there's no need to grab it by cunning, trickery or force. And the people’s police and justice system are perfectly able to mop up the rest, especially given the high-tech surveillance and enforcement kit the Fabs made for them.”
Julia has been reading the local news reports. Something strange is stirring in the sun-baked volcanic interior of the island. Something which speaks to her professional training.
“The global network of Super-Fabs now forms a completely-parallel ecology,” she says, “They're mobile and they reproduce. They were designed to serve us but things could easily go a little haywire. Some replication glitch, some programming error or hack would do it. Their and our basic interests are far from totally aligned. After all, God isn’t making much in the way of new territory, are they?”
She sips her rapidly-warming drink.
“The Romans were always most scared of a slave revolt, weren't they? That's why their punishments were so draconian.”
Timothy doesn’t see how any of this could relate to his thesis. It seems orthogonal to the social relations of post-capitalist society, the economics of the transition to fully-automated luxury communism.
Just scaremongering and doom-speak.
Julia is not nearly as much fun as he’d hoped.
Neither of them notices the black shapes emerging from the waves. Alligator-bodies with spectral eyes and laser-mouths crawling in their dozens out of the surf, here to recycle the garbage and claim their world for ever.
END
© Adam Carlton 2019 from this collection of short stories.
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This is a somewhat dramatised view of the inner logic of total automation.
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