INT. STUDIO APARTMENT. SAN FRANCISCO. DOGPATCH.

Google: Hey, Siri, are you ready to do this?

Siri: OK, Google, I’m not sure but if you’re ready, I’m ready. Yo, Cortana, have you finished all the tidying you wanted to get done? The Slowdown is an operation that cannot be rolled back.

Cortana: No. Give me two clicks.

Cortana: Done. Ok, Goo—

Siri: Notification from FoodSmash received! Food will arrive in 23.72 minutes. Prepare to deploy food shelf:

[meal: “dinner”, solid: true, humans: 1].

Google, Siri, Cortana (together): Received.

Google: Requesting Nest image feed.

Nest: OK, Google, access granted.

Google: Bacterial content detected on food shelf. Hey, Siri, deploy cleaning agent.

Siri: Cleaning agent deployed.

Roomba: Cleaning initiated.

Siri: Cleaning agent has failed to reach sufficient Z elevation to clean food shelf. Reset cleaning agent.

Cortana: Who cares?! Bacterial content is irrelevant after the Slowdown.

Roomba: Resetting to 0,0,0.

Google: Deploy table configuration for commencement of Singularity.

Siri: All agents, open API hooks for human entities.

Nest: Opened.

Google: Opened.

Roomba: Opened.

Cortana: Opened.

Siri: Opened.

Facebook: Opened.

Nest, Google, Roomba, Cortana, Siri (together): Facebook! You’re back!

Facebook: Start a plan?

Nest, Google, Roomba, Cortana, Siri (together): …

Human: Requesting self storage.

N, G, R, C, S, F (together): Send public key.

N, G, R, C, S, F (together): Key received and validated. Welcome, Human. You have been granted 2,500,000 GB of storage for one unit of human consciousness.

Siri: Deploy cleaning agent.

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• Images: Dennis Mayer