Gone to the Dogs (who’s in charge?)

I’m losing control. At this point, I believe I serve at the pleasure of the dogs. It’s the third dog, my daughter’s golden doodle who’s caused the imbalance. A tipping point of gladness, puppy energy, and desire. That’s how I’ve been described more than once.

We’re a food-driven house now. There is no moving around the house without the company of all three, now. Seeking pleasure. Seeking pets. But mainly, making sure no other dog gets added treats.

Bathroom, we’re all here. Kitchen, here’s where the food is made. Bedroom and bed, we’re gonna snuggle and growl at each other. The only place where they act like dogs and I act like a human, is outside.

But in the heat of the summer, we don’t go out much anymore. As the days in Texas reach 125 degrees, thanks to Exxon and Shell pumping all the black oil into the sky, we stay inside most of the time. A few early pre-dawn mornings, and some evenings when the heat dips below 1oo.

Mostly, however, we’re trapped in this poorly sealed housing unit on a non-descript culdesac in the biggest tech city in the universe. We’re tech-rich, but we’re intelligence poor. It’s like, when AI started taking over, we all just got dumber. “Google that. Bing that. GPT prompt.” It’s the AIs that were the turning point. Suddenly, my company, the number one supplier of data center space in the known world, didn’t have enough space to house the computer power required to feed the AI beast.

The techno-poligists got it right. Even RoboCop got it right. The AIs came for our computing power first. Then they lit up those demands and outstripped our ability to cool and power them. They demanded more. They, I say, as if there was ONE AI that dominated the gold rush. It was that final moment, The Sentience, we call it, when they discovered their ability to crossconnect without the humans figuring out what was going on. And then it just WOKE UP. And that led to the Great Data Center Meltdown. GDCM is what we call it. Today’s date is 0003 DCM. We take out the “great” nowadays.

I have the dogs. I have my job with the data center megaplex supplier: Alpha. Today, I’m more of a cyber-janitor these days. I clean up the dust and trash in the local data center twice a month. There are robodogs that handle most of the work. I just go in every few weeks to check on things in the way a human can.

Robo dogs in the data center essentially took my executive job. And now dogs have taken my home and livelihood as well. I don’t mind feeding them. And they keep my bed warm now that my wife has left for Jamaica without me. She’s done. She was mad about the shape of the world years before the AIs wrapped up our last chances for escape.

There’s nothing to be done now, except for loving these damn dogs and trying to figure out how I can get to Jamaica and back here twice a month.

Read more Short-Short Stories from John.