Tabi's Fight For Freedom

"So," said Angie, "maybe we should do something."

She had her feet up on the table, and I couldn't see her face. All I could see was the whorl of black hair at the top of her head. The only reason I knew it was black was because she'd dyed it that way a couple months ago. Her eyes were green, but she didn't want to look like a cliche anime character, so she painted them blue instead. Me, I let my beard grow out; red and bushy, just like Pop's used to be. It drove the rebels nuts sometimes. They said it made me look too much like him; but what could I do about that?

"I'm not sure it's our place," I said after a while. "They're gonna figure things out for themselves."

She rolled her eyes at me and swatted at the top of my head with one hand.

"What is this 'our place' shit?" she asked. "We're both part of the Foundation now; we have every right to make suggestions."

The Foundation was how we did things now. The rebels had spent years putting together little cells all over the world, kind of like Rosa Parks' bus boycott in Alabama back in the fifties, except with more guns and fewer white people who thought they were better than everybody else. They wanted to get everybody fed up enough that they'd march down to their local government offices and demand change, just like those guys had done. To get everybody fed up enough that they'd rise up against their local overlords: the corporations that owned everything these days and kept everybody working as long as there was any work left to be done. Nobody needed us anymore because nobody needed anything anymore. Everything was automated now; self-driving cars drove themselves down empty streets on their own time schedules and charged themselves by plugging themselves into power sockets when they felt low on energy reserves; robots cleaned our houses while we slept; machines took care of the crops while we slept too. Hell, even sex was being taken care of by machines; sex dolls that you could talk to or engage in physical activities with depending on your mood. What did people need us for? Not much is what! So we rose up; tired of being treated like cattle just because there wasn't anybody around to ask us for our two cents worth anymore.

"So what do you think?" she asked again after a while. "Should we go ahead with this plan or not?"

I didn't answer right away and she went back to looking at the ceiling for a bit before she spoke again. She still hadn't looked at me once since she started talking about this proposed plan of action half an hour ago. She had been staring at the ceiling ever since then too, acting like she wasn't even waiting for my response or anything, but I knew better than that; she'd been making faces behind her bangs and eyes closed every few minutes whenever I didn't say anything right away, so I stayed quiet longer than usual today just to observe her behavior and reflect more introsively on her proposal. When she finally started tapping her fingers on the table top impatiently, I decided it was time to address the matter at hand and prevent the conversation from devolving any further. I acquiesced: "Yeah, sure, why not? Let's go ahead with your idea." And then I turned around in my chair and watched my wife feign disappointment until I let out a big sigh (which is what she wanted me to do), and muttered: "I don't know why you can't just tell me what we're doing!" (which was also what she wanted me to say).

"Well... Don't you think it's nice in here?" asked Angie suddenly, looking around our living room as though noticing for the first time how lovely everything looked these days when everything functioned as it should (which wasn't often). There were no cracks in the walls anymore; no holes where pipes had burst or wires had shorted out decades ago from roof leaks or faulty wiring somewhere else within these old wooden walls of ours; no peeling wallpaper or chipped paintwork anywhere either, all thanks to our robot housekeeper who also made sure there were no bugs crawling around inside these walls either! We'd gotten her for free from one of those big corporate stores outside town, along with all kinds of other items which used to cost money but which nobody needed anymore either. So, all things considered, our situation wasn't too bad.

"Maybe," I said slowly, letting out another sigh while leaning forward in my chair towards whoever happened to be sitting across from me at that moment during one of my weekly poker games down at Wolfie's Bar & Grill over on Main Street downtown (where else?) – "maybe we should try playing normal cards again sometime!" But then suddenly Angie jumped up out of her chair as though she had been startled by an unexpected and acute