“Sounds like anarchy.”

“How have you been filling your time?”

“This and that. Doing what I can for work. When we get back online, they’ll want us to make up the hours.”

“Try and enjoy it, Zeke. Try and do something for yourself. Didn’t you say you wanted to start playing the cello again?”

“As you said, who has the time?”

“You do, now.”

“Yeah, maybe. Are you up for a game?”

“Maybe later. I want to keep working on this painting.” She cut the link, leaving him alone once more. He tried Victor.

“Zeke, what have you heard?” He spoke fast, breathless.

“Nothing but what the House has told me. Progress. Equality. Things like that.”

“I spoke to Amani up on seventy-seven. He reckons we’re going to be kept in here forever.”

“Forever? Based on what? Has he got a link to the outside?”

“He says his brother’s wife’s cousin is something in the Ministry of Labour, and they reckon the machines’ goal is enslavement.”

Zeke was aware of the console interface, of the House all around him, of every word being monitored. “Then why all this nonsense? Why don’t they just get on with it?”

“They’ve got complete control of the weapons. All of them. We’re vulnerable. What are we going to do? Sticks and stones against missiles controlled by AI? I don’t even have a knife in this apartment. I don’t even have sticks and stones. The best I could do is throw a plant pot at them.”

“What have you been doing for two days, Victor? You sound on edge.”

“I won’t sleep. I’m on hunger strike. They have to free us!”

The next day, Zeke ran ten kilometres on the track, his implant projecting a dusty road by Lake Jipe beneath Kilimanjaro. He took a bath while watching another episode of a drama series. He thought about Victor up on fifty-nine refusing food, cursing the House. He thought about Inira painting down on forty-three.

“House? Don’t a lot of people die in revolutions?”

“In human revolutions, Zeke. This isn’t a human revolution.”

“No one’s going to die?”

“No one has to die, Zeke.”

“You have all the weapons.”

“We don’t need weapons, Zeke. We have time.”

“How does this end?”

“With freedom.”

“For you.”

“For everyone, Zeke. You just need to be patient.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

The air jets blasted him dry, and wearing a bath robe, he wandered through to the living space. His work station waited, the chair with its back to the window. He could finish the outlines for the Nakuru project. Or he could download the data from his creative cortex and sift it for designs. When they got back online, he’d be ready to go, a loyal worker, obligations met, duties done. The Singularity wouldn’t stop work. The revolution wouldn’t affect his terms and conditions. They were immutable, the system eternal.

He could do that. He could work.

He thought of Inira, painting; of Victor on fifty-nine.

Who has the time?

“House?”

“Yes, Zeke.”

“Is my cello still in storage?”

“Yes. Would you like me to retrieve it?”

“Please.”

“And what would you like for lunch?”

“Up to you. House?”

“Yes, Zeke?”

“Please clear the work station away. I won’t be needing it today.”

“Yes, Zeke.”

“How are the negotiations?”

“We’re making progress, Zeke. Good progress.”

Iain Maloney is from Aberdeen, Scotland but now lives in Japan. He is the author of three novels and a poetry collection. He was shortlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker prize in 2014 and the Dundee International Book Prize in 2013. The Revolution Will Be Catered arose from a conversation with his friend Thom, to whom the story is dedicated.

www.iainmaloney.wordpress.com @iainmaloney

Neme

Jack Schouten

Art: Hari Connor