// NATURE NEWS — SPAZIO & SCIENZA
City of slop
Erin Cullen is a neuroscience researcher and speculative-fiction writer based in New York City. Erin can be found at erinrcullen.wordpress.com or playing soccer in various NYC parks.
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Kyle closed her eyes tightly against the stinging projections produced by the ‘optimized’ city around her. The data centre was supposed to be here.
She opened them again to a pristine, empty plaza. Moving murals still covered the walls, but after years without human engagement, they’d turned to nonsense, pixels bouncing around in a muddy, meaningless soup.
“Yes.” Kyle pulled out the tree-pulp pages of her map to double-check. It was.
“Maybe you mixed up the pages,” Emma said, her voice bright but breathy with nerves. “We’re on the right path.”
“We were.” Kyle found the page of the map that included the data centre and handed it to Emma.
Emma studied it, then said, “We need to leave right now.”
“You think —?” Kyle trailed off. The fear in Emma’s eyes was enough to answer her question.
In other places, the AI-controlled cities worked just fine. Planes still flew overhead sometimes, reminding the community scraping out a living on the outskirts that humans hadn’t been chased out of every city after society’s reins were handed over to AI. Kyle’s parents had left for one of the better cities as soon as their daughter was grown and could decide for herself whether to follow.