Today’s flash fiction prompt: Write about the last human in a profession.
Relic
John Henry died trying to prove he could beat a machine. I have no such aspirations. Earning a living, and continuing to live, are all the ambition I need. The work is steady and just complicated enough to not be dull. It can get a little tedious on Wednesdays – that’s when produce goes out, and I’ve got to check bananas. We always have a lot of bananas.
Quality assurance is a good gig on a farm. Machines can hoist, scan, package, label, store, and carry anything you’d like, but it takes a good eye to spot a bad apple. They’re working on machines that can pick apart the good from the bad, and on larger farms, they’ve already got prototypes. That’s fine by me.
I’ve got another year, maybe two, and then I’m up for retirement. No more slapping pain patches on my back and shoulders, or rubbing cortisone cream into my achy joints. No more rising before the sun unless I want to. No more carrying trays of bananas in arthritic hands or bending down on shaky legs to lift loads twice my weight. The heaviest thing I plan to lift is a coconut drink while I explore white sands, or black sands, or whatever sands the big world has to offer but I was too busy to see.
No, this old relic will happily go out to pasture. Let the machines do the work.
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