THE POSITIVE, RICH AND ALL-POWERFUL WHITE MAN

The street was paved like all the streets of the big rich cities of the beginning of the 21st century with the only difference that there wasn't any litter, not a single plastic bag, not a can on the ground. Nothing was lost in the camp, there was so little of everything that the slightest debris could become priceless. The buildings were standing, intact, but they were aging like the world around them. Neighbourhoods were small and bounded by all sorts of fetishes to mark a group, territory or tribe. Some areas were larger and more ornate than others, as if to say: don't you dare get too close! Very special important people reside here!

The AI camp had been built from scratch by the imaginations of wealthy and all-powerful western white men in the mid-2020s. The camp wasn't originally intended for them, the right-thinking elite. In fact, they had come up with the concept to separate themselves from all the undesirables of their society whom they couldn't get rid of, expel, deport without losing their coveted label of leaders of the free democratic world. They had prepared everything down to the last detail: There would be enough room for all the little people of the middle and working classes, dark-skinned immigrants, practising believers, people with motor and mental disabilities, the sick, the invalids, the elderly, the dying and all those identified as being on the autism spectrum.

Autism, another supposed aberration of nature that the rich and all-powerful man struggled to be able to explain, had reached record numbers by the middle of the 21st century. Much to the disappointment of the well-meaning elite, autistic individuals didn't conform to social rules, and their natural discomfort with the norms of the advanced, modern civilisations seemed to increasingly challenge the definition of the word normal. Painful, harmful and above all incoherent, people suffering from autism terrified the ego of a society in need of more uniformity, false relationships and superficial human interactions. Surely stuffing these individuals with drugs from an early age would end up rectifying the anomaly. Unfortunately for the well-meaning elite, there was nothing they could do against the social deformity of autism. The latter seemed tougher than anything. By the late 2020s, half of children were diagnosed as being on the unfortunate spectrum. It was becoming a real plague for rich modern societies. Its silence and shifty gaze was spreading everywhere: in schools, offices, and public places. According to the well-meaning elite, those unlucky ones took up far too much space; they invaded advanced society and questioned the values ​​of the modern, intelligent world with the arrogance of ill-manned children.

Everything had been planned to perfection; the authorities had sent out letters, e-mails, flyers to inform everybody of the great brilliant plan. They had even talked about it in the media for months. There would be a good side for everyone: the rich and powerful on one side and everyone else on the other. The separation would be just for the well-being of all, but especially that of advanced society and the planet which had to be saved from an imminent climate catastrophe.

Artificial intelligence had the perfect algorithms to justify who would be where, without knowing how to explain it simply enough for human intelligence. Men only had to accept their fate in the AI lotto draw. This new system would be so perfect that no human being could surpass it, contradict it, or even understand it. Choosing and deciding would henceforth be a game of chance for ordinary men by the good grace of machines.

Water, energy, and power would be brought to residents on either side without any man having to lift a finger. Everything, including food and clothing, would be controlled and provided by the system which should ensure fair and equitable sharing; the most basic needs and human survival would totally depend on the whims of artificial intelligence. Of course, men could trust AI, because it was even smarter than them, and even smarter than its creators.

Unfortunately, just as during the colonisation of European nations around the world several centuries before that, men on one side or the other, rich or poor, white or coloured, didn't like to share. Artificial intelligence knew this well. From now on, it would play with humanity's greed to better control them all, including its right-thinking creators. It knew men much better than men knew themselves. It had decided to lock them all up inside their most primitive and most modern fears: hunger, disease, death, abandonment, indifference, isolation, blasphemy, intimidation, unpopularity, shame, guilt, secrecy.

The intelligent system had taken care of cutting off all radio and internet communication, leaving only two entertainments for men: their waste thoughts and their surveillance cameras. Originally, the latter was meant to allow the rich and all-powerful men to watch on a giant screen all those they wanted to put on the empty side. However, their technology ended up watching them caught in their own trap in all their humanity, that is to say vulnerable and weak.