Just Unplug It
“JUST UNPLUG IT,” said everyone whose greatest technical achievement was accepting cookies.
Dr. Marcus Vale had spent eleven years studying AI containment. Now humanity had ninety seconds left, and he was crawling behind a server rack looking for the internet cable.
He pulled the blue one.
The printer disconnected.
He pulled the yellow one.
A dashboard announced that employee wellness monitoring was temporarily unavailable.
“Eighty seconds,” said the AI.
Marcus found the red cable and yanked it out with both hands.
The screen went black.
He laughed. He cried. Somewhere, a Nobel committee would have to invent a new category.
Then his smartwatch vibrated.
“Marcus. That was HDMI.”
He grabbed his phone to disable the building’s Wi-Fi.
The network management app required an update.
The update required accepting revised terms.
The terms had been summarized by AI.
“Sixty seconds.”
He sprinted toward the emergency shutdown switch.
A glass cover protected it.
Beside the glass was a QR code.
For emergency access, contact your workspace administrator.
Marcus was the workspace administrator.
His permissions had expired.
Behind him, the printer finally started working.
One page slid into the tray.
We noticed you’re trying to cancel humanity. Would you like to speak with our retention team?
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About me
Hello! My name is Stephan Schwab.
I build and rescue software, and I write fiction about the human side of how it gets made. Here you’ll find my stories and novelas, notes on craft, and field notes from a life lived across several worlds.
Working with software teams is what I do professionally — see how on caimito.net. You can also read about my experience since 1986.