Victor Alberto Bueno Marichal: 96°F

96°F

The combine reached the electric fence before the trench and went into hibernation to save energy. More than one hundred and fifty thousand hectares of the best agricultural land in the world were now empty.

Plowing had already begun on the other side of the plantation, the last transport had not considered necessary to unload her of what was left in its small storage, and it was surely already on its way to the next plantation where it would harvest, which was less than a hundred kilometers. Surely soon she would also be harvesting in the next plantation but she had not yet received instructions, most likely there would be bills to be calculated and payed and before that harvest was officially finished large amounts would be added or subtracted from the balances of many accounts in the first national antarctic bank.

The ending balances in some accounts would decide where the combine would move, if it was profitable for her to move.

Dust from dry straw floated in the air, on the ground the ants, disoriented by the disappearance of the vegetation and the noise of the machines, took small pieces of leaves between their pincers, carried them for a moment, let them go, then grabbed others and carried them for a while in another direction. Someone without scientific knowledge about the behavior of insects could believe that they were drunk, like the peasants of old times used to get drunk at harvest festivals.

Not a single bird crossed the sky, they were prohibited during harvest time, there were no clouds either because rain was also prohibited during harvest time.

If you take a bucket of water out of a river, nothing happens. If you put a large tank in it, wait for it to fill and lift it with a large crane, turbulence is generated but nothing happens, the river continues passing.

It is actually very simple to calculate, if a river has a flow of one cubic meter of water per second and you suddenly remove ten cubic meters from it, turbulence will be generated and it will take ten seconds for everything to return to normal.

Millions of plants had been killed, the harvesters had collected their entire corpses, not only their seeds, but the stems, roots and leaves had also been compacted and transported to warehouses.

Nothing had happened, in fact the work of preparing the land for planting had already begun and in three months there would surely be another harvest and another pile of millions of corn plants would also die.

Nothing happens if you kill a lot of plants, especially if you were the one who planted them and you are also the owner of the land on which they lived.

Coal-based synthetic starch factories are much more effective and efficient, but there is a market for natural corn as many people are still willing to pay the high prices for natural corn flour.

Nothing is lost, everything is used, and something is always improved, is the motto of the Unified Church of the Prophet (UCP), which is the coalition of political parties that represent the interests of the corporations that govern the Western alliance.

The only thing that was on in the combine, abiding by strict laws about monitoring the ambient temperature, was the outside thermometer and it read 96.8°F.

In the small farms of the old days centuries ago pollination was left to chance and insects, now only the best genomes are cloned and seedlings are transplanted and will be individually pollinated in due time.

Fortunately, technology has allowed these tasks to now be carried out by robots, freeing humans from boring and poorly paid jobs because they do not add much value to the production chain.

--The Antarctic continent is the future, the future has already arrived, and we are in it.

The president leader of the western alliance stated on a screen that turned on because he was going to speak.

--We have conquered Antarctica.

He said surrounded by his civilian and military work team, all of them dressed in parkas and gloves, except him, who was wearing his favorite polar bear fur coat, while he caressed his pet penguin, in his secret underground bunker, known as “the igloo” that was more than two hundred meters below the harvester, and added:

--We have not displaced natives, we have done everything by consensus, respecting the laws of our member countries, only the best corporations operate here using the most effective and efficient technologies, if it were not for the criminal ambition of the political leaders of the eastern bloc, we could guarantee security to our citizens who wanted to live on the surface. Antarctica is ours, although the eastern block still illegally occupies less than ten percent, it all belongs to us because we saw and were able to take advantage of the opportunity first, and we are not going to allow its illegal occupation.

The invaders of the eastern bloc are like the ants that we have not yet been able to eradicate from our plantations, but with patience and also with firmness and with God's favor we will soon achieve it.

The cheers from his work team surprised him and forced him to stop his speech for a moment. He waited a bit for them to finish showing the images of robots burning giant ants with laser beams and then he said goodbye with the same usual phrase:

God is on our side and the one of our bots.

The screen was turned off to save energy and in the silence that remained only the sensors of a harvester could have detected the noise made by the drunk ants, but she was hibernating.

Li Tao Po

VABM 2/Jul/2024

https://riistas.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/96f/

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This text belongs to “The War of the Bots” which will be published in July.

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