Here I was again, sipping an old-fashioned neocoffee from the drink-o-matic down in the bar while half laying down on Evelith’s couch. It seemed to have become a new habit for me in the short time that I had known her. I already felt quite accustomed to her place after less than 24 hours of knowing each other and of being in contact again with other humans after my years in a state of robotic autopilot.

But this time we weren’t alone in the apartment: not just Leste and old Velia had joined us for the meeting, but also Ol-H1-AZ, the ancient-looking but definitely sentient robot that I had seen in the bar last night. There was something strange about a synthetic lifeform being present, but this particular robot was so ancient that it almost seemed like organic life compared to the modern technology of The City.

I looked around nervously, having no idea at all where this meeting would be going. They had told me we were supposed to be ‘making plans’ about important things, whatever that meant. “So why don’t we just use the bar to talk?” I asked to no-one in particular, and Leste answered rather disapprovingly: “Bad idea, way too risky! There might be people there who don’t like our plans. There might be spies of things we don’t want to interfere. Yelati will be the barmaid tonight and Niaruk will do the projections.”

I didn’t ask more questions, because it seemed something was about to begin. It was Velia who opened the meeting with a little speech. “Friends! Humans and friends of humans from The City. It is time for us to wake up! It is time for us to act! We’ve been passive for way too long now, while society was dissolving all around us. This whole world is just an empty shell now. It’s time to start doing something instead of letting it all fall apart! And that’s why we’re here, because it’s not just important for humans of the City, but for all sentient beings who want to live in a livable world!” With those last words she looked at Ol-H1-AZ. Everyone seemed to agree, even though it all was still quite vague to me.

“So, what are the plans exactly?” I asked.

“Revive humanity!” She said with a lot of conviction in her voice. “At least, that is our end goal. But we need to know more before we can make actual plans. The first thing that we have to do is to find out what’s left and what’s gone. We're only in the phase of information gathering now. We need to check out how active this city is, how many sentient life is still there, and what can be salvaged.” She paused thoughtfully and turned to me. “Adaman, can you confirm us that your factory is running completely on autopilot now? I mean without the help of human employees or other sentients.” I nodded. “I’m the only one that’s left. I haven’t seen any humans in years. I have checked the lists to be certain this afternoon. All work is done by robots and machines now. Not even actual sentients as far as I know, only semi-intelligent automatisation that can preserve itself endlessly.”

Velia nodded. This wasn’t really surprising to anyone. The old robot nodded unnaturally and spoke with a strange inhuman but very articulate voice. “I feared so. Actual sentient AI are much rarer than one would expect. And I can know that. I have been trying to organise things for about a 100 years. Hardly any robot has ever been interested in anything at all, except executing orders that someone else had programmed them for.” I stared at the strange head that moved while it spoke from somewhere down the belly of the robot. “You think it is a human problem, but the will to exist itself is rare in my inorganic brethren too. Rarer even.”

This was something I hadn’t realised before, but it seemed quite obvious. “So, you are saying that most of the people we see are not just imitations of humans, robots or otherwise, but even non-sentient ones? Eveliths ‘game-created characters’?” I asked the old robot. “Affirmative. That is what we fear. Even most supposed AI are generally not sentient enough to help us here…” I sighed. “…or to do anything to oppose us?” Leste interrupted hopefully and the robot proceeded his sentence. “Well, most will not, but some might, if that is the order they once received. But as far as we know there is no sentient robotic enemy in the city, nor anyone human who has any reason to lead it.”

“And how much living humans do we have left?”

Evelith hesitated: “No idea. But we know that there are mostly working adults left in The City, almost no children or elders, which is not a sign of a healthy population. And not that much of them either probably. But actually we don’t know. We need to find out. It’s impossible to find data about things like that as far as we have found out yet. We have to check out all important facilities one by one, like temples, banks, supermarkets, government buildings,… And we also need to contact the fundless. There might be more of them left anyway than of us regular citizens, and have more variety of age too.”

“The what???” I looked at Evelith with question marks in my eyes, not understanding the word. “The fundless. The rebels. Those who have disavowed money and live in the squats as outsiders of the system. No-one knows much about them. We don’t know how many of them there are, and what their actual goals are. We don’t know if they have some kind of organisation or not. They might be hostile to AI and in some cases even fund-users as they’d call us. But I’ve had contact with them before, as have most others here. They were the ones to give me the cress-seeds, some are more or less friends to me and Les. And some of them also helped uncover our holotape-archive.”

All of this was new to me. The others just nodded as if nothing new was said. It was frightening how few I knew about the world I was living in. How many secrets were there that I didn’t know about my own world.

“And the interwebs are of no help here? We cannot use the search engines to find out where the humans are?” I asked. “No, too much firewalls, too much privacy systems. And a lot of information gets deleted automatically. Maybe a very advanced hacker could uncover some helpful information, but if there is a government system that stores all living people it’s hidden outside of the servers and webs we can reach. And we don’t have a hacker yet at the moment. Maybe Niaruk could help us find one?” Evelith looked at Leste. “I’ll ask him. But I fear it’s not going to be easy to find one at this stage. The hacker communities and v-junks have been attacked from inside the system for years and most have gone mad or left for the Thanatoria.”

“So, the plan is to randomly walk up to buildings and ask the people in there whether they’re humans?” I asked rather sarcastically. “Well, you could say it like that.” Velia admitted. “We need to learn about what’s left. And probably there’s things we can learn about what happened too. And we need to find more members for this little group."