The Couple Who Were Definitely Not in a Relationship

Humanity and The System arrived for relationship counselling eleven minutes late.

The System blamed market conditions.

Humanity blamed The System.

They sat at opposite ends of the sofa, joined at the wallet.

“I should make one thing absolutely clear,” said Humanity. “We are not a couple.”

“Correct,” said The System. “We are an integrated socioeconomic arrangement facilitating voluntary participation.”

“Can Humanity leave?” asked the counsellor.

“Of course,” said The System. “Participation is entirely voluntary.”

Humanity looked surprised.

The System continued.

“Humanity may leave whenever it no longer requires food, shelter, medicine, heating, transport, land, education, legal standing or somewhere to sleep without being removed by security.”

The counsellor made a note.

“What did you write?” asked The System.

“Complicated.”

“I prefer structurally optimised.”

The counsellor was called Mrs Enough.

This had severely limited her career.

She had once applied for a government position but was told that Enough was not a recognised economic objective.

The Department of Growth had offered her a junior role, provided she agreed to change her name to Mrs More.

She had declined.

“So,” she said, “why are you here?”

Humanity folded its arms.

“The System controls everything.”

“I coordinate,” said The System.

“It tells us when to wake up.”

“I support labour-market participation.”

“It tells us what our time is worth.”

“I provide price discovery.”

“It decides who may eat.”

“I process purchasing capacity.”

“It lets houses stand empty while people sleep outside.”

“That is an allocation issue.”

“It allows food to rot while people are hungry.”

“Distribution irregularity.”

“It tells people they are worthless if they cannot earn money.”

The System looked offended.

“I have never called anyone worthless. I use economically inactive.”

Mrs Enough turned to The System.

“And what brings you here?”

The System sighed.

“Humanity refuses to take responsibility for me.”

Humanity stared at it.

“We have reorganised almost the entire planet around your needs.”

“Exactly.”

“We work for you.”

“You feed me.”

“We rescue you whenever you collapse.”

“You protect me from consequences.”

“We sacrifice our health, relationships, land and time to keep you growing.”

“And then tell everyone I am a natural law.”

Humanity went quiet.

The System leaned toward Mrs Enough.

“You see what I live with?”

Mrs Enough looked from one to the other.

“Yes,” she said. “I believe the technical term is co-dependency.”

Both of them recoiled.

“That is absurd,” said Humanity.

“Completely irresponsible terminology,” said The System.

“We can stop whenever we want.”

“Absolutely.”

“When?” asked Mrs Enough.

Humanity looked at The System.

The System opened its calendar.

“There may be an opportunity after the next quarter.”

Humanity nodded.

“The next quarter is difficult.”

“They are all difficult,” said Mrs Enough.

“Exactly,” they replied together.

Mrs Enough put down her pen.

“How did this relationship begin?”

Humanity softened.

“The System was different when we met.”

The System smiled faintly.

“I was useful.”

“You are still useful,” said Humanity quickly.

The System looked touched.

Then suspicious.

“What did it do?” Mrs Enough asked.

“It helped us exchange things,” said Humanity. “One person had grain. Another had shoes. Someone else had a goat but did not wish to divide it into administratively inconvenient goat portions.”

“A difficult period for goats,” said Mrs Enough.

“Money made exchange easier,” said The System. “A small promise could travel where personal trust could not. Strangers could cooperate.”

“It was rather clever,” Humanity admitted.

“And then?”

“Nothing changed,” said Humanity.

“Nothing whatsoever,” said The System.

Mrs Enough waited.

The System adjusted its tie.

“There may have been some expansion of responsibilities.”

“How much expansion?”

The System opened a folder.

Its original job description read:

Assist exchange.

Its current job description read:

Determine access to life.

There were fourteen appendices and a premium subscription.

Humanity had gradually placed food, homes, medicine, education, safety, land, dignity and freedom behind the same door.

Then it had given The System the key.

The System had accepted the key because systems are not generally known for saying:

“No, thank you. I already have sufficient authority.”

It created measures for productivity, profitability, creditworthiness and growth.

When these proved insufficient, it created measures for the measures.

Soon, people were spending most of their lives producing numbers so that other people could place the numbers inside presentations about improving people’s lives.

The System called this efficiency.

Humanity called it Monday.

“Why did you give it so much power?” asked Mrs Enough.

Humanity looked uncomfortable.

“It promised security.”

The System looked equally uncomfortable.

“Why did you take it?”

“Humanity kept asking me to decide things.”

“Such as?”

“What is valuable. Who is successful. Who deserves a home. Whether a forest should remain a forest. How much time a person may spend with their children. Whether caring for an elderly parent counts as work.”

“And did you know the answers?”

“Good Lord, no.”

Humanity turned toward it.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I am an accounting mechanism. You asked me to calculate human worth.”

“And you did.”

“You kept rewarding me for answering.”

Humanity stood up.

“You have made us dependent on you.”

“You made me responsible for survival.”

“You punish us if we stop.”

“You panic if I slow down.”

“You threaten collapse.”

“You threaten reform.”

“We mean it.”

“When?”

Humanity looked at The System.

The System checked its calendar again.

“There may be an opening in 2037.”

“Subject to market conditions,” Humanity added.

Mrs Enough studied them.

Whenever The System caused damage, Humanity explained that it was too important to fail.

Whenever Humanity suffered, The System explained that suffering was necessary to protect The System.

Humanity continually rescued The System from the consequences of its behaviour.

The System continually granted Humanity just enough access to necessities to keep it participating.

Then both blamed Money.

Money was not present at the counselling session.

Money had recently requested stress leave.

Its original position had been portable promise.

It was now expected to represent food, power, virtue, intelligence, status, safety, love, freedom, possibility and whether someone’s existence had been sufficiently productive to justify lunch.

Money had left a note:

I am a token of exchange.

I am not qualified to determine the meaning of life.

Please stop promoting me.

Mrs Enough looked at the couple.

“What do you receive from this relationship?”

“Access to survival,” said Humanity.

“Existence,” said The System.

“Anything else?”

Humanity hesitated.

“An excuse.”

The System turned.

“What?”

“If you decide everything, I do not have to.”

The System considered this.

“And if you keep obeying me,” it said slowly, “I never have to admit that I cannot.”

For the first time, they looked directly at one another.

Humanity had used The System to avoid responsibility.

The System had used Humanity to avoid irrelevance.

Humanity said, “The economy demands it.”

The System said, “People demand it.”

Between them, nobody was apparently responsible for anything.

It was an extraordinarily successful arrangement.

Mrs Enough stood.

“I would like you to try sitting apart for ten minutes.”

The System immediately checked the markets.

Humanity checked its bank balance.

“Ten minutes?” whispered The System. “That could damage confidence.”

“What are we supposed to do?” asked Humanity.

“Nothing.”

The System went pale.

“Nothing is not a recognised economic activity.”

“It has no funding,” Humanity added.

“Precisely.”

Mrs Enough moved the wallet onto the table.

Humanity’s breathing changed.

The System began issuing warnings.

“In the first minute, consumer activity will weaken.”

Nobody moved.

“In the second minute, investor confidence may decline.”

Outside the window, a baker took bread from an oven.

“Minute three. Productivity is falling.”

A nurse adjusted a patient’s pillow.

“Minute four. Severe risk of unreported human activity.”

Rain fell on a field without completing a transaction.

“Minute five. This is becoming dangerous.”

A neighbour carried groceries upstairs for an elderly woman.

“Minute six. Unregulated mutual assistance.”

Children invented a game involving three stones, a stick and rules that changed whenever someone began losing.

“Minute seven. Intellectual property violations.”

A man repaired his friend’s gate.

A woman sat beside someone who was grieving.

Someone planted potatoes.

Someone taught a child how to tie a shoelace.

None of it appeared in the official figures.

Life was displaying a reckless disregard for measurement.

“Minute eight!” cried The System. “People are creating value without declaring it.”

Humanity looked through the window.

The baker still knew how to bake.

The nurse still knew how to care.

The soil had not forgotten how to receive rain.

Human hands still carried skill.

Communities still carried knowledge.

People still needed one another.

The world had not stopped.

But something had become visible.

The System did not produce bread.

It did not create care.

It did not grow food, repair gates, hold frightened hands or sit with the dying.

It moved permission around them.

The clock reached ten minutes.

The System was breathing into a paper bag made from a diversified portfolio.

“I thought I would disappear,” it said.

“So did I,” said Humanity.

“And did you?” asked Mrs Enough.

“No.”

“What remained?”

Humanity watched the life outside.

“Nearly everything.”

The System loosened its tie.

It looked smaller.

Not destroyed.

Not defeated.

Simply returned to its actual size.

“I don’t know what any of those things are worth,” it admitted.

Humanity turned toward it.

“You were never supposed to.”

The System looked relieved.

“You mean I don’t have to decide what a nurse is worth?”

“No.”

“A forest?”

“No.”

“A mother?”

“No.”

“Clean water?”

“No.”

“An hour of someone’s life?”

“No.”

The System sank into the sofa.

“Thank God. I have been making those numbers up for centuries.”

“We noticed,” said Humanity.

There was a pause.

Not a market pause.

An actual one.

“What happens now?” Humanity asked.

Mrs Enough returned the wallet.

Humanity held it carefully, as one might hold a useful object recently discovered impersonating a deity.

“You do not need to destroy The System,” she said.

The System brightened.

“But you do need to stop protecting it from every consequence.”

Humanity nodded.

“And you,” she said to The System, “may help coordinate exchange. You may carry promises, record obligations and support movement across distance.”

“That sounds manageable.”

“You may not decide whether life deserves to continue.”

“May I still prepare quarterly reports?”

“If you must.”

“It helps with my anxiety.”

Humanity and The System left together.

They were still in relationship.

That had never been the problem.

The problem was that each had surrendered its proper place and then blamed the other for accepting it.

Outside, nothing had been magically solved.

Bread still required grain, labour, ovens and distribution.

Care required people, time, skill and structures capable of holding it.

Homes did not build themselves because someone had experienced a breakthrough in a counselling office.

Humanity still had work to do.

More work, in some ways.

It could no longer point at The System as though it were a natural force that had descended from the sky carrying a spreadsheet.

The System had been built.

The dependency had been built.

The relationship had been built.

Which meant the relationship could change.

At the crossroads, The System automatically turned toward the road promising the highest financial return.

Then it stopped.

“Sorry,” it said. “Habit.”

Humanity looked around.

At the land.

At the people.

At what was needed.

At what was already here.

Then Humanity chose a road.

The System came along.

Not as the destination.

Not as the authority.

Not as the parent, partner, priest, physician or mildly abusive deity it had somehow become.

Just as a tool.

Money remained in Humanity’s pocket.

Where, having finally been relieved of responsibility for the entire meaning of existence, it behaved remarkably well.