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The snow outside was the same shade of pale grey as the concrete blocks that lined Oslo’s People’s Sector Seven. Inside the Productivity Hub, Comrade Morten stared at the dim glow of his workstation.
A red icon pulsed in the corner: “AI Assistance Required by Order of the Central Efficiency Committee.” Morten sighed. He’d been a woodworker before the Great Automation Integration, before the Party had decreed that every citizen must harness state-approved AI to achieve optimal output. Now, every design he made was “enhanced” by Algorithm 14-K — smoothing lines, optimizing cuts, trimming away his individuality.
“Comrade,” came a voice from behind. Morten turned to see Comrade Bjørn, draped in the standard-issue fur-trimmed coat, his breath steaming in the cold air of the underheated hall. “You’re falling behind quota,” Bjørn said, his voice both concerned and sharp. “The Party notices such things.” “I am meeting my numbers,” Morten protested. “Mostly.” Bjørn’s eyes narrowed. “Mostly is not enough. Have you forgotten Alexei Stakhanov? The coal miner who extracted fourteen times his quota in a single shift? The Party remembers him, even now. He is the model of the New Working Class Hero — not because he was forced, but because he believed.” Morten tapped the AI prompt reluctantly. Blueprints blossomed instantly on his screen — impossibly precise, impossibly fast. “The AI designs everything now,” he muttered. “What’s left for me to believe in?”
Bjørn stepped closer, lowering his voice. “You believe in the result. Every chair you make, every beam you cut — they build the communal future. It doesn’t matter if your hands or the algorithm’s hands shape them. We are one machine, Comrade. You, me, and the AI — all tools of the Party.” Through the frosted window, the red aurora shimmered in the polar sky, cast by the orbital solar reflectors. It painted the snow crimson, as if the whole land bled for the collective.
Morten looked at the glowing blueprints. Somewhere deep inside, a stubborn human pride whispered that he could do better without the machine. But another part of him — the part that wanted to survive the coming inspection — began to work faster. He pressed the Accept button. In the background, Bjørn’s voice echoed softly, almost like a hymn: “Production is devotion, Comrade. And devotion is forever.”
