It’s week two and we no longer dare go upstairs. We hear “them” thumping around up there, trying to get out. We’re safe on the ground floor for now as they still have yet to master doorknobs and stairs.

Leaving the house to escape is not an option. We watched in horror through the kitchen window as one poor sap tried. He made a dash for his car, but a hulking upright California King, amazingly nimble for its size, caught up with him. The massive grey-pink slab fell on him, squashing him like a bug.

Other devices are joining in. The last time we tried the smart water filter, it dispensed a concoction so foul, we have been reduced to drinking straight from the tap.

The horror.

We cannot rely on anything electronic. The TV keeps us confused by feeding us fabricated news — something about the White House being demolished? Obviously AI — so we have no idea if this is a global phenomenon or whether it only affects the microverse of our suburban cul-de-sac.

I am scratching this memoir into the kitchen counter with a knife, as the iPad was plotting death to humanity even before we got it out of the box. The point is, if anyone ever reads this, I hope it serves as a warning to future, less stupid generations.

Whoever you are, heed my warning carefully: Whatever you do, don’t even dream of buying an AWS cloud-connected bed!💀

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By donating to KDE, you ensure we can continue bringing you apps and environments that keep you in control, protect your privacy, and refrain from killing you in your sleep.

I came to a village. The path I was following became a muddy road between the ramshackle huts. I saw few people, but they too were twisted and gnarled, most only able to walk with two canes.

They eyed me suspiciously, and did not respond when I greeted them. I moved on hastily, soon reaching the northernmost limit of the heath.

De bladeren werden opnieuw dikker toen ik een hut ontdekte en een oude man die een pijp rookte op de drempel.

“From the city are ye?” he called out.

“Yes", I answered. “Beautiful place, this is.”

“The sun must’ve affected yer eyes if ye think that”, he laughed. “Here, come and have a drink, and let yer wits catch up with ye.”

Weary from walking, the prospect of some local moonshine became more appealing.

I asked him what had brought the area to such a dismal state.

“There been this meteorite, see? It done crashed down on ole Whateley’s property there yonder,” he pointed vaguely back the way I had come.

He told me how something had seeped out into the ground, poisoning the well’s water and then the bodies and minds of the farm’s inhabitants.

The wife had been institutionalized, the son was running around wild and naked somewhere in the woods. Old Whateley himself had been found wandering the empty farmhouse, gibbering in a foreign tongue. As the poison also made his skin go dark, the agents of the law assumed he was Mexican and shipped him off to El Salvador.

“It’s a-growin’, that thing the meteorite gone left behind, see? It eats at the trees and the bugs and the beasts.”

He shuddered.

“Really?!” I gasped.

“Nah, man! You city folk will believe any old crap. There’s an e-waste landfill upstream. A few years back, when Windows 11 stopped working on people’s computers, they dumped 50 thousand old computers there. They ran ’em over with bulldozers and everything so nobody could take ’em home. Cadmium, see? That crap’s in the river, the air, everywhere, and, well…” He gestured towards the heath and shrugged.

“Still,” he said, as he refilled my tumbler, “it could’ve been worse.”

“How so?”

“The next town over is getting a Meta AI data center,” he chuckled. “We’re screwed for a generation, but those suckers are screwed forever”.

I refrained from telling him that Windows 13 would be released within the year. 💀

KDE takes on tech pollution through its KDE Eco project. Not only are we reducing the carbon footprint of running software, but we also work to make sure all our software will work on low-powered and supposedly obsolete machines.

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