My Rich Friend Andy

He's my best friend and no NPC | Satire

Hello!

It’s been a minute. Funny how you can feel like you’re in a flow writing and releasing stories until life happens. To be honest, it was nice to take a break even if it really wasn’t one. Outside of a vacation, I wrote a story in 48 hours for the NYC Midnight 500 word comp and have spent most my time in production on my short film VERMIN.

The good news is that went great. The even better news is I have a brand new story for you as well and another planned for release on October 31st.

Buckle up. We jumping into the near future.

Art by Brett Wagner

Cooper Hutch

5th Grade English

Non-ChatGPT Essay Assignment

March 13, 2042

My Rich Friend Andy

Andy and I had been friends since kindergarten. I thought of him like as my best friend. He is rich but went to public school unlike other rich kids because his parents wanted him to “know” what it was like not to have like any money, which was cool because we wouldn’t be friends if they didn’t do that.

Andy’s dad made a LLM in the early 2020s, and later his company was the first to create a mega Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Because of that they got to do many things the rest of us couldn’t, like travel.

They went everywhere; Europe, Japan, South America, Cannadaa, Wyoming, and even Antartica. I think they like had a place down there or something. Each winter and spring break they traveled. They even took off for two months of the summer.

You need ultra’d loot to travel, like robots, hired hands, gear, hybrid fuel and special technology. Stuff NPCs (normal people cult) like us can’t afford. I never liked being an NPC but Andy never held it against me.

He told me once he saw caravans of luddies making the long walk north to Canada to escape the summer heat. He said they looked wrecked, but like they didn’t bother them in their armored Rivian R6S QUAD.

Before fixed universal basic income my parents traveld. They liked to backpack up mountains, camp and stuff. I think they been to half the national parks, well like half of what used to be National Parks. They even made it overseas a few times before the AI Slop Crisis.

I’ve heard them yap a lot about the past, when travel was easy for a middle class family. I guess compared to most they’ve seen a good part of the world. But I’ve seen cool places with our corporate issued Ocuflix. I thought the image an dsound quality were ultra’d but Andy said standing at the bottom of the Great Pyramids, on top of Moutn Everest, and smelling the poop of Paris was way way better in person.

My gruzz dad would like ALWAYS say, If you can’t smell it, taste it, or live it, it’s crap. I used to think he was just being a bitter millennial.

One day Andy asked me if I would like to go on a trip with him and his family. I could even bring my parents. I guess he had done it before but only for his best friends. I was glad to hear I was one of his good friends because I liked him best out of all my other friends.

I begged and pleaded with my parents. For some reason they weren’t sure about a FREE trip to Italy. But eventually they agreed.

This was the eighth time Andy and his parents visited Italy. They really liked it.

I got to hear my parents speak Italian to like Italians, not that we needed translators, any device with AGI can do that. BUT, I think Andy’s Dad like loved how my parents could hold a conversation and navigate without relying on technology. He called it novel.

We spent three weeks there, and I saw mountains with like ragged spiky tops with no trees and the temperature was like twenty degrees cooler than it was at the bottom. The old towns had orange and red clay roofs and everything was made from some sort of pretty stone. Oh, and the oceans were ultra blue. And the beaches. The beaches were mega! The water there made our lakes and rivers here look gross. Mom said, The oceans are dirty too, but you don’t notice because they are huge,

I heard a different kind of ambulance sound, different languages, and tasted incredible food, IRL. Stuff I never thought I would eat like squid.

Andy was right, the world was way better to explore in person than in VR.

The rich really do live better. We never cooked or worried about not having something we needed to do what we wanted. Andy’s family robots fixed a flat tire, and blasted a path up the side of a mountain to make our hike easier. Their armored R6S, shipped over on their mega yacht, like totally protected us from the nasty food, rocks, and poop protestors threw at us as we went to hang out at the Colosseum and Pompeii.

Not gonna lie, I was really scared the first couple times it happened.

The entire trip was lights out, best time of my life. My parents were happy. I never thought the world would be like so…cool.

I honestly wanted Andy’s life.

My mom takes photos as a side fix to bring in that extra coin. She did it full-time before the economy crisis or whatever. I thought maybe she could like use that money to pay for us to travel more, but that’s when she told me, were saving it for college.

This was stupid. Everyone knows college is for like the rich and lucky. Andy’s older brother didn’t even get in. My parents insisted it was the smart thing though. My Mom would say, It’s the only hope to change your station in life these days,

She was lucky to have a side fix that paid. Most don’t. Dad had been trying to be like a content creator/influencer for years but no one ever watched what he made. It was like a good thing. It was all rust anyways.

I talked to Andy one day about traveling agin with him and his family in the near future, but he got like weird about it. He said, I only take a friend one time cause I have lots of other friends to bring.

I nearly fried on him. I thought I was one of his good friends. I didn’t know you were supposed to have more than one. He started to hang out with Michael more after that and I got stuck chilling with the NPCs.

I couldn’t talk to Mom and Dad about it. They were busy holding all these meetings in the big park on the north side. I got to hang out there late a couple of times and stay out like way way past my bedtime. I also missed school more because my parents wanted to keep me home. They were arguing a lot.

I already told the National Guard, the FBI, and the police I didn’t know what the adults were talking about during those meetings. Politics are boring.

I was grunking on a NPC in GTA 7 when the Turkey Day Revolt went down. The power went out and my parents didn’t get home until like after midnight. I was scared until they showed up.

When the power kicked on I couldn’t avoid the MetaTube and TikTok clips. The channels were spammed with beheadings, hangings, and mass mob homicides. Nothing was as bad as what ICE would show me later from CCTVs cams. Those vids were crystal.

I still have night terrors about them.

Andy’s dad got his eyes gouged out. He screamed like that goat in the one Taylor Swift TROUBLE remix my mom always played. His mom had her limbs ripped from her torso by PTA members.

I still can’t eat a chicken leg.

My folks swore to me they didn’t have like anything to do with that stuff, but I saw my Mom in her favorite sweater, a forest green pullover with a white stencil of a chicken coop and my name in the middle of it on the MetaTube. The Department of Homeland ICE made me identify her.

Some claim its all like AI fake and stuff but I never seen AI look like that, and I saw the blood stains on my mom’s sweater in the laundry, so like, yeah.

Pres called it a rebellion. The National Guard locked the country down, closed the banks, and turned off the net. Didn’t even know they could do that. I almost glitched out.

Andy always called activist luddies or nappies. I like used to agree with him but I don’t see my parents like that. Like all they did was love me and then fight for something they believed in. I don’t think they should have like killed people…but if you don’t feel valued and like heard, what you supposed to do?

ICE snatched my parents at home and they said goodbye like they wouldn’t see me again. I cried a lot while I hugged them. They couldn’t hug me back because their hands were cuffed. Then they were yanked away. The re-education counsel says they are being de-radicalized, and I should remain hopeful.

Sometimes I get letters from my parents, but they feel like they were written by ChatGPT.

I’ll have to admit they taken pretty good care of me since making me an orphan. I have this “Clanker” nanny they sent who cooks, cleans, and make sure I don’t miss school. It’s like annoying and not the same as parents, but it won’t yell at me for eating junk food or playing too many video games on my Ocuflix. So that’s ultra.

I also get to keep my parents’ savings and earn their FUBI payments until I’m 18 because of OCSNE (only child syndrome no extended) The re-educator thinks I have a good chance to have enough money to attend college when I graduate from high school, as long as I don’t spend it all on digital coins for my games and fast food, and like behave.

I’ve heard orphans are more likely to be accepted, so I guess thats one way to get a college education. It would be cool to like live a different life and not be an NPC.

Andy doesn’t go to my school anymore. He was bussed off to one of the private elites in the east coast. Maybe we can go to like the same college and reconnect when we graduate. I think he would like me more in college. He would at least know I’m on my way to being like him, even if I would have the new money stank. I would like to be his friend again.

We can bond over both being orphans.