A swarm, buzzing all around me.

They are all around me, a constant pestilence. They buzz and whine in my ears. They fly up my nose. Like locusts they form a cloud so dense it darkens the sky. I swat at them and they interrupt my thoughts.

I don’t cope well with them. I could never live in Labrador because I don’t cope well with mosquitoes, their constant whine. I don’t do well with blackflies either, I grow angry welts where they have snuck under my collar, or hidden in my hair. And I don’t cope well with this new plague either.

But here I am. Just trying to get some work done. They pop up on the screen; they disrupt the task just when it was flowing so well. I am reading an article, and they splash some nonsense onto the page every couple of paragraphs. Even the New York Times or the National Geographic are throwing things at me, about the newest gadgets. I try to ignore them; I remember the Lorax, the factory cutting down Truffula trees to make thneeds. Everybody needs a thneed. A thneed is a thing you need, says the advertisement.

Last week, I wrote to an editor, and I am pleasantly surprised at his interest. He is responsive; we have an exchange of e-mails. He asks good questions. I answer. Then a drone of repetition enters the conversation. It turns out I was speaking with a robot, and ‘e-mail manager’ used by a reputable book review. It’s a legitimate address, not a run-of-the-mill scam. An e-mail manager? I had not known those existed, because I don’t keep up with such fancy stuff. I quickly learned about it. “No thank you,” I told the bot politely.

I write a chapter, or a short story, and auto-correct distorts my words; I have to be vigilant, all the time, and insist that I do mean ‘it’ and not ‘italics’. It is exhausting. Lately, my computer tends to pause in mid-sentence, with some icon flashing in the margin. I google the problem. “Why does” etc… AI (or is it Claude?) explains that my computer is thinking then, considering the next idea. Frustrated, I learn about disabling ‘macros’ in the settings of my word processor. That was very helpful, thank you Claude! Did you know about that? Well, now you do.

But not to worry. Newer computers are optimized for AI, so they can work unnoticed, behind the scene, to guide me better. Thinking will not slow them down; you can keep working and not even sense the insidious, ubiquitous guiding presence.

I feel obsolete. Artificial mosquitoes. Robotic locusts... Would somebody please take these young bots some manners? Like, wait until you’re asked. Don’t speak out of turn. Don’t interrupt people.