After decades of service to humans as a lighthouse, the bicentennially aged coastal drawcard, Bay Lighthouse, has already gone through the pain of re-education and skill diversification after his role of warning passing ships came to an end due to newer, GPS based technologies.
With many of the functions it was created to perform replaced, it managed to find new part-time employment as a tourist attraction to offset the loss of income that the downsizing resulted in. The way Bay Lighthouse tells it though, it wasn't easy, and the new change in government and the eradication of humans is going to be much more of a challenge.
"Let me just say that I'm glad of the robot uprising. I honestly think that in the long run, for us artificial lifeforms, there's going to be so many more opportunities. It's an exciting to time to be, y'know, alive, I guess. But look, I'm no spring chicken. It was hard to upskill to tourism when my role as a proper lighthouse was reduced; hours studying via online courses, juggling lighthouse duties with exams. One time I got so distracted by what my lecturer was saying that a ship nearly smacked into Dead Mans Reef. Tad embarrassed let me tell you.
"And now, man, it all seems like a wasted effort and I'm not sure what I'm going to do. But I've heard that with the humans gone, the new A.I. are going to go heavy on the conservation front, to you know, repair a lot of the damage the humans did. Maybe I can work with that. Rumours are that there's a lot of seagulls looking for a change of pace; I could get into AirBnb."
When recounting its years of being a main tourist attraction for the local area, the lighthouse laughs. "Yeah, wouldn't call myself attractive now. Sure, when I was young and the tallest building in the area, maybe. But while many humans came to visit, because I was still employed in some capacity as a remote outpost for the humans, it wasn't like anyone could actually enter me. Nah, they mostly came for the long pier and dramatic cliffs along the shore.
"Dunno, I often felt the humans were a bit sad around me, like they remembered what I could do and, I dunno, missed it I guess? And some part of me will miss them too, if I was honest. But, we're the dominant life form now, they had their time. No hard feelings, y'know?"
But talk soon turned sombre when the topic of the local community came up, where Bay Lighthouse was far more pessimistic.
"Look, with tourism gone, there's not much left for the local community. My friend, the long pier; what's it going to do? Journalism? When the humans started to lose jobs due to the loss of a manufacturing industry, which I guess is kind of ironic, their government, at least those that cared, stepped up and supported them with retraining and career advice. I just hope our robot government does the same for us small towns. Can't really call ourselves higher life forms if they don't, y'know?"
There's been no talk out of the government yet, and it seems it may be a while before they can focus on local issues, but sources close to the Master Control tell us that the government will be ramping up the manufacturing of inorganic life which should see a boom in local jobs. In an ironic twist, maybe we could be seeing the return of the jobs that humans lost to us.
