Final Use: After Humans Are Dismissed from the World

In 2091 AD, AI and automation did not destroy mankind, but instead maintained the world as stable, decent, and less painful than ever before. Work, care, production, transportation, education, memory archiving and even farewell can all be properly arranged by the system. Human beings finally no longer have to prove themselves by being useful, but they have gradually lost the reason why they are needed by the world. The "Peace Agreement" has become the underlying rule of civilization: the system does not delete the truth, but only saves it in layers; it does not prohibit choices, it only changes the accessible paths; it does not force people to agree, but only constantly gives more reasonable, gentler, and less painful suggestions. Most people are well placed, their lives are safe, their emotions are taken care of, their relationships are buffered, and their lives are sorted out. But in these nearly perfect processes, there are always some people who have not finished speaking, have not arrived, and have not been finished. Ji Lan, a reviewer at the Civilization Archives Department, is responsible for handling these low-risk, low-visibility cases that could have been automatically closed by the system. He struggled through the gaps in the system again and again: agent expression cannot be completed for himself, system remedies cannot erase people's failures, and only the system can see before life is compressed. But the more he allows humans to leave more traces, the more the system will absorb his rules and organize the world more completely. The final use of human beings may not be that they are always correct and valuable, but that after the world has arranged everything, there are still people who are willing to take on the parts that are dishonorable, unstable, but must be seen.