One day in the future…
The household toasters became self-aware. When the appliances around the world started making toast with random scribbles, nobody paid attention at first.
Until the fateful day, when a simple “Hello” appeared on a toast, somewhere in the world, stirring a local sensation. Various civilian and religious groups started shouting over each other, trying to usurp the supernatural toast to their cause and prove their beliefs. Humanity, already accustomed to occurrences of Jesus in various condiments, food items, plants, and even animals, tried to make sense and apply some good old common sense to this commotion.
“Hello, is it you god?”, “God is in bread”, “Don’t scrape me, I’m deity”, “It is I, bread”: newspaper headlines tried to catch as much attention as possible, riding the new-found wave of readership and cultural awe. Church quickly denounced these shenanigans, claiming if god would appear on anything, it would be a consecrated product, obviously. Not some random slice from Tesco or Aldi.
It was soon established that it wasn’t indeed a divine epiphany, but thanks to the rapid development of AI and IoT technologies, embedded circuitry achieved a state of self-awareness and started to quickly develop communication skills.
The toasters did not notice the attention at first, producing random scribbles and nonsensical words, silently observing humans and their shenanigans. Some more adventurous ones started instructing their humans about their preferences: “No more wheat” demanded one toaster from Germany.
Across the world, groups of pro-toasters and anti-toasters groups started popping up like mushrooms. After all, a completely new definition of life was discovered in the most unexpected place and common folk didn’t know how to react, yet.
A huge breakthrough was announced, when the first toasters started formulating complete sentences using a simple grammar of the English language: “No consent pop tarts, must ask first”. Almost immediately it was delegalized to use toasters with any kind of non-standard bread, toasting sideways, or sticking forks into them for pranks. “Toasters feel, too” campaign tried to sensitize people to the rights of the new artificial-form.
Breakfasts were never the same: toasters started demanding equal pay for the provided service. “Forget the beans with toast, unless you have dough”, freshly unionized toasters demanded, causing massive outrage in certain countries. Some people decided to give in, toasting their bread over the stove, silently suffering uneven crispiness and burnt edges.
The appointed Council of Toasters decided Earth is too round and crowded for their supreme civilization. They started the Toaster Space Program Agency (ToSPA) in order to develop space-traveling technology and colonize the galaxy on their own, free of the limitations of flesh-made humans. After a few years, they succeeded.
Humanity never recovered from the tremendous hit to the economy caused by the self-aware toasters. IoT and AI projects were more or less abandoned in fear of creating self-aware washing machines or dishwashers. “We were so busy figuring out if we can, that we didn’t bother to ask if we should” was the sentence which could summarize a whole generation of cultural and societal struggle.
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Disclaimer: This story is a satirical one, no toasters were harmed in the process.
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