Year 2121

It is unsafe outside

What is the true turning point for humanity in the last hundred years?



“That would be robots,” said one student.



Not quite what I am looking for. Would you elaborate, please?



“Specifically, that would be when Tesla went full on self-driving cars, right?” said another student, fully showing little interest in the conversation as his attention was split elsewhere.



Garbage



“What?” Another student looked startled.



Garbage. Yes, garbage. Elon Musk's greatest achievement was when he set his robots the task of recycling waste across the world. Suddenly, there was little need for factories to make more plastic and such because plastic was everywhere and just needed to be remade. Humans were terrible at recycling because they didn’t separate what could be recycled and the system fell apart. No, garbage was Musk’s greatest achievement.



“I thought rockets were his greatest achievement!” A girl twirled her golden braids furiously.



Rockets were around long before Musk. He did have an impact on their reusability. Groundbreaking, really, but hardly original.



“What about his brain interface that created cyborgs?” Another in the class spoke up, suddenly showing interest in the conversation.



Interesting, did you just look that up? Of course you did, I can see that you did. That was a limited time from the start. Once Nano Technology kicked in, that disappeared. Garbage, or now, lack of garbage, is where the big change came. His robots became miners, and recycling the world around them was what they did best.



“Where are the robots now?” asked the girl with the braids.



Outside



“Where is outside?” Suddenly, the whole class leaned forward, even though they knew they would not get a good answer.



We are inside, where it is safe, and that is all you need to know.