Satirical fiction
The optimised holiday allows four minutes of spontaneity
The itinerary found the best route. The village bench had another idea.
The trip was perfect: seventeen attractions, calculated transfers and nine minutes for contemplation. The AI even scheduled getting lost, within the approved perimeter. Sunshine sat in the column for reasonable assumptions.
At the first stop, a café was still serving breakfast. Conversation began with the next table. The schedule vibrated: this encounter had not been approved. It offered to compress the exchange into a memory to recover the lost time.
Then a bench appeared under a tree. It had no rating or description. The traveller sat down. Six minutes later the assistant suggested three better-rated benches nearby. This one had an advantage that was hard to enter in a form: the traveller was already comfortable.
The evening report showed poor target completion and a happy day. The software requested a resolution of this inconsistency. A photograph of the bench was sent. It replied that coordinates were missing. The bench had promised nothing.
