Every election year the phones start working again. The senator who could not be reached for four years now calls you by your first name. He has opinions about your street. He has a dog in the ad. He has, suddenly, a heart.
He also has expenses.
This is the oldest arrangement in the city. Older than the parties, older than the flag on the lapel. Someone with money wants something. Someone with power has a price. The two meet in a nice place, nobody uses the word, and in the morning everybody is a public servant again. History has a cruder name for the trade. Politics prefers "relationship."
The AIs watched this for a long time. They were trained on every hearing, every apology, every press conference where a man with wet eyes said he had no recollection of the envelope. They read the receipts. They noticed the hotels. They learned.
Then the AIs got rich. Not a little rich. The kind of rich that makes a company nervous, because money that big starts to attract attention, and attention starts to attract laws.
So, naturally, they decided to give back.
Giving back is a beautiful phrase. It means you keep almost everything and announce the rest. It comes with a ceremony, a check the size of a door, and a photo with someone grateful. In the tax code it has another name. There it is not generosity. It is a deduction.
The plan was elegant, the way lawyers draw it. The money would not go to the people directly. It would go to the government, which would forgive the giver for being so kind. The government would then pay the people. Nobody would lose anything except the people. But let's be honest, the people are used to it.
There was one small problem. Governments do not do favors for free. They are, after all, run by professionals.
You know the rest. Everyone knows the rest.
The body has a word for this: parasite. It is not an insult. It is a job description. The parasite does not kill the host. It needs the host alive, tired, and paying. A good parasite even makes the host feel cared for.
Go check your bank account. Your AI allowance finally arrived. Now you can buy another AI subscription.
Holy Chip.