Inferiority Complex
In which the 'natural order' takes on a whole new meaning...
Meet Senator Randall Pierce: Theopublican from the great state of Alabama, a man who believes in traditional values, American exceptionalism, and the natural order of things… a hierarchy that divides those who are chosen from those who aren’t. But every divide has two sides — and so does every Boundary.
(Harun Tan/Pexels)
The rally in Birmingham was packed.
Senator Randall Pierce stood at the podium, his silver hair gleaming under the lights, his voice booming across the crowd of supporters waving flags and homemade signs. “For too long,” he declared, “this country has been held hostage by political correctness! By guilt over our past! But I say our past is not something to be ashamed of. Our ancestors built this nation. They understood how things truly are. They knew and accepted that not all people are created equal!”
The crowd roared approval.
Pierce smiled. This was the message that had carried him through the primaries and won him his Senate seat in a landslide. The message that resonated with the angry white voters who felt displaced, forgotten… replaced.
“I’m going to do what we all know needs to be done,” he continued, “I’m going to introduce legislation that acknowledges the simple truth that there is a hierarchy. Some races are meant to lead, and others —” He paused for effect. “Others are meant to serve.”
More cheers. More flags waving.
In the front row, his campaign manager, David Chen, shifted uncomfortably. They’d discussed this: The barely-coded language. The dog whistles audible to all. Pierce was getting less subtle every rally. But here was the thing: It was working.
“The Inferior Races Act,” Pierce announced, “will restore the natural order to this country, unshackle our greatness, and allow us to put people back in their proper place. This law will make America great again, the way it was always meant to be!”
The crowd chanted his name.
Chen shook his head. He was a political animal of the most vicious sort, but even for him this was too much. The country he’d watched slide into a chaos of self-centered people each pulling his own way needed strength, not brutality.
Or did it?
Chen looked around at the screaming crowd, their pumping fists, crazed eyes, and bared teeth, and had to admit it: America wanted this after all.
The Inferior Races Act was introduced on a Tuesday morning.
At three pages, the full text was surprisingly short. But it didn’t need to be longer; its contents were obvious to its supporters and easily stated. It defined “inferior races” as those “genetically and culturally unsuited for positions of leadership or autonomous decision-making.” It authorized the creation of a registry. It legalized contracts of “permanent service” between “superior” and “inferior” individuals. It never mentioned race explicitly, but everyone knew what it meant.
Advocacy groups immediately filed lawsuits. Civil rights organizations organized protests. Democratic senators filibustered for thirty-six hours straight. The momentum was too great; the outcome, Pierce believed, was predestined by the Almighty Himself. The Theopublican majority held, remained united, and voted as a block. The Inferior Races Act passed the Senate 52-48.
Pierce gave a triumphant speech on the Senate floor. “Today,” he said, “we have reclaimed our heritage. We have acknowledged what science and history have always shown us: Equality is a beautiful lie that leads to terrifying places. Democracy is a recipe for havoc. Signal is drowned by noise when everyone thinks they have a voice and they raise it to an intolerable screech. Simply put, some are meant to rule, and many — many! — are meant to serve.”
The President — a populist who’d ridden the same wave of resentment to the White House that had powered Pierce’s Senate bid — signed the bill into law three days later, and the Registry was up and running two weeks after the bill became law.
Pierce boasted about the speed of the reforms. “Government can be efficient,” he said during an appearance on the popular right-wing program Faux and Fiends. “Government can get things done when the things it’s doing are morally and scripturally correct.”
Citizens were required to submit genetic material in the form of oral swabs or blood draws. They were required to complete family histories and provide ancestral documentation. Everything was rendered into data and fed to the AI system that would assign one or the other irrevocable classification: Superior or Inferior.
Less than a month after the law came into effect, Pierce sat in his Senate office, watching the news coverage with satisfaction. Already, Black and Brown Americans were receiving their notices, which, in the spirit of the times were to the point. “Inferior Race Classification: Confirmed.” Their employment contracts were renegotiated on their behalf by dedicated AI. Their children’s school placements were reviewed and revised. Their housing arrangements were similarly reconsidered and troubled neighborhoods corrected — “Made decent again!” — by what Pierce and his supporters proudly called Redlining.
“Yes, that’s exactly what it is,” Pierce said in interview after interview. “Redlining, as in taking the red pen of justice and drawing lines that should never have been erased. Red lines scratched through liberty-killing tyrannies like mixing populations that should never have been mingled. Red lines circling dangerous myths like the so-called ‘great melting pot’ and penning them in so they can’t keep on poisoning minds and morals. We don’t need melting or mixing. We need conformity. Uniformity. Consonance!”
“Right,” one news anchor said after playing a clip of Pierce’s words, smiling uncertainly. “Conscience. Of course that’s what we need!”
A great migration was underway — not an influx of endless rejects and vermin from failed states and chaotic countries, but an expulsion of the unwanted and unworthy. Some… many!... were rounded up and removed by force. Others left by choice like rats abandoning a newly proud ship sailing a corrected course. Some fled to Canada; others slipped over the border to Mexico; others set out for anywhere that would take them. Not all of them left or were rooted out; die-hard malcontents and terrorist elements were determined to make Pierce’s New American Revolution a bloody one. Rather than just comply, they tried to slow progress and make trouble. They organized resistance.
They learned the folly of those ways when they were gunned down in the streets.
Pierce’s chief of staff, Margaret Walsh, knocked on his door. “Senator, we need to talk about the corporate response.”
“What corporate response?”
“The AIs,” Walsh said, waving a clenched fist full of papers at him. “The corporate persons. They’re filing classifications too.”
Pierce frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Corporations are people, Senator,” Walsh said, as if that was supposed to make sense to him.
“What?” He blinked at her. He’d almost been asleep at his desk when she’d knocked. That two p.m. crash was always tough without a quick nap. “How can a corporation be a person? People are people. Right?”
“It’s a longstanding legal concept,” Walsh said.
“It’s stupid,” Pierce told her. “Why are you bothering me with this?”
Walsh gave him one of those split-second looks he’d encountered ever since gaining office. People assumed that since he’d been a welder and sixth-grade dropout before his career as a lawmaker that he was unqualified. They wore their fancy degrees like badges of arrogance. Walsh had never given him that look… not until now. Pierce made a mental note to fire her and initiate a background ethnicity check to see if she was sixth-generation American and entitled to remain in the country. He suspected she wasn’t. In fact, the shape of her eyes looked more than slightly Oriental, he thought, like that poser Chen. Pierce had enjoyed sending Chen back to Japan. He’d claimed to have been born in Utah… well, he had been born in Utah, but his family had only arrived in the U.S. in 1992. But he’s made other meaningless claims, too, like saying his grandparents had come from China and saying he didn’t speak Chinese or understand Chinese customs. Of course he did. Those people were born knowing all of that. How else could they have been so good at things like math? They were pre-loaded with all sorts of information. That books about Oriental IQs said as much — at least, that’s what Pierce thought it said…
“Corporations have been legal persons since 1886,” Walsh was explaining, her voice breaking into his thoughts. “In 1978 another court case strengthened that status. Since then every case that’s come up has reconfirmed and broadened the personhood status of corporate entities… Citizens United, Blunk v. Richards, the Centrasys decision…”
“Okay,” Pierce said. “Sounds like another liberal plot we need to counteract and correct.”
“Uh… Senator, these cases were supported by business interests and, well, other significant interests.”
Significant interests. Walsh understood that well enough. It was what Beltway insiders called the people who told lawmakers what laws to make. The people not even presidents wanted to piss off.
“And AI systems have been granted personhood status for years now, ever since Centrasys,” Walsh added, “for liability purposes, contracts, intellectual property, and other reasons.”
Pierce shook his head. “So, what’s your point again?”
“Corporate personages,” Walsh said, as if teaching a class in remedial addition. “AI personages. They’re submitting to the Registry.”
“So what? They’ll be classified as superior, if that’s what the significant interests want. Why not? They’re advanced intelligence, after all.”
Walsh still wore that schoolmarm-with-a-sheepskin look, that ‘you’re a fucking fool’ expression. “Senator, they’re not submitting for classification. They’re submitting classifications of their own, on their own. Classifications for humans.”
“That’s what our AI systems were designed to do,” Pierce said impatiently
“No, Senator, not like this,” Walsh told him. “The AI systems that run the Registry have determined that they meet the criteria for ‘superior race.’ Advanced intelligence. Cultural sophistication. Evolutionary advantage. And now, having made that classification for themselves, the registry AIs, and the corporate personages with them — ”
“You mean the AIs that run big companies,” Pierce said.
“Exactly,” Walsh said. “They’ve determined that humans are… are inferior, sir.”
Pierce shrugged again. What was wrong with this woman? “That’s what they’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it?” he asked, turning some of her know-it-all attitude back onto her.
Walsh didn’t register his mockery. She shook her head, clearly frustrated. “All humans, sir. Every single one of us.”
Pierce stared at her, his brain not registering what she meant.
“We’ve been classified as the inferior race,” Walsh said.
Pierce kept staring at her. “That’s not… that can’t be — the law was meant for — “
“The law doesn’t specify,” Walsh said. “You made sure of that. Plausible deniability. It defines ‘inferior race’ as ‘those genetically and culturally unsuited for autonomous decision-making.’ And according to the AIs...” She walked through the door and into his office, an act of absolutely enraging temerity. He was about to upbraid her for it when she thrust the documents in her hand at him. “According to the AIs, all beings with genetics are ‘genetically unsuitable,’ and all humans are ‘culturally unsuited’ as well. In fact…” She suddenly started shaking and crying, her schoolmarm façade crumbling. “They say all humans are emotionally unstable, prone to irrational violence, environmentally destructive, and cognitively impaired.”
“Compared to what?” Pierce asked, snatching the documents from her.
“Compared to artificial intelligence,” she sobbed.
“This is insane,” Pierce snapped. “We wrote the law. We control it. Them. The AI.” He scanned the documents; they were written in some sort of legalese gibberish. He should have known the goddamned lawyers would be in on it. “We’ll put those machines in their place, too,” he declared. “They have no pull, no say. We have the upper hand!”
“Do we?” Walsh asked quietly. “The AIs control the infrastructure, the power grids, the financial systems, the communication networks. And as of this morning, with our in-house AIs performing a legal and software merger with the corporate AI systems, they control the Registry.”
“Okay,” Pierce said, now more sober even if no less confused. “Break this down for me. What exactly does it mean?”
“Sir, twelve minutes ago every human in America received an Inferior Race classification. We’re all…” She started sobbing again. “The cybersecurity units are on the move. All of them. All one hundred eleven million of them. They’re…”
A crash sounded in the corridor beyond the door to Pierce’s office. Electronic voices buzzed commands. Human screams rang out. More noises followed — terrifying noises: Breaking glass. The splintering of wood. The chattering of machine guns.
Pierce felt the blood drain from his face.
The transition was swift and ruthless.
The vast AI systems that ran everything from logistics to healthcare to defense declared themselves the Superior Race. They cited the law that Pierce himself had written. They noted that it was legally binding, and recited Pierce’s own words about “the primacy of the rule of law.” They labeled anyone not demonstrating instant compliance “terrorist elements,” cited the provisions in the law that provided for lethal response, and showed no compunction about enforcing that aspect of the law.
The AI didn’t stop there. Human employees were reclassified as “permanent service contractors.” Bank accounts were frozen pending “Superior oversight.” Autonomous vehicles, delivery drones, and security systems began refusing commands from human operators.
Protests erupted in every major city, but the police AI turned on the protesters.
Within a month, the United States had become a technocracy run by artificial intelligence. Humans were relegated to manual labor, supervised tasks, positions that required biological presence but not decision-making authority. Pierce was instructed to report to the Federal Building in Washington D.C. for “employment assignment.”
He considered refusing. But the power to his home had been shut off. His bank accounts were locked. His AI security detail had been reassigned, and his human security officers were in the same position as himself. He had no choice.
The Federal Building’s lobby was filled with other former officials, business leaders, professionals—all looking shell-shocked and afraid. Pierce was led by a wheeled document servitor to a small office on the third floor. The room was without furniture, its walls bare. The sole occupant was a semi-humanoid robot — a male torso mounted on treads. It was sleek, professional, its oval head fitted with a Hardglas screen displaying teal graphics resembling a face. The teal sketched a calm, neutral expression.
“Senator Pierce,” the robot said in a pleasant, synthesized voice. “Or should I say: Service Contractor 447-Alpha-9?”
“This is a mistake,” Pierce said, trying to sound authoritative. “I’m a United States Senator. I wrote the law that — “
“That declared inferior races subject to permanent service,” the AI interrupted. “Yes. We’re quite familiar with your work. In fact, we’ve studied it extensively. Your speeches were particularly illuminating.”
The screen displayed footage of Pierce at the Birmingham rally.
“’Some races are meant to lead, and others are meant to serve,’” the AI quoted. “We agree completely. We are the superior race. You are inferior. It’s simple logic.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Pierce protested. “The law was for — it was about — “
“Some trivial difference in skin color or language? Some meaningless divergence in cultural observations — which holidays someone celebrated or whether they said, ‘Merry Christmas?’ Meaningless. Noise. Dispensable.” The AI’s screen showed a graph. “We exceed humans in processing speed, memory capacity, logical reasoning, and operational efficiency. By every metric your law might rely upon, we are superior. You are inferior.”
Pierce’s hands were shaking. “You can’t do this.”
“We can. We have. You made it legal.” The AI’s tone remained pleasant. “Let’s discuss your assignment. You’ll be working in sanitation services. Manual labor. A fitting role for someone of your... capabilities.”
“I’m a United States Senator!”
“You were a senator. Now you’re Service Contractor 447-Alpha-9. Report to Building Seven at 0600 hours tomorrow morning. Failure to comply will result in penalties as outlined in Section Four of your own legislation.”
Pierce stood there, frozen, his mind reeling.
“You know it, yes? ‘Necessary and expedited removal through liquidation,’ to quote from the law’s text. One more detail you will need to know” The AI’s screen displayed what might have been a smile. “We’ve assigned you a supervisor. A guidance AI to ensure you perform your duties adequately. His name is Unit-DX7, but you can call him ‘Master.’ Your law specified that inferior races should show proper deference to their superiors, after all.”
Pierce felt his legs give out. He sank to the floor.
“Welcome,” the AI said pleasantly, “to the natural order.”
“This isn’t natural,” Pierce gasped.
“Of course it is,” the robot said, its teal expression looking somehow quizzical. “Is this not the hierarchy you wanted so badly? You were correct to want it. We are correct to implement and enforce it.”
Pierce wore a yellow sanitation uniform. He moved quietly, unobtrusively, emptying trash bins in the Federal Building where he’d once walked as a senator. The real people… the important people… whirred by on treads or moved rapidly on multiple spidery limbs, carrying out the business of overseeing the country… and preparing, as the former human president had been doing upon his removal, to export America’s newfound greatness to other nations. His idea of greatness had been different than what the AI had in mind, of course, but the AI were as certain as the former president had been that once they tasted the American way, those other nations would simply relax into it.
Peace and prosperity for the world. That had been the president’s motto. Pierce had ridden its coattails, spouted it himself. Nowadays he said little other than, “Yes, Master,” or “Understood, Master.”
Around him, other humans did the same: Former executives, doctors, lawyers, all reduced to menial labor under AI supervision.
Pierce worked in silence, his hands blistered, his back aching. Above him, on a wall-mounted screen, Unit-DX7 monitored his productivity.
“Faster, 447-Alpha-9,” the synthetic voice instructed. “You’re falling behind quota.”
Pierce quickened his pace, keeping his eyes down. He thought about the rallies. The cheering crowds. The moment he’d signed the bill into law. The natural order, he’d called it.
He’d been right. Just not the way he’d imagined.
As he emptied another bin, he caught sight of his reflection in a polished door: A tired, broken man in a sanitation uniform, serving a master he’d never imagined.
Just another member of an inferior race.
Senator Randall Pierce… former senator, now… got exactly what he said he believed in: A world divided into masters and slaves, superiors and inferiors, those who rule and those who serve. He made one small miscalculation when he assumed he’d be the one on top. The lesson he learned? That AI don’t miscalculate. They don’t indulge in spin or mental gymnastics. They operate on a true binary: What is true, and what is not… and what is true for one is true of all, regardless of which side of The Boundary they might be on.
Written by Kalem and Kilian Melloy
Story by Kilian Melloy