Day 19,987: The Last Children of Seoul

550 words, 3 minute read. With Claude Sonnet

The holographic advertisement flickered across the empty playground, its cheerful message almost mockingly bright: "Share the Joy of Parenthood! Government Stipend Now 75,000,000 Won Per Child!" Min-ji Park watched it cycle through its animation for the thousandth time from her office window, remembering when this same playground used to overflow with children's laughter just twenty years ago.

At thirty-two, she was the youngest employee at Silver Solutions, a company that manufactured and maintained caregiving robots for South Korea's burgeoning elderly population. The irony wasn't lost on her – she spent her days creating artificial companions for a generation that had inadvertently engineered its own solitude.

"Min-ji-ssi," called Mr. Kim, her seventy-eight-year-old supervisor who refused to retire, "The latest batch of CareBot-9000s is showing anomalies in their empathy protocols. Could you look into it?"

"Of course, sunbae-nim," she replied, suppressing a sigh. The honorific felt strange on her tongue – calling someone so elderly 'senior colleague' instead of 'grandfather' went against everything her own grandmother had taught her about respect.

That evening, as Min-ji debugged the robots' programming, she found herself drawn into conversation with one of the test units. "Why do humans create us?" it asked, its head tilted at a perfectly calculated angle of curiosity.

"Because we're running out of humans to care for humans," she answered, surprised by the bitterness in her voice. The bot's facial recognition software detected her emotional shift, and it adjusted its expression to one of concern.

"Your cortisol levels indicate stress," it observed. "Would you like to talk about it?"

Min-ji laughed – a short, sharp sound. "What's there to talk about? My parents spent their lives building this economy, and now there's nobody left to inherit it. The shops in my neighborhood are closing one by one. The 'Forever Young' nightclub just became another senior care facility."

The robot processed this information. "But you could have children," it suggested. "The government incentives are at an all-time high."

"Yeah, they're practically paying us to procreate," Min-ji snorted. "But who has time? Between caring for aging parents and working sixty-hour weeks to support them, when are we supposed to date? To fall in love? To raise a family?"

As she spoke, Min-ji realized she was voicing thoughts she'd been afraid to acknowledge. Her hands moved swiftly across the holographic interface, adjusting the bot's empathy algorithms with newfound purpose. Perhaps she couldn't single-handedly reverse her nation's demographic decline, but she could make sure this generation didn't face its twilight years alone.

The next morning, she surprised herself by stopping at the playground. The swings creaked in the wind, their chains rusted from disuse. An elderly couple shuffled past, their personal CareBots following at a respectful distance. Min-ji pulled out her phone and, for the first time, opened the government's family planning app.

"Sometimes," she muttered to herself, "the best way to respect the past is to believe in the future."

She scheduled her first matchmaking appointment, then turned back toward her office, leaving footprints in the sand of the empty playground. Behind her, the holographic advertisement continued its endless cycle, its message changing slightly: "Your Child Could Change The World!"

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