As John got up from his bed, as on every other day, the first thing he saw was the calendar. The date and time reflected on a transparent screen before his window, its curtains still drawn. The date reflecting on the transparent screen was 10 May 2044, the time: 07:00 a.m. As soon as his feet touched the mat on the floor his robot-maid burst in and said in a computerised, yet cheery voice, “Happy Birthday, John, hope you have a great 30th birthday!”

“Thank you Carly,” John said, as he went out of his door and into the elevator.

On John’s elevator wall shone a map of the house. The first two floors were under the supervision of Carly the robot maid and the last floor was programed to supervise itself. John clicked on the second floor then went to the bathroom to take a bath quickly. As soon as he got in he said, “Warm water please?” and the water ran itself in the shower.

As he was showering, the drain pipes sent some water which consisted of John’s DNA to Carly for tests on his health, so she could know what adjustments to make into his diet. It was a big day for John. Not only was it his birthday but he was going to court to file his application for a piece of land where he would run a fruit plantation using indigenous ways of farming.

This took everyone in the Constitutional Court by surprise. It had been more than a decade since anyone used indigenous ways of farming. All farmers did these days was laze around while their robot staff, known as farm-bots, did all the work. Even though it looked good to have a bot work for you, it had a bad impact on the human race. More people were becoming more and dependent on the bots for everything, ranging from running their houses to running a country.

John’s application was so shocking that the bots sent it straight to the president for him to see it himself. The president was also shocked and a lot suspicious of John’s motives that he had him brought in front of the Constitutional Court to state his motives. John explained that he wanted to use indigenous ways of farming because the new robot ways of growing crops were too artificial, and hurt the environment which is in fact breaking nature’s number one rule. This angered the government as they believed that the robot controlled, artificial life was the best possible way one could live, and that their electrically controlled weather was better than natural weather.

Almost in an instant, John was sentenced to life imprisonment.

He was sent to maximum jail which was in planet Mars. The charges were alleged terrorism and sabotage. This didn’t make sense at all, but the government felt he was a threat to the way they operated and so had to be removed from planet Earth. John was immediately labelled ‘number one terrorist’ in the universe. He was sent to Mars on the 12th of May 2044 and a flying car with added features of a spaceship was used to transport him.

As soon as he landed, John was put in his own yard which was where he had to live till he died. For three whole months, John planted and grew fresh fruits and vegetables on a piece of land which was not seen by the bots or cameras. As soon as his plants started growing, John hatched a plan to get back to earth.

After five days of planning it was time to get the plan in motion. John picked up a couple of veggies and fruits from his garden and headed for the prison yard gate muttering, “I’m a bot, I’m a bot.” This made the robots mock and laugh at him because they thought he was going insane, but from this distraction he quickly shut down the cameras.

With the cameras shut down John broke the prison gate through mixing up all the wires in the intercom and escaped. Quick as lightning, he took a police flying car so he would not be easily detected and used it to travel to earth. By the time he got to earth the Mars bots had discovered John had escaped and were raising the alert.

Immediately when John reached earth he headed for the president’s office. But two police flying Ferraris had detected him and were now pursuing him in a high speed chase all the way to the presidential building. When John reached the building he quickly put the car on auto drive so it could fly itself to his house.

After that he put on a robot suit to disguise against the Ferraris and the cameras in the building. Everyone in the governmental office believed John was in the police car flying itself to his house, so John used that and his disguise to slip in the building and president’s office unnoticed.

In the president’s office John found the president all alone and decided to act quickly. John held the president hostage and proposed an ultimatum for his freedom. John proposed that in order for the president to be freed as a hostage he had to agree to compare naturally grown plants to robot-grown plants. If the robot-grown plants were better than the natural ones, John would be prosecuted but if it was the other way around, natural ways of farming will once more be practiced.

The president agreed to this condition and he quickly noticed how delicious the natural fruits were compared to the robot-grown fruit. So, John got his freedom and his way of farming. Robots were not at all happy about this and so the human-robot war kicked off. But that’s a story for another day.