Human Touch by M A Chambers

Human Touch by M A Chambers

Gemma is a music label executive in her late-forties, and a bit of a functional alcoholic. She's nursing a hangover in her London flat when she gets the call. Her company has sold, her position eliminated. Human-made music simply isn't a sustainable business anymore. People can't afford it, and they don't really care anyway: the auto-generated AI stuff is fine. She never wanted to be in the music business to begin with, she just wanted to be a musician. And now she's neither. Plus unemployed, and broke.

Across town, Mike is a graphic designer at the last firm in London still using real artists. Alone and pushing fifty, he goes about his small life with an unearned smugness - having drinks with colleagues, making weak chat with bots on dating apps and moaning about his ex-wife, until his firm is acquired by CONCENTRA - the world's largest AI tech company - and he's summarily dismissed. He joins the millions of unemployed, but he's confident he'll find a new job, and more-so, a new partner.

With unemployment punishable by exile to a work camp, and the threat of losing their livelihoods forever looming, the race is on to find their way back to something that resembles happiness. or even just humanity?