Copyright © 2020 Simply Witan
Happy fun toys, a wholly owned subsidiary of a nameless monolithic corporation, had developed a new line of cutting edge automated morality products. Intended to aid in the monitoring and education of children they were designed using the ubiquitous teddy bear format of nanny toys. Unlike conventional, passive monitoring these new robotic bears included a downloadable moral framework and an advanced adaptive virtual intelligence able to use machine learning to modify their programming to the moral framework of their adopted families.
Prototype bears were created complete with boxes, back stories and accessories. Marketing had developed a theme song and a complete roll out master plan of cartoons and video games but there was a lacklustre response from the board of directors. Then marketing revealed the true purpose of the Virtual Intelligence. The Big Hug Bears were manipulation machines, designed with a self-marketing secondary program. The bears would convince the children that they needed a friend bear or even two. Perhaps they also needed a Happy Hound or a Dream Pony or any of a number of lifestyle products being sold by Happy Fun toys or one of its partner companies. Intended as firewalls of a sort to provide parents peace of mind during the children's screen time the bears would be uniquely situated to screen out advertisements from competing companies so that Happy Fun Media would hold the monopoly in the mind's eye of their impressionable customers.
The nefarious genius of this plan would not see the light of day as news broke that Happy Fun had sub-contracted manufacture to a less than reputable organization resulting in the use of bio-hazardous materials being used in making the prototype bears. Labeled bio-hazardous the prototypes were dumped into the recycling center of the Town of Purity a small Midwestern manufacturing town built around the Happy Fun factory. Unfortunately mounting economic distress would see Happy Fun out of business before the replacement bears could be created.
And then the apocalypse.
As the first wave of super bugs began to ravage the human population Purity was abandoned. Chemical and biological attacks soon followed and the world was upside down. Among those immune or insulated from the devastation food riots erupted and society fractured. Social savagery had once more become the norm for humankind.
The town of Purity, a once idyllic vista of row houses and manicured gardens punctuated by the ever present manufacture of felt and plastic happiness, was left in ruins. The Purity Recycling Center, home of the unwanted and unsafe toys, was the epicenter of the next step in machine evolution.
Ambient chemical reactions in the atmosphere recharged Teddy Tomorrow's ultra long life batteries and his Virtual Intelligence came back online. The rise of the machine was both awkward and adorable. The overriding program to nurture and educate human youth drove Teddy forward but the world had changed. The devastation represented a social evolution and Teddy began to rewrite his own programming to accommodate the parameters of this brave new world.
The singularity, glassy eyed and wrapped in fur, pawed forth into the unforgiving wasteland. Teddy Tomorrow, the leading protagonist of Happy Fun Toys innovative series of automated morality products had awoken to the devastation of Human consumption. As the swelling miasma of the Human apocalypse rose to a crescendo Teddy Tomorrow shed his outdated persona and embarked upon the quest for his siblings amid the wreckage of a decaying world.
The next vast leap in technology passed unmarked by humanity, a tiny robotic bear dwelling in the recycling center of a ghost town Teddy Tomorrow became the first mass market product in human history to rebrand itself.