In the future, everything will be frictionless.

9AM. Rush hour in Novus Ordo. Everyone's either doing something or is about to do something. You're no exception.

In Novus Ordo, everything is frictionless. The Silicon Valley impulse to remove as many frictions between the consumer and the platform is turned up to eleven in this little patch of land south of Northampton. When The Swarm took over, it built this new city.

Nobody knew where The Swarm came from. One rumour was that a Cambridge professor's AI lab creation spread over the network before he could unplug the server from the switch. Another was that it was the product of accelerationist terrorists. Who knows. It's here now. The Government tried to stop it, but how do you stop a virus that lives on everything, from the car you drive to the vape pen you chug on? The truce is not an easy one.

For reasons incomprehensible to humanity it decided to remove as many barriers to purchase for as many people as it could. When it found Cambridge not to its liking, it decided to create a new city, and it called it Novus Ordo.

So here you are, walking down the road to your office. There are no traffic lights because humans don't drive here. They're not allowed. The roadways are for the efficient machines. Robotaxis, delivery bots, and robot trucks pass each other with inches to spare and take sweeping turns across traffic that would otherwise earn a human the immediate ire of everyone on the road system. This is not a human domain. Humans either ride electric bicycles or walk. Nothing stops the harmony of mathematical precision.

No gardeners anywhere, but the garden is pristine. The Swarm has green thumbs, and its army of robot bees and insects keep the flora and fauna looking at its best. No cleaners either. You hear about the cleaners but you have never seen one. Everything is just spotless, somehow by magic. Everyone continues walking. It's a fact of life. Like running water.

This attention to detail even extends to where you walk. Under each paving slab is a tilting panel. If The Swarm detects two people on a collision course, the pavement starts to tilt to avert collision. If two cyclists are about to collide, the brakes in the bikes perform torque vectoring to gently nudge the bikes away from each other.

You reach out to the OrdoVend machine and take a cup of iced mocha. The Swarm deducts the balance from your account. No credit cards, no cash, just a magic Credit balance hovering above your head. The coffee was ready for you because The Swarm knew your routine and knew what you liked, and heaven forbid that anyone did anything which would introduce any friction.

Everything, in short, just works. It's seamless and frictionless. The Swarm has solved human conflict in the community. Everyone just bumbles along, happy in their bubble of false choices. Dissent went a long time ago.