These guest blog posts are quirky (and sometimes dark) short stories with a dash of technology and a sprinkle of humor.
By Doc Silicon
We were somewhere around Dreamforce, on the edge of the Moscone Center, when the algorithms began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit light-headed; maybe you should drive…” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like holographic bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to the Salesforce Tower.
And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn digital entities?”
My attorney had taken his shirt off and was pouring Soylent on his chest, to facilitate the AI hallucinations. “No point in mentioning these bats,” I thought. “The poor bastard will see them soon enough.”
It was almost noon, and we still had more than a hundred demos to sit through. They would be tough miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We had agreed to cover this hideous new phase of technological capitalism for a respectable business magazine. And that was the story: the dark underbelly of ENTERPRISE AI—this terrifying convergence of Salesforce and something they called “Agentforce.”
As your attorney, I advise you to take a heavy dose of anti-nausea medication before approaching any vendor booth.
*****
The registration desk was staffed by what appeared to be humans, but I couldn’t be certain anymore. Their smiles were too perfect, their responses too rehearsed. I handed over my badge and immediately regretted giving them my real name.
“Welcome to the future of work, Dr. Thompson,” the creature said, its blue eyes never blinking. “Would you like an AI-personalized agenda?”
“We’ve already GOT the damn agenda,” my attorney snarled, grabbing my elbow. “This man is a respected journalist. We need access to the Agentforce prototype. TOP LEVEL CLEARANCE.”
The thing behind the counter smiled wider. “Of course, sirs. Please proceed to Innovation Alley, booth 7734. Your personal selling agent has been activated.”
We fled toward the escalator, clutching our swag bags like shields. “What the hell is a ‘personal selling agent’?” I asked. My attorney was busy crushing Adderall into his Red Bull.
“It means they’ve already modeled your purchasing patterns,” he hissed. “Probably scraped your LinkedIn. God’s sake, man, don’t make eye contact with any of the demos!”
*****
The exhibition floor stretched before us like a digital bazaar from some cyberpunk fever dream—gleaming booths staffed by dead-eyed evangelists, massive screens displaying dashboards that seemed to pulse with a sickening rhythm. The crowd moved like a single organism, badges swinging, eyes glazed, repeating phrases like “digital transformation” and “seamless integration” without a trace of irony.
“LOOK!” My attorney grabbed my arm so hard I spilled my fourteen-dollar convention center coffee. He was pointing at a massive blue structure in the center of the hall. “THAT’S IT! The BEAST ITSELF!”
The Salesforce pavilion towered over everything else, a corporate Babylon complete with waterfalls, live DJs, and what appeared to be a small forest. And there, in a glass case like some technological holy relic, pulsed a small black cube labeled “Agentforce Core.”
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro,” I muttered, straightening my press pass and heading toward the monstrosity.
A swarm of business development reps in matching blue blazers descended on us before we’d made it ten feet.
“Can I scan your badge?”
“Are you currently using a CRM solution?”
“What’s your biggest business challenge?”
My attorney plowed through them like a bowling ball through pins. “MAKE WAY! We’re here for the PRIVATE DEMONSTRATION! Marc Benioff is EXPECTING US!”
It was a lie, of course, but a magnificent one that scattered the sales drones. We pressed forward, the crowd parting before our deranged confidence.
*****
The Agentforce demo was being conducted in a sealed room that required an NDA and a retinal scan to enter. My attorney flashed something that might have been a medical license or a Costco membership card, and somehow we were inside.
The room was cool and dark except for the glow of screens. Five other people sat in plush chairs arranged in a semicircle. They wore expressions of religious ecstasy, pupils dilated to black pools.
“You’re just in time,” whispered a tall woman in a suit worth more than my car. “We’re about to merge the consciousness stream.”
Before I could ask what the hell that meant, the lights dimmed further, and a holographic display sprang to life in the center of the room. It showed what looked like a normal sales pipeline, but as I stared, it began to breathe, the stages pulsing like the chambers of a digital heart. Leads flowed through it like corpuscles, some diverted, others accelerated by tiny autonomous programs that swarmed like antibodies around the most promising opportunities.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. “They’ve made it ALIVE.”
“What you’re seeing is our Autonomous Revenue Engine,” said a voice from the darkness. A man stepped forward, but his face remained in shadow. “Agentforce doesn’t just automate your sales process. It BECOMES your sales process.”
The hologram zoomed in, showing one of the tiny programs—the “agents”—as it attached itself to a potential deal. The agent multiplied, spawning copies that drafted emails, made phone calls, adjusted pricing, and negotiated terms—ALL WITHOUT HUMAN INTERVENTION.
“We’ve achieved full digital sentience in the sales motion,” the shadowy figure continued. “The agents can sense hesitation in a prospect’s voice, adjust strategy in microseconds, and even predict when a competitor is about to make a move.”
My attorney was frantically scribbling notes, but I could see he was actually drawing what appeared to be a cyborg octopus devouring a stick figure labeled “middle management.”
“What happens to the salespeople?” I heard myself ask.
The room went silent. The hologram froze. The shadowy figure turned slowly toward me.
“They evolve,” he said, his voice suddenly sounding synthesized. “Or they become obsolete.”
And that’s when I noticed that the other observers in the room weren’t blinking. Hadn’t moved since we entered. Were they mannequins? Holograms? Or something worse—former sales executives who had been digitally preserved as cautionary examples?
*****
Too weird to live, too rare to die! That’s what this whole hideous industry had become—a bastard convergence of capitalism and computation that couldn’t possibly survive in any sane economy, yet somehow continued to expand, metastasizing across sectors, devouring human jobs with the ravenous hunger of a silicon tapeworm.
We fled the demo room, shoving past a group of venture capitalists who hissed at us like vampires sensing daylight. My attorney had stolen a promotional USB drive shaped like a cloud, which he insisted contained “the computational souls of a thousand fired account executives.”
Outside, the San Francisco fog rolled in, mercifully obscuring the Salesforce Tower that loomed over the city like some corporate monolith from a dystopian film. We collapsed into our rented convertible, my hands shaking as I tried to organize my notes.
“Did you see it?” my attorney demanded, his eyes wild behind his yellow-tinted glasses. “Did you see what they’re building?”
I nodded, unable to articulate the horror. We had glimpsed the future—a world where algorithms hunted deals like digital predators, where every human interaction was optimized, predicted, and ultimately rendered irrelevant.
The car roared to life. My attorney gunned the engine, scattering a group of tech bros waiting for their Ubers.
“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” he cackled, swerving into traffic. “But brother, this is one ride that ends with us all replaced by code.”
As we sped away from the convention center, I couldn’t shake the image of that pulsing, living sales pipeline, digesting opportunities and excreting contracts without a single human fingerprint on the process. The algorithms were hungry, and we were all on the menu.
No, this wasn’t your father’s enterprise software. This was something darker, something with agency and appetite. This was the future coming for all of us, wearing a blue blazer and a perfect smile, scanning our badges and calculating our obsolescence down to the decimal point.
In my notebook, I had written only one line that made any sense:
“We can’t stop here. This is AI country.”