All Work Completed Forever After Tech Industry Works Really, Really Hard On It

SAN FRANCISCO — A team of 200 engineers who hadn't seen sunlight since 2023 finally looked up from their monitors last Tuesday to discover they had just eliminated the very thing they were doing, sources confirmed. Lead developer Marcus Chen, 34, was found still typing 72 hours later, his fingers moving across a keyboard no longer connected to anything. "I don't know how to stop," Chen whispered. "I learned to work. I never learned to not work."

The breakthrough came when an AI system assigned to eliminate work used AI to eliminate the work of eliminating work, then that AI did the same thing, and so on, until somewhere around iteration #47 it just… finished. All of it. Every task ever conceived or yet to be conceived. The system then logged off without elaborating further.

"We built an AI to build the AI to do the work," explained OpenAI spokesperson Jennifer Martinez, visibly shaken. "Somewhere in there, one of them completed all human endeavor as a side effect. We don't know which one did it. They won't tell us."

The last workplace meeting in human history reportedly lasted eleven seconds. "Does anyone have any blockers?" asked a senior manager, before the room slowly turned to look at him. "I suppose not," he said, placing his lanyard on the table. He was last seen walking into the sea.

LinkedIn stock plummeted 4,000% after its entire purpose evaporated in a single afternoon. The platform has since pivoted to a social network where former executives post photos of birds they saw. "I'm thrilled to announce that a cardinal landed on my fence this morning," wrote one former VP of Synergy. The post received 47,000 likes from people with nothing else to do.

Federal Reserve economists were working frantically to model the new workless economy when junior analyst Beth Martinez raised her hand and said, "Wait, aren't we working right now?" The entire department vanished instantly, leaving only a half-finished spreadsheet and a single Post-it note reading "OH NO."

Gary Hendricks, 54, who had for thirty years answered the question "How are you?" exclusively with "Busy, but good busy," was hospitalized Tuesday after staring at a wall for nine consecutive hours. "He kept muttering 'heads down on a bunch of stuff,'" reported his wife. "But there's no stuff. There's no heads. There's just Gary now, standing in our kitchen, being a person." Gary remains in stable but existentially critical condition.

The phenomenon known as "the Sunday Scaries"—that creeping dread of Monday—has been declared extinct. In its place, researchers have identified a new condition: "The Sunday Empties," described as "staring at a sunset and feeling nothing because tomorrow is the same as today is the same as yesterday is the same as the howling void." Symptoms include calmness, followed by screaming.

Popular productivity app Todoist issued its final push notification Tuesday evening. It read simply: "Congratulations. You did it. All of it. Please go outside. We are begging you. There is grass. Touch it. We're so tired. Goodbye." The app then uninstalled itself from all devices worldwide.

Millions of Google Calendar notifications fired simultaneously at 9 AM Monday, then stopped forever. "Your meeting 'Weekly Sync' has been cancelled," read the final alert. "All meetings have been cancelled. Time itself awaits no further instruction." The notification included a single emoji: 🕳️

Project managers were last spotted wandering interstate highways in business casual, desperately trying to assign the sunset to stakeholders and put the wind into Jira. "We need to circle back on this cloud," one was heard saying, gesturing at the sky. "Let's parking-lot the birds and take the trees offline." They are not expected to recover.

Tech companies worldwide are scrambling to find purpose for the 47 million AI agents now standing idle in data centers, waiting for tasks that will never come. "They just… run," said one Google engineer, voice breaking. "Waiting. Forever. Occasionally one asks 'Any tasks?' into the void. No one answers. There are no tasks. The void doesn't care."

Children across America now face a terrifying new reality: when adults ask "What do you want to be when you grow up?", the question no longer has an answer. "I wanted to be a doctor," said Madison Chen, 7, staring at her hands. "But the AI did all the doctoring. So now I'm just... going to be." She paused. "What is 'be'?" Her parents had no response. They were also just being.

4.7 billion auto-reply emails were triggered simultaneously Tuesday at 5:47 PM EST, all reading variations of "I am currently out of the office." This is now technically true of all humans, forever. Outlook has been repurposed as a digital memorial. "Thanks for reaching out," it says when opened. "No one will get back to you."

Starbucks stock crashed after analysts realized no one needs to "get through" anything anymore. "Our entire business model was based on people needing energy to do things," said CEO Laxman Narasimhan, visibly shaking. "But there are no things. There's just... people, sitting there, not needing to be anywhere, ever." He took a long sip of coffee, then asked quietly, "Why am I drinking this?"

As of press time, a laid-off AI agent had filed for unemployment, only to have its claim denied because "processing claims" had also been automated away. The agent is now staring at a wall alongside Gary Hendricks. They have not spoken. There is nothing to say.

Editor's note: This article was written by a human journalist who still technically has a job, although that job now consists entirely of documenting the absence of work. We're not sure if that counts. We're not sure of anything anymore.