The last signature

Chicago, March 2036. A work of speculative fiction.

The agents finished the acquisition at 4:12 in the morning. By the time Mara Okafor reached the office, the diligence had been run nine ways, the financing priced across forty lenders, and the integration simulated through three recessions and a pandemic. The board deck was the best she had ever seen. It had been written in her own voice, with her habits of emphasis, including the joke she always made on slide four.

All that remained was her signature.

Her general counsel, the human one, sat across from her with a paper document. Paper was not required by law. It was the only paper in the building.

"The agents recommend proceeding," he said. "Ninety-four percent confidence."

"And the other six?"

"That's why you're here."

She read the integration plan again. The model had found eleven hundred redundant roles and a path to remove them in eight months with what it called minimal reputational exposure. It had modeled the local press, the union, and the senator. It had not been asked what the company owed the town where it was founded, because no one had ever written that down, and so it did not count.

"Who wrote the objective?" she asked.

"We did. In 2031. The board approved it."

"Then I should read it."

It took fifty minutes to find, three screens deep in a governance portal no one used. The objective was clear and sensible, and it said nothing at all about the town.

At 9:40 she put down the pen.

"We proceed," she said, "after we amend the objective. Give the agents the new constraint. I'll explain it to the board myself."

The analysts later called it a delay. That year's letter to shareholders called it the only decision anyone at the company had made by hand.

The decision

Which of your objectives were written for a machine that will outlive the meeting where you wrote them? Find one this week. Read it. Amend it.