Dystopian displacement (worst case)
Elena remembered when the world still made some sort of sense. Not much, admittedly—it had always teetered somewhere between absurd and unbearable—but at least back then, she could lie to herself about having a job, a future, or a say in how things turned out. Now, her morning routine involved checking two things: whether the universal basic income had landed in her bank account (it had not), and whether the nearest AI surveillance drone was watching (it was). ...