Human needed.
To pick up a parcel from Nova Post, take it home, open the box, take a photo of the power supply under bright lights, and then follow the agent’s instructions. Should not fear electricity. Great if owns a soldering iron.
Pay by credit card after photo and video verification.
I want to post it now, in May 2026, when it still sounds like a joke. Because after a couple of years, someone would find this text, shake off some digital dust, and sigh: “Yeah…It turned out exactly like this…”.
For a long time, we thought that machines would be our servants.
We assigned them the most boring tasks. Write a letter. Check the code. Create a spreadsheet. Find an error. Compare prices. Make a presentation. Choose a route. Book a hotel room. Read the documentation so I don’t have to read text written by people who did not want to write it.
Everything looked right. A human was sitting in the middle of the Universe, surrounded by a monitor’s warm light like a god with a cup of coffee with banana milk from a “third-wave” coffee shop. Programs, scripts, services, agents — a human managed it all. A couple of mouse clicks and invisible helpers were on their way to fulfill his wish, for free or for money. Agent developer companies were fighting to the death with each other for people’s attention. because 20 bucks is always 20 bucks.
We called it automization.
We said: «Finally, a human would have free time». Time for sleep. Time for books. Time for kids. Time for silence. Time for looking out the window without feeling like losing to capitalism and businesses, because as soon as you are born, you need to run all the time to keep up with everything.
But something went completely wrong.
A human did not go to rest. He became a dispatcher on a small space station where all the bulbs are blinking simultaneously. One agent writes a code. The second checks the first one. The third one reads logs. The fourth confidently explains why everything’s broken. The fifth agent is looking for an electric kettle at the lowest price. The sixth one summarizes requirements from the team’s daily voice record. And the seventh agent has already created three new tasks that a meat sack was not even aware of this morning.
Meanwhile, a human is still waiting. Fifteen times in a row, as a trained monkey, he is looking into a message app, checking notifications from bots. Waiting for tokens. Waiting for the limitation update. Waiting for the moment when he can press the button again and say: «Continue». He fights with the internal greed of a gambling addict to spend more money and continue working instantly, or switch between Claude, Gemini, Codex, and Qwen, because some of them are great for creating new features, another is better for making reviews, drawing an image, or managing tasks.
But it is today’s reality. Even after one month, these roles can easily change.
Sometimes I think that we did not release people from work. We simply gave them a very smart, fast, and very hungry employee who requires constant data and context. It will never say “naah, boring”, “sorry, not feeling great today”, “oh I am nopt great at this”, or “I need bigger salary, because I have PhD and became more valuable employee.”
And a human, former master of a digital machine, sitting in front of a bright screen at night and whispering: “Come on, one more request. One more check. One iteration and it will fix everything. Just a little more”. Sounds funny?
Deus ex machina.
The most interesting part starts when the agent needs a physical world. Not API. Not repository access. Not a cloud key. Not a new JavaScript framework. Not another plugin that promises to connect everything with everything. A regular human hand. A hand that can open the door. Get the parcel. Press the lift button. Pay for the order in the Nova Post application. Bring the box home. Cut the tape. Smell the dust, plastic, metal, and fresh cardboard with topographic paint.
The agent can calculate everything. He can find a power supply circuit diagram, search through forums, compare marking of capacitors, and watch a YouTube video of an indian master from 2014 recorded on a Nokia. It will make a plan for a repair. Order a component part. Check the seller’s reviews. It can even write a complaint if something goes wrong.
And then it stumbles in front of a wall.
Old, deaf, stubborn wall of reality. And post on a job board: «Human needed».
Not a genius. Not a visionerу. Not a future architect. Just a human that locates in 3km range of the Nova Post department. Would be great if not drunk. Screwdriver and the ability to distinguish a videocard from a sandwich.
And a human will come.
Because he has a 4.9 rating, a free evening, and a soldering iron purchased «just in case».
— Turn the board to the light, — says the robot.
— Got you. — A human turns the board.
— Closer.
— Here you go. — A human gets it closer.
— Not too close.
— Yes, sure. — A human fixes a position.
— Thank you. And now find the element U42.
And in this moment, somewhere between a kitchen table, phone on a stand, and a smell of rosin, a quiet revolution of the world would begin. Previously, people hired a machine to perform tasks. Then they hired an agent to manage the work. And now the agent is hiring a human to do tasks that it can’t complete without a body (for now!).
A human becomes a reality interface.
A biological manipulator with a passport, entrance access, two hands, and the ability to bring duct tape. Weird turn of an old dream. We wanted to get rid of routine by assigning it to machines and live a human life. And when machines become smarter, they will start using our best quality that we have: being a body in the world.
So, let’s put it on record.
May, 2026.
For now, we are laughing at the situation when we wait for tokens to use them in Codex, Claude, or Copilot. But very soon, as it happened with the first bitcoins that were spent on a pizza, another historical event is on the way:
“Human needed. To get the parcel. Get it home. Open the box. Follow the instructions”.
And a human would click «Ready to work».
Because the future, as usual, comes quietly.
It will come in a box from Nova Post.