by Gerald Huff
“This story takes place in a future United States that has not made the decisions it needed to make in the here and now. What transpires is an important warning by Gerald Huff of the kind of future we can realistically expect where due to political gridlock and corporate greed, technology continues to not be used for the benefit of all until the inevitable breaking point is reached… Is this the future we want, and what can we do to avoid it? Read it and find out.”
- Scott Santens, founding member of Economic Security Project and a leading U.S. Basic Income advocate
“This novel addresses the most important policy issue of the current generation: the future of jobs. Although the possibility that many or even most humans will become jobless within a generation is aired in the media routinely, it is generally followed by bland assurances that there is nothing to worry about, and the bogus assertion that since past rounds of automation have not caused lasting widespread unemployment, therefore this one cannot.
Gerald Huff works in Silicon Valley, ground zero of the Economic Singularity. He has been thinking carefully about these issues for years, and now he has written an engaging and lively novel, which explores the possible outcomes in an accessible and entertaining way.
An important and valuable book. Highly recommended.”
- Calum Chace, author Artificial Intelligence and the Two Singularities
“CRISIS:2038 is a fascinating account of our near future. Only someone who is actively engaged in building the future like Gerald Huff could have crafted such a detailed look at what awaits us as a people and a society.”
- Andrew Yang, Democratic candidate for President in 2020
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
ISBN: 9781543953961
I dedicate this book to my friends and family who stuck with me for more than five years and dozens of revisions to bring it to fruition.
Acknowledgements
There are many people to thank who shaped my thinking on this novel. As a first time author, intensive editing work with Scot Edelsten early on was invaluable. Calum Chace, Berit Anderson, and Charles Radclyffe all provided early critical insights on characters and plot direction. Scott Santens asked important questions about timeline and what should have changed by 2038. Gisele Huff, Michele Huff, Jane Huff, Judy Bliss and Paul Huff all read multiple drafts and identified opportunities to strengthen characters and plot arcs. My biggest thanks goes to my brother Stephen Kuhn, who provided not only detailed line edits for many drafts but also had an eagle’s eye focus on character and plot inconsistencies. My thanks to all of you for helping bring this novel to life.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER ONE
SANTA BARBARA - SEPTEMBER 10, 2038
Roger Driscoll eased himself into his black Herman Miller executive chair and rolled it over the gray and white marble tiles of his living room floor up to a spotless chrome and glass desk. A transparent, paper-thin monitor with an elegant metal bezel stretched from one end of the desk to the other. He took in the view of the rolling brown hills, the still sleepy streets of Santa Barbara, and the deep blue Pacific and smiled. “What’s up this morning, Allison?” After facial and voice print verification, his screen booted up and filled with various media feeds, video streams and messages, all selected and prioritized by his AI assistant.
“Good morning, Roger. You have a new client holochat in fifteen minutes. I can take care of everything else.”
“Who’s the client?”
“It’s a new political party in Italy.”
“Well funded?”
“Yes, they have two well-known billionaires backing them.”
“Who’s the call with?”
“The party’s CEO, Milena Palmeri.”
“Did you do a deep search on her? What’s the probability she’s a government or corporate agent?”
“I did a complete background check, Roger. She reached us with a good onetime-use client certificate. The probability is less than point zero five percent.”
“Okay, fine. Put together the usual hologram camo for me blended from pics of her family and known close associates. What can you tell me about this political party?”
“It appears from its omnipresence to be pro-business and anti-government regulation.”
“Right up our alley. Is the Italian real-time translation module up to date?”
“Yes, Roger, I refreshed it overnight.”
“Of course you did, sorry to have doubted it. Anything else going on?”
“I created a compilation video of the most relevant news for top clients and put an executive summary here.” An icon glowed at the right of his screen.
“Got it. Thanks. Please monitor the conversation, the usual overlays.”
“Yes, Roger. I’ll let you know when the holo is ready.”
A few minutes later Allison sounded a discrete chime and he donned his hologlasses and spun around in his chair, facing the array of cameras that would capture his image. He used small finger motions to expand the virtual screen floating off to his right so he could see the stream Allison was broadcasting to Milena Palmeri in Rome. In the projection his avatar sat behind a wooden desk with a shimmering New York skyline in the background. Not that the businessman on his screen looked anything like him. The cam
o layer meshed over his features and allowed for complete expressiveness, but to Milena, he would appear as an appealing amalgamation of dozens of people she knew well. His athletic thirty-six-year-old frame and light brown hair were replaced by a late-forties, heavyset man with jet black hair graying at the temples.
He flicked the screen to the corner of his view and nodded his head. Allison adjusted the holo connection and a six-foot-long beige sofa appeared in the open space behind his desk. A dark-haired woman, mid-thirties, wearing a fashionable pale green dress, sat perched on the edge of the sofa with her legs crossed. “Good afternoon, Ms. Palmeri,” he said. His avatar delivered the corresponding Italian. Roger checked the floating overlays Allison was providing. “Level 2 holo-facility. Side-channel analysis shows no camo in use.”
“Yes hello, but I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage because I do not know your name?” The real-time translator preserved the nervousness in her voice.
“You can call me Ernesto. Tell me, Ms. Palmeri, how did you find out about my services?”
“I have a friend, Gennaro Certa. He told me, in general terms, what you do for Certechnica. He suggested the New Democracy party could use your help.”
“And Gennaro gave you the certificate to reach us?”
“Yes, I followed his instructions and then your AI contacted me.” Roger checked his floating displays. There were no flags in the security overlay and indicators in the truthfulness overlay lit up solid green.
“Very well, Ms. Palmeri, how can I help you?” asked Roger.
“Well, Ernesto, we are a new party and have gained many strong followers. But we are being attacked online by many others and they are overwhelming our supporters. Is this something you can help with?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I can help with. I have a network of online resources that we can deploy to counteract those working against you.”
“We are an Italian party. Do you have such people in Italy?” Allison provided the up-to-date synth demo profile for Italy on a display at the bottom of his vision. A yellow banner noted that four hundred thousand synths had been assigned six months ago to promote a rival party, the Forward Alliance.
“Yes, Ms. Palmeri. We have more than two and half million resources in Italy, aged fifteen to sixty-five, in all socioeconomic groups and regions of the country. We can instruct a set of them to begin supporting New Democracy online and attacking those who are against you.”
“But, who are these people? We do not have that many supporters yet.” Gennaro had obviously adhered to his NDA and told her next to nothing about his network.
“That’s the thing, Ms. Palmeri. People take too long to convince and are very busy in their lives. We operate a network of AIs that we can direct to take up important causes online.” The resolution of the image in his hologlasses was precise enough for him to catch her upraised eyebrow. “I’m sure you’re wondering how that is possible, given the RealLife bot detection algos. My AIs have been online for almost twenty years, building omnipresence lifestreams using synthetic pictures, videos, and holograms. They are deeply connected and impossible to detect as non-human, even by the latest RealLife algorithms.”
“I did not think such a thing was possible,” she said.
Roger laughed. “It’s not possible, unless you started back when I did. Today’s AI bot nets can’t create enough back history to fool RealLife. But mine have no problems at all.”
“But if they are not real people, how will they know what to say online?”
“That won’t be difficult, Ms. Palmeri. We’ll run your omnipresence and your supporters’ and opponents’ interactions through our proprietary machine learning system. Our synths will quickly learn how to make the best arguments for New Democracy and counteract those against it. Then they will be able to interact in OP in real time.”
“Synths?”
“Oh, apologies, that’s what I call our AI agents. Now, our system will provide you with daily automated reports on synth activity and we throw in a complete OP reputation tracker at no charge. Of course, a service like this does not come cheap, as I hope Gennaro indicated to you. The neuromorphic cloud compute alone for a project like this—”
The woman in Rome raised her hand and grinned. “Ernesto, if your synths can rebuild our momentum, money is no object.”
CHAPTER TWO
MADISON, MISSISSIPPI - SEPTEMBER 13
The crowd started to gather just after sunrise. Rumors had been swirling all night on omnipresence that the call center was closing down. Employees and community leaders sent out the word—rally first thing in the morning in the parking lot next to the three-story building off of Interstate 55 at Lake Castle Road.
Customer Contact Solutions, better known to its employees as CCS, had built the call center eleven years earlier, attracted to Madison County by huge tax breaks and pledges of investment by the local government in infrastructure and education. It hired nearly twelve hundred customer support specialists and instantly became the largest employer in the town of Madison. It was the first employment opportunity for many of the Nissan workers who had lost jobs when the big factory ten miles up the road had shut down in retaliation for the Trump Trade War in 2021. Their pay was lower, but it was a lifeline to the community just as a wave of middle-aged suicides and opioid overdoses was starting to rise and young people were migrating away.
The first few years were a tremendous relief to the people of Madison, who were very grateful to CCS for choosing their town. Then a wave of innovation in conversational AI in the late 20s and early 30s delivered digital agents that could handle the vast majority of customer service interactions. As CCS integrated the technology, it began to have regular layoffs of support specialists. CCS was hiring high-skilled tech workers, but that was in their Silicon Valley hub. Employment fell below a thousand, then steadily declined until today it stood at just over four hundred. The entire third floor of the building was unused.
By 7:30 a.m. there were several hundred people in the parking lot milling around and waiting for word on the closure. A few carried home-made signs. Save Our Town. We Need These Jobs. Kill the Bots.
Katie Buford, a freelance reporter on assignment for Facebook Media Services, arrived shortly before eight o’clock. An FMS AI had recruited her a few weeks ago after watching her Instagram channel and deciding her personality and looks fit the FMS field reporter profile. After she went through five days of intensive online training, the FMS scheduling AI started giving her assignments based on analysis of local content in omnipresence and other news outlets. The scheduler prioritized any developing story with high conflict or drama. Today’s rally was a perfect example.
Katie deployed her pair of micro-drone cameras and started scouting out potential subjects. With her two drones and an AI performing real-time editing, she could record or broadcast interview segments with traditional back-and-forth reporter and interviewee shots without the expense of a camera operator.
“Good morning, ma’am. I’m Katie with FMS. Could I have a word with you?” The middle-aged woman turned towards her. “I suppose so,” she said. Katie’s micro-drones lined up with perfect framing. The AI editing program would instruct them to periodically change the shot, panning or zooming out to give context, or tightening if its emotion recognition system detected any strong emotional signals in the subject. Katie was free to focus on asking questions.
“Can you tell me your name and how long you’ve worked at CCS?”
“Yes, I’m Hannah Alexander and I’ve been here since the beginning, back in ’27.”
“So, you’ve survived a lot of layoffs in the past. Do you think this one’s different?”
“Damned if I know. Everyone heard rumors is all. Said they’re shutting the whole thing down.”
“Any idea why?”
“You bet I do. It’s the damned AI.”
“I thought customer service bots could handle the simple calls but they still need peopl
e for more complicated situations.”
Hannah nodded. “You’re right, that’s the way it used to be. Which was nice, really, because we got to do the trickier cases, the ones needed problem solving. Much more interesting than data entry and pushing buttons. Then CCS started training that RezMat DeepAgent.”
RezMat was one of the world’s largest technology companies. It had grown almost entirely by acquisition, much of it in the last few years, swallowing up hundreds of firms from equipment providers like Cisco and Juniper to small twenty-person AI shops. RezMat seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of capital generated from its financial trading arm. There were rumors it had an advanced AI trading algorithm that cleared billions of dollars every day.
But it wasn’t just all financing. Breakthrough technologies like DeepAgent and dozens of others in robotics, nanotech, and material science seemed to emerge from RezMat’s labs every few months. The company’s success had led to a backlash from competitors and regulators concerned about the growing threat of a RezMat monopoly across whole sectors of the tech economy. With pressure mounting, the company’s founding CEO had recently stepped down amidst allegations of securities violations.
Katie had followed news about RezMat but was unfamiliar with DeepAgent. “Oh, it’s from RezMat? What’s so different about DeepAgent?”
“Well she’s so pleasant to talk to, but she’s basically living in your head all day long. She listens to all of your calls. She sees everything on your screens and all the commands you enter. And she’s learning all the time. After each call, she even asks you why you did things. Then once she thinks she knows how to handle something, she’ll steal your call right from under you.”
“Wait, how does DeepAgent do that? Doesn’t it confuse the customer?”
“No, she’s friggin’ able to mimic my voice so the customer doesn’t even know.”
“So, do you think closing the call center is because of DeepAgent?”
“No doubt in my mind, honey. We were finishing fewer and fewer calls. We trained that bitch so well I think CCS is going to turn it all over to her.”