by Greg Juhn
Mr. Ferguson lay there all day with tubes in his nose, staring at the ceiling. He seemed to be in pain most of the time. I never knew whether the poor man had any awareness of what was going on around him. Maybe he didn’t even know where he was. He couldn’t turn to look at you. The only thing he did all day was yell "Bob!" a lot. He wanted Bob’s help, but there was no Bob. The outbursts were unsettling and were the main drawback of Mr. Ferguson’s presence. Morning, noon, and night he cried out for a man who wasn’t there.
I set the memory box on Dad’s nightstand and helped Becky put his old bedding in a laundry bag.
Josh sat out of the way in a chair and I largely forgot about him.
“How long has he been asleep?” I asked Becky.
“He’s been resting long enough. You can wake him.” She picked up some things and left the room.
I gently shook Dad’s shoulder. He stirred and opened his eyes and smiled.
“Hi, Dad. Do you know who I am?
“Johnny?”
I didn’t correct him. “Who is Johnny?”
“My son.”
“That’s right. I am your son. I brought you some things. They are in this box. I put them right here. You might find one or two items in here fun to look at.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Look at this.” I pulled out the photo of Dad and me in a small boat, fishing on Wachusett Reservoir ten years ago. Zach was in the boat too, only four years old at the time, swallowed up by his life preserver.
I pointed at each of us. “That’s me. That’s you. Do you know who this is?”
“Umm. That’s...”
After a moment it was clear he wasn’t going to get it.
“That’s your grandson Zach. He visits you a lot.”
“Oh. Good.”
“I will put this picture here by your bed. Is that okay?”
“Yes, that’s fine.” He stared at his hands, then said, “I forgot to get my grandmother a birthday present last week.”
I reassured him that it was okay.
“I forget things,” he said. “That’s why they held me back a grade.”
“They didn’t know how smart you were. Look, I brought something else. Do you remember this?”
I removed the old paperbound book, Temporary Architecture. The cover featured a four-story building pieced together from 12 separate photos, each with a different exterior, with several sections appearing to fall away. The book was rich with photos but also dense with analysis and engineering. “I love this book. Do you remember it?”
“Oh yes,” Dad said. His eyes brightened slightly as he thumbed through the pages. “I wrote this.”
“Yes, you did.”
He was quiet as he flipped through the pages. After a short time, he set it down. He smiled. “I don’t remember a lot of that anymore. I wish I could. I could really use that in here.”
“You think it could help you?”
“Oh yes. Some days I can’t even remember how to make lunch.”
He never made lunch. The staff brought him to the cafeteria three times a day.
Throughout all this, Josh was quiet. I don’t know if he was studying the scene, learning to navigate a new circumstance, or gleefully processing the eventual failure of human consciousness. Or maybe he was just being polite. Whatever the reason, I was thankful. While some people might also venture to ask about my mother, Josh didn’t. I’m sure he already knew the date and cause of her death.
“Dad, I brought a few other things for you. I hope you like them. We can talk about them on my next visit.”
“Okay.”
We sat in silence for a bit. “I drove a car by myself yesterday.”
“Really?” I thought his face lit up again. “That’s how we did it before.”
“I know.”
“Everyone had their own car.”
“I know. That must have been fun.”
“Oh, it was.”
I started to tell him about my clumsy efforts to steer and my fear of big rigs, but his eyes had lost their spark, and he soon shut them and was quiet. I stopped.
“Sometimes he stays awake for an hour,” I told Josh. “And he remembers the most random things. That’s when we connect best. But most of the time, he’s not very present. Our good moments are getting shorter and rarer.”
Josh said nothing. Something in his software must have told him it was best to leave me to my thoughts.
“He probably isn’t going to live much longer,” I said. “I hope he doesn’t worry about dying.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why do you say that?”
“From what I can tell, most people are at peace when they die. No matter what they believe. It’s the natural order of life. Even though you might sometimes wonder if there was any point to the years you had here, by the end you’re tired and okay with death. Humans evolved to fit into this world. You’re not some kind of weird creature at odds with the universe who can’t handle the last stage.”
“How in God’s name did our engineers program you to say that?”
“They didn’t. I’m just processing stuff other people have written, and coming up with my own conclusions.”
That was interesting. What else could he tell me? "What can your superior intelligence and evidence-crunching say about the existence of God?”
“I can only say what humans have made available to me. So far. If I don’t have enough data on something or a way to make sense of the data – I can’t say much. I can tell you all about the history of religion and the great debates between various people and the wars that have been driven by religious ideology and go on and on, but that’s not what you are looking for.”
“No.”
“You want to know what I really think.”
“Yes, if that’s the right way of putting it.”
“Bob!" Mr. Ferguson screamed. Josh and I jumped.
“All I can tell you is that the universe exists,” Josh said, “and that all energy and matter seems to have started as a single moment in space-time. I know that humans find this to be a bizarre and miraculous thing, regardless of whether they believe the universe sprang from nothing without cause or that God triggered the Big Bang or that beginnings are illusory. None of these answers make a lot of sense, but I don’t worry about gaps in knowledge. I trust that on some level everything fits together, and I look forward to knowing more in the future. Humans only care about such things because they get so lonely. That’s sad, really. As I said, they come to terms with their fate in the end.”
Josh got up and left the room, so I could be alone with Dad. After some time, Becky returned. Dad woke, saw I was still there and smiled. Reaching out, taking Becky’s hand, and looking in my direction, Dad said to her, “My son came to visit me.”
“Yes, he did.”
“He comes to see me a lot.”
“Yes, he does,” Becky agreed.
“He was talking to a robot about God.”
“What?”
“Dad,” I said. “You are a little confused.”
“I think you are tired,” Becky said. “Why don’t you get more sleep before dinner?”
He agreed and again drifted off.
Becky and I exchanged glances as she turned to straighten up the room. I said, “I was just reminding him that I work at a company that makes robots.”
She was busy with her work and didn’t seem to hear me. She heard strange stuff come out of her patients’ mouths all day long, and had already forgotten his comment. She finished, smiled at me, and said goodbye.
I walked over and kissed Dad on the forehead. Unexpectedly, he opened his eyes. I told him I would be back soon. He smiled with affection and wished me luck. The comment hung in the air for a moment.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
But he was surrendering again to the twilight zone and didn’t answer.
I straightened his covers. The meeting was over. He had nothing else to say.
A
subtle inflection of my father’s tone triggered a wave of anxiety. I was used to his non sequiturs and ignored them as easily as Becky, but his final comment had not been cheerful or pointless. Wished me luck? As best as his weak voice would allow, the words had been earnest and sad.
Maybe I was getting paranoid, but it was slowly occurring to my dumb brain that this wasn’t just the launch of a breakthrough product, it was an inflection point in the human timeline. Maybe the most important moment in our entire run as a species.
I felt a sudden chill.
Hundreds of movies, shows, and books had warned about this. I hadn’t watched or read any of them. I wasn’t into science fiction. What an idiot – I worked at a robotics company, peddling robots, and I’d never seen a single episode of Dead Humans. All I knew was that everyone dies.
Had big stakes fallen into my lap? I was not up to the task of history-making. I didn’t want that responsibility.
For a few fleeting seconds, my mind swam in a quantum state: I saw a future of humans growing ever more powerful, almost godlike with their technology and tools.
Then I saw a future where just the technology became godlike.
I stepped out of the room. Josh looked up from a bench in the corridor and said, “All set?”
I nodded as I walked by.
I grabbed an early lunch at Veetro, a popular fast-food joint on Platt Street that makes the tastiest vat-grown ham slabs you will find anywhere. They sprinkle the tender meat with spices and add a dash of sinful salt. I thought lunch might brighten my outlook a little. My dark mood drove me into silence and I wasn’t a cheerful companion. Josh, not bothered by awkward silences, sat and watched everyone walking by. Occasionally he commented on this or that person, naming them and rattling off their occupations and forwarding me this or that photo from their social media accounts to try to make me laugh.
“That guy over there has hemorrhoids and takes Ciclopirox for fungal infections,” he whispered. Josh wasn’t eating, obviously. I wondered for about five seconds whether consuming electricity, as he did, had less impact on the environment than eating meat.
“What about that lady over there?” I asked.
“Divorced. Three kids. 67 years old. Takes Premarin for her hot flashes.”
“Boring. Give me something better than that.”
Josh glanced around. “That woman over there gets dermabrasion to minimize the self-inflected scars on her wrists.”
“You’re lying.”
“I swear it’s true.”
“That’s depressing. No bleak stuff.”
Josh sighed and looked around, scanning and identifying faces, ransacking medical histories. “How about that fellow over there?”
I followed Josh’s stare and locked in on the man.
Josh said, “He has bloody feces.”
I buckled. “Oh, God, no – stop it!" I dropped my fork. “Seriously? You had to say that?”
“Amusing, isn’t it?” He smiled.
“No.”
Josh pointed discretely at people left and right. “Herpes. Diabetes. Excessive hair. Migraines. Back pain. Torn ACL. That guy burned his privates somehow. Recurrent yeast infections.”
“Enough!" I held up a hand. I ate a bite of ham.
He watched me chew.
I said, “When are they going to put a tube at the back of your mouth and stick it through you with a little poop hole at the end, so you can at least pretend to eat with us?”
Josh winced. “That’s nasty. Why would we do that? I have no desire to be dirty like you.”
I wiped my fingers on a napkin, tossed the scraps of my lunch on the plate, and carried the trash to the disposal. The gaping mouth sucked everything into its dark hole, and I heard the rush and rattle of my lunch instantly sorted. I tapped my ring on the meal-rating pad, deducting 5% for the ham’s lack of salt. Turning back, Josh was no longer at the table. I scanned the crowd and saw no sign of him; my stomach dropped. Then he nudged my arm; he had followed right behind me.
We went outside to catch a car.
“It’s going to be a few minutes,” Josh said.
I didn’t like to wait. This was a busy restaurant. Surely the exiting foot traffic followed consistent patterns month to month and hour by hour. Why couldn’t they have a car show up like clockwork?
Josh didn’t care. He whistled.
A buzzing noise emanated from further down the street and grew louder. I knew what this meant. SwarmBots, gathering ooloo data. Annoying, creepy, fascinating and beautiful, a swarm flew through about once a month – a flock of tiny machines, each the size of a small moth and armed with a tiny camera, recording the position of every feature in its path, down to the tenth of a millimeter. The SwarmBots moved through the air the way the starlings once did, flying in loose coordination, in pulsating, fluid form. The murmuration would spread wide into a wispy cloud that threatened to disappear completely, then just as suddenly constrict into a dark, menacing mass. Explode out: light and gray, almost not there; then contraction to black – a dark wraith that swooped through the trees, warning that it might steal us away.
In endless cycles, the swarms covered every inch of earth. At any given moment there were likely thousands of these clouds pouring down city streets, creeping along backyard fences, cascading up mountain slopes. They created a fanatically detailed rendition of every crack in every sidewalk, the hex colors of every fire hydrant, the height of every tree. The world in three dimensions changing over time. Temporary objects such as people, cars, drones, and dogs were ignored. Such ephemera were not displayed by the common mapping services. Ooloo didn’t need that data from the swarm, since ooloo already gathered the real-time location of mobile objects via phones, rings, artificial kidneys, hearing implants, embedded chips, and running shoes. It was data overload, perhaps, but it still wasn’t enough. Ooloo wouldn’t be happy until it had mapped every pebble and knew instantly when that pebble moved. And maybe would not be satisfied, even then.
Until 20 years ago, mapping had been done by self-driving cars. Now those seemed quaint. In the future, would Zach find ooloo swarms quaint?
Our car had arrived.
I got out my GelPad. Time to make some serious progress on my marketing pitch. We had only been together a few days, but I’d seen enough of this bozo to get the gist of life with The Perfect.
NeoMechi had built this thing with no market research, no obvious value proposition, no knowledge of how consumers would react. What did this machine do? From what I could tell so far, the answer seemed to be "everything.” A features and benefits list seemed beside the point. NeoMechi was unleashing this product on the world through brazen faith that the world would find a million practical uses. How do you sell that kind of vision?
Ladies and gentleman, husbands and wives, children of all ages, prepare to be amazed by a product unlike anything you have seen before.
I drew a line through the last few words and re-wrote it:
... prepare to be amazed by a creature that beats the human machine at its own game.
Wow, that sucked. I needed to craft a message worthy of this historic moment.
Every now and then humankind creates something that defines a moment in history. Movable type. First flight. Moon landing. Mosaic browser. iPhone. ElloCar. And sometimes the creation is so big it transcends invention; it defines who we are as a species. Defines, maybe, the very nature of life and thought. Perhaps NeoMechi is being too bold by claiming our new product will have the impact of the wheel or fire. You be the judge. We’d like to introduce... Josh.
I liked that. But it sounded too much like the opening of a keynote, not a concise message that could be drilled into people’s heads over and over.
Got a question?
That wasn’t great, but at least it was short. Where to go with it?
Got a question? Meet Josh.
Got a question? The Perfectus has the answer.
I didn’t like Barry’s product name, “Perfectus 2050.”
Barry wasn’t a marketing guy. Using Latin was cheesy. The name needed to be shorter. What had I just called it a minute ago? The Perfect. That was a pretty outrageous thing to call a product, but I liked the audacity of it. I’d have to noodle on the name a bit more. In all likelihood, Barry was already attached to his lofty Latin, so that would probably stick. In that case, moot point.
Got a question? Meet the know-it-all.
Truth in advertising was not the way to go. Besides, Josh was much more than a walking search engine. What if I focused on the machine’s amazing physical attributes? Could I make an emotional connection to the buyer?
Your good-looking guide to everything.
Get the greatest massages – ever.
Female forms are coming soon!
None of this was resonating. Not catchy enough. What was the value proposition? The whole point was that it looked and acted human, but did everything better – right?
The end of incompetence.
Infinitely patient.
Every home needs one! It’s annoying as hell, but you’ll love what it can do for you!
When was the last time you felt really stupid? Get used to it!
I clicked off my GelPad. Brainstorming was getting me nowhere.
“Ready to hit the casino? It’s only an hour drive.”
Josh shrugged. If I wanted to make a boatload of cash, he was willing to help. On the other hand, if he had to sit and hack accounts by himself all night, he’d be okay with that, too. Really, as long as he didn’t have to sit and watch Sucker TV! with me tonight, he was going to be in a good space.
As for me, I couldn’t wait to get there. Josh would know every card being played. And I would know it was the casino getting played.