Auto
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Ignore the blurred cascade of text on the sidescreen. Ignore the two profiles on the mainscreen with the interface above them. She kneels down in front of them as if praying at an altar. Her fingers run along the screen’s edge, then peel away a rubber covering, exposing never-used sockets. She stabs one end of the USB cable in, the other into her laptop. Yanks furniture aside until she finds a power socket for the plug. On.
The laptop whirrs. Clunks. Moans. Blows hot air out of one side. It boots up like a bloody steam engine, Christ almighty, come on, come on...
Finally, a screen Amy hasn’t seen for years lights up. She starts tapping the icons on the laptop monitor, swearing when she realises it’s pre-touchscreen, prehistoric. Her fingers work the keyboard and mousepad awkwardly until she finds the program she needs.
Auto-Mate™ v0.977.
She whacks the keys, stopping it from automatically trying to log onto the internet and connect to all her various accounts. Then:
Auto-Mate core system main menu
Full install
Custom install
Repair
Uninstall
Settings
She moves the cursor back and forth between Repair and Uninstall. Surely... surely her auto just needs repairing? Bring it back to normal?
But then she glimpses the vitriol and outrage and confusion vomiting down the sidescreen, and knows she has no choice.
Amy’s auto started with this program. A beta-test industry prototype, loaded onto this laptop by her mother back in 2012. Despite all the updates over the past decade, despite autos now running purely within the internet cloud, its core operating system still exists (doesn’t it?). It might be buried under years of code updates, but it’s still there (isn’t it?). So it will respond to commands from its original software (won’t it?).
Amy bites her lip. She isn’t sure. She isn’t a geek or anything.
No, it’s got to work. Her auto was born right here. This is its digital heart. Uninstalling and deleting it should... should stop that heart.
Amy takes a last look at the mainscreen, as if saying goodbye to herself.
Relationship status: Pregnant.
“What...?”
Sentences are blinking down the interface, one by one.
Code share... complete.
Settings share... complete.
Parameter definition...complete.
Auto boot initiation... done.
Coding......
Amy can’t believe what she’s reading. They’re doing it. Her auto and Juan-Miguel’s auto, they’re... merging, or combining themselves or something, they’re...
They’re making a new life.
“You can’t be bloody pregnant!” she shouts, and then laughs at the sound of her own words. A jagged laugh. “You can’t be!”
Coding...................................
“You CAN’T be!”
She looks down at the laptop. Her finger is trembling over the keyboard. Uninstall. Do it! Press Uninstall and kill her now, she has to stop this –
She has to abort –
A baby’s cry fills the room.
Amy cries out too, dropping the laptop, watching the videos and photos of newborn babies flaring down the sidescreen, babies with wispy gossamer-fine blonde hair, babies with dark Mediterranean skin, babies swaddled in cotton and held by exhausted mothers and grinning fathers, babies bawling for their mummy and daddy, and Amy’s sobs are mixed up with the noise, she can smell that faint fresh-dough smell and feel the weight in her arms, she can’t do this, she can’t kill her own child –
Silence.
Shocking quiet fills the flat. Just the sound of Amy’s sobs.
She looks up, wiping tears and snot off her face. The babies are gone, but there is a lot of activity scrolling down the sidescreen once again. Transactions are being cancelled. Messages are being deleted. Statuses are being downdated. Event invitations are being redacted. All of it being done by her auto… or rather, undone.
Rollback.
She looks at the lower half of the mainscreen where her profile is being displayed.
Relationship status:
Single/Available.
Back to normal.
Amy kneels there on the floor below the monitors and watches as her auto swiftly redacts everything that happened. Everyone in her Circle accepts it, reverting back to standard pleasant responses. Her auto posts an update that effectively says ‘normal service has been resumed’.
The interface glows.
“Why... what happened?” she whispers.
He asked me to stop.
“Juan-Miguel?” His profile, still alongside hers, now says Soltero/Disponible. “Or do you mean... it was his auto that asked you to stop?”
Yes.
“And... you only stopped because his auto asked you?”
He asked me to do the right thing.
He improves me.
For the next half hour, Amy kneels on her living room floor and stares at those words, ignoring the ceaseless chatter dribbling down the sidescreen.
A little later, once she has freshened herself up, Amy sits back down on her sofa. She unblocks her mother’s auto and books in some conversation time tomorrow, causing it to display a satisfied smiley. The rest of the Pearce family – living and unliving – respond with likes, thumbs-up, approving comments.
She stares at Juan-Miguel’s profile, at a man who lives hundreds of miles away in a place she has never heard of. A man whose personality, background, and culture she knows nothing about. A man who most people in her Circle would frown upon her even knowing, let alone dating. A man whose dark, stubbled, smiling face she doesn’t really find attractive.
A man who might improve her, too.
She says “PM Juan-Miguel,” and a message box pops up on the sidescreen.
She says “Hello.”
She says “No, redact. Hola!”
She watches the private message being sent. About a minute later comes a reply. Her auto translates it for her:
“I know who this is!! Hello, my wife!!
Are you having the same crazy day
that I am?! What happened to us
both today?!”
Amy’s surprised to hear herself laugh. There’s a grin across her face almost as big as the one on his profile picture.
She sends another message, pausing to ask her auto to make sure she gets the translation just right.
“¡Feliz Día de San Valentín!”
Both Amys glow.
Timeline
6.10pm Thursday 7 April 2022
Joanna O’Donnell is at Global
Investigations (UK) Ltd Head
Office
As she walks through the sliding doors and into the open air, Joanna feels good.
She stands out from all the other office workers leaving the building, and she knows it. Her green dress is figure-hugging enough to be sexy but floral enough to be traditional, and her long beige coat flaps around her bare legs in an almost cinematic manner. She’s had time to reapply makeup and dab a little Calvin Klein Magnetic around her neck. She’s also pinned up her wavy black hair, primed to release it and let it tumble onto her shoulders, whenever she needs an extra boost. Always good to be prepared! Hm, probably the only worthwhile piece of advice Mum ever gave her.
From her handbag, she pulls out her Vades™ and slides them onto her face. They’re transparent, almost invisible from a distance. Sleek, narrow and wraparound, like the coolest pair of perspex safety goggles ever. Inside the lenses, Joanna’s auto is there, overlaying icons and text and images onto her view of the real world.
6.11pm Thursday 7 April 2022
Joanna O’Donnell
Gender: Female
Age range: 26-30
Orientation: Straight
Relationship status:
Single/Available
Current location: Global
Investigations (UK) Ltd Head
Office, Farringdon
Road,
London EC1M 3JB.
Status update: Working.
Hi Joanna, hope you’ve had a
good afternoon at work! Here’s
the selected feed since 3.55pm:
17 private messages
2 personal videos
20 referred videos
78 status updates
89 tweets
23 veets
8 bleets
...
She cuts off the full list as it scrolls over her view of Farringdon Road. It’s rush hour, the street is full of traffic and people, and she’s in a hurry too. “Less updates,” she says softly. Her display changes, as her auto hides all but the most urgent items.
Joanna straightens her Vades™, noticing how most of the people passing by are walking with heads bowed and smartphones in hand. She can’t believe that’s still the norm. So old-fashioned, having to carry something in your hands all the time! She knows the reason, though. It’s a prop. People love their props, especially Londoners. They’re much more comfortable focusing their attention on a smartphone than looking awkwardly at strangers. Who wants to do that!
Joanna does. She likes to look at people. She likes to watch. She likes to find out as much as she can.
Hey, it’s my job, she often tells herself.
Joanna flicks through genuine private messages from people in her Circle, the generic ones from their autos having been filtered out. She doesn’t have to use her hands, unlike the Neanderthal smartphone-luggers. Just her eyes and voice. Staring at an icon opens it, blinking hard closes it, speaking aloud transcribes a reply. Takes about a minute to get through half a dozen PMs and send responses. The last one is from Siobhan, her youngest sister, still living back home in Dublin having only just started her Economics degree at Trinity College.
Another date tonight then sis,
you tart?! Best of luck! What’s
this fella like then?
“No idea,” Joanna says aloud, the words appearing across her vision. “Haven’t met him yet. On my way now.” Blink. Send.
Siobhan must be online, desperate for a distraction from studying, as her reply pops up within a few seconds:
Good sex though????
Cheeky little cow. Although it’s a fair question, and how nice for Joanna to be able to answer with “The best, apparently!”
She blink-shuts her auto’s message panel. Time to get on with tonight’s date.
Joanna scrolls through her personal calendar and reviews the agreed location for tonight, a trendy pub in Camden that she’s never heard of, but apparently has 105 reviews and an average of four stars. She likes that he chose a pub and not some swanky wine bar. Less competition - she’ll stand out better in a pub. She fancies a proper drink. How many can she have? Her auto has the answer, monitoring the signals from the microbiosensors inside her clothes and giving her a quick medical summary. Alcohol content in her bloodstream now virtually nil following the night out with the girls from the office two days ago, so she’s allowed three glasses of wine tonight. Any more and her private health insurance payments will start to increase, and there’s no way she’s making that mistake again.
As Joanna follows the crowd of people along the pedestrianised Cowcross Street walkway, she spots the London Underground sign up ahead, outside the huge station. Through her Vades™, the familiar roundel glows warning-red, overlaid with flashing text:
Farringdon Station CLOSED.
TfL update 5.55pm:
Circle, Hammersmith &
City and Metropolitan Line
services suspended following
signal failure at King’s Cross
Station.
She stops in her tracks. Bugger. She should have checked before she left work. Too busy messaging! All these people queuing outside the station elevators must be taking the Crossrail or the Thameslink, neither of which are any good to her.
She says “Alternative routes.” Her auto brings up local bus timetables. God, as if Joanna’s going to get a bus! They’re one of the few things she’s learned to hate about London: unreliable, uncomfortable, unpleasant.
She says “Local taxi availability.” Her auto detects an empty taxi 0.7km away, a miracle for rush hour.
She says “Book taxi and confirm destination.” Her auto makes the booking, causing the driver to change course and head her way.
Joanna turns back to the corner of Farringdon Road and waits for a few minutes until the sleek black taxi purrs alongside, door unlocking. The driver, a grey-haired man in his fifties, doesn’t look at her as she climbs in and buckles up. His auto has already been given destination details by her auto, and the payment has been debited. They don’t say a word to each other.
6.23pm Thursday 7 April 2022
Joanna O’Donnell is on Greville
Street, London EC1M 8SU.
As the taxi works its way through the back roads, Joanna faces the window, not seeing any of the streets and buildings passing by. She’s reading about the man she’s going to meet. The man she hasn’t really met at all yet.
It was last Monday when she first spotted him, coming back from lunch with Nell and Sophie through Hatton Garden. He was walking in the opposite direction, alone but clearly having a phone conversation with someone. His mouth stopped moving when he saw her. As they passed each other, they shared a glance. A few seconds later, Joanna risked looking over her shoulder, smiling to see that he was doing the same thing. He smiled back – a nice smile. He was tall, young-ish, thick brown hair, neat goatee, wearing rimless glasses and a good quality navy blue suit. Cute.
A few years ago, that would have been it – a warm little memory for both of them. But as Joanna looked back, she triple-blinked to display his public profile, which now floated alongside him.
His name was Greg.
Greg Randall
Gender: Male
Age range: 31-35
Orientation: Straight
Relationship status:
Single/Available.
Compatibility Index: 85%.
Really? A see-eye of 85%? Her last three boyfriends had all been in the low 70s!
She bookmarked him instantly. Her auto reported that he did the same thing to her. His prescription glasses obviously had the new Spex™ technology built in, which gave him the same constant online access that her Vades™ did.
And they both kept walking.
Back at the office, Joanna went through his timeline. Searched his online history. Did a little digging. It’s what she’s good at.
Gregory James Randall is 32, two years older than she is. He lives in Walthamstow (Google Maps show a two-storey house, very well-kept, neat front garden, green front door) in his own property (land registry confirms he has owned the freehold for four years). His family are from Chelmsford (both parents still alive, one older brother in the Armed Forces), but he moved to London at least six years ago (which is when he was listed on Haringey Council’s electoral roll). He works for On Course Consulting Ltd (a long-established management consultancy, doing well, their share prices are up) as manager of their marketing department (promoted in January according to his CV on LinkedIn), and is earning about £45K per year (if his tax records are accurate). He’s got a fun side (images and videos at fancy-dress parties, parascending for charity, foreign nightspots on holiday) as well as a professional side (company dinners, conferences, seminars). His public Circle has 615 people in it (about average), a mixture of old college friends, workmates and family members, none of whom ring any warning bells (or have criminal records, according to CRB checks). She reads a few samples of his Amazon product reviews (he points out design flaws but is otherwise quite generous in his praise), his comments on other people’s blogs and vlogs (again generally upbeat), his status updates (often quite self-deprecating but amusing), and his forum posts (he’s registered to a lot of marketing forums, plus a few discussing music and old TV shows). His favourite city is Dublin (oh yes, good man), his favourite recor
ding artist is Public Property (she downloaded their latest track bundle last week, they’re dead good), his favourite film is Avatar 3 (she enjoyed that too, not her fave but probably in her top twenty) and according to the number of flights he’s booked, his favourite holiday destination is New Zealand (she’s never been but it looks beautiful in his photo albums, perhaps he might take her?).
It was all there. You didn’t even have to know where to look.
After twenty minutes, Joanna understood why her auto had awarded Greg an 85% see-eye. He’s a catch! And so she sent a sim request, which he accepted almost instantly.
Ever since Monday, Joanna and Greg’s autos have been engaging with each other more and more. Since each auto is not only programmed to mimic its owner, but also has access to every single piece of their data, it can replicate how a conversation with another person might play out. Except a hundred times faster.
Simulated relationships. Joanna has half a dozen of these on the go. She doesn’t have time to waste finding out whether she might like someone or not, not these days. So simming is useful for picking and choosing new mates. You can’t just add anyone to your Circle.
During the week, Joanna received regular reports on how things were going, as her auto chatted, flirted and joked with Greg’s auto to determine how compatible they might be. Scanning through highlights of their simulated conversation, she was pleased to see his remarks were both amusing and intelligent, often with that self-deprecating wit. He had strong opinions too, some of which were quite political, but it looked like her auto managed to change his auto’s mind on a few things, which was a very good sign. He can expect a fair bit of that if they ever get talking in real time. She’s nobody’s pushover!