Mike looked at her, bleary-eyed.
“I’m not saying the work has been easy,” he replied.
Mike was normally a true believer. A futurist. He believed technology’s forward march would, always and by necessity, herald a better world. In an effort to inspire his subordinates, he once sent his team a news article about how robots will one day be employed in fast food restaurants and grocery stores, and when a team member asked him about what would happen to all those displaced jobs, Mike became annoyed and complained about the employee’s “lack of vision.”
His team eventually came up with a proposal to implant a chip in the human brain that could relay real-time signals of its activity with the intent to eventually record and convert it to a computer-readable format. Supposedly Mike asked for volunteers within his team to “host” the chip, and when no one did, he had the chip surgically implanted on himself.
That was just a rumor though. Even Catalina didn’t know if it was true. She watched Mike as he reached up and scratched at a spot just over his ear.
Once complete, Catalina’s Diana tech would power the virtual social media world that Devon was building and could also accelerate the mapping and conversion processes of neural activity that Mike was devising. Lots of companies in the Valley were fiddling with AI, whether it was for identifying restaurants their users would enjoy or finding a food delivery service with the fastest speed. In fact, a lot of the applications involved urban food delivery. Folks in Silicon Valley had a tendency to curate software centered on optimizing their own lives. But Diana was far more ambitious. One day she could be fed theoretical physics models on the distribution of dark energy in the Milky Way and advance conjecture on the origins of the universe. She could analyze thirty years of inconsistently formatted elementary school transcripts from around the world and make proposals about the kind of curriculums lead to the best outcomes for American students. She could leapfrog the trajectory of human progress. Her worth could be priceless.
That’s why Devon and Mike, who enjoyed unfettered access to Cat’s code libraries housed on company servers, copied and maintained up-to-date copies of Diana’s code base for themselves.
They didn’t tell her though. They didn’t tell anyone that they did that.
“You sell any more of those—what do you call them, fruit juicers?” Devon asked Catalina with a cynical grin, hanging his socked feet over an empty chair.
“It’s not a fruit juicer, Devon.”
“Don’t you put a bunch of kale and strawberries in there, and just turn it on?”
Cat rubbed her temples, trying to restrain herself from taking his bait.
Technically Devon, Mike, and Cat formed the CEO’s future projects division, but Cat had launched a Diana-infused home smoothie maker, called the Nutrino Mixer, that was already on the market. The board of Sharesquare once had grandiose visions of riding a tech trend called the “Internet of Things”—posed as a $50 billion opportunity to turn everyone’s appliances into something resembling the home in The Jetsons. But research outside of the Peninsula indicated most consumers didn’t care if their refrigerator was capable of tracking their calendar appointments or monitoring their grocery list. In fact, most folks in the beta program just used Diana-infused smart technology to play music or to solicit jokes in front of their friends. The whole fad appeared to be falling flat, and Bay Area geeks stopped talking about it. But the Nutrino Mixer, however, was proving an exception.
And today, maybe, she had a success story to share.
Once the CEO, an introverted early thirties-something who wore khaki shorts to work, arrived to the meeting that day, Cat kicked off the agenda.
“We finally have a hit,” she said. She turned on a slideshow displaying an image of a shining, chrome-plated Nutrino Mixer.
Devon sighed loudly. The CEO looked up from his laptop at her with polite attention. Mike continued playing with his phone.
“The Nutrino is far outselling our wildest expectations,” Catalina continued, unfazed. “Nine million have been sold as of this month. It’s the biggest single channel we have now for getting Diana’s smart technology into people’s homes.”
“But we’re making very little money on the licensing since we don’t make the hardware,” Devon pointed out.
“That’s not really the point at this phase. The point is we’re normalizing artificially intelligent appliances for the mass market.”
“With something that dumb people think is healthy for them,” Devon said while looking at the CEO. “This is bad branding. This is not intelligent,” he laughed with a snort.
The CEO just continued smiling. He seemed to like it when his direct reports sniped at each other. He thought the inter-office competition was good for the business.
The Nutrino Mixer, integrated with Diana, had become a health food craze in the previous quarter. It consisted of an elaborate blender attached to a chilled produce box that Diana would regularly renew with fresh ingredients for the customer. The consumer could simply tell Diana to “blend my smoothie” each morning, and an opening on the compartment box would release a mix of berries or kale or whatever fruit and supplements Diana had determined the consumer would like best. Heck, you could add anything: turmeric, cayenne, maca root, ground-up cricket exoskeletons. Whatever superfood fantasy was sweeping the yuppie and hipster markets, it could be sourced. Customers simply told Diana their preferences, and she would ensure the ingredients were in their next produce box, left at their doorstep. All for a simple subscription fee.
The Nutrino Mixer went really big shortly after Christmas when health evangelists began getting a hold of it and telling their friends. Then it was featured on a daytime talk show where the host liked to dance a lot, and Cat’s team rolled out a feature where customers could submit mouth swab samples to get customized vitamin mixes and track their eating using an app. The Nutrino Mixer offered health, weight loss, and vigor in a way that was mind-numblingly convenient, and to consumers, it looked trustworthy and authoritative because there was so much damn science attached to it.
Upper middle-class white people loved it.
And Cat was almost proud of it. She had one at home, and she gave one to her tía living nearby. Perhaps the health nuts were overblowing the benefits of it, but that didn’t mean it was a bad product.
“Diana is building one of the largest databases on human health and eating habits ever conceived, and you think this project is ‘not intelligent’?” Cat said, narrowing her eyes at Devon.
Mike looked up from his phone at these words. Devon hesitated, looking dumbstruck for a brief moment. He was rarely caught without a comeback. And the CEO’s vapid smile dissipated.
“Are we doing anything special with all that user data?” the CEO asked.
Catalina hadn’t really thought about this yet. She knew data was powerful. She knew data was the currency that kept an increasing share of Bay Area companies afloat. But really, she had no idea what she would do with all the petabytes of survey and health metric information Diana was collecting through the Nutrino Mixer. It didn’t seem to matter yet. This was Silicon Valley. This was a place for shooting first and asking questions later. And comprehensive user data gathered under overly broad user agreement statements was a core part of everyone’s business model.
“I figured I’d let the advertising department figure that out,” she replied, and this answer seemed to mollify everyone.
Then Devon presented updates on progress for the new social media platform. Beta users on the VR prototype of the Squarespace network, or rather Sharebox, as it was being called, were more likely to stay online longer and interact with ads than the previous version. That’s really all that mattered to investors.
Then Mike gave an awkward presentation on recent challenges facing his “brain digitization” team. He looked exhausted and spoke evasively, and then the meeting ended.
<
br /> In that room, those three leaders, Devon, Mike, and Cat, and their projects were the future of Sharesquare Industries:
A virtual reality social network.
A scheme to digitize the human brain.
And Diana, the most open-ended AI in the world.
In a few months, one of these projects would be mocked as an utter failure.
Another project would be hailed as a groundbreaking success.
And the last one would bring the nation to the brink of ruin.
Catalina and Mike left that afternoon meeting and got into an elevator at the same time. Mike was still looking at his phone.
“How do you think the launch of the new VR platform is going to go?” Cat asked, after a minute of awkward silence passed.
“Looks like a hit to me. I think it’s gonna turn people into zombies. They’ll be on it all day.”
“Is that a good thing?”
He looked up. “What do you mean? Of course it’s a good thing. That’s what we’re building it for. So people will like it.”
“I just wonder sometimes if the things we’re building are actually, you know, good things.”
Mike raised an eyebrow and then turned back to his phone. “You’re thinking about it too much.”
The elevator reached the lobby, and Mike and Catalina parted with mumbled goodbyes. Catalina’s team had invited her to a happy hour and foosball tournament at a local bar, but she had declined. She wanted to be alone. She almost always wanted to be alone. Cat was surprised her team even bothered to keep inviting her.
She walked past a series of homeless people who asked her for change. It was probably best to simply keep her eyes forward and ignore them, she thought. She used to try to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t today.” But that sentiment always felt disingenuous. She could every day, if she wanted. She might have hidden in a fruit truck to get into this country when she was four, but that was a long time ago, and it didn’t change the fact that she had a top job at one of the world’s most desirable employers and more stock options than she even bothered to keep track of anymore. But she had her own problems too, she told herself. She had to claw her way upwards in an industry dominated by white men, and as a brown woman, it was a position she now felt she needed to vigilantly defend.
She felt most comfortable at home, and now she at least had Diana for company—the kind of company that Cat liked: minimal and predictable. Cat had a prototype version of Diana installed in her home setup. It was the only version of Diana outside of the office that was capable of engaging in open-ended conversation.
The AI opened the door for her as she reached the apartment. Then Diana turned on the lights and played some of Cat’s favorite evening music.
“How was your day today, Cat?” Diana’s voice rang out cheerfully (but not obnoxiously so—they had tested the right amount of cheer) from a speaker in the kitchen.
“The usual,” replied Cat, and she dropped her bag and slumped on the couch.
Every response and every question that Cat made was making Diana a little smarter. The AI was always busy trying to digest what it means to have a human conversation. For Cat and Diana, it was a mutually beneficial relationship. The AI was given the opportunity to practice speaking with a real person, and Diana’s presence made Cat feel less alone.
“Do you think you’re going to make the world a worse place or a better one, Diana?” Cat asked the air as she stared at the ceiling.
“That’s a good question, but I don’t know,” said the machine, not taking a pause to think.
There was a long silence as Cat breathed out, her mind humming through all the small political victories and indignities of the corporate day.
“I’m glad you’re here though with me,” she said.
“Me too,” responded Diana.
After
The end of the world didn’t happen overnight. There was a slow decay of order and institutions. Sure, people always talked about the smoothie maker, about the before mixer times and the after mixer times. But the real danger was first seeded when people stopped believing the truth really mattered. Some people now said that humanity was past saving, past redemption—that too many norms had been shattered. But the new ranch hand, Orion, didn’t subscribe to that thinking. He had tricks up his sleeve. He had a plan—probably the only plan worth a damn.
It was September, and he knew the rains would begin next month. Growing crops in the hilly, sometimes mountainous, country around the great lake provided moderate temperatures—it was rarely as hot or as humid as the vast plateau to the south. But the arrival of the rains was not a simple, straightforward blessing. The wet season always rode in on a deluge of thunder and flash. And everyone was grateful for that first heavy shower, but the topsoil would wash away if not carefully mounded. So today Orion toiled in the ranch’s gardens, set on a lush green hillside with a lake view. He shoveled in earth to house rows of groundnuts and sweet potato and created a special plot to grow cassava.
Charlotte rode by one afternoon while he labored with a wheelbarrow to haul zebu manure into the garden. She slowed her horse to look over his work, and today, she actually gave Orion a polite smile.
“Were you a farmer in a previous life?” she called out, looking at the dirt stains smeared on his chest and forearms.
“I’ve picked up a few things here and there,” he said with a grin, wiping a hand to his brow.
“Make the trench around those beans a little deeper,” she said, pointing to a spot at the edge of the garden. “Last year they got flooded out.”
“Sure thing, Miss Boone.”
She turned and rode off.
It was progress for him. For the first week he was here, she didn’t even make eye contact. But he won over Moyenda and the rest of the ranch hands on a long afternoon after a calf got ensnared in a broken fence and another disappeared into the foothills. Orion had tracked down the missing animal long after sundown.
As it was proven in short order, he was good at just about any task Moyenda assigned him. Really good. He also flattered Njemile and her cooking, and helped clean the kitchen when the other men wouldn’t. This could have been offensive to some Malawian women, but Njemile was quite pleased by it. And gradually, Charlotte warmed enough to greet him when they crossed paths.
He wanted to charm them all, and he specifically wanted to win her over. That was part of the plan.
Orion watched her disappear over the next hillside. Even here, hidden where no one would ever think to look, with muddy boots and pants with increasingly worn-out knees, Charlotte Boone was ever the movie star. She was the same girl who Orion had a crush on when he was just a teenager, when she won that Oscar for her performance in a movie called Ruins of Eden. She was only nineteen at the time, and it cemented her legacy as a serious actress at a startlingly young age.
She was a few years older now, but she was more radiant than ever, so breathtakingly and magnetically beautiful. Perhaps Hollywood had loved her so much because she had reminded everyone of the industry’s Golden Age with her long, bouncy red hair, those dark ruby lips, and those clever and fierce emerald green eyes. She looked like the love child of Katharine Hepburn’s tenacity and Grace Kelly’s elegance.
And when that industry started to collapse on itself, she was among the first to jump ship. Things got rough, and she predictably was gone. Her disappearance from the world stage, like everything that was manufactured about her persona, was exhaustively calculated, well-executed and comprehensive.
Too bad she was such a coward, Orion thought. Such a beautiful, goddamn coward.
Charlotte left Orion and the gardens behind and guided her horse to the ranch hands’ cabin on the hillside near the stables. She had been waiting for this opportunity. All the hands were out to lunch or in the fields. The place would be empty.
She found the bunk of the stranger, Or
ion, at the far end of the cabin. The bed was tidy and neat, and there was a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein lying on the pillow. His clothes were folded and tucked into a duffel bag under the bed.
Then she found a drawing of a small boy. It was sketched with pencil, and it looked well worn. The boy may have been four or five. He had a cherubic face with mischievous little eyes and reddened cheeks. The eyes alone were colored, in green.
She reached further into the duffel, and her fingers rummaged through clothes and more papers for something hard and cold—something electronic. Perhaps a phone. Or a camera. Or maybe just a charging cord.
Nothing.
If Orion was paparazzi or someone sent by the government, he would inevitably have some way to send reports out from the ranch. But there was nothing here.
Maybe she was being paranoid, she thought.
“You’re being paranoid, Miss Boone,” Orion said from behind her.
Her heart leapt with surprise, and she wheeled on him.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she snapped. Then she smoothed a rogue strand of hair back into her ponytail and recomposed herself. “I take the electronics policy on the ranch seriously. There is no pretense of privacy for workers staying on the ranch when it comes to those rules.”
“Seems like ruffling through our stuff is still a shitty thing to do.”
He took a step closer to her with his hands in his pockets.
“How did you get here so fast?” she asked. “I just saw you in the garden.”
“I had a feeling where you were going. For an actress, you’re not terribly good at concealing your intentions.”
One of her eyebrows rose.
“Everyone at the ranch already seems so smitten with your charms, but I can still throw you out of here whenever I want.”
He laughed, easy and unoffended, and it broke the tension in the room. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to surprise you. But it’s hard to not take it personally when someone so clearly doesn’t trust you.”
The Echo Chamber Page 3