Jaffle Inc

by Heide Goody

  “Is that the flesh of a beast?” she asked. “I’d heard that people ate such things, but I had no idea that they walked among us here.”

  “It’s tasty,” I pointed out.

  “I’m not sure your opinion counts for much. In truth, I only came down to inform you – inform you all—” she added loudly to anyone within earshot, “—that Clifford and I are moving out today.”

  “I will have your apartment dried and cleaned soon,” Helberg tried to assure her.

  She shook her head with something like disgust. “We’re moving to that new North Beach arcology. Integrated living solutions and they pay you to live there. We jipped the terms and conditions today. Didn’t we, Clifford?”

  There was no sound of support from Pedstone. Swanager looked round and caught sight of her roommate, Pedstone, over at the barbecue. He was trying to dangle a slice of hot and juicy bacon into his mouth.

  “Pedstone! We’re leaving!” She made sure she gave everyone present a good glare. “And I doubt many of you will be staying around much longer if this is the kind of nonsense that goes on at Shangri-La Towers.”

  Swanager left at that point, and whispered to several other people on her way out. They also turned and walked away.

  “Wait!” I called. “Some of you must be interested in the work that we’re doing here? Look at the textures and the colours! Think for a moment about the circle of life! Don’t you realise that everything turns into dirt in the end, and here we are making flowers grow in it! Look, will you!”

  They weren’t interested. People hung on politely for a few minutes before leaving. All except Hattie. I hadn’t seen her arrive, but she stood there now, shaking her head.

  “I don’t know what you’ve become, Alice?”

  “I haven’t become anything,” I said. “Nothing that wasn’t there already.”

  “I feel as if I don’t know you anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought you were my friend, but you ruined my Smiley Tot—”

  “That was an accident.”

  “—and now you’re scaring all of the neighbours with your talk about dirt. Are you really trying to make us eat flesh from a beast?”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it tastes nice and—”

  “Was it a bad animal?”

  “Bad? As in…? It’s a pig.”

  “Did it deserve to die? Is that the point? Are we punishing it? You’re messing about in the dirt, getting excited about rotting things and now we’re supposed to devour this pig. I don’t know what it’s supposed to have done but it’s very odd behaviour to say the least.”

  I wanted to tell Hattie how delicious it was. How people had eaten this sort of food since the beginning of time, but her face was stony and impassive and I could tell she didn’t want to hear anything from me.

  “Hattie, I’ve learned so much over the last few days,” I tried. “I really want to share it with you. Give it a chance. I think you’d like it, I really do.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe I ought to see if they’ve still got any spare apartments in that North Beach arcology.”

  “Hattie!”

  She walked away. She was the last. All of the other people had gone, although I could see that several of them stood at the windows overlooking the quadrangle, staring out as if I might be a dangerous menace.

  I looked at Helberg. He stood by the barbecue as the remaining rashers of bacon crisped and withered, unwanted. “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  Whatever the mood was, whatever connections I’d hoped to make, it was all gone now.

  “And the bacon?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment. I was deflated. Part of me wanted to reject the bacon, close the door on the garden and leave it all behind. It did smell delicious though.

  “Bring the bacon,” I said.

  ***

  Back in his cluttered office, Helberg put a plate of stacked crispy bacon on a pile of documents. He cleared a chair for me by moving a pile of electronic junk from one pile to another. This somehow didn’t seem to satisfy him and he whacked the seat cushion a few times, making puffs of dust in the air.

  “Please,” he said and then rootled around in a cupboard to produce a slim-necked glass bottle. “Have you ever tried alcohol?”

  “No,” I said. I wasn’t counting the second-hand experience that I’d had in Rufus Jaffle’s head. I thought about the party in that memory/dream. “Is this the right time to be having a drink?”

  “Absolutely. Everyone walking out of your garden party, that’s a drinking situation.”

  “I’ll just have a really tiny bit, then.”

  He got a small glass out of a cupboard. It was the sort of glass that Hattie would love: it was just about the right size for a Smiley Tot. He poured an appropriately small amount of a golden liquid.

  “This is sherry,” he said. “A perfectly serviciable Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana Manzanilla.”

  “That’s a bit of a mouthful,” I said.

  “More than a bit of a mouthful in there.” He passed me the glass.

  “I meant the name.”

  “I know.” He smiled.

  I took a sip. It coated my lips with its sweetness, and I could feel a delicious warmth in my mouth. As I swallowed, the warmth went down my throat.

  “Mm. It’s sweet but kind of salty and… Mmmm.”

  “Throw in a few more wild similes and we’ll make a wine connoisseur of you,” he said.

  I took another sip. Drinking it was an undeniably pleasant sensation, and I could feel that the busy, bothersome thoughts that crowded my brain were slipping away. I finished the glass and tipped my head back, delighted at how mellow my mood was becoming.

  “Can I have some more please?”

  “Sure,” said Helberg and he poured me another glass. I noticed that he was drinking something from a different bottle. It was called whisky.

  “You talk to your Jaffle Port,” I said.

  “I talk to lots of things. I talk to Jetpac here,” he said, patted a pile of rubbish next to him. It burbled and beeped, revealing itself to be a partially constructed bot.

  “Nobody talks to their Jaffle Port.”

  He regarded his glass of whisky for a long time. The glass was an interesting shape, with artful facets which reflected the light. “They do if they have a non-Jaffle Port,” he said eventually.

  “What?” I said with a nervous laugh. “Non-Jaffle Port? What does that even mean?”

  “It means what it means. A Jaffle Port is just a device. Don’t confuse the item with the brand. It’s like hoovers or coke or scotch tape. You know scotch tape?”

  “I think so,” I said, still reeling.

  “That’s a brand name. The stuff itself is just called adhesive tape or something. You don’t have to go with the big brand name. You can buy one somewhere else, or make your own.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth I understood. The evidence was all around his office. “You made it? You made your own Jaffle Port?”

  He nodded. “Brain port, but, yeah.”

  I was knocked back by the implications. He was one of the three percent. One of the mad and crazy ones. “How does that even work?” I took a larger slurp of sherry and topped up the glass myself. This was mind-boggling.

  He shrugged. “Jaffle Ports allow access to a wealth of information, but Jaffle Tech don’t own all of that knowledge. In its most stripped-down form a Jaffle Port is a sophisticated way of accessing a massive computer network. I built a similar device that lets me do the same thing. The difference with mine is that I control what access the network has to me.”

  “But Jaffle Tech manage your spare capacity for your benefit,” I found myself saying.

  “Spare capacity!” he scoffed. “Don’t think I don’t know what’s happened to you. Do you think what you’ve had given back to you was spare capacity?”

  “But the essential service so
ftware,” I insisted. “Firewall, obscenity filters, system check, customer feedback…” I realised I was spouting lines from my own call centre script.

  Too many thoughts flooded my mind. What he was saying made sense on the surface but I couldn’t help but feel a deep-seated revulsion at what seemed like an unnatural perversion. Didn’t he want to be part of a global community? Didn’t he want to fit in?

  “How are you able to live?” I asked.

  He laughed out loud at that.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I live quite well, thank you.”

  “I know. I meant…”

  “You mean, as an outsider.” He took a sip of whiskey. “I’m not alone.”

  “Er…” I waved a hand around his hermit’s cave of an office by way of counter-argument.

  He laughed, tilting his glass in my direction. “I live a selfish life, in every sense of the word. Anything for an easy life, that’s me. I know I’m an outsider, but I’m not alone. Jaffle would like you to think those who don’t adopt their tech are doomed to a solitary life, but there are others out there who refuse to become brand victims. And even if I was alone, just because you’re a minority of one, doesn’t mean you’re mad.”

  “Bit mad,” I suggested. “You’re a—” I jipped for a good word. “—a Luddite!”

  “Anti-technology?” he said. “Me? Do I look like a machine-smasher, a saboteur?”

  “No, but—”

  “But nothing!” There was a note of passion in his voice. “Technological development is a wonderful thing. I would be mad if I thought the world would be a better place without brain port technology. My great-aunt suffered from a degenerative brain condition. A piece of early Jaffle technology was able to repair the neural damage, or bridge it at least, and give her years of life quality that would not have been available otherwise. No, knowledge is king. How it is applied is where the ethical debate lies.”

  “You think Jaffle Tech is unethical?” I felt my own recent opinions solidify even as I said it. “Helberg?”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you heard of a plipper?”

  “A who’s-what-now?”

  “Plipper.”

  “As in a thing that plips?”

  “You have heard of it?”

  “No. I just extrapolated. What is a plipper?”

  I recalled what I had seen in the executive offices at Jaffle Tech. “It’s a device. About so long. You point it at someone and it automatically reduces their brain function to the bare minimum. Like the Empties outside.”

  His expression had become serious. “You’ve seen one?”

  “A demonstration, at work. They’re going to give them out to law enforcement agencies.”

  “They’re going to use them for pacification? Jeez.”

  “Henderson – he’s the Chief Technical Officer at Jaffle Tech – he said that it’s much safer than the police using Tasers on people.”

  “And that makes it okay?” said Helberg. “I can’t believe people would stand for this.”

  “He said—” I tried to remember what he’d said. “Everyone has already given their consent, everyone on Jaffle Enhanced and below. It’s in those new terms and conditions.”

  I’d coerced that caller, Jackson, into signing those new terms and conditions, just before I’d been distracted by the mouse. Was I now responsible for them getting plipped in the future?

  Maybe it was the mouse that reminded me, but a phrase they’d used leapt to my mind. “What’s a deadcat?” I asked.

  “What’s a dead cat?” repeated Helberg.

  I considered jipping it but I didn’t want images of dead cats flooding my mind at this vulnerable time. “I think it was meant to be a verb.”

  “They were going to deadcat something?”

  “That.”

  He made a noise, not a happy one. “If you throw a dead cat on a table, everyone will notice it. Once you’ve thrown a dead cat on the table, people will be too distracted to notice what you do next. Is the plipper the dead cat?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You deadcat something truly horrific with something people are going to be distracted by. If the plipper is the dead cat then the other thing … what else were they talking about?”

  “It was something called Operation Sunrise.”

  “Euphemistically pleasant sounding.”

  “It just sounded like a software roll-out. Jaffle Tech 2.0. It’s going live in six days.”

  “Fuckers,” he said, and with such quiet sincerity it was even more shocking.

  “You think it’s going to be a bad thing?”

  “Oh, absolutely. A company that turns the weak and unfortunate into Empties at the press of a button? With the collusion of the powers that be? There’s no way their next software innovation is going to be a good thing.”

  “I’m sure if I could speak to Rufus Jaffle, I’d be able to discuss it with him. Maybe I’ve got it wrong and he can tell me what’s really going on.”

  Helberg scoffed. “Those Jaffle guys have been screwing over the little guy for years.”

  “And yet,” I said, thoughtfully, “you’ve done nothing about it.”

  He drained his glass. Refilled and drained it again. “I try not to get hung up on things I can’t possibly fix,” he said. “Like I say, a selfish life. Drink.”

  It was an instruction and an invitation. He topped up both our glasses once more, hand shaking with emotion.

  “You…” I said.

  “What?”

  “You’ve set yourself apart. You’ve not been a joiner. You’ve not got a Jaffle Port.”

  “I’m one of the fabled three percent. And how glad I am of that!”

  “But it hasn’t made you happy, has it?”

  His lips curled in a smile but it was the bitterly cold smile of the old Patrick Helberg. “Heard of John Stuart Mill?”

  “Does he live in the complex?”

  “He was a British philosopher. Long time ago now. He had a lot to say about human rights and freedoms.” He picked at the pile of uneaten bacon which was now cold and hard as cardboard. “He said it was better to be an unhappy human than a happy pig.”

  “And is it?” I asked.

  “I’m not even sure I know what happiness is. By a lot of people’s definition, I’m some kind of miserable bastard, but I’d rather be miserable like this than happy because I’m a dumbed-down-to-watch-Smiley-TV-all-day-long-and-be-satisfied sheep.”

  I thought about that. “I used to like Smiley TV,” I said. “I mean, I used to like it a lot.”

  He laughed cruelly. “Doofus.”

  “And now,” I said, “it does nothing for me. It’s not enough.”

  “And would you go back, if you could?” Helberg asked. “If at a flick of switch—” he clicked his fingers “—they could instantly return you to how you were before: ignorant and happy. If you could plip yourself back to stupidity, right now, would you do it?”

  I sipped the golden sherry. “Nope,” I said. “I’m never going back.”

  I waved my suddenly empty glass at him for a refill.

  ***

  Chapter 19 – 7th June – 12 days until Operation Sunrise

  I woke up with a headache, a dry mouth, and no desire to get up. I must have stumbled home at some point but I didn’t remember anything beyond chatting and drinking with Helberg in his office. It was a work day and I had a scan scheduled at the office. If I didn’t at least go in to work, they would be even more suspicious of me.

  I called on what pain filters my Jaffle Port allowed and, ignoring the protests from my head and stomach, forced myself to get up and dressed. Hattie was busying herself around the apartment but seemed disinclined to talk to me. That was okay; I wasn’t in a talking mood either.

  Out in the corridor, Chuckie Egg was painting apartment doors, deftly handling a paintbrush in a way that put my efforts to shame.

  Hattie and I shared a car to w
ork, but the atmosphere was uncomfortably strained. Hattie claimed she was studying a literary module, so she was unable to engage in conversation. It was natural to assume she was lying, but I’m not sure Hattie was capable of lying, which made me think she has accessed a literary module with the sole purpose of avoiding me.

  Partway through the morning, my calendar pinged to remind me of the rescheduled brain scan. I had run out of excuses, so this time I tried the strategy of ignoring it and hoping it would go away. This was obviously doomed to failure: within a few minutes a call came through.

  “Alice, you’re late for your scan. You need to come down to the medical centre right now.”

  “I can’t.” I failed to elaborate.

  “Why not?”

  “Our department is in lock-down,” I said, spotting Levi marching around looking self-important. “There’s been an intrusion. An anomaly.”

  There was a sigh on the line. “If I call your section head, am I going to find out that this is untrue, Alice?”

  “No?” I tried.

  “Because repeatedly failing to attend a mandatory health scan could result in disciplinary action, did you know that? And more importantly, it could point to an underlying issue, which is the whole reason we’re doing this, isn’t it?” There was an even heavier sigh. “Fine. I want you here first thing in the morning, is that clear?”

  “Er, yep.”

  “You will come to the medical centre before you even go to your section.”

  “Sure.”

  “This is your last chance, Alice.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  When I killed the call I looked round to Hattie’s cubicle, because something strange was happening. A delivery of several large boxes had just turned up. Hattie attempted to push them discreetly out of sight as she dealt with her caller. A little bit like trying to hide an elephant by popping a tiny hat on it. Hattie succeeded only in drawing Levi’s attention more quickly. A cleaning bot trundled into Hattie’s cubicle and bounced off one of the boxes. It readjusted its course.

  Levi stood impatiently to the side until she’d finished the call.

  “Can I ask what this is, miss?”