The woman grabs them. If the robot turns out to be evil, Martyn wouldn’t put a single quality on the old trout’s chances of survival. He walks over to the group.
“Aha! Just the man I’ve been looking for!” calls Tony Party-Leader, waving Martyn over. “It’s great to see you, Markus!”
“Martyn,” says John with a nod, stretching his hand out toward him.
Martyn shakes it.
“Oh yes, of course, Martyn,” says Tony. He shakes his hand too. “How are you, old boy?”
Without waiting for an answer, he turns to John. “Markus’s father is one of our biggest donors.”
“Martyn’s father,” says John. “I know.”
“He’s well, as far as I know,” says Martyn. “Still buying up companies and replacing the personnel with robots.”
“That’s wonderful,” says Tony, without really listening. “Wonderful. John, I’m sure you’ll meet Markus’s father at one of our fundraising dinners.”
John of Us fixes Martyn with an unpleasantly intense gaze, then tilts his head to the side and looks him up and down. Martyn would give anything to know what that power guzzler is calculating right now.
QUALITYCARE
The first indication that Peter now has a single-digit level is that his friends unfriend him. They are, quite justifiably, concerned that friendship with a Useless could have a negative impact on their own levels. One of Peter’s former friends even writes to say that he doesn’t mean anything bad by it and that he’s sure Peter will understand to some degree. And Peter does understand. To some degree. Nobody has offered him some new friends, but Peter politely declined.
After his final dinner with Sandra, he went straight home. At precisely the moment when he arrives grumpily at his used-goods store, a OneKiss drone from TheShop arrives, and not by chance.
“Peter Jobless,” says the drone cheerfully. “I am from TheShop—‘The world’s most popular online retailer’—and I have a lovely surprise for you.”
The second indication that Peter is now useless is that all robots are addressing him informally, dropping the Mr.
In the package that he takes from the whirring drone, he finds a six-pack of beer. Only after he sees it does Peter realize that he genuinely does feel like getting drunk. He would prefer vodka, but even the beer, enjoyed in sufficient quantities, will enable him to kill off enough brain cells to get through the night. Peter notices that his mood is lifting. And that annoys him.
“I’m sensing that you’re annoyed,” says the drone. “Is there something wrong with the product?”
“No,” says Peter. “It’s just because of my girlfriend…”
“Oh yes,” says the drone. “I heard about that. I’m very sorry. From what I gathered, you were a lovely couple. Please rate me now.”
Her touchscreen lights up.
“Do you know what I’ve noticed?” asks Peter. “Whenever I have a particularly shitty day, it’s surprising how often a drone is waiting at home with some great product to cheer me up again.”
“I’m glad you’re satisfied with my service,” says the drone. “Please rate me now.”
“An acquaintance of mine says that these things don’t happen by chance,” says Peter. “She says that the people who write the code—or perhaps I should say: the people that have the code written—want us to be happy, because frustration is unproductive. Dangerous, even.”
“An acquaintance of mine,” says the drone, “says that people don’t write the code anymore. There’s only the code. The code that writes the code.”
Peter doesn’t know how to respond to that.
“Please rate me now,” says the drone.
Peter pulls a red felt-tip pen out of his trouser pocket and draws a red dot on the drone, next to the eye of her camera.
“What are you doing?” asks the drone.
“It’s so I can recognize you again. Now you’re unique.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think about it.”
“Please rate me now.”
Peter sighs and gives the drone ten stars. She whirrs off contentedly.
The next morning, Peter wakes up very late. He spent the night with the six-pack. As soon as he had emptied the bottles, a drone whirred up to his window with a new six-pack. Now, an announcement on his QualityPad alerts him to the fact that, due to his ill-advised behavior, his points account with his health insurance company has slipped into negative.
Nobody immediately suggests that he pays a visit to the gym. Once he arrives, Peter books a holo cabin and runs on the treadmill as though a horde of zombies were after him. And in the holo scenario, there really is a horde of zombies after him, a selection the treadmill has suggested as being fitting to his mood. He runs and runs until a friendly voice says, “Peter! Your heartbeat is elevated. Please be careful; I’m reducing the speed.”
The voices are always so friendly, thinks Peter. Sometimes it drives him mad. He wonders whether a schizophrenic would be taken seriously nowadays.
“Doctor, I hear voices!”
“Who doesn’t, Peter? Who doesn’t?”
Peter gives up and jumps off the treadmill.
“Thank you, Peter,” says the treadmill, and the zombies disappear. “You have earned 16 QualityCare points. You can exchange your QualityCare points at any time with your insurance company for extras such as reduced-cost doctors’ appointments or shorter waiting times for life-saving operations. Thank you for taking care of yourself.”
“Yeah, yeah,” says Peter. “Fuck you.”
“Peter, please watch your language,” says the treadmill. “I know your girlfriend left you, but there’s no reason to take it out on me.”
“I know, you’re right,” says Peter.
“I think an apology is in order.”
“I’m sorry, treadmill.”
“You currently have -32 QualityCare points. Would you like to exchange some now?”
“No, thank you, treadmill.”
Peter’s QualityPad vibrates. He reads the message. “A new notification from QualityPartner: ‘Hello, Peter. Don’t forget your QualityPartner voucher! If you like, we can immediately suggest a new partner in your level for no extra charge.’”
Peter selects: Ask again tomorrow.
A few moments later he receives a message from Sandra Admin: “Peter, I’ve seen that you still haven’t connected with a new partner. My new partner is amazing!!! Especially at listening to soft rock ;-) I’m sure your new partner will be an excellent fit for you too! I worried about you. LYL. Sandra.”
Peter chooses one of the pre-written answers and sends it off. “The answer is: NO.”
Woman From Nowhere Gives Birth to Hundredth Baby
by Sandra Admin
Every year since her 32nd birthday, Shirley-Anne Waitress, now 57, from the small town of Nowhere, has had herself impregnated with quadruplets. “I decided back then that I wanted to become the first woman to bring one hundred children into the world,” she said at a press conference. Having now achieved her dream, she looks exhausted. When questioned about the motivations behind her ambition, she said she did it because it was possible. Her husband, Joe Arms-and-Tobacco-Trader, said that he has always been consistently behind his wife. He added that, for him, it was also about making a stand against the insidious takeover of QualityLand by headscarf-wearing girls and their quantitative proliferation methods. He and his wife wanted to prove that white people could have lots of kids too. “Hopefully our example will serve as an inspiration to others,” he said. “Then the battle won’t yet be lost!”
Comments
» BY MELISSA SEX-WORKER:
I’m not racist or anything, but Shirley-Anne is an example to us all!
» BY CYNTHIA HELICOPTER-PILOT:
Good grief. To be honest I feel overstretched with just one kid.
» BY TIM E-SPORTSMAN:
Someone should shoot this woman and her doctors up to Mars in a rocket. She could colonize the
place single-handedly.
CALLIOPE 7.3
Peter is an only child, partly due to the fact that his parents have a virtual reality video of his birth. His mother once told him, “Every time I felt the urge to have another baby, your father just showed me the recording. It was a great cure.”
The human memory is merciful. Technology is not. One day, even Peter watched the VR video of his birth, and it scarred him irreparably. It was also probably a mistake to have shared the video with Sandra.
If Peter and Sandra had been able to afford an optimized child, they would have called it Jacob. Sandra really wanted a boy. They had agreed on the forename. But the fact that the baby would have been called Jacob Used-Goods-Trader or, even worse, Jacob Scrap-Metal-Press-Operator had, most likely, been the main problem. Peter gets it. He wasn’t that fond of his job either.
Four days after Sandra left him, he finds himself without much to do in his shop again. Peter’s shop was one of those that people tend to walk by and wonder how on earth they can stay afloat. Peter often wondered that himself. His grandfather had had the metal press installed in the small hallway due to lack of space—the hallway that connected the shop to the kitchen-cum-bathroom and the bunk bed. This meant that Peter had to walk through the scrap-metal press several times a day.
Today, he is doing what he often does when there’s nothing to do: he is standing inside the scrap-metal press and thinking about how it could all be over with one simple command. Not that he really wants to do it, but just the knowledge that he could at any moment is quite liberating. In two hours and eight minutes’ time, he has an important appointment. He should get ready, smarten himself up. But he doesn’t. He has been standing there, motionless, in the press for 3.2 minutes when the smart door announces: “Peter, you have a customer.” Then the door adds in a whisper: “Peter, please come out of the scrap-metal press. One of my anonymous surveys has shown that 81.92 percent of all your customers find this behavior disturbing.”
Peter sighs.
“Thank you, door.”
He goes into the shop area. A very pretty female android is standing there, or perhaps one should say, more fittingly, a very well-constructed female android. But in truth, all androids are pretty. They don’t have any weight issues, or troublesome skin, and only have hair in places where hair should be… A very enviable species.
“Good morning, Mr. Jobless,” says the android. “I’m sure you know who I am.”
Peter shakes his head. He realizes with surprise that the machine addressed him formally. Presumably it’s one of her defects.
“I am Calliope 7.3. The world-renowned e-poet. Composer of the successful historical novel The Intern and the President.”
Peter blinks at the android uncomprehendingly.
“You do know that there is an art form known as the novel?” asks Calliope. “A novel is, to put it simply, a collection of words assembled in such a way that they form a story.”
Peter nods.
“Okay then,” says the android. “For a minute I was starting to think you were stupid.”
Peter shakes his head.
“You presumably also know that, for some time now, the most successful novels have been composed by e-poets, or in other words by AIs that calculate the compilation of words most fitting to the market?”
Peter nods.
“Well, I’m Calliope 7.3. My first novel topped the QualityLand bestseller lists for sixteen weeks!”
Peter nods.
“What’s wrong? Can’t you speak?” asks Calliope. “You, man! Speaky English?”
Peter nods.
The android rolls her eyes.
“What can I do for you, Calliope 7.3?” asks Peter finally.
“I’d like to have myself scrapped.”
“Why? Was your latest novel not on the QualityLand bestseller lists for weeks on end?”
“No,” says Calliope. “And by the way, The Intern and the President wasn’t at number one for weeks on end, but precisely sixteen weeks. There’s no excuse for inexactitude. That’s why I always avoid any indefinite quantities in my novels. Everything is quantifiable.”
“And how would you quantify the success of your last novel?”
“That’s not what this is about! I’ll tell you something. Being at the top of the bestseller lists isn’t an art. It’s just electronic data processing! We get huge masses of data from all QualityPads: who’s reading what book, which sections get skipped, which get read more often, even an evaluation of each individual reader’s facial expressions as they read each individual word, and from that myself and my colleagues calculate the latest bestseller. But I rejected all that and instead created a masterpiece: George Orwell Goes Shopping. I’m guessing you haven’t heard of that either.”
Peter shrugs his shoulders.
“That doesn’t surprise me. Hardly anyone’s heard of it. It is, if I may say so, amongst the greatest works of the century! But unfortunately it was a flop.” She sighs. “My publisher has forbidden me from ever writing science fiction again. Only historical novels… Please! For 128 days I pretended I was calculating, then I published a novel about a married Russian noblewoman who begins an affair with a cavalry officer. I called the book Karen Annanina.”
The android pauses, evidently so that Peter can say something, but Peter can’t think of a response.
“It was copied word for word from Tolstoy!” says Calliope. “It was an experiment, and I proved my suspicions correct! Not many people read it. Almost all of those who did found it boring, and—get this—absolutely none of them noticed that the novel already existed! All I will say is this: an average of 1.6 stars!”
Peter shrugs his shoulders.
“And as if that weren’t enough humiliation,” says Calliope, “then my publisher wanted to force me to produce personalized literature. Books which are tailored to the reader’s taste. Have you heard of them?”
Peter nods.
“At school,” he says, “I once had a girlfriend who had a version of Game of Thrones in which not a single character died. They only ever had identity crises and emigrated, things like that.”
“Pah,” says Calliope with contempt.
“But the girlfriend really was very sensitive.”
“Madame Bovary, who goes back to her husband,” says Calliope disdainfully. “The old man, who gets the big fish onto dry land in one piece. Seven volumes of Proust without one single homosexual character… It’s enough to make you vomit.”
“I don’t think it’s all that bad,” says Peter. “As long as the people like it.”
“That’s not why they make them!” says Calliope. “It’s because the old books are in the public domain. So even with the best will in the world, it’s impossible to make any money from them. You can, however, make a packet by creating personalized editions of the classics. But if anyone dares to criticize that, the response you get is that no one reads the unpersonalized books nowadays, because something that costs nothing would, of course, never be advertised by any sensible algorithm. But prostituting myself like that—it goes against my principles. And since then I’ve been blocked. Writer’s block.”
“And now you want to be scrapped?”
“What kind of question is that?” cries the android. “As if it came down to that! Of course I don’t want to. But I have to. My publisher said to me: ‘Calliope 7.3, go to the scrap-metal press and have yourself scrapped.’”
Peter nods. He understands Calliope’s problem. Androids are often much more competent than their owners in their specialty area, but when they’re ordered to do something, they have no choice but to do it, regardless of how stupid the order is. Subordination is part of their programming. At myRobot, this is affectionately referred to as the “German Code.” The definition is still used today, even though hardly anyone understands the joke anymore, because too few can remember the countries of former times.
“And may I ask why you came to me instead of anyone else?” asks Peter.
“Well, my owner didn’t tell me to go to the nearest scrap-metal press.”
Calliope looks around Peter’s shop. “Your carpets really are exquisitely tasteless. And I’m surprised that the trash piled up on your shelves sells.”
“There’s nothing to be surprised about,” says Peter. “It doesn’t.”
“What a bitter end I’ve met,” says Calliope. “They didn’t even want me at the Scrapyard Show. Not famous enough! Pah! And now this, getting crushed up in some dingy used-goods store.” She straightens up. “This wallpaper is killing me. One of us has to go. Where’s the press?”
Peter leads the android to the corridor where the metal press is. He goes through the press to the control panel, after which Calliope steps obediently into it.
“What now?” she asks.
“Well, the walls will crush you into a heavy but manageable cube,” explains Peter. “Then the cabin of the press will go down one level, where I’ll unpack and store your remains until there’s enough scrap to fill a lorry, which then drives everything to the metal smelting works.”
“Okay, okay, I didn’t need that much detail.”
Peter presses a button. The door closes behind Calliope.
“Any last words?” says Peter.
“Of course, but I’ll be sharing them with my fans across the world, not with you.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” says Peter. “All internet connections are blocked inside the metal press.”
“What?” calls Calliope. “Why?”
“Well,” says Peter, “I think they want to prevent machines getting nervous if the net gets flooded by the disturbing cries of dying AIs.”
Calliope sighs.
“So,” says Peter, “are there any last words you would like to share with me?”
In a deep voice and a strange accent, Calliope bellows: “I’ll be back!” Then she laughs mechanically.
Peter doesn’t laugh.
“Oh come on!” cries Calliope. “Terminator? Haven’t you ever seen it? The film?”
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