Qualityland

by Marc-Uwe Kling

  “The what?”

  “The mass genocide of Jews initiated by Hitler.”

  “They didn’t say anything about that in the musical…”

  “Well, if that’s the case,” says the old man, “then I’m sure it can’t really have happened…”

  Peter thinks for a moment. The old man has fallen asleep again. Peter raps on the glass and he gives a start.

  “Please change my profile!” says Peter.

  “Do what?”

  “Correct the data!” says Peter. “See to it that my profile really profiles me.”

  “You?” asks the old man.

  “Yes, me,” says Peter.

  The old man chuckles. “So who are you?”

  This simple question provokes in Peter a series of three emotional states, one followed quickly by the other. Firstly, annoyance. Secondly, embarrassment. Thirdly, horror.

  “I…” stammers Peter. “I… am…”

  “Spare yourself the effort,” says the old man. “Even if you knew who you are, I still wouldn’t be able to help you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “For you it amounts to the same thing.”

  “Why don’t you want to help me?”

  “Peeping through the keyhole is one thing,” says the old man. “Usually no one notices. But if you break down the door and move the furniture around, then any idiot who goes into the room after you will be able to see that something’s not right.”

  An audio signal can be heard, and the old man immediately reaches for a small pill bottle, takes out a tablet, and begins to chew it. He comes up close to the glass and whispers: “Also, I don’t want to be pulled into your story too much, because from a dramaturgical point of view you’re the hero, and that would probably make me the mentor figure. But the problem with these wise old mentors is that, statistically speaking, they have really miserable chances of survival. So I prefer to remain the hero of my own story. I don’t want to die, after all. On the contrary. Guess how old I am.”

  “No idea,” says Peter. “Old?”

  “Older,” says the old man, chuckling. “Much older! And I’ve almost managed it.”

  “Managed what?”

  “At some point in the near future, medicine will reach the point when enough technological progress will be made each year to prolong the life of a human by more than a year. Do you understand what that means?”

  Peter shakes his head.

  “That means immortality, my boy.”

  “That sounds terrible.”

  “And I’ve almost made it,” says the old man with a chuckle.

  “And what have you learned from all that life experience that could help me with my problem?” asks Peter. “What do you advise me to do now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Have you noticed that the so-called binary system, in which one only has the choice between the values 0 and 1, has furtively transformed? Into a singular system, as I call it?”

  Peter sighs. “I’ve lost you again.”

  “You don’t need to understand,” says the old man. “In the singular system you don’t need to make any decisions anymore, because there is only one value: OK.”

  “You’re depressing me.”

  “Everything’s gonna be all right,” sings the old man. “Everything’s gonna be OK! Everything’s gonna be…” Suddenly he breaks off. “Have you ever heard of the Chess Turk?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “The Chess Turk was a robot. The first chess robot! With the appearance and clothing of a Turk. He was constructed in the year 1769 of the old timekeeping by an Austrian-Hungarian court official called Wolfgang von Kempelen.”

  “Aha,” says Peter. “Where are you going with this?”

  “When he was making a move, the robot lifted his left arm, moved a chess figure, and then put his arm, accompanied by a mechanically rattling sound, back onto the cushion. The robot was a sensation. Kempelen traveled to all the big cities. He presented the robot to the Emperor in Vienna. In Berlin, the Turk even won a game against Frederick the Great. Impressive, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.”

  “The whole world was in awe of this miracle machine, and yet the solution to the puzzle was very simple. Inside the machine, there was a little person steering it.” The old man laughs.

  “What’s so funny about that?” asks Peter.

  “And we today are human beings with little machines inside steering us. Exactly the other way round, do you see?” He tugs four times on his earlobe. “Funny, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose,” murmurs Peter.

  “You should ask yourself the following question,” says the old man. “Are we living in a dictatorship whose methods are so sublime that no one notices we’re living in a dictatorship? And following on from that, you should ask yourself the next question: is it actually a dictatorship if no one notices that it’s a dictatorship? If no one feels robbed of their freedom? Freedom is, after all, by no means forbidden in QualityLand. It’s just temporarily out of stock.” The old man yawns. “Do you know, by the way, why it’s called the net?”

  “Because we’re caught in it,” says Peter.

  “No,” says the man. “Because we’re caught in… Hang on a minute! Kiki must have told you that!”

  An analogue alarm clock next to the old man begins to ring.

  “Go now,” he says to Peter. “I have to sleep. Otherwise I get migraines.”

  “But…” begins Peter.

  “You can come back,” says the old man. “I find your ignorance refreshing.”

  “I have one more question,” says Peter. “The woman who sent me to you… Kiki… How can I see her again?”

  The old man chuckles.

  “What?” asks Peter. “What is it?”

  “She has a powerful effect on men of your age. But—and please don’t take this the wrong way—it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the ones she has the most effect on are the hopeless losers.”

  * * * QualityLand * * *

  Your Personal Travel Guide

  CASH MACHINES

  Through the digitalization process and the accompanying automation, so many people in QualityLand have lost their jobs that a cornerstone of the capitalist economic system threatened to break away: mass consumption. Too many people simply no longer have enough money to mindlessly consume their way through life, as much as they would like to. Thankfully, some technocrat from the Progress Party came up with a wonderful idea that prevented the collapse of the economic system. The government placed an order with myRobot—“Robots for you and me”—for a large quantity of BuyBots: androids whose sole purpose of existence is to consume. QualityLand equips these cash machines, as they are known colloquially, with sufficient financial means to keep the market economy afloat. The androids make their way through the shopping malls, buying, according to totally puzzling rules, all sorts of odds-and-ends, knick-knacks, and frippery. But you don’t need to worry about a BuyBot snatching the last Armani smart jacket from beneath your nose! The cash machines only purchase goods from the lower and middle price segments. The luxury goods market doesn’t need state support; it’s doing better than ever.

  THE BETA TEST

  TheShop—The world’s most popular online retailer—bought up QualityCity’s unused space dock four years ago and transformed it into an offline shopping center. An insanely hip idea. It’s like a virtual shopping center, except that you’re really inside it, in real life. And once you’ve chosen a product, the delivery time is a sensational zero seconds.

  Kiki is sitting there at the counter of an open cafeteria and watching a man repeatedly bang his head against the wall. For some reason that isn’t clear to Kiki, the crazy man suddenly stops and steers his way toward the cafeteria as though nothing had happened. He orders himself a green smoothie and sits down on the bar stool next to her.

  “What was that about?” asks Kiki.

  “Yo
u mean, why was I banging my head against the wall?”

  “No,” says Kiki. “That I can understand. But why did you stop?”

  “I finished the midday ritual.”

  “Well, that explains everything.”

  “I belong to a relatively new faith group,” says the man.

  “Oh yes?”

  “We believe in a godly creator who is genuinely benevolent, but who unfortunately made a number of catastrophic mistakes during the creation process.”

  “Aha.”

  “We are disciples of the Stupid Design Theory.”

  Kiki grins. “I have to admit, the theory that humanity resulted from a mistake in God’s thought processes seems more plausible to me than the creation stories of all the other religions I know.”

  “And due to the many difficulties presented by life in this stupid world, we don’t refer to it as the creation, but the Beta Test.”

  Kiki grins again.

  “There’s no need to laugh,” says the man. “Anyone can make mistakes.”

  “Of course.”

  “We’re not some comedy club, you know! We have a number of high-ranking engineers, architects, and politicians in our ranks.”

  “I bet,” says Kiki. “And why did you bang your head against the wall?”

  “The wall is the Stupid Design Theory believers’ wailing wall. One of our most holy places.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, the architects of the space dock thought of all the important things during the planning, like shops, restaurants, and travel offices. But shortly before the opening, they realized they had forgotten to put in starting and landing platforms for the spaceships. And by then there was no space left. The planners are, by the way, now renowned members of our community.”

  The man points behind him.

  “Gate number one was supposed to have been behind the wall.”

  “And you were involved in this catastrophe?” asks Kiki.

  “No, no,” says the man. “I’m a researcher at QualityCorp—‘The company that makes your life better.’” He leans over to Kiki and whispers: “I even worked on John of Us for a while.”

  “Really?”

  “I tried to create an artificial intelligence that works like the human brain.” He clears his throat, a little embarrassed. “Unfortunately, however, that led to machines that constantly forget things.”

  Kiki takes a sip of coffee.

  “Did you know that valuable code now arises from the crossing of different AIs?” asks the engineer. “It produces mutations, just like with evolution, only much quicker.”

  Kiki nods.

  “It is, of course, never completely clear what the result will be,” says the man. “One can only make prognoses. Just like when two human beings are crossed. I’m Paul, by the way.”

  Kiki wonders to herself which sequence in her genetic code seemingly makes her so irresistible to complete idiots.

  “Look,” says Paul, showing Kiki the photo of a little girl on his QualityPad. “She’s pretty, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” says Kiki, in an attempt to be polite. “Your daughter?”

  “No, no,” says the engineer. “That could be our daughter. There’s this new dating app that predicts how your offspring with any woman in the room would look. The app’s called Kinder. If you release your DNA data too, the prediction would be more accurate of course.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Anyone who has Kinder can easily get chatting to pretty women.”

  “Says who?”

  “The ad for Kinder.”

  “Was this app also developed by one of your faith brothers?”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Let me give you a tip,” says Kiki. “Most women prefer Kinder Surprise.”

  Suddenly, out of the blue, the freak with the dolphin vibrator appears in front of her. Luckily without the dolphin vibrator. Nonetheless, Kiki is taken aback.

  “Hi!” says Peter. “Er… I wanted to ask you… I mean… Could I perhaps invite you for a coffee?”

  Kiki points at the half-full cup of coffee in front of her.

  “Erm, well, I was thinking more of, er, a coffee at my place. Or at your place, I mean…” He glances at the man next to Kiki. “Um, is that your boyfriend?”

  Kiki laughs loudly. “You’re funny,” she says. “It’d be nice if you could credit me with having just a little taste.”

  Looking peeved, the engineer goes off and sits down next to another pretty woman in order to tell her about Kinder.

  “Who was that?” asks Peter.

  “That was Paul,” says Kiki.

  “Who’s Paul?”

  Kiki doesn’t answer. Peter points at her half-eaten fruit salad. “Are you still eating that? Could I try it? I’ve never seen that fruit before. I’ve started to make lists, you see. About things I like and things I don’t like. I want to try everything I don’t know yet, and…”

  A group of cash machines rushes past, chattering excitedly. Without paying any attention to Peter, Kiki jumps up, leaves the cafeteria, and follows the horde. Peter hurries after her.

  “Was that a no?” he asks. “I mean, to the coffee?”

  “Do you know your way around cash machines?” asks Kiki.

  “Should I? What makes you ask?”

  “You’re a machine scrapper, aren’t you?”

  “How do you know…? Oh, stupid question.”

  “So, do you know your way around cash machines or not?”

  “I never had one as, er, as a customer.”

  He looks at the group of androids in front of them.

  “Did you know,” asks Kiki, “that cash machines flock together into small groups on their daily shopping excursions? Watch closely.”

  The cash machines meet another group of BuyBots. They all begin to shriek joyfully.

  “I’m always asking myself,” says Kiki, “whether the machines are really just trying to imitate human behavior, or whether it’s some kind of intentional parody.”

  “What do they actually do with all the shit they buy?”

  “Good question. I have no idea.”

  Kiki catches up with one of the cash machines and heaves a magnetic microbot onto its head as she passes. The microbot scrabbles into position and bores itself into its host’s brain. Kiki’s shopping list begins to burn itself into his system.

  “Some of the purchases get stolen, of course,” whispers Kiki with a wink. As though on cue, a security guard comes around the corner.

  “Shit,” mutters Kiki.

  “What is it?” asks Peter, before Kiki grabs hold of him. She pulls him between herself and the shopping-center detective, backs up against a window display, pulls Peter closer still, and begins to kiss him.

  The security guard continues on, uninterested. Once he has disappeared around the next corner, Kiki pushes Peter away from her.

  “No one said you could use tongue,” she says.

  Peter is completely confused.

  “Luckily they don’t use CPUs here,” says Kiki.

  “What?”

  “Crime Prevention Units—police robots that calculate who is likely to commit a crime in the future, then arrest him preventatively. In the beginning they used to let them run around here in the shopping center, but the people didn’t feel comfortable while they were shopping.”

  “Are you afraid of them?”

  “Afraid? Pah! My name is Kiki Unknown. And I’m my mother’s daughter.”

  “Kiki Unknown,” repeats Peter.

  “Exactly,” says Kiki. “And I’ve made staying unpredictable into an Olympic sport.”

  This is why Kiki suddenly turns around and goes back in the direction she came from. She hurries into a pharmacy, logging in as she enters with her own credit chip. She buys Valium, condoms, ten pregnancy test packets, a magazine about fly-fishing, two FaSaSus, and a blueberry-sorting machine. Kiki smiles. That should give the algorithms something to think about. Peter is standin
g in front of the door to the pharmacy.

  “I don’t want to annoy you,” he says. “But about that coffee… I really don’t live that far from here.”

  Sixteen minutes later, the two of them are standing in the car park, waiting. A cash machine comes out of the space dock.

  “Good little bot,” says Kiki.

  The BuyBot places four shopping bags, stuffed to the brim, in front of Kiki and then disappears back inside.

  “Okay then, Peter Jobless,” says Kiki. “Let’s go to your place. But you have to help me carry.”

  She walks off, without a single bag in her hand.

  * * * QualityLand * * *

  Your Personal Travel Guide

  TRAVEL DESTINATIONS

  A festival in Progress, modern architecture in Growth, the technology museum in Digital, or fusion cookery in Profit? Tourists in QualityLand have a wealth of choices. There’s just one city that has to be included on any travel itinerary. QualityCity! Oh, QualityCity, the dream destination of all humanity! Queen of the Cities! Capital of the free world! Did you know that 81.92 percent of all modern novels, series, and films are set in QualityCity? Many people know far more about the streets of QC than of their own hometown.

  Apart from some spectacular exceptions on the coast and in the mountains, the rural regions of QualityLand generally offer very few sightseeing opportunities for the sophisticated tourist—unless they have a marked interest in huge monocultures, that is.

  COUNTRY AIR

  “Pooh. What’s that smell?” asks Aisha.

  “My sensors are registering a significantly raised number of carbamide compounds in the air,” says John.

  “For God’s sake,” says Aisha. “What on earth is that?”

  “Urea,” says John.

  “You mean…”

  “Liquid manure.”

  “Yuck. Is it dangerous?” asks Aisha.