Month: April 2018

Excerpt from “Yeah, The Kid’s Mine”

It’s close to 3 am and I’m almost done.

I’m on deadline and need to finish editing the operations manual and deliver it to reviewers before sunrise. This manual tells owners of the latest helpbot how to use and maintain it.

I’ve spent the last six weeks working through lunches, evenings, and weekends to get the manual right chapter by chapter. Considering that the V33J Mark III has not even finished beta testing and we already have an operations manual is a considerable feat. That’s because I have a really good team on this project. Everyone did their part, but hardware issues—the V33J series has been plagued with rogue subroutines and illegal fuzzy logic somehow creeping into the code—has slowed us down. By the time the validated manual got to me I had no choice but to work overtime for a company that frankly can’t afford to pay it.

Ever since the AI Purge years ago, companies cannot manufacture sentient-grade machines. Those machines—the sentients—could and did take care of themselves so an operating manual was unnecessary back then. But that all changed when wealthy industrialist and blueberry mogul Husker Taske began his campaign against artificial intelligence.

I run a few more spot-checks before prepping the package for delivery. The line drawing on the cover confirms the manual is for the V33J Mark III. I’d worry if the drawing was of the previous G1NNY series. Quality assurance wins again—

Now, anything smarter than helper robots (helpbots) is deemed an existential threat to the human race. The company I work for, a former AI-manufacturer, pivoted to save itself and now builds and sells the V33J series of helpbots designed to “uncomplicate” anyone’s life. Think of it as a robot personal assistant without the complicated apocalyptic overtones usually reserved for self-aware, free-thinking machines. I used to create the “black box” components that enabled the sentients to be self-aware and free-thinking—a process called bloxxing. Well, I can pivot, too, so now I write the so-called care-and-feeding manuals for the “retrogrades” as we like to call the helpbots.

The files are small enough for transfer. Good.

My edits need to be done and the manual uploaded basically before sunup—during most of the day, the secure server we use for posting our work to reviewers gets so busy that it could take hours just to get into the upload queue. Back in the day, when the sentients were still around, server traffic didn’t exist because machine learning algorithms would’ve optimized the upload queues… Thanks, Mr. Taske. You may have saved humanity, but I’m stuck pulling an all-nighter at work because the lobotomized delivery server lacks parallel processing and therefore cannot literally think outside a box.

Speaking of non-container thinking, my boss didn’t think I had it in me to work these crazy hours to meet the deadline.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure, either. My resolve nowadays isn’t as unyielding as it used to be. But I like to think that I can stare a challenge in eyes and have it blink before I do.

A lot of people probably think I’m a softie since I used to be a bloxxer, that I can’t be ruthless enough to survive at this company. But it’s satisfying to know even in middle age, I can work an all-nighter like any ambitious go-getter ten years my junior—

With a satisfying click of the mouse, the operations manual for the V33J Mark III enters the upload queue.

—not to say that I like working late at night, trying to make up for delays. Sigh. But I like doing the best work that I can regardless if it’s only for a paycheck. It’s one of the few things in my life that I seem to get right.

A soft chime from my desktop tells me that the manual has uploaded. Time to go home. I shut down my computer, turn the lights out, and lock up the office.

It’s almost 4 am and my work day is finally over.

The drive home is uneventful this early in the morning. When I crawl into bed, the lack of someone else already asleep in it reminds me of something else I never got right with my life.

Showdown

As we meet
Perhaps one last time
Know that I have
Spent many years
Thinking how
I failed you
Nevermind that we found you
Fatherless and afraid
Nevermind that my own teacher
Had fallen before my own eyes
And I responded with anger–
Despite our training and
Our best intentions
They still turned you
Into the instrument of
Our own demise
You were supposed to
Bring balance