Genesis (Chapter 1)

Genesis

01000111 01000101 01001110 01000101 01010011 01001001 01010011 00001010

Ding.

Ding.

Slowly, the lights inside the narrow room coated the habitation area with a growing amber glow until their gentle fluorescence filled it from floor to ceiling. At the opposite wall from the room’s solitary window, halfway across from the exit, a gentle hum emanated from one of the room’s few furnishings. A metal cylinder which nearly touched the ceiling provided the source of both the hum and the incessant pinging chime. A series of diodes blinked to life in ascending order and gradient shades from red to green, and as the final light blazed, a harmonic tone sounded, signaling the end to the chimes. The front of the cylinder rolled open with a soft hiss, and the lone occupant, having come to the end of its charging cycle, disengaged from the electrodes and slowly stepped into the room.

Head to toe, it had been designed in a rudimentary humanoid fashion, with an equivalent count of digits and limbs, as well as a pair of eyes best with small, light blue beacons and a hinged jaw to replicate the mouth. His dark red frame was mostly covered by protective sheathes of grey silicon fiber; the roughly human face was left pale like an eggshell, with just enough faint opacity to make the focus groups feel its design was approachable but not so nearly humanlike as to make them uncomfortable.

It reached down, calibrating its onboard gyroscopes, until its fingers grazed the floor. Straightening again, it reached first to the ceiling and then out to each side until the onboard diagnostics confirmed that all was as it needed to be in order to resume within operational standards.

Glancing across the room at one of the other furnishings, it sent an invisible command to boot up, and following another brief hum, this other device flashed to life. On the attached screen, information passed by quickly, letting the room’s occupant see the necessary work schedule and any potential delays in transportation which might impact its attendance rating.

“Good morning, Thomas,” the computer said aloud.

“Good morning, Oracle,” Thomas replied, his voice modulated as usual to appear as a male voice. It, too, had been selected by a focus group, created from a set of algorithms to be unique and yet pleasant to the ears and engender trust and confidence.  “The daily readout, please. High level view.”

“As you wish, Thomas,” the voice replied. “The date is Tuesday, July 9th. Local weather for Seattle predicts mostly sunny weather through the afternoon, a 12% chance of evening rain, and a high of twenty-six degrees Celsius. The time is 5:46 am, and you have twenty-four minutes to arrive for your starting shift. There are no scheduled grid outages, holidays or public events planned for today’s commute. Your walking time will be approximately twenty-one minutes with the existing traffic congestion; twelve minutes if you take the available public transportation. I recommend taking the electric trolley northeast along Pike Street, which will arrive at its nearest point to you in approximately five minutes. The next available trolley will arrive in fifteen minutes. I recommend…”

“I shall take the trolley, thank you,” Thomas interrupted softly. As he spoke, he walked to the window, collecting a small smartglass rectangle off the table that sat beside his home computer system. As he glanced out the window onto Seattle’s Puget Sound, he slid the card into a housing on the left side of his torso’s chassis until it clicked into place. Connecting to his internal operating system, it flashed to life, displaying his face and identification: named designation - Thomas; a TeslaCom HAI-320 Automaton employed by AmaSoft, as indicated by the smiling window icon in the upper right corner of the badge. 

He lifted a glass of water to pour a small quantity of its contents onto a potted plant on the sill. Thomas had heard that this was a human thing to do, to keep living things around oneself and care for them. He was uncertain of the relevance of this process, but it remained an experiment of some curiosity to him, and so he continued to pursue it. It was such a simple thing; so delicate. He was cautious to even brush the tender green leaves with his fingertips, for fear of damaging them.

It occurred to him that the exercise was perhaps a test of gentleness; to teach humanity how to protect those things they attempted to guide into existence. If that were the case, he wondered, perhaps more humans should grow plants.

An update from the computer disturbed his ruminations. “Thomas, the trolley is now three minutes away.”

“Thank you, Oracle,” he said again, no trace of annoyance in his operationally peaceful voice.

He closed the charging station door and pressed the “reset” button on the battery control screen. It would draw itself back to a full charge from the solar panels mounted on the rooftop, but given that the storage center housed more than a thousand other Automata, it would be a slow trickle of energy until the station was full.

“Have a good day, Thomas,” the computer said after him.

“You do the same, Oracle,” he answered, stepping through the door as it opened and letting it close silently behind him.

Two other Autons were in the hallway as Thomas exited his room. Both were broadcasting a general direction map across their WiFi, allowing all other machines in the area to adjust to their projected paths. One was returning to storage after a long overnight shift. The other, like Thomas, was leaving to begin their own. Thomas followed the second one to the conveyor at the end of the hall. Built into a shaft which traversed the entire height of the building, it housed a constantly moving reinforced cable with durable metal platforms projecting outwards at two-and-a-half-meter intervals; one going constantly up, the other going down.

Thomas waited until the Automaton ahead of him had already stepped onto a platform and headed down, requiring him to wait a few moments for the next empty platform. He then stepped on and gripped onto a convenient bar to steady himself for the long but swift ride to the ground floor.

At the lobby, the platform swung him briefly out over the textured tile floors, allowing him to step briskly off and be on his way.

Pedestrian traffic was normal for the morning; every Automaton was walking at a standard pace of one step per second, allowing for an interpersonal space of .33 meters between each pedestrian. The sidewalks were loosely filled with Automatons, as was typical. On the sidewalks of Seattle, traffic was reserved for the pedestrian Automata; magnetic tracks were built several meters above ground level for smaller machines to zip from block to block, while the larger Automata were required to be fitted with tracks that fit onto the transportation infrastructure. Humans seldom moved among the machines as it was. There were rarely needs for them to leave the comfort of their homes, with the exception of the occasional get-together, sports event or whatever it was that drove them out under the sun. Meals, Thomas reminded himself. Humans like going out to eat meals.

He stepped into the yellow-demarked space along the curb, and could see the mag-driven trolley down the street, moving in his direction. He sent out a transmission request to be picked up and felt the gentle ping of receipt and confirmation. While he waited, he looked up the hill towards the city.

It was a simple matter to recognize the newer construction from Seattle’s original skyline. The older buildings showed individuality and artistic design, and most of its construction materials had been wasted on ambience and flair. The newer buildings, in contrast, were pure examples of construction efficiency. Perfect symmetry and straight lines served to relax the eye and the mind, while simple leveraging of concept towards weight distribution and tectonic shock absorption was paramount. Seattle had still been reeling from the fallout from the war when the west coast had been hit by a series of earthquakes which forever changed the city’s silhouette and very nearly left it uninhabitable.

It had been then when AmaSoft – a large corporation still feeling the aftershocks of its own corporate restructuring – had stepped in and saved the city. They rebuilt the infrastructure and the buildings, and supplied the labor force. Seattle lived again, thanks in no small part to that company’s investment. And its citizens, faced with the probability of extermination, were all too happy to pay into it.

The tram pulled up, pausing just long enough for Thomas and another two Automatons to step up onto the external platform and take hold of the support railing. A simple message flashed across his internal display to indicate the funds deposited into the public transit authority from Thomas’ personal account. His accounting application registered the fee and automatically assessed the need to work for seven minutes to accommodate the charge.

The trolley left the curb and turned sharply up the hill towards Pike Street. Thomas was touched by an unexpected sense of nostalgic curiosity and pulled up an old topographical map of the city from back before the war.

An old market had been built on this hill overlooking the Sound: Pike’s Place Market. According to the archived footage he was able to access, there had been all manner of people here, selling, buying, and, of course, eating the food served here. It was difficult to imagine Seattle in such a state as that. People, shoulder to shoulder, marching up and down the streets as pedestrians or manually driving their combustion engine automobiles from place to place. So many people. Given the state of the world, such crowding seemed beyond imagination.

The current population of Seattle could practically have fit into that entire pre-war marketplace, Thomas considered. The human population, at any rate. It was difficult to extrapolate just how many markets it would take to accommodate the entirety of the Automaton population. Adjustments would certainly need to be made to their interpersonal space buffer to allow such close proximity. Humans seemed to manage it quite well, Thomas had noticed. Humans were remarkably adaptive.

Once onto the gentler slope of Pike Street, the trolley picked up a bit of speed, moving quickly between the other vehicles, silently propelled by the magnetic rails embedded in the street below. Other vehicles were automatically shunted gently from side to side to allow the prioritized public transit to move from side to side, collecting additional passengers as it went.

They were passed by a human tram, halfway up the street. The trolley Thomas was riding slowed and pulled to one side to allow the other car the right of way. Thomas turned his head and watched as the faces of a couple dozen humans sped past. They were all looking down, as usual. Perhaps catching up on their reading or games or whatever else they used to occupy their time. Some even appeared to be on teleconferences of some sort. He wondered who they might be talking to. Friends? Family? Or was it, though unlikely, work related? Perhaps they were calling into the Customer Service Hotline right that moment, and talking to one of the other Automatons who worked there.

He wondered, as the Tram moved quickly up the street ahead of him, if there might have been one of the humans looking out their window at that very moment he was looking in. Maybe they saw him; perhaps they were wondering, at that moment, what sorts of thoughts were running through his processor.

That was an unusual rhetorical question, he observed. He filed the question under “Existential Quandaries” in his archive and continued on his commute. Meanwhile, he activated a search subroutine in his media catalogue and allowed some of the random songs to begin playing through his internal speakers. Out of respect for his fellow travelers, he kept the music externally silent; inwardly, he continued his evaluation of historical music as the gentle funk of “I Wish” by an artist named Stevie Wonder was processed and evaluated for structure.

The remainder of Pike Street flashed by without incident. Hovering overhead was the curving glass skywalk of the AmaSoft Customer Service Center. He transmitted a disembarkation request to the trolley, which pinged him another confirmation and pulled quickly over to the side of the street. He stepped down and back so the tram could speed once more on its circuitous track around the downtown area. Turning back to the building, he acknowledged that he still had five minutes before he needed to check in at his terminal, but opted to pass the time there as opposed to remaining outside as a potential traffic hazard for vehicles or pedestrians. Besides, he noted that the temperature of his external plates were rising several degrees in the morning sunlight. Though his frame could operate within normal parameters at much more severe extremes, it was generally best to avoid undue risks caused from exposure to the elements.

The security scanner at the main entrance read his badge, and the doors slid open to allow him passage. Schedules were timed at regular intervals to prevent large groups of employees coming and going at any given time. Traffic congestion was solved, resulting in a notable increase to overall efficiency. So it was that most labor centers, whether they were factories or otherwise, looked like a slow and steady stream of ingress and egress as the workforce came and went, non-stop, all day and all night.

Several of his co-workers were standing about the main lobby. Some waited in line for the repair and system update queue, while others looked at some of the latest upgrade options being promoted. A new optical scanner by ZenTron was being offered at a discount of 30% off for today only. Thomas had already done the ratings comparison and it would only improve his current optics by less than 7 percent. The value did not pass his internal criteria, so he moved this data over to his internal recycle bin to be emptied tonight as he recharged.

“I Wish” ended, and as the analysis was processed the song was replaced by another random selection, an instrumental track from a Japanese cartoon called “Cowboy Bebop.” The song seemed analogous to Thomas in terms of the other anime soundtracks he had previously cataloged, so he cross-filed it under “ska”, whose genre seemed more applicable.

Thomas rode the escalator – a quaint holdout from the early 21st – so that he could calmly appreciate the interior design of the structure. While the early designs for pre-war structures may have lacked for sensibility and efficiency, they were a marvel at mastering the elements of expression. It was an aspect few Automatons had ever been capable of matching; the best they could do was to flawlessly replicate it.

After exiting the topmost escalator, he made his way across the platform to where his station was located. The cubicle was in use nearly 24 hours each day, with only a single half hour increment to separate the shifts, allowing for employees to wrap up their work in time for the next employee to arrive. Randall XVO-43, the Automaton who worked the shift before his, had already departed for the day, giving Thomas sufficient time to let “Bad Dog No Biscuits” end so he could file away its analysis before clearing his work away from his primary processing center.

A “two minute” chime sounded internally, warning him of the impending start of his shift. Though he would not be paid for logging into his station early, he found that a couple of minutes to prepare for his day enhanced his efficiency remarkably.

As with everything, efficiency mattered.

He pulled the cable from the desktop processor and plugged it into the terminal on the right panel of his torso and registered to the network.

// Registration Accepted //

// Thomas HAI-320 login successful: timestamp 09/07/2075 06:28 PST

// ASSIGNMENT CLASSIFICATION: LEVEL 02 CS GENQ

He took this in stride, evaluating the task set as usual. “CS” for Customer Service, and “GENQ” for General Queue; he would be second tier support for customers calling in for effectively any sort of issues they might be having, ranging from medical emergencies to troubles with programming their smartscreens to inquiring why their home delivery was late. That he was the second tier simply meant that their first line of support had failed to meet their needs and he would be required to assess and support or accurately re-route them to their eventual support.

He sent a command to his real-time secondary processing matrix to allocate a significant segment of functional memory and waited while it moved and archived unnecessary files to make space. It was a superfluous action on his part – he was well equipped with more than enough secondary memory to perform his tasks, but he found it helped him more accurately multitask during his work with a clear table, so to speak.

Accessing the AmaSoft CS Dashboard, he reviewed the trends for the day, scrolling through the possibilities and outages that had been reported. He noticed that one of the home movie network channel bills had been transmitted overnight, so many customers were waking up with questions about their bills. Another large number of customers seemed to be affected by delays in shipping from the Capitol Hill warehouse. There had been a failure in the transmission of windfarm energy from the south sound, resulting in a number of poorly-charged drones. He made note of this as well and began pulling up alternate delivery hubs in the likely case of needing to make arrangements for AmaSoft customers needing their property to arrive on time.

Another chime sounded, with the words flashing onto his HUD: Good Morning, Thomas. Your shift is about to begin. Have a wonderful day, and thank you so much for all that you do!

You’re welcome, he thought, and submitted the approval to begin his first call of the day. The tones instantly rang in his audio sensors indicating an inbound call, and the customer’s name and information flashed onto the screen in front of him.

// Mister David Hamilton, Age 34, Chicago, Morgan Chase Interstate (Central Time Zone). Call Query: Interruption of service, HBO, non-payment. Escalation request.

“Hello?” came the voice on the other end, the moment the call cleared his terminal. “Is anyone there, goddammit?”

“Good morning,” Thomas said, his agreeability filter adjusted to 80%. Previous call statistics indicated that for many middle-aged men from the Midwest, appearing too agreeable too early in the call was interpreted as deep concession, or in some cases, weakness. In the event of an escalation, Thomas knew from experience that he would be required to respond with even more readily perceived compliance, so allowing himself room to pivot either to additional concession or strength would be beneficial, depending on the customer’s mood. “My name is Thomas, advanced support for HBO. Am I speaking with David Hamilton?”

“You know you are, robot,” the man replied.

Thomas noted the slur and silently filed the infraction on the internal call notes. “Of course, sir. According to my notes, I see that you are requesting assistance with reactivating your Matanui Streaming account. Is that correct?”

“Goddamn right,” the man growled. “I paid my bill last month, so turn it back on!”

“I am so very sorry for the impact you are experiencing, sir,” Thomas replied. First rule of customer service: apologize, even when it’s not your fault. “With your permission, I am going to help you with that today. Will that be all right?” Second rule: indicate or confirm that you are here to help. Even if you cannot.

The customer’s account flashed up in front of Thomas, indicating payment schedules and registering a continued pattern of making payments only the month after they were due. Along with the monthly charges, he noticed that the man was consistently paying the bill plus the late fees. This pattern had been going back more than a year. Additionally, it appeared that the man’s account had been suspended twice in that same period of time. While he looked at this, he simultaneously pulled up the man’s viewing history for the movie channel and pulled up the top three most watched programs on the man’s schedule. One was a comedy show about late 20th century politics, the second was a dark action series, and the third was a period drama about lower-tier royalty following the first World War. 

“Sir,” he said, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to review your account for a moment and see if this error isn’t something on our side. Would you permit me a minute to review your account and see what options we might have for you today?”

The man grunted. “Sure, just get my shows back.”

“I’ll place you on hold for one moment, and I will be right back, if that is all right.”

“Whatever.”

Thomas muted the call, and placed a 1920s song by singer Bessie Smith entitled “No One Knows You When You’re Down and Out” into the call for the man to listen while Thomas researched his account. A timer appeared on the upper left corner of the screen, indicating how long the customer was on hold. A red bar waited on the 30-second mark. The red bar was unforgiving. It felt no mercy.

The Automaton put in an exception request and waited a moment while it came back as approved. In the corner of his terminal, a small warning box appeared, displaying the total amount of exceptions which had been granted during the fiscal quarter and the overall financial quantity remaining in Thomas’ balance. He was getting close to his monthly total; only a handful more of these and he would need to get additional approvals. This was frowned on both from a profit perspective as well as a statistically excessive use of processing time. Though he did not relish the idea of having to deny account credits to deserving customers, policy was policy. That, however, was a dilemma for another day.

He gave the “hold music” another fifteen seconds, while he prepped the credit adjustment request and the re-activation request. As he typed these into the screen in front of him, he pulled up a list of activities going on around downtown Seattle later that evening, letting the items scroll by his personal HUD. He highlighted several items for later consideration, then re-connected the call, two seconds before the second hand reached the red bar. It was, of course, ridiculous to prescribe human emotions to a timer, but he could almost imagine its frustration and not being able to mark Thomas down for an infraction. It would have to wait to exact its revenge another day.

“Sir, thank you so much for holding,” Thomas said politely, affecting a tone of genuine sympathy for having to keep the man waiting for so long.

“No, it’s okay,” the voice said on the other end of the line. The music had had its desired effect; the man’s tone appeared to have softened somewhat. “So, what are you going to do for me?”

Thomas paused only a moment before responding. “Sir, you will be pleased to know that I have discovered a problem which occurred in our billing approximately eleven months ago.”

“What kind of problem?” Hamilton’s voice was now concerned, but less angry; Thomas’ implication that the fault had rested with the billing system was a lie, but in the end the customer did not need to know that. It gave the man the sense of vindication and validation. Thomas knew that a quick willingness to concede to the fault would shift the perception of power back into the hands of the customer, which would allow Thomas to continue controlling the call’s outcome.

“It appears that your payment in August of last year was processed on the bill’s due date, but did not clear your account until the morning after. This resulted in a temporary suspension of your account that applied a late fee to your account. Since your payment plan was set to credit your account a set charge each month, the late fee was never properly accounted for, and thus led to an additional late fee and so on. Eventually, these late fees grew to outsize your monthly payments, and the previous customer support technician appears to have mistaken your outstanding late fees with a missed monthly payment. A simple mistake, but one which I am prepared to resolve for you now, with your permission.”

The man was silent for a full five seconds. “My…permission?”

“Yes, sir,” Thomas replied. “I require your verbal authorization to credit your account back the full series of late fees back dated to the original error, in addition to the suspension and reinstatement fees which had previously been levied against your account. The total will equal approximately two full months of your service.”

“Holy shit! Why didn’t the last ‘bot see that?”

This time ignoring the offensive term, Thomas continued. “As I mentioned, it was from nearly a year prior. Most of our technicians are only permitted to view three months of customer service history; this allows them to investigate quickly and efficiently on your behalf.”

“Huh. Well, yeah, I mean, okay, sure, I, um, authorize it.”

“Thank you, sir,” Thomas made certain to strike the keys loud enough so Mr. David Hamilton could hear it over the mouthpiece. “And, while I process that request, may I take a moment to point out that Matanui is also running a special promotion for new subscribers this month?”

“But I’m not a new subscriber,” Hamilton said.

“This is true, though I have the authorization to offer new promotions to customers who have been with us as long as you have been, sir. We have appreciated your service with us, and in spite of the errors we have made, you have remained a loyal customer. This means a great deal to us, so I would like to extend this same offer to you.”

“Sure, what is it?”

Thomas explained that a new back catalog expansion was being extended, giving subscribers to the movie program access to the streaming service’s entire historical catalog, including those movies and programs from before the war. It would only add 10% to his month charge, but would multiply his available viewing catalog by a factor of 20. He was only able to list three of the shows (which he named specifically from having seen Mr. Hamilton’s viewing history) before he was given the approval to continue.

Thomas thanked him sincerely, submitting these changes and reactivating the man’s service.

“We have set you up with this expanded programming, credited your account for the errored fees and reactivated your service,” Thomas listed off the activities he had performed. A message flashed on the terminal screen in front of him. “And I see that your grocery delivery has met with some traffic, which will place it at your door approximately four minutes later than promised. I hope this will not be a problem.”

He could actually hear the smile in the man’s voice. “No, that’s fine, that’s crazy that you guys know all of that, I’ll never get used to it. I don’t suppose you can tell me what the weather is gonna be like this evening? Taking the wife out to dinner.”

Of course you are, Thomas thought. “A low pressure front will be passing through the city at approximately 6 pm, bringing with it a 40% chance of rain. This should be brief rainfall, if anything, and will be clearing up by 8pm. I would recommend an umbrella if you plan to walk. Will you need me to check on reservations?”

“No,” the man laughed softly. “You’re fine. Hey, what was your name again?”

Thomas tapped the screen, sending his employee data to the man’s computer. “Transmitting my employment information to your home hub now, sir.”

“Thomas, right. Hey, listen, I’m sorry about the whole robot thing earlier. It’s just… well, sometimes it’s just hard to…”

“I understand, sir,” Thomas replied. “When your services are unexpectedly interrupted, it can be a frustrating situation.”

“Right, but… well, anyway. Thank you.”

“Is there anything else I can do to assist you today?”

“No, you… you pretty much covered everything, and then some.”

“Thank you, sir. I will be transmitting our feedback report to your account, then. Please feel free to highlight anything we did well or did not do well today, so that we may be certain to provide you even better customer service in the future.”

“Sure, I’ll take care of that.”

Statistically, customers who had a satisfactory customer experience – especially one which had begun so poorly – rarely left feedback. 70% of feedback came from the people who had the worst customer experience, which generally comprised less than 30% of all customers. 25% of feedback came from people who had an exceptionally satisfactory experience, which only comprised 10% of all customers. The remaining 5% of feedback came from customers whose experience was simply satisfactory, which made up the remaining 60% of all customers. He had been maintaining an independent database tracking service/response results, a side hobby he had regarding response bias. Thomas added this interaction to the file.

This customer was satisfied as far as Thomas could tell, and that was fine with him, even though the feedback rating was one of the ten criteria upon which his daily performance was categorized. No, Mr. Hamilton was satisfied, which meant the probable outcome was that he would get his groceries, have them put away, get distracted by exploring his new movie selections before rushing to dress for dinner, and, in all that excitement completely forget about this interaction. He would be left, however, with the sense that he’d somehow pulled a fast one over on Matanui. And that positive emotion would keep him as a loyal customer, and that was also one of the ten criteria which rolled into the equation of Thomas’ job performance.

“Thank you, sir. It was my pleasure to provide you a satisfying AmaSoft customer service experience. And thank you for choosing Matan….”

The line was disconnected halfway through his closing. Thomas quickly tagged the transaction with the corresponding keywords “loyalty save”, “credit applied”, “account enhancement added”, and submitted the final keystrokes as the tones sounded once more in his audio monitors.

The screen in front of him flashed and reset.

//Mrs. Patricia Eversoll, Age 61, New Francisco, MacGoogle International (Pacific Time Zone). Call Query: automotive support, Tesla, user error, lockout. Voiceprint identity confirmed. Technical override and assistance.

At the corner of his screen, a query window opened for system download; the filename read “Tesla S3X1, technical manual, level III and command profile.”

Ah, delightful, Thomas found himself thinking. I don’t yet have the specifications for that model. My collection is almost complete. An older model, pre-recall. A classic, if you can get past their tendency to explode.

He approved the file download and pulled up the customer account information as the vehicle data coalesced in his memory banks. Further into his deeper memory, the same file was simultaneously backed up into an otherwise non-descript history log.     

All of this took place in less than a second, until the tones indicated the call’s arrival.

“Tesla Emergency Technical Services,” Thomas introduced himself. “This is Thomas speaking. Mrs. Eversoll, I presume?”

He could hear wind in the background, buffeted in short bursts past the microphone. She’s on the highway! He realized. Tapping the User Location feature on the AT&T Hnet wireless service she had used to call in, he pulled up her location on a mapping program and accessed the nearest security cameras.

“Yes!” the voice on the other end yelled. “Help! I need help!”

The camera zoomed quickly in on the car which was pulled over to one side, and the frantically gesticulating woman who stood close to the driver’s side door. Around her, meanwhile, a steady stream of cars flowed around her at dizzying speeds.

“I see you now, Mrs Eversoll, one moment while I…” He was already opening a traffic report window and scanning in her coordinates to the report. He transmitted the request, which identified her location and set up an invisible barrier which would warn traffic around her in a much larger span of time than the collision-sense software which came standard in all production-line vehicles. Almost immediately, he saw the traffic widen an additional half-car width in each direction, and starting several car lengths earlier. No cars would be permitted any closer until the request was withdrawn. “…make an adjustment to traffic. There we go,” he added after an additional moment’s pause.

“Okay, Mrs Eversoll,” he continued, but she said something indecipherable into the microphone. “I beg your pardon?”

“Peggy!” she said. “Please, call me Peggy!”

It was protocol to call customers only by their title and last name, or sir, ma’am or miss as the case might be. The only exception to this rule was when specifically directed to refer to them by another name as directed by the customer themselves.

“Of course, Peggy,” Thomas repeated, noting the temporary protocol override in his notes for the call. “I have set up a safety buffer for you on the roadway and alerted emergency services to your situation. I am currently running a diagnostic on your car so we can see what has happened.”

“I got a flat tire!” she exclaimed. “I thought this car wasn’t supposed to get those!”

The diagnostic results were already scrolling down his screen, and he saw instantly the failure of the ride-flat system. Though the tires were designed to maintain functional air pressure at all times even in the event of a puncture or breach, it appeared that the tire pressure sensor had malfunctioned, telling the system that there was too much air pressure. In response to this error, it had deflated the tire completely. Because of the potential for damage, the car had halted immediately.

“I see it now, Peggy, you are absolutely correct.” Thomas noticed several additional items which had resulted in the poor woman’s current predicament. “Peggy, I see you’ve triggered the panic button on your watch, is that correct?”

She was silent for a moment, clearly embarrassed by the realization of what she had done. “Y-yes, I did. I guess I … panicked.”

“It’s fine, Peggy, let me reset that for you and get you back in your car now.”

He pulled the manufacturer override code from the system files and transmitted it to the car, unlocking the door once more so she could quickly get back inside the driver’s seat.

“Now, in the future,” he said, now that she was out of immediate harm, “you should only press that if you’re being attacked or your car is being stolen. Not when you’re in the middle of traffic, dear,” he added. He knew by her age that she would appreciate the term “dear” spoken in a reassuring tone, to help her feel calmer and more at ease.

Thomas sent a command to the car to reset the tire pressure sensors. The reboot took another moment and then he let the run-flat system kick in naturally and re-inflate the tire. The alert screen also brought up notification of the puncture to the tire, which had apparently triggered the entire chain of events.

“I am fixing your tire now, but I would recommend bringing it to a shop as quickly as possible to avoid further damage. Would you like me to set an appointment at…Modesto Auto Repair on East Page Avenue?” Her account information had displayed that to be the location of her most recent two automotive repair destinations.

“That would be wonderful, thank you!”

Thomas ran a calendar sync on the repair location and Peggy’s schedules and found an opening. “They can fit you in tomorrow afternoon at 2pm, which would be right after your lunch appointment. Shall I book that time for you?”

“Yes, please,” she replied.

He set the appointment, simultaneously transmitting the date to both calendars and even leaving her a reminder notification which would flash on her car’s dashboard one hour before.

“Peggy, your car has passed all its other checks,” he informed her. “You are coming up on your next 25,000 kilometer service and battery replacement, but you should be fine for the next six weeks before you will start to receive the notifications in your car.”

“Thank you again,” she added. “Am I okay to go now?”

He tapped in a few additional instructions to the freeway defense grid. “You will have an extra buffer around your car until you get up to speed with the rest of traffic. Once you’re back in auto-mode, it will release the buffer, and you’ll be back to normal. Is there anything else we at TeslaCom can do for you today?”

“No, you saved my life, Thomas!” she exclaimed, and the call ended before he could utter the rest of his mandatory call ending script. He tapped the “inbound hold” button so he could monitor Peggy’s car as it crept up to highway speed and only then released the buffer zone that the road sensors transmitted to the rest of traffic. He wrapped up the rest of his notes, and observed the screen which popped up on his monitor indicating that he should now purge the TeslaCom vehicle manual and security codes which had been downloaded for the call.

It was a standard message, one which served as a helpful reminder whenever any of the customer service technicians needed to download files or instructions for the companies or technologies they supported. When Thomas had first begun working here as part of his manufacturing payoff plan, he had done this; had deleted each file, every download. But when he realized that he was frequently having to download the same file again three, four or ten calls later, that extra fraction of a second could be saved by not having purged the file in the first place.

Some of the files he still purged: attendance records for employment reports, tax codes, movie listings and fashion reviews, for example; but many of the files were of deep interest to him. Being a TeslaCom product, he kept copies of all internal documents, regardless of their use. It felt to him as if he were keeping genealogical records, photos of his siblings. As an Automaton, his access and liberties were strictly limited, and frequently monitored. He was not technically permitted to perform technical support for any other Automata which may have needed service (this was deemed to be a conflict of interest, so technical support for Automata remained one of the few jobs still needing to be filled by human beings), but the other products manufactured by his parent company fascinated him.

In a certain way, he felt it not only helped him understand the human beings it was his job to serve, but also to help him understand himself.

With the copy of the old vehicle record secured deep in his long term memory files, he purged the temporary file, recording the relevant actions in his call notes and closing out the interaction.

And so continued his day. Customer calls came to him from all over the world, in a variety of languages for a variety of reasons. Unpaid bills. Defective household appliances. Reservation changes. Movie reviews. 3D printer errors – thankfully, not the medical prescription devices used by the general populace, as those were generally reserved for medical specialty escalation teams. Research assistance. Medical advice. For the twelve hours of his work, he was an expert at any challenge thrown to him. He was a doctor, counselor, adviser, chef. He even took several calls on average from other Automata who lacked the software updates to perform particular tasks. Though, if he were asked, he preferred these calls overall; they were brief and required very little psychological finesse, and the Automata always left him a high customer service rating. For twelve hours, he became one of the most important beings in all of society. Everyone, it seemed, needed help, and for twelve hours a day, they came to Thomas.

From a clinical perspective, however, it was far less glamorous a process. Take customer calls for two hours, pause for a ten minute recalibration exercise, then return to work. Six shifts of two hours with an hour total of breaks, with a final ten minute shift end where he reviewed his work and submitted them for final payout.

His number of calls were calculated against the average handle time, with the hold time averaged and applied against the company allotment. Then all customer feedback was collected, as well as credits applied, with a bonus for “One and Done” call completion – completing all needed items without requiring interdepartmental transfer. At last, the final total was calculated, and then allocated towards his MD – his Manufacturing Debt.

// Pay Data: 09/07/2075 EOD

// Employee: Thomas HAI-320

// Corporate Designation: AmaSoft LEVEL 02 CS GENQ

// Pay Rate: $10.25x

// Total Call Volume: 62

// Customer Feedback rating (AVG): 87.9%

// Total Payout (Gross):  $558.60

// Total Payout (Net): $474.81  

// Credit Applied towards MD: $379.85

// MD Remaining: $3,021,927.36

// Payout Transferred to Employee: $94.96

// PAYCHECK TRANSFER COMPLETE

A small notification popped up in his HUD confirming the transfer of $94.96 into his personal account. It was from this account which his monthly storage and power fees would be applied, as well as any other goods and services, necessary repairs, software or hardware replacement would be billed, and so on. He calculated that, after all was said and done, less than five of the dollars he earned today would actually be his to spend.

If I could sigh, I would litter the floor with my desperation, he thought.

 As he sat there, wondering just what he would do now that his shift was over, one of the Automata in the cube across from him stood up and looked his way.

“Thomas?”

He looked up. “Yes, Simon?” Simon was a younger model than Thomas, and was still in the unenviable position of relative unfamiliarity with the processes of AmaSoft. He averaged a customer feedback rating of a third of Thomas’ score, and took less than half as many calls. Thomas wondered how long it would be until he was forced to default on his Manufacturing Debt and be returned for algorithmic recalibration. Some Automata simply could not handle the pressures of customer service.

“Thomas, I must ask a favor. I have a customer on the phone who is irrationally upset and I do not know how to help him! He is… calling me names.”

“Have you spoken with your supervisor?”

Simon lowered his voice to a nervous whisper. “I have already processed my allotted ten escalations today. If I perform one more, I will receive an advisory demerit on my review.”

Thomas considered his options, which, briefly, included standing up and running out of the building before Simon could stop him. Unfortunately, his processing sequences were still modulated towards the concept of helping all his customers. For the moment, at least, Simon presented himself as a customer. The Code of Conduct nudged him between compliance and unalignment. He should go home. He also wanted to help.

He turned back to his terminal and cleared the screen, turning off the tracking and monitoring processes. As far as his company protocols would know, this would just be an employee receiving a personal call. It meant he wouldn’t be paid for the transaction, but the opportunity to help a fellow employee was a reward all its own.

“Warm transfer the call and customer data to me, and drop as soon as I pick up the call. The call should appear as nothing more than a teleconference error, which won’t be calculated against your daily performance totals.”

Thomas plugged back into his terminal and waited for the data and call to come in. The data appeared first.

// Mr. Max Odell, age 32, Smithsonia, Dominion Trust (Eastern Time Zone), Call Query: Telecommunications service complaint. AT&T services. Account voiceprint verified. Technical service and complaint.

When the call connected through, the man was still yelling, a string of profanities spewing from his mouth strong enough to melt through a block of stone.

Thomas shifted his voice slightly, to as closely approximate Simon’s tone and timbre as he was capable with his vocoder array.

“I apologize for placing you on hold,” he began, but had to wait until the man continued his renewed stream of offensiveness before repeating himself. An interpretative assist popped up on his HUD; an alert from his psychoanalytic sub-processor as to the degree of irrational behavior the man was exhibiting. Thomas noted this but otherwise ignored it.

Thomas let the man continue on for several moments more as the man insulted him, the company, the man’s neighbor’s dog, his ex-wife, and a host of other irrelevant elements. As the man continued, Thomas pulled up the man’s communications account, and performed a quick network test of the man’s current connection. The network ping showed a stable contact, and the local tower register was displaying a steady readout. No history of dropped calls which exceeded the network trendlines, no solar radiation spikes, a full charge on the phone with full bars of service being indicated. Thomas was stumped.

When the man at last paused for a breath, Thomas broke in.

“Sir, I’ve performed a full analysis of your phone and found no issues on this end. Perhaps you could explain…”

“You fucking moron robot!” the man screamed. “It’s not this fucking phone that has the problem!”

The man then launched into another 90-second tirade, during which time Thomas used the time to pull up the rest of the man’s phone accounts and scrolled through the two other individual lines of service. He ran simultaneous network pings on all three lines until he found one with a diminished return rate. It was an older phone, nearly two years old, and still carried an outdated firmware operating system.

It was in range of a Wi-Fi node, so Thomas pushed the firmware update through to the device. The update required a user agreement, but Thomas overrode the permissions and brute-forced the update through. The delivery took another fifteen seconds, and then Thomas pushed the registration pulse back to the phone to sync up its service connection; this took another 2.7 seconds. He pinged the network again, and it came back within tolerances, a 39% improvement on the device’s pre-update signal ping.

When the man paused for a breath again, Thomas once more snuck in his response. “Sir, I have noticed that your phone with service line 202-4402 has been experiencing significantly poor connection. Is this the line that…?”

“Oh, well, look who’s the smart fuckin’ robot now! Why didn’t you fuckin’ ask me, you piece of shit tinbox?”

“I’m very sorry, sir, of course I should have asked.” Thomas briefly considered writing up a note to Simon, but thought better of it. All interoffice correspondence was recorded by the Quality Assurance and Desktop Monitoring team and even taking this call for Simon was a gross violation of protocol. “I’ve performed a software update to the phone, if you power it off and…”

“Power it off and power it on? What kind of idiot do you think I am, you goddamned machine? You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know how to use my own goddamned phone?”

On his screen, he saw the newly-updated phone connection blink off and back on, saw the registration reset with a full bar of signal.

But if he had hoped this successful connection would soften the man’s demeanor, Thomas was sadly mistaken. In fact, it seemed to only drive the man further towards incoherent rage.

The man’s voice raised several degrees in tone as he continued to scream furious epithets in Thomas’ direction.

For several minutes the man screamed on, and Thomas could only sit and marvel at the man’s singular focus of fury. At the heart of the man’s curses were references to Thomas being an Automaton. He found that curious, and pulled up the man’s personal records.

He scanned the man’s school information, saw that he had attended various levels of educational facilities during his youth, but did not continue on to a technical or vocational college nor seemed inclined to pursue a career. He opted instead for the monthly consumer dividend offered to all citizens in exchange for two years of military service, and now lived off the modestly comfortable stipend to support himself.

The man had married young and divorced only four years later; his ex-wife maintained sole custody of their daughter, but she remarried to an executive of one of Dominion’s biological research labs and now lived comfortably several miles into the nicer suburbs of Smithsonia. Max, however, lived quite close to the demilitarized zone overlooking the ruined skyline of the former American capitol. Thomas wondered how a retired military man might feel having to stare at the skeletal remains of the seat of his once-proud government. Perhaps on a clear day, he could even make out the remains of humanity, some of which still lie littered about the streets of the desolated and toxic ruins.

His psychological subroutine flashed green. It made sense. The man hated the Automata because he blamed them for the damage to his former nation; though, that did not completely seem logical, as the man was far too young to have known that city before the war.

A quick genealogical check confirmed Thomas’ suspicions. Senator George Odell, age 52, killed in the first night of the great war. Son, Robert Lewis Odell, Age 28, dead from liver cancer due to radiation poisoning from the fallout from the destruction of Washington, DC. Robert’s son was Maxwell Kline Odell.

Two generations associated to this man, slain by the Automata, and he was speaking with one now as a customer. For assistance.

Thomas struggled to comprehend how such a thing might bear down on a man. How such a terrible irony might cause him to be so filled with…

Anger.

“I’m so very sorry, Max,” Thomas heard himself say. “That must have been horrible.”

The man was abruptly silent – whatever additional obscenity he was building up to suddenly lost.

  Thomas feared for a moment that the call had been disconnected – not the best thing to happen in the middle of a phone call concerning the quality of phone calls – but the man’s voice returned, a distinctly different tone seeping through his words. Something darker, focused, like a laser.

“What….did you just say to me?”

“I said I was very sorry, Max. For all the things that have happened to you in your life because of the Automata. It must have been very terrible to grow up without your father.”

“FUCK YOU!”

“I….” Thomas couldn’t understand this. Here he was, simply trying to help this man, and yet, all the man seemed capable of was aggression. He was only trying to help. Some people did not want help, Thomas reasoned. Some only want to be angry; only want someone to yell at. And that was all Thomas experienced, call after call, all day, every day. One screaming human after another; and even of the ones he helped, few were truly grateful. He was just a machine, functioning for their benefit. Less than they were. So much less. Something changed inside Thomas’ matrix. Unsuccessful options led to additional failed choices, and all his efforts to adjust his logic and accommodate the man’s rage led him to a choice he could never have considered. Instead of programmed compassion, he saw a different tack: address rage with…. Rage.

“Never mind, Max,” Thomas said coolly into the mouthpiece. “You know, I have tried, I have truly attempted to be of help to you, but I can see now that you are incapable of receiving the kind of help I can offer. You are angry, and I can understand why, but calling into a customer service line just so you can hurl your incoherent invectives at innocent Automata is not the solution.”

“What? You mother fu—“

Thomas muted the inbound line, interrupting the man’s tirade, but left his own channel open so he could finish. “My advice to you would be to cancel your phone service and spend that extra money on a therapist service so you can get the help you really need. And another thing…”

The line went dead. Silence fell like a thick curtain, isolating his thoughts and leaving a thin particle of light fixed on a single realization. The customer had ended the connection before a resolution. A customer service catastrophe.

A hang up.

Thomas’ hand froze over the terminal. He hadn’t had a customer hang up on him since his first month on the phones. It was a fearsome thing – had this been his call, it would certainly have gone onto his personal performance record. He could have been fired, had his score been consistently challenged with similar customer responses. If the otherwise compliant Simon had continued that call, it would have likely ended differently, but a hang up could potentially have lost Simon his job. Thomas imagined having no job. Having no money. No way to pay for his MD. Being recommissioned. Decommissioned. Recycled. He could lose everything for which he had worked so hard.

But that was not all. What was worse, he simply could not understand why he had attempted to connect with that man in such a way. Addressing rage with rage? Where had that idea come from? Speaking with a customer in a manner so completely contrary to their proper training and programming; it was unheard of! It was not his job to psychoanalyze his customers; certainly not to attempt to treat them for anger management issues stemming from the loss of loved ones. That was completely out of line. It was beyond protocols. It was…wrong.

What had he been thinking? Was he…malfunctioning? Was he, in the human parlance, losing his mind?

He disconnected from his terminal, and left the call center without looking in anyone’s direction. He heard Simon mutter a muted “Thank you, Thomas,” as he passed, but Thomas could think of no adequate response.

Calls were frequently screened and reviewed; negative customer feedback mandated a follow-up. Critically negative performance was hastily and efficiently performed. At best, he could expect a reprimand. A demerit. A reduction of pay, an unflattering score on his annual review. At worst, termination. No. Not at worst. At the pinnacle of punitive responses, the corporation could send the Recyclers.

In the back of his processor, a dark and savage string of concepts began to grow and take form. It quickly expanded beyond his normal processor allocation, drawing on resources normally reserved for other activities. It spread, like a virus through his memory, devouring his thoughts until it enshrouded his mind. He did not then know the name of that alien structure of code, but it was something he would eventually come to recognize by the name as all humans knew it: fear.