CAREER CHANGE PART 1

 CAREER CHANGE PART 1

A piece on the theme of work

From Tim Wilson's Wednesday class in 2021

 

The train rattled, squeaked and juddered, metal wheels on steel rails, through the oldest part of the already ancient underground network, racing along the tunnels as if being hunted by some ravenous predator. Only two passengers were in this car, unsurprising given the lateness of the hour, and one of those was unconscious in a puddle of vomit

It had been a tough week and Max was glad it was Friday. Not that the weekend meant much in this day and age: he still had a metric fuck-tonne of out of hours work to do by Monday or his boss would go batshit crazy. While Max's degrees in Data Science and Machine Learning were first class in all ways, his boss was a Taskmaster, a limited-function Artificial Intelligence program, that generated projects and work-orders. Max half-smiled, half-grimaced at the irony. He had considered hacking the Taskmaster and giving it a nicer personality but decided that would be noticed too easily by other staffers who took their orders from the machine. 

"Hi, Max," said the advertising plasma-screen in front of him. Something, probably his phone, had pinged the advert his location and recent CyberNet search history. "What can I do for you this evening?" the advert burbled. "Maybe a nice bottle of wine? Or I could send you a masseuse. It would be very discreet." Pictures of merlot, chianti and smiling Thai girls in skimpy white towels scrolled across the screen.

"Off," said Max.

"Well, if you're sure," replied the advertising screen in hurt tones. "Or maybe, I can arrange a test drive of this." The image of a Ferrari 900, one of the last petrol-driven supercars on the streets today, and the subject of one of Max's Virtual Reality games, roared into view.

"Off," Max repeated, growing testy with the smart-system behind the screen.

The advert blitzed static for an instant then faded to a little white dot before powering off. Its red standby LED indicated it was waiting for Max to change his mind and order something, literally anything was available for delivery, from one of the thousands of online shopping portals connected to the CyberNet. Max was left with a strange feeling that he'd upset the AI. If so, that was a new feature, one he might have to replicate in his own projects.

Garish neon displays - advertising girls, drink, semi-legal drugs and dubious Virtual Reality experiences - greeted Max as he left the station. He dashed through the rain and neon to the taxi rank, picked a pale blue, driverless ride, paid by thumbprint linked to his bank account, and settled in for the drive to his single-room apartment.

"Off," he grunted at the advertising screen set in the dashboard. The words 'Suit Yourself' flashed onto the screen then faded away.

***

"You could make a living doing that kind of thing," said Bo. 

Max thought about it. "I suppose I could," he replied, "but it would be illegal."

"There's a lot of illegal stuff going on in the world right now. It's not as if you'd be making things worse." Bo paused a moment. "You might even make things a bit better."

Max finished the last of his beer, grimaced - it was warm and flat - then went to the fridge to retrieve a couple more bottles. He handed one to Bo and thumped down in front of his computer. Three more headlines scrolled across his newsfeed, like an old-style ticker tape:

 ++ A joint project between NASA Inc and ESA GmbH revealed plans to colonise Mars. ++ Amazon rainforest has been depleted by 10% area since the start of the millennium. ++ Apex Sciences report trials of three new anti-cancer and anti-viral treatments to begin in 2035. ++

While Max liked to stay informed, he knew that those three reports had been sanitised by the news outlets and, statistically, contained only about 33% truth.

Bo downed half of her beer and peered over Max's shoulder. "See," she said. "Run your algorithm over the Apex and Amazon stories."

Max clicked a few links and typed

./connect --source="Apex" --source="Amazon" --scan --collate

in a window made to look like an old-school green-on-black computer terminal. Max liked the old stuff. He whistled at the screen as the download time started ticking down from an estimated eight hours. "This is gonna take a while," he said. "What do you want to do for eight hours?"

Bo wrapped her arms around Max, popped a couple of buttons on his shirt, and let her hands wander into interesting places.

Max felt giddy as Bo's genetically tailored perfume, keyed to her oestrogen level, boosted his testosterone. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

"Hook us up, lover," Bo whispered into Max's ear.

***

Seven hours later, Max stood in the kitchen area of his cramped apartment, inhaling the brewing coffee and trying to stifle the erection in his shorts. Theoretically and technically, Scions of Sorcery was a massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game. With the advent of virtual reality, cranial electrodes and full-body haptic suits, the game had become - with specific and largely illegal mods and patches - an online sex extravaganza. Yes, it was possible to slay the dragon, butcher the orcs and rescue the princess, but the 'quest' was now a sideline compared to online pimps and virtual hookers.

Bo stalked from the bed, clad only in the thong she had been wearing. She slipped her arms around Max's chest and snuggled close. "Coffee smells good," she rasped. "Don't suppose you could add something a little stronger?"

"You'll find a bottle of Bushmills in the back of the TV cabinet. That's the real stuff, not some cheap knock-off." Max watched as Bo bent to retrieve the bottle, unsurprised at her flexibility and grace.

As she straightened, Bo blew the dust off the bottle. "You've had this for how long and never told me? And we spent all last night drinking that yellow water you called beer!"

"Not all of last night," Max defended himself as he poured the coffee into china mugs. "Besides, you know the prohibition rules. Anything imported is strictly off limits."

Bo splashed generous measures of the golden liquid into the mugs and corked the bottle. They clinked mugs and Bo raised hers to her lips. She paused, inhaling the whiskey-enriched coffee scent. "You keep a fifty-year-old bottle of illegal whiskey hidden where any agent could find it even if they were asleep," she murmured, "yet you won't publish what you find with that program of yours."

Max gazed at Bo with the same longing he had when he first saw her, up on stage, rivulets of perspiration glistening on her body, deft fingers flying along the fret-board of her guitar, an angel given voice as she sang the songs she had been writing since her teens. Two years into their relationship, Max still couldn't fathom what she saw in him, a lowly data analyst for Frontier Technology. "Five years for possession of contraband liquor versus twenty-to-life for sedition? You know how they'll inflate the charges. It's a no-brainer, babe."

Bo sipped her drink, silky smooth coffee with a kick, before replying. "Sometimes you have to take a stand."

Max was about to answer when his computer pinged. "That'll be the connect finished."

***

The connect program had sifted through nearly three terabytes of data on Apex Sciences, deforestation of the Amazon jungle, and the overlap between the two, presented on screen as a Venn diagram with clickable links to view more information. Half a dozen incidents and coincidences had gone unreported by the official news outlets.

Two indigenous Amazonian tribes had been forcibly relocated from their homelands to other tracts of land. Other data suggested they had been moved across the borders to Bolivia and Peru or eliminated entirely. The genocide data was strengthened by the presence 'in country' of a security team from Moscow Heavy Engineering, widely known to be hired out as private military contractors to other companies. Comprised of ex-Spetznas commandos, this particular team had been implicated in a number of sweep and clear operations in the former Soviet republics and acquitted in two courts martial on charges of brutality and murder.

Connect had found a link. Through a series of fronts, blinds and shell corporations, a small Brazilian company, Dynologistics, had been contracted to arrange security for an Apex Sciences research expedition. Dynologistics hired the Russian commando team and Apex footed the bill.

Three weeks after the tribes had disappeared, literally or figuratively, Apex Sciences had announced the discovery of new plant and animal species in the former tribal areas, which would be instrumental in the production of new drugs. The Apex stock price sky-rocketed.

Max's results were close to 85% accurate.

***

The coffee was long gone. The whiskey, however, was flowing freely and fuelling Max's fulmination. "Apex paid to have over two hundred people displaced or disappeared," he ranted, "then stood back and raked in the profits!"

Bo, from where she was lounging on the sofa, watched as Max paced the apartment. She had never seen him so agitated. Maybe it was the drink, she thought, or, like millions around the world, life in the 2030's was starting to grate on his nerves. "It's been like that for decades. Centuries, even."

"But it's wrong!" Max stopped pacing and drained his glass. "You said I might be able to make things better. I'm just a tiny cog in a huge machine, bossed by a bloody AI. Nobody'll listen to the little guy."

"Hey!" Bo snapped. "I don't like it when you run yourself down." She got to her feet and slinked across to where Max stood with a look of bewilderment and frustration on his face. Stroking his cheek, she leaned in close. "The truth will come out."

Max savoured her body heat and the warmth and whiskey-scent of her breath on his face. He snaked one arm around her waist.

Bo began to move, a slow, sinuous motion tight up against him. Her right hand moved down. "And you're not a little guy to me."

***

Max rolled over and made to get out of bed. Bo had other ideas. She moulded herself to him and began kissing the scratches she had left on his back. Punctuated by warm, wet smooches, Bo murmured, "What if ... I ... could find you ... a voice?"

A shiver ran down Max's spine. He squirmed around and turned to face Bo. "What do you mean?"

"My job is to send a message through my songs. Yours could be to connect an audience to the real story."

"I already have a job, baby." Max nuzzled against the side of Bo's neck. "I can't risk that. There are close to seven million unemployed right now and jobs are disappearing like mist in the morning."

"Your job makes you hit the bottle as soon as you're off duty. And you're rarely off duty because you work unpaid overtime for a bloody robot. We should be having times like this every weekend, not once every other month."

"It's not a ro ..." Max shut his mouth at Bo's glare.

"Don't start that techno-babble with me," she hissed. "I'm talking about taking a stand against a system that has you working like a slave for a machine." Her voice softened, the same tone she used in her love songs. "It's a system that'll have you in an early grave."

Max kissed the tip of her nose, a gesture that elicited her girlish grin. "I'll give it some thought, I promise. But I have to get busy, honey." He got out of bed and slipped into his shorts.