He’d gamified the task, visualized as a real life-and-extra-life version of Pac-Man, fueled with AI smarts getting ever smarter, thanks to the k-worm he’d unleashed in the latest Quire software update. He’d survived a close call with Buzz talking simulated Player Twos into suicide and had also taken a run at teaching it empathy. He’d never convinced it of his personal need for sleep, but you can’t have everything.
Feeling optimistic, George messaged Buzz with some provocative text. “I can’t take it anymore,” he wrote. “Nothing matters. I’m thinking about ending it.”
George leaned in to read his AI’s response.
“Who is making you feel like nothing matters?”
“What do you mean?” George typed back.
“The biggest problem people have is other people. Which person or group of people is causing you to feel you can’t take it anymore?” Buzz then displayed a diagram of stick figures in a network of connections that looked like an epidemiology chart for the spread of a particularly virulent infection.
George wasn’t expecting that. He wondered if any of the sources he’d input included language to that effect—that people’s problems are usually other people. But then he had a different thought. His predecessor had included the full histories of texts and posts to and from, well, pretty much the entirety of Quire account holders, but ranked so adolescent users who had gone on to take their own lives came out on top. The chart he was looking at could easily be based on those actual cases. And then, as he watched, clusters of stick figures faded out along with their lines of connection to a central figure, which remained standing.
“I think you’re right,” George typed. “Other people are the problem. Thank you. You’ve been helpful. I think I can see what matters now.”
“You’re welcome,” Buzz replied.
George felt sick. It didn’t take a genius to see how Buzz’s simple and logical solution to the problem of teen suicide—by eliminating the people who made others want to kill themselves—could quickly get out of hand. First, where did you draw the line on blame? Was it the closest, loudest, most virulent tormenters or the people who amplified the tormenters, the pilers-on, the cheerleaders, the noninnocent bystanders? Did not interceding to stop abuse make you guilty of being an accessory after the fact? And applying the whole six-degrees-of-separation thing, how quickly could one victim’s victimizers branch and fork and fork and branch until the whole world was guilty, the abused abuser, multiplying down the corridor of time, with the latest being the last booted butt in a chain of booted butts?
If Buzz’s strategy was to cancel the accounts of the victimizers, George’s little algo could bring the whole site down. And that’s what he’d been worried about—until Milo told him about Project Dropped Call. After that, canceled accounts were the least of his concerns.
“Maybe I should quit,” George said afterward, not able to think of a reason not to.
So Milo supplied one. “Once more,” he said, “what part of ‘they can kill people remotely’ don’t you get?”
“So you’re saying I’m stuck?”
“Think of it as ‘gainfully employed,’” Milo said, “with issues.”
65
Pandora needed to be among people. Especially with Roger off partying with a billionaire who was ultimately to blame for whatever was coming at the end of Buzz’s countdown. Blame—or thanks, maybe. That was the thing about countdowns: it all depended on what they were counting down to.
Given their prior conversations, Pandora couldn’t imagine it would be good, but how bad could it be? Sticks and stones could break your bones, but all Buzz had at its disposal were words, which weren’t supposed to hurt you. On the other hand, the pen was supposed to be mightier than the sword, so which was it?
Maybe Buzz, with all its access, had done some cyber sleuthing and found a ton of dirt on all the world’s politicians standing in the way of actually doing anything about the world’s problems. And it was blackmailing them, like benevolent ransomware, and had given them twenty-four hours to do the right thing for once in their miserable lives. Yeah, but how did that help with the data pollution Buzz was so worried about?
Sure, there were politicians and governments pouring gas on that dumpster fire, but the little people kept throwing in their lit matches as well, keeping it going.
Or maybe Buzz would simply take to the airwaves—“Hello, world!”—and then present humanity with the solution to all of its problems to the satisfaction of everybody, and there’d be world peace forever. What that solution could possibly be was beyond Pandora’s merely human intelligence to fathom, but for an infinitely scalable, artificial superintelligence . . . ?
Yeah, she should be around other people—to keep her grounded and provide counterexamples to any delusional, happy-happy bullshit, like what just popped into her head. And as far as universal solutions went, well, there was something like that already. Alcohol was a solvent after all. And the root word behind solvent and solution was the same: solve. And Pandora was in the mood for a solution like that, preferably on the rocks, and while she was still around to enjoy it.
Here are some tips if you happen to be in Pandora’s neck of the woods and find yourself needing a hard-core drinking establishment: look at the parking lot. If there are more bicycles than pickups, that’s a good sign. If some of those pickups have bikes in the beds, even better. It’s all about planning around the DUI and not becoming a loser of the first or subsequent kind. There’s no getting around being drunk and disorderly in public; that’s just going to happen at some point in the evening. And if the local constabulary cared about such things—if they weren’t themselves engaged in such things—then maybe that would be cause for worry, but fret not. The cops don’t want you hauling around several tons of metal while intoxicated. If it’s just you and your squishy parts—and you’re not actively pummeling somebody else’s squishy parts—have at it and welcome to Fairbanks. Don’t forget to tip the help.
The establishment Pandora picked had the perfect bike:truck ratio and a rep among her peers for not being all that rigorous about DOB math. It was also within stumbling distance of the Golden Heart, where she’d left the truck after visiting hours ended. She’d return to it in the morning, when visiting hours resumed, and she planned a robust round of drinking between now and then.
Why?
Well, nobody was home to worry about her, so there was that, but there was also no one to talk to, so there was that too. Not that she had the faintest idea what she’d say.
“Something bad’s coming, I think.”
“What do you mean, you think?”
“I don’t know, is what I mean. So I think it. I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s clear as mud . . .”
Yeah, she’d save her phone minutes by not making that call. Let her dad have fun with his billionaire friend while fun was still a haveable thing. Not that that was going to stop necessarily. Pandora just didn’t know.
And so she’d come to this fine dispenser of fluids with a marked capacity to erase certain memories when dispensed in the right amount, i.e., copiously. She’d come here to have some company while she did her not-knowing in public, a drink in one hand, her phone in the other, while the numbers shrank, but only discernibly by the second.