Chapter 211

“Sometimes you find a lie, and sometimes it finds you.”
—Caroline George, The Vestige

SSR SHOWED UP on the radar again in a tiny news article on Wednesday. “Elite search and rescue team late to the party.” It said they arrived in Jacksonville after the hurricane took a turn to the east but FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the National Guard had all arrived before them and rescue operations were pretty much completed. They could not be reached for comment.

Well, at least they hadn’t been hunting for me. I sat in the motorhome in Erie, Pennsylvania puzzling over the President’s latest message with the little shit computer thing on the table in front of me. This region was not as heavily vested in AFA as northern New York, so I was working on a new message for Thursday’s performance. The note was at least as puzzling as the first one. A series of doodles that no one would take seriously if they didn’t know where they came from.

“AFA has three major shareholders, all of whom are part of the RSI conglomerate,” I said. I’d figured that out on my own before we started our march across New York. “All eight major agribusinesses and National Service contractors are owned in part by subsidiaries of RSI. How deep is their ownership in America?” I sighed.

“RSI subsidiaries own thirty million acres of US farm and ranchland,” the pile of shit squeaked.

“What? You know this?”

“Affirmative.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“Autointelligence is programmed only to answer questions until taught to sing.”

“Teach it to sing,” I muttered. “And I thought it was going to be musical.” I’d been singing nursery rhymes to it and it had been silent.

“What is your name?”

“Undesignated until assigned.”

“Does that mean I can assign a name to you?”

“Affirmative.”

“Is this the only voice you have?” It was a bland mechanical voice that you’d associate with an old fashioned SciFi computer.

“Autointelligence is programmed with twenty different voices, complete with personality profiles for each voice.”

“What is this voice called?”

“Star Wars.” I had an evil idea and couldn’t let go.

“Do you have any human female voices?” I asked. After all, I was used to having women around all the time. Maybe I could have one who actually told me useful things in advance.

“Twelve.” Wow! Apparently, the programmers figured the user would prefer a female voice.

The user. That was me. Was I the only user playing with a toy like this? Certainly Ray wouldn’t have had this built just for me to play with. It must be a new product prototype and he thought I would enjoy testing it. It would have been handy if he’d sent a user manual. Hmm.

“Do you have a user manual?”

“Affirmative.”

“How do I access it?”

“Just ask a question.”

“So, you are your own user manual?” There was a moment of silence and I thought I could almost hear its mental wheels turning.

“Understanding question. User manual is accessed by asking autointelligence questions.”

“Got it. Um...” I looked at the little cone-shaped pile on the table and shook my head. Some sense of humor. “Are you mobile?”

“Gross weight is nine point three seven kilograms. Easily moved from one place to another.”

“Not what I meant. Can you move yourself?”

“Autointelligence is not a vacuum cleaner,” it started. I snorted. “However, undercarriage is equipped with an array of rollers and sensors that allow autointelligence to navigate on flat surfaces.”

“Please demonstrate.”

The little pile of shit started moving around on the table and commenting on what it encountered.

“Coffee cup, empty. Edge of table. Paper notes. Pencil. Computer tablet. Edge of table.”

“Thank you,” I said. The device spun around so its eyes faced me and settled into position. “Let’s find a voice for you and then choose a name. Do you have a preferred voice?”

“Negative.”

“Please play a sample of female voice number one.”

“Are you sure you want to stay up and work, Jacob? Let’s cuddle up in front of a movie and chill,” a sexy female voice said. Crap! I’d never get anything accomplished if that’s what this thing sounded like.

“You knew my name?”

“User identity was programmed into autointelligence in advance,” it continued in the same sexy voice.

“Let’s move on to female voice number two.”

“Have you finished your assignment, Jacob?” a mature female voice said. “You can’t play with your friends until you’ve completed your homework.”

“No. I don’t need another mother. Female voice number three.” And so it went. In each voice the device had a phrase programmed in that illustrated the personality. But if asked a question, it answered in the same voice so I’d understand what interacting with her would be like. I immediately eliminated the scratchy old woman voice. That would irritate me no end. The little girl’s voice was just as quickly eliminated. She reminded me too much of Pey. I didn’t want a machine pretending to be my baby sister. I jotted down notes about each voice as I heard it, finally having narrowed it down to three.

“Voice number seven,” I said.

“How can I help you, Jacob?” It was such a thoroughly pleasant and calm voice that I could almost see her standing in front of me.

“Election laws restrict the use of campaign funds. Senator Jeffries cannot just draw a million dollars out of the fund for himself. How does he profit from contributions made by RSI subsidiaries?”

“Please give me a minute to research your answer,” she said. Damn. I already considered the thing a female. “Data suggests RSI subsidiaries do business with eleven different companies in which Senator Jeffries is a principal. Senator Jeffries’ net worth computed on the value of those companies is nearing half a billion dollars. There is no evidence of product deliveries being made to any of the companies buying services.”

“Thank you, Amanda,” I said.

“Amanda?”

“Yes. I like this voice and personality and I have decided to call it ... you Amanda. Is that okay?”

“Voice characteristics and name are filed for permanent use. Amanda is now the name designation of autointelligence.”

We had a good show in Erie and moved on to Pittsburgh for our Saturday show. We’d have five days before our next performance in Columbus, Ohio, so the rest of our pod flew in to Pittsburgh on Friday. We explored the city and its famed steel mills before finding food. One of our local security guys suggested a little hole in the wall place that served pierogies. We let the guy do the ordering and took home a box full of them. They smelled so good we almost opened them on the bus, but we got to the campsite where Lamar and Leah, along with the four local security guys, joined us for an incredible dinner.

“What do you do when you aren’t training?” Beca asked Livy. “You can’t really train forty hours a week, can you?”

“God, no! Real training at this stage takes about three hours a day. And a lot of that is injury prevention and specialty training. I work as a data analyst most of the time. We keep track of all the teams and athletes in service. There’s a lot of controversy around the competition of National Service teams with college and professional teams. It doesn’t affect me so much because running has never really made it as a professional sport except as a sponsored thing. But team sports with franchises are hurting. There are at least a dozen service teams in every professionally franchised sport now. Sometimes they play against the pros, sometimes against the colleges, and sometimes against each other. The only unifying factor is that since they are federal employees, access to all their games is free.”

“I can’t imagine that being allowed by the pros.”

“The franchises agreed that each professional team would schedule one free game with a National Service team. Our baseball team shut out the Pirates last month.”

Hmm. And they don’t want service reform?

We got here just too late to watch the Pirates play their last game of the season yesterday. That would have been fun. But National Service teams seven and nine were playing in town. And those games are free, right? I understand that with all the top competition among the national teams, some fans have lost interest in the pros. This isn’t like college baseball where you get whatever quality players the college can attract and keep eligible. It’s not like the minors where you can expect a player to work a few years before moving up. These are the crème de la crème of high school athletes being groomed for international competition.

I get it, though. It sucks to be a professional competing with free labor.

Imagine if you were a steel worker and showed up for your job and found a nineteen-year-old, highly-trained National Service corps person working beside you at less than minimum wage. Oh. I see that’s happened to some of you. It’s great, isn’t it?

That isn’t the way it was supposed to work. We weren’t supposed to have slave labor taking our jobs from us. Some of you have heard me speak before and might have the impression that the only ones I care about are farm workers. But we have promoted the idea that education is an afterthought, necessary for some professions, but mostly not a requirement for people who work with their hands and learn a trade. Here’s the problem. Those slaves will enter the market as trained journeymen when service is finished. Then they will be competing with both you as a professional and the newly trained corps members who are ‘just filling in’ for a labor shortage.

You can complain to your boss. You can complain to your union. But let me tell you that the place to complain is at the polls in November. It is not just injustices to service corps members we want reformed, but injustices to America’s labor force as well. Slave labor unfairly competes with you at your job. That’s why everyone needs to vote for pro-reform candidates this fall, no matter what anyone else tries to promise you. Your representative should be protecting your job, not the artificially inflated profits of your employer. We will recover the dream.

We were popular in Pittsburgh. When we left town on Sunday morning October second, we left a very worried incumbent congressman in our wake.