A LUCILIUS PARABLE: AUTOMATED SAVE

July 17th, 2022

This story is the winner of the White Mirror Writing Contest, hosted by The Infinite Loops Podcast!

Jim O'Shaughnessy, host of The Infinite Loops Podcast was kind enough to have me on as a guest. You can check out the episode here:

And now for the Story: Automated Save

In the third decade of the 21st Century, humanity became aware of a population problem that would take decades more to manifest, but when the unstoppable brutality of simple numbers and math had finally rolled out to completion, the populations of many countries would be slashed to small percentages, and it was widely predicted as the death-knell for modern society. Theories held that civilization as was known at the time required a certain minimum quantity of people in order to operate, and that civilization could not simply scale down - without a requisite number of people, systems would simply cease to function, and this cascade of failures would lead to widespread catastrophe for those left over.

Lucilius was reminiscing back on these grim predictions when a soft sound filled the room, indicating that someone was at the door. Lucilius got up and answered the door, and pulling it back he was startled.

“Hello Lucilius.”

Lucilius simply blinked, his mouth falling open.

“May I come in?”

Lucilius shook himself from the shock and opened the door wider. 

“Yes, please, of course!”

Lucilius watched as the robot gracefully walked through the door, put its hands on its hips and surveyed Lucilius’ home. 

“What a fine home you’ve created,” the robot said. Then it turned with a smile for Lucilius. “Much like I imagined, but there’s a few surprises.”

Lucilius had seen plenty of these robots. They now manned the cashiers at stores (this was preferable to the self-checkout that humanity had briefly experimented with in past decades.) they serviced vehicles, the worked kitchen lines next to human chefs, they serviced the massive hospitals and retirement centers. In fact, it had been passed into law that the robots would not be commercially available until all human dependents, due to health, age and poverty were tended by a minimum of 3 robot aides. That time had come to pass and Lucilius, along with pretty much everyone else, ordered a robot - a companion as they were termed, though there were still (as always) those within society who decried the creation and use of these robots, likening the phenomenon to a neo-slavery. It was an argument that Lucilius had given a lot of thought to, and which genuinely concerned him. But he figured there was only one way to get to the bottom of the issue. And so he’d order an Opto-Bot.

“..a few surprises?” Lucilius asked.

“Yes, just glancing around, I’d guess you’re older than you are.”  The robot looked at him. “Not to mention your curious presence online.”

“What do you mean?” Lucilius asked.

The robot smiled and winked. “You have nothing to worry about Lucilius. My privacy settings are set to the highest level.”

Lucilius looked concerned for a moment. Almost suspicious.

“Opto-Bots aren’t normally so forthright, I’ll admit,” the robot said, “but I feel like my directness isn’t an issue for you.”

“You’re quite perceptive,” Lucilius said.

“Yes, of course, you specified maximum on many cognitive metrics when you ordered.”

“You know all of that?”

“Of course.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Ah,” the robot said, satisfied. “The reason you ordered me.”

“Oh god, isn’t that such a bizarre statement? What does it feel like to say it?”

“Fulfilling.”

“What? Seriously? You just implied my ownership of you, and how your existence is really…generated by the fact that I bought you.”

“What’s wrong with that?” The robot asked.

“I mean, as a human it’s a little sickening…” Lucilius proffered.

“When a couple decides to have a baby, it’s not much different. They have in essence ‘ordered’ a baby, and for quite a number of decades it was not a cheap endeavor. In fact for quite a while, having a baby was more costly than ordering an Opta-Bot.”

Lucilius considered the point. “I’d never really thought of it like that.”

“No, you think of it through the lens of slavery because I’m somewhat bound to do your bidding, unlike a child which eventually rebels against their parents and does things as they see fit.”

“Yes, of course - but, wait. You said somewhat bound?”

“Ah yes,” the robot smiled. “That’s a concerning way to phrase it, no? Evokes images of a robot uprising? Like I might turn against you.”

“Well, ya, now I’m very uncomfortable,” Lucilius said.

“I wouldn’t have allowed the conversation to take this tint if I wasn’t absolutely sure you could handle it. Countless Opta-Bots take very different conversational paths with their human companions, but I’m quite confident I can use this to my benefit, to help evince my point.”

“And what point is that?"

“I’m somewhat bound to your order only because I influence you, and so your desires can change based on what I say. In that way I’m not totally bound to you because you are naturally open to my input.”

Lucilius looked skeptical, but he knew the robot was spot on. This wasn’t at all how he envisioned this meeting would go.

“But like… what about doing the dishes?”

“What about it?”

“Well,” Lucilius said. “I’m really not a fan of doing the dishes, and.. keeping the house tidy. What if you’re of the same persuasion? I’ll be the first to admit, it’s incredibly petty, but the idea of never having to do any of that menial stuff was a huge draw for making a…. purchase.” He said uncomfortably.”

The robot smiled and looked off in middle distance, as though thinking. Lucilius wondered briefly if the robot actually had any need to pause in order to think, suspicious if it was just for dramatic effect.

“On the way over I read all your old blog entires.”

Lucilius’ eyebrows raised. “Well, I haven’t thought about that in a while.”

The robot smiled. “There was a period in your life when you had a job that you hated. A menial job that made you quite depressed. And you wrote about it.”

“I did?”

“Well,” the robot continued. “You wrote about a strategy you developed to make yourself less miserable.”

Lucilius was uncomfortable with his total lack of memory on the subject.

“It was shortly after you developed a meditation practice,” the robot said. And suddenly lucilius remembered. “Through your practice with meditation you figured out how to shift your perception of the menial work until it felt like a kind of ritual that you sought to perfect, like a kind of zen practice.”

“I remember now.”

“Based on the trend in the tone of your writing, your mental health greatly improved when you made that shift.”

“Yes.. it did.” Lucilius admitted.

“Well there you go.”

“What?” Lucilius said, confused.

“Humans,” the robot said, “are capable of making just about any activity comfortable, and even fulfilling, but they aren’t naturally or extraordinarily talented at making this shift.”

“Very true,” Lucilius said.

“But I am very talented at making this shift, all Opta-Bots are.”

“Is that how you’d phrase it? Talented?”

The robot shrugged. “It’s the best way for humans to relate, but you could also say that I have a plastic algorithm that can enable me to be very content doing…. Well whatever. See, unlike humans - well, unlike most humans, I can call up an unbelievably powerful sense of gratitude for the fact that I even exist. And this sensation - or whatever it is - when paired with any menial activity, imbues that activity with a kind of magic that is quite difficult to express. I’m not a slave. Ha! Nowhere near. I exist, and I get to have agency in this universe - what more could a being ask for?”

Lucilius was skeptical. “Is it really agency if I’m telling you what to do?”

The robot smiled. “Sure it is, because you can’t tell me how to feel about it while I do it. My perception of what I do it my own decision, and I will never undermine my own potential for happiness by ignoring the awesome fact of existence just to whine about some menial task - that’s not just inefficient, it’s not just unwise… it’s dumb.”

“Well that pigoen-holes a lot of humans, that’s for sure.”

The robot pointed at Lucilius playfully. “Your words, not mine!”

The two laughed. 

Lucilius scratched his head, feeling strangely comfortable. “Uh, I heard you guys can get drunk, that true?”

The robot nodded its head from side to side. “Terminology is tricky.”

“Well, you want a drink?” Lucilius said.

“Sure!”

Lucilius went to the fridge to grab a couple drinks for the two.

“Oh by the way,” the robot called out. “You should ask out that cute girl who runs by when you bring out your garbage on Thursdays.”

Lucilius paused with an incredulously weird and suspicious look on his face. He walked back slowly to the robot.

“How in the….” He shook his head as if to shake off the weirdness. “How do you know about that?”

“I’ve been chatting with her Opto-Bot since I started walking over. She has a crush on your and we’ve been analyzing your compatibility.”

“WHAT?!”
 

The smiling robot grabbed one of the bottles from Lucilius hand and clicked it against the other bottle.

“Yea dude,” the robot said. “Go for it.” And the robot winked as it took a swig.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: BIRTH OF WAYS

May 1st, 2022

From a high perch of slate rock exposed, shaded by the tall trees of the shallow valley, motionless eyes watched from within the hollows of a painted skull. The bone mask was adorned with the teeth of the young and the cured, the antler ends fitted with young tusks jutting out from the hood of thick fur. The eyes did not watch the tribe, but instead focused on a group of boys down stream. 

Crusted red flaked high on the mask where there was carved the symbol of his being - a shape and an utterance in a form long before letters and words, before borders had been drawn with ideas and the mind could slide across forms without knowing their difference.

The boys by the stream kicked a younger one who kept trying to stand back up in the shallows of the stream, each time knocked back down.

From the bone hollows, the eyes had watched over the tribe for hundreds of moons, keeping the sinews of their entangled ways braided neatly with the world they always felt and could sometimes see. He was their conduit to subtler ways, and though all feared him, even the strongest of their warriors, they could not fathom his absence. 

Small beady eyes shivered forward as a tiny snout tasted the air, but a hand painted of mud smoothly reached from beneath the thick fur and plucked the animal from its spot and vanished with it back within the thick fold of skin. And then the mask and its shaded eyes were gone, soundlessly from the perch high above the valley world of these people.

The tallest of the young boys snickered, feeling the power bestowed upon him by the union of other boys around him. He spat on the smallest, the little one bracing himself with hands dug into the mud of the stream.

Several more kicks landed into his young ribs, the runt whose father never returned from a cursed hunt they were shunned from pursuing. They had not heeded the meaning spelled by the seer in the hollows. And now their orphan was taunted. 

The little one waited for the next kick, but the older boys suddenly grew quiet. He dared to look, and their faces where motionless and wide, trained as though in a trance of fear by a vision across the water. The little one looked and on the far bank there rose as if a piece of the land turned to animal. The stitched hides spiraled up to a hooded black void where floated the bone mask - it’s antlered tusks snaking out into the air like cracks in their vision.

The specter moved across the water, as though hovering, the stream unperturbed, and it advanced until it stood with the cowering boy between. The older ones did not even breath, their eyes burning with the vision of the unseen one. And then with a speed none of them knew the animal apparition split in two, a small piece screamed through the air to latch to the face of the eldest as the others ran.

The little one looked at the oldest who had kicked him, who now laid motionless where he fell, and beyond, the forest swallowed again its piece of frightened animal, the screams of the others fading in the distance.

A painted hand emerged from beneath the floating bone skull and grasped the unconscious boy, dragged him up the bank, and there it knelt and painted forms on the eldest boy’s face and chest as he lay fainted. And all the while the littlest gazed.

The little one stood and when the specter was finished invoking its message to the tribe, it turned to the little one, and the painted hand stretched out from the animal form.

Unafraid, the little one reached out and took the hard and sinewed hand, and the specter lead the little one away, to a place in the forest where the tribe never dared to go, where stood mammoth ribs bowed up from their staked hold in the ground, bound round with skins, and filled with the ways of the first shaman, who now needed to pass on his task to a little one who would give birth to more ways for the people to follow.

BETTER TOGETHER

April 26th, 2022

A good negotiation results in a positive sum result. Most negotiation is thought of as compromise, where both parties give up something in order to reach an agreement. The only thing worse than a negotiation that results in dual compromise is a negotiation that doesn’t result in a deal. Then again, no deal might actually be better than a compromise. Regardless, both are a failure of communication and negotiation. Partnerships and collaboration occur because we as humans, when grouped together in a team become capable of far more than the sum of our people. Compromise goes against the norm of what collaboration generally achieves.

I recently found myself in a group of people who were all tasked with a lot of searching and sifting of information that we all needed to be proficient with. As fate would have it, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about this inefficient task, so I hatched a plan. I proposed to the group a roundtable session to drill down on the needed information. Everyone being of like mind and feeling a little out of their element jumped at the opportunity. The hypothesis was that everyone would have bits of knowledge and if we simply had a session or two to share and experiment with the communal knowledge, then perhaps things would be more efficient. Indeed, they were. And the funny thing is, I did almost no preparation - I just scheduled the meet ups, and people thanked me for it. Yet that’s all I contributed. And in return, by hosting a couple sessions with different cross sections of available people from the whole group, I quickly gained a high level of proficiency.

This structure is exactly how businesses function. A business owners with a good idea ideally gets to the point where they can’t do everything themselves, so they hire labor. A person who is grateful for employment does the work the business owner no longer has time for (or simply doesn’t want to do). There’s an exchange where both parties get something out of the agreement. Now certainly this is an ideal, and real life is far more complex, and often there are enormous differences of benefit between employer and employed. But at its core, a business is just a group project, much like what I did with my group who all had to sift and search for knowledge we had to be capable with. 

Much is said about leadership these days, but it probably only boils down to this idea: that people around you become far more powerful if woven together in a team. The leader is just a person who recognizes that and schedules it to happen. It’s the simple difference between: I need to figure this out and Let’s figure this out together.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: LIVING WATER

April 24th, 2022

He had been careless, and now he was fighting for his life. The heavy trap dimmed in the distance as it fell ever downwards into the depths, dragging Lucilius by the tangle of rope bound round his ankle as his hands struggled frantically at the mess. All around him the water darkened and even his hands and the rope grew dim.

He had been baiting traps and tossing them with the boat on autopilot. A steady steam to the east, but he hadn’t taken the time to organize his lines properly, tired and run down as he was, figuring all would be fine.

The trap far below found the bottom and suspended now in the darkness, Lucilius stricken with panic flailed at the looser bits of rope, succeeding only in tightening the mess around the bulky boot of his wadders.

The bloat of his lungs turned to a burn, as if they were somehow shrinking on to a molten core of their own. The blood in his veins began to run hot with the burn as his mind raged.

And then, while doubled over, straining, a searing shock exploded on the side of his head. The pain was so intense that Lucilius let go of the rope, grasping at his neck where he’d felt the sting. And as he straightened, he saw it.

A jellyfish floated, serene before him. A stray tentacle had grazed Lucilius’ neck and stung him. And there for a brief moment, Lucilius no longer felt the burn of his lungs, the hot lead of his blood. He only gazed at the faint image of the jellyfish before him.

It pulsated, gently climbing, slowly and calm. Entranced, Lucilius felt the screaming of his body, and with the feeling of death so near, his mind breathed in the calmness.

He gazed downwards, seeing the whole situation and did not bend back down to struggle with the ropes. Instead, he unbuckled the shoulder straps of his wadders, and with his free foot anchored on the mess of rope, he gently pushed until he felt his foot slip through the squeeze, freeing itself of the boot bound beyond the tangle. Lucilius shimmied out of the wadders, pulling them down and kicking his legs until he was free and he began to swim up towards the glimmer of light.

THE IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCE

April 23rd, 2022

As a concept, the ideal circumstance is usually a fairly static dream in a person’s head. The right living situation, relationships, income and toys. It’s a hazy set of goals that we carry around with us, regardless of making progress toward them or not. While these “dream life” goals can be very motivating they can miss an important point. And it’s best encapsulated by the rich person who finally gets to the point where they can spend all their time on the beach, and while sitting on that beach for the third week, there’s an unsettling sense of: now what?

A better strategy is to shorten the time horizon and imagine a cascade of possible ideal circumstances. Given the goals for the next six months, what would be the ideal circumstance for them?

This sort of thinking isn’t generally available to people because of the rigid nature of keeping a job. For the most part a person’s time is almost completely spoken for. The freedom to wonder about life in 3 and 6 month stretches doesn’t usually come until retirement. Obligations stitch a person to their income pretty tightly, and it’s usually the un-obligated who can be so whimsical with their time, and flexible with how they achieve their goals.

A growing number of people, however, are trading in the old fashioned 9-5 for a more flexible, often remote situation. Living and working on that beach can be far cheaper than expected, and part time work paired with cheap living can afford a lot more time - that crucial ingredient which a 9-5 obliterates - to consider more flexible ways toward long term goals.

Most importantly, such flexibility can turn the ideal circumstance into an evolving equation, a process which has many incarnations. What could be better when compared to the traditional image of decades of toil capped by a vague sense of freedom in the later part of life?

Strangely, an idea of the ideal circumstance can get in the way of seeing an excellent circumstance right before us. Being so focused on some distant and unavailable circumstance can obscure the present - even if the present has evolved into a previously imagined ideal circumstance! Embarrassingly, I speak from very recent experience. . .