I Remember When

Three old men, George, Henry and Frank, are sitting up high in the hockey arena, in what had historically been called the ‘cheap seats,’ watching a NHL game. The first period has just ended. They have decided to get themselves some coffee and biscuits from the machines on the food floor. It is a long way down, but they did not mind as they wanted to talk as well as drink coffee and eat biscuits, no matter how stale they might be. There are chairs on the food floor that they could arrange so that they are facing each other.  George is the first to utter the phrase that all their conversations in the food floor begin with: “I remember when hockey players were our heroes. We got autographs, and we cheered whenever they made a good play.  Home town players even waved at the crowd when we cheered them after they scored a goal, or a goalie made and incredible save. ”

Henry took over, as he invariably did in such conversations. “I cannot relate to any of the players today. Most of them are machines, with AI strategies and showing no more joy at scoring a goal, than air fryers would after completing their cooking responsibilities.”

Then Frank spoke up, “I feel bad for the few human beings remaining in the game. They do not get much ice time, and they are never ranked among the three stars of the game.  They almost never receive passes from the machines, nor are they congratulated when they score a goal. The machines do not even congratulate each other when they score. The living players gradually stopped congratulating their metallic fellow players, as there would be no response on their artificial faces.”

George then said, “I wish that someone could change things back and the game could be more like what was, the way we remember it.  Humans facing, passing and congratulating other humans.”

Then Henry had a big smile on his face, for which the other two could not see the reason. They looked at him with unspoken questions, and he said. “I think I know how we can get what we want. I think that you all know about my grandson John, the programmer.”

George replied, “You have talked about him before.  Why bring him up now? He is probably on the other side of this issue.”

“I will tell you. When he was but a young lad I would show him videos of hockey games when all the players were human. He really enjoyed them. Recently he asked me why we went to mechanical hockey games when it was just ‘computers on ice’”. 

There were smiles all around when he said that.

“Well, here is what I want to tell you. I recently had a very encouraging talk with him. John has a plan to change the game in the direction of what we knew and loved. His work now is primarily aimed at what is called “AI override. With what he has developed, he can undo pretty much any program. He thinks that if he went to a hockey game, he could override the programs that run the AI hockey players. He has a small device, not much bigger than a camera that he can ‘point and change’ as he puts it, ‘point and change’. We can give him one of our tickets, and he can do his damage that might just lead the game in the direction of what it once was.

John Executes His Plan

A week later, John sits in George’s regular chair. He takes his device out of the bag that he was carrying. It looks a lot like an old-fashioned camera. He has been practicing its use on different devices that he essentially deprogrammed from a distance. With a few adjustments it worked consistently. Just before the game began, when a young and attractive looking AI mechanical woman was about to sing the national anthems of the United States and Canada, he was tempted to deprogram her so that she would ‘forget’ the words of the songs, but decided it would be better to wait, and direct his device at the players.

           The puck is dropped for the beginning of the game. A mechanical member of the New York Rangers wins the faceoff and begins to skate towards the Toronto Maple Leafs net at an incredible speed.  John de-programmed him, and the player kept on skating until ‘he’ ran into the boards to the left of the opposing net, breaking ‘his’ stick, and falling, unable to get up, as that function had been taken away from him/it as well. This shocked the crowd a little bit, but as he was from the visiting team, the shock did not last for long. Several people actually applauded. It was not like what the reaction would have been if a human being was injured in that way. The deprogrammed player had to be lifted up by other members of his team. They did not look sad or disturbed, as that had never been programmed for that. They just dumped him/it behind their seats in the stands.

           As the game continued, John kept disabling the Ranger players. Only the handful of human players were able to perform as usual, but they were unable to do enough to make the score anyway near even. The Leafs won by nine goals. 

           The home crowd was generally glad of the score differential, but could be heard to be discussing how it came about as they left the building.

           John bought tickets for games across North America, and sent out copies of his de-programmers to like-minded programmers.  They continued John’s work almost religiously, and they met with little resistance.  The results of this spread of AI anarchy baffled the hockey player programmers and the team owners who had believed their players to be invincible. The owners of the teams began recruiting human players. By the end of the season, there were significantly fewer AI players. The older fans such as the trio who instigated the deprogramming of the machines were pleased, and showed it when a human outplayed a machine.

           In the years to follow human players replaced AI ones, until eventually all were humans. Interestingly, some of the younger fans missed the amazing skills of the AI players. And when they were old they could be heard saying in the stands, sentences that began with the telling words, “I remember when.” But no change took place in their favour.