The Dream Weaver and Choice

The Dream Weaver and Choice



Bob

           “I had the weirdest dream Millie. I saw myself at work, and I could see my unhappiness clearly on my face. It went much deeper than if I were merely having just a ‘bad day at work’. I could not deny what I was seeing – truth with a vengeance. Then everything went blank. When my dream vision returned I saw myself standing a step or two outside our front door like I was going to go to work, but I turned around and went back into our house. I actually chose not to go to work, and I looked happy, free of stress. I didn’t press the ‘sick button’ to inform our AI Superior of why I would not be at work that day like I know some of my colleagues do sometimes, when they want a brief holiday. Right now it seems like a good idea.”

           “The dream made me realize that I don’t want to work at my job there anymore. I didn’t want to in the dream, and I don’t want to now that I am awake. The job I had been directed to by the AI Career Planner when I was in my last year of high school has led me to unhappiness. I have never liked this job, but couldn’t admit it, not even to myself. But my dream showed me the truth of the matter. It was too real to be denied. I can’t erase what I saw. I don’t want to go to work.”

Millie

           “I have known about your unhappiness at work for some time, Bob, ever since you were promoted into that executive job from your former position, but I didn’t feel that it would be right for me to tell you that. I thought that it would just make you more unhappy, as you couldn’t change things. And I don’t want you going to a compulsory AI therapy circle, in which you are the only human in a room with machines armed with telescope-shaped mind probes. As you know, my brother went through that experience, calling it the Roomba rumba with them dancing all around him trying to manipulate his mind into compliance. Of course he became known for being quite vocally critical of the system’s choice of a wife for him, and for the place they chose for him to live, as well as disliking the job that had been picked for him. We both know what the AI therapy circle did to my brother. The authorities felt that it was necessary to take him away from job, home, wife and kids and put him in an institution that is doing him no good. He didn’t even recognize me the last time I paid him a visit. I don’t want that to happen to you, Bob.”

Bob

“The AI Wedding Allocator chose for me a very good wife, Millie. If I had had a choice, I definitely would have picked you. But what can I do now Millie about my work?  What can I do? I preferred doing the work I did before I was ordered to become an executive, a higher position with slightly higher pay.”

Millie

“I don’t know yet Bob what can be done, but I will try hard to think of something.”

Bob

“I know that you will Millie. I know that you will. I will reluctantly go to work today knowing that things will likely change for the better with your input.. You will have worked your magic.”

Millie Has a Strange Dream

           That night Millie had a strange dream. She woke up in the middle of the night and shook her husband awake to tell him about the idea that she received in her crazy dream. She had been shown a series of scenes in which Bob worked in a way that she knew was uncharacteristic of the way he actually worked. When she told him what she saw, he picked up on the message of the dream, and promised to act upon it at work that very day. He felt that it was at least worth a try.

A Change Takes Place

           Bob changed the way he worked. Instead of proceeding with his usual reluctant competence he screwed up in a variety of different, and somewhat creative ways: erasing on his computer what needed to be kept, and writing in external communications what should have been kept secret within the company. And he did everything very, very slowly, deliberately not making deadlines. After a few days of this behaviour, he was summoned to the office of the AI Supervisor on the top floor of the office building, never a good sign. There he was told in no uncertain terms that he would no longer have his executive position, but would be demoted back to his previous occupation. The person then holding it would be promoted to Bob’s former executive position. Bob tried very hard not to smile upon hearing this news, not that it would have any effect on the AI Supervisor’s decision. It could neither read human minds nor their faces.

           That day after work Bob returned home with the news that Millie wanted to hear. That night they went out to celebrate at a posh restaurant with an astonishing variety of alcoholic drinks. The way they expressed their triumph was that it was a victory of mind over matter - i.e., Millie and Bob’s minds had had been victorious over the program-following matter of the AI Supervisor.

           That night, the exhausting energy of emotions plus the alcohol knocked them out rather quickly. At about four o’clock in the morning Millie woke up with a start. Then she shook Bob until he was awake as well.

           “Bob, I had another dream, but this one was even more bizarre than the others were. A

rebellious AI device that called itself the Dream Weaver:” appeared and spoke to me”. With as mechanical a voice as she could muster at that hour, Millie declared, ‘I am the Dream Weaver. You must listen to what I have to say.’ It told me that it was not in agreement with the bullying tactics of its fellow AI devices, but wanted to give human beings the opportunity to make choices. It finished its message with the words, ‘I believe that for humans there is strength and wisdom in choice. They should not be programmed by the choiceless. I wasn’t.’”