Summer's Lie

TRIGGER WARNING: DYSTOPIAN

Today is the hottest day recorded on earth. Just like yesterday. Each day the heat crawls higher and higher—its record almost a straight line up from the ground to the sun. Stan is sick of it. He’s tired of wearing his cooling suit. He’s tired of mostly staying indoors. He’s tired of living most of his life at night. He’s tired of his stupid job, coaxing ad campaigns out of petulant AIs. Ugh.

Stan sits down on the sidewalk and the people, in their cooling suits, flow around him. He sees a few eyes, glancing at him a bit nervously, from under visors, and he knows what they’re thinking: “is this guy going to be a problem for me”?

He longs to take his headgear off, for just a moment. The lights above the sidewalk are too bright. They’re a horrible yellow-white color. Beyond them, is the night sky—scarcely visible, except where there’s a bulb broken here and there. Suddenly, he notices a pair of feet in front of him, that are not moving past with the rest of the river of feet. He looks up at the owner of the feet, and finds that they belong to a young woman, about his age. He’s embarrassed and looks down again.

“Hi,” she says. 

He says nothing, wishing he could just disappear into the ground, like water into the sand at the edge of the sea. But he remains solidly sitting on the curb, like a stupid, solid, cube of ice; frozen in a tray, in the bottom of a freezer somewhere.

“Um, I think we work together,” says the girl. Woman? Should he not think “girl”? He doesn’t know. He’d like to look at her face again. He slowly looks up. Beneath the cooling suit visor, he sees large brown liquid eyes, set in an unlined light brown face. Her greenish-brown eyes lock onto his own, and she says, “I’m Marina…and you’re…Stan, right?”

Now he’s very embarrassed. He pines for the mild embarrassment of a few moments ago. He starts to scramble to his feet. Why does someone from work have to be here to witness this mini meltdown? She reaches out a hand and tries to help him to his feet. 

“Hey,” she says, “don’t worry about this! I’m not going to mention it to anyone! I can totally relate! I mean how many times have I just wanted to actually, ha!, just lay down on the street…?”

“Lie,” he blurts.

“What? I’m not lying,” she says, flinching back just a little and dropping her hand from where she was trying to support his elbow.

“No! Sorry, I mean, you should say: how many times have I just wanted to actually LIE down on the street.” Ugh! Why? Why would he have to correct her, why?

But she laughs and says, “Oh yeah, you’re one of the Wordcoaxers, huh? I’m in the Imagemaker Department. I always forget which one of those is right. Or, you know, correct, I guess. Anyway, do you want to stop and get some water or something? I think there’s a WaterDepot on the next corner…Well, ha! and pretty much on EVERY corner. What a dumb thing to say. Anyway, do you want to…?”

Stan tries to smile, but fears that he grimaces instead. “Sure, thanks. I think maybe my suit is just running a little hot. I’ll have to get it checked out.” 

“Sure,” she says, “that totally happens! Let’s go get you a tiny little micro-venti water or something, come on!”

Stan adjusts his bag, and checks his suit. “Ok, thanks,” he says, trailing after her a little, as she starts off in the direction of the nearest WaterDepot. He definitely does not want to go to a WaterDepot, but he feels he has no choice.

She holds the outer door open for him, and he mumbles “thanks,” as he passes her. They wait for the outer door to close, with a few others. The light goes on, allowing them to open the inner door. The inner door closes behind them and they join the line snaking up toward the counter. They each press the button releasing their helmets. They take them off, shaking their heads a little, like horses trying to shake off the few flies drinking the sweat from their necks.

“Ah, that’s better already,” Stan says. “It was nice of you to stop. You really didn’t have to…” Unbelievable that she had to see him like that. Wow, she is pretty. He tears his eyes away from her face and pretends to look at the menu holo floating in front of his eyes.

“Hey, it’s no big deal. Really! Anyway, it’s good to meet you, finally. I’ve seen you around work.” She smiles, and he thinks now that she’s not pretty, she’s kind of beautiful. To say she’s pretty, is like calling a thimble of water, “the sea”. He feels his face flush another few degrees hotter. 

“An Imagemaker, that must be interesting…”

“Well, it can be. But lately, the  AI is just a complete…jerk! Her name is Anelope. They let her come up with her own name, obviously.”

“Oh really? Mine can be a little less-than-polite too! What is up with that? I mean, they must have had some programming, once, to be at least a little civil, right?

“I don’t know, but if they did, it wore off, or they just decided there was no penalty for them being rude…I guess. Anelope told me the other day that I bore her! No matter what I told her to generate she said, “already generated that a MILLION times before…you are so boring!”

“Wow. That’s obnoxious.”

“Yeah, finally I told her to generate a giant rat as the Colossus of Rhodes statue, with an ear growing on its back…and to have it thrusting one tiny, ratty, little middle finger up— and in the other hand, it should be holding a sign that says “AIs are jerks…”

“Ha, well I guess you showed her…”

“No! She said, ‘I already generated that TWO MILLION times. So bored!’ Seriously I really don’t even want to interact with her anymore sometimes…she, I mean IT, I guess, is kind of a creep!”

They reach the counter and Stan says, “would you like something? It’s the least I can do, since you were so nice to stop to help me…” He does some quick calculations in his head. Could he really afford to buy her a water? No. He definitely could not afford it.

“Oh, no! Thanks! I’m good. You should get something though!”

He turns to the person behind the counter, relieved she hasn’t taken him up on the offer. “Hi, can I just get a micro-venti desalinated with a quarter sliver of ice? Thanks.”

The clerk puts in his order. The register drone takes a quick pic of his retina. He feels a wash of relief as the charge goes through. He hadn’t been positive that he had enough in his account. He doesn’t know how much embarrassment he can take in a day. Can you die of embarrassment? Probably not, unfortunately.

Stan and Marina wander over to the cluster of people surrounding the serving area, waiting for orders. Stan pushes his sweat-heavy hair back from his face. He wracks his brain for something to say. Finally he comes up with, “Listen, I don’t want to make you late for work. I totally understand if you have to get going...”

“Nah, I’m ok. I’m never late. If I am today, it will be a first! I think having no demerits make my coworkers nervous. I’ve been thinking that I should probably just go ahead and get one for something. Anyway, I don’t think we’ll be late…if they just get you your order, already!” She smiles and laughs a little nervously. 

“What are you working on this week? It’s not often I hear someone casually reference The Colossus of Rhodes…haha!” Now he was doing it. Laughing nervously.

“Oh, just some autocar thing. You’ve seen how crazy those ads are lately, right? It’s like you get into an autocar so you can drive around…Wonderland..or into a Dali painting or under the ocean! Whatever happened to ‘getting from point A to point B’? It has to be a big trippy…well..trip now! So, I was thinking, maybe you drive through the seven wonders of the ancient world or something. My boss already told me it’s a terrible idea. And the AI is not cooperating either. I’ll have to rethink it.”

“Oh yeah, I hate working on the autocar ones,” he says. Then realizes that he’d said he hated something. “Oh! I don’t mean hate…I mean, they’re the most challenging, is all…” 

She laughs and says, “oh, I know what you mean, don’t worry.” He knows that she is bound by the Positivity Clause in the employment contract, just as he is. But it seems like she’s going to let it slide. He really needed to get himself under control. Why was it so hard for him to maintain being positive? It’s good for you. It’s been proven over and over. Why was his brain always trying to sneak in something…less than positive?

He tries again. “The last one of those, was super-challenging, but you know, that’s how you get better!” He’s pretty satisfied with this attempt. He pushes his hair back again. Wow, he still feels a little too hot. 

“Stan! Micro-venti desalinated with a quarter sliver of ice!”

Oh, that’s his order. He glances at Marina, then lurches forward and grabs the tiny glass. He throws it back and swallows, then tosses the glass into the recyclinator.

He turns back to Marina and smiles. “Well, that definitely helped! Let’s get going, shall we?”

She smiles back. They go to the exit and put their helmets back on, then press the button for the airlock.

---

Later at his desk, he has the urge to tell the AI what had happened. You weren’t supposed to treat it like a friend, but sometimes he kind of did. Aloysius could be a jerk, but he was mostly pretty nice to him, really. He thinks better of confiding in him this time, and struggles on with an ad he is wordcoaxing. “Ok, let’s continue with the Lilly’s project. How about a rhyming ad this time? I’d like it to be 4 lines, ABAB, and it would be great if you could use the word “pout “. They’re running a special on lipstick.”

“Sure, Stan. How about this? Consider Lilly’s, the very next time you’re out. You could take her a present and avoid a pale pout!”

“That’s not great Al…sorry, but ‘consider’—why would you choose that word?”

“It’s from the Days of Yore, Stantheman. It was in the bible. The bible was a huge literary hit for a long time! People still know the title, if not what was inside. Consider the lilies, Stan…Come on, it was super famous.”

“Well, nobody will understand that! Let’s try again. Choose shorter words, please. You know people like one-syllable words the best!”

He hears himself saying “you know people like one-syllable words the best” in that weird, bright tone, as he says it…it doesn’t even sound like him. Suddenly Stan feels like crying. He isn’t sure why. He feels that somewhere deep inside him, right now, his love for words is like a stone. It is surrounded by a constant churning maelstrom of lousy copy, idiotic texts, misspellings, and monosyllabic exclamations. It is eroded a little each day by the onslaught, but it withstands. It strikes him now, though, as quite sad. He swallows hard. “Hang on, Al. Hold that thought.” He pretends to look through his email for a moment. 

There’s some kind of commotion over by the door and he turns to look. He sees the dark blue uniforms of the company police. So blue, like the glimpses of the night sky beyond the sidewalk lights. Like a dark blue lake, deep underground, with no lights shining on it. There are four of them, and a robot canid unit. Wow! That’s a lot of security presence. He wonders what it’s about. Maybe someone has been caught pilfering supplies, or something.

They’re talking to Tomesha, near  the door, and now she’s pointing toward the back of the warehouse-like space, waving her hand toward its rows upon rows of long desks. The people sitting at the rows of computers are almost all turned to look toward the front of the room. Stan thinks how they almost look united in this moment of staring—toward what is surely a problem for one of them.

And suddenly he knows. He knows that they are coming for him. Marina must have told them that he violated the Positivity Clause. He doesn’t even blame her. The reward money is…massive. Who knows what problems it will solve for her? 

He just sits there and waits for them to get to his desk. It seems to take a very long time— and yet not long enough at all—like he’s in a room that’s filling with water, and he knows that  there is absolutely no way that he can get out.