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Operator Error
It's only as good as the Programming
How good is your memory? Mine is very selective. I remember entire conversations I’ve had with people, but not their names. I walk into a room and forget why I went there to begin with. (Thankfully, there’s a reason for that and it isn’t dementia.) I will wake myself up hours before I need to be somewhere in case I might miss it, yet I’ll work through an appointment if I’m on a roll. The way my brain either over- or under-performs, I often feel like one of my own unreliable narrators.
At least I’m not the only one. Lou Harper recently mentioned that she exploded some hard-boiled eggs once the water boiled off. I haven’t gone that far…though I did recently ruin a teflon pan by abandoning it on a hot burner.
I do cherish my ability to become engrossed in a project. It’s the opposite of multi-tasking. In me, the urge is so pronounced that I often feel I can’t take advantage of mid-sized chunks of time if I have somewhere to be within the next few hours.
Since it would be weird to have a personal secretary sitting around with nothing to do but make sure I don’t get too engrossed, I decided to see what I could find out about timers.
If you’ve never played with the standard clock on the iPhone/iPad, it may be nicer than you’d think. It has alarm, stopwatch and timer functions. It keeps running even after your device goes to sleep.
Since I tend to spend most of my time on my desktop, I wanted some sort of app for the computer. The app I’d been using took a while to load and seemed kinda logy, so I did a fresh search thinking there must be a new app out there by now. There wasn’t. However, I did find a dashboard widget that is fantastic.
I’ve heard Mac dashboard widgets are being phased out. That really stinks. I use my weather forecast, calculator and thesaurus widgets daily and I’ll be distraught without them. So while we still have our dashboards, I’ll highly recommend the Zvora 10-key timer to my Mac-using pals.
 Several of my stories deal with the theme of automation versus control. In Zero Hour, a far-future dystopia, the characters are all dependent on their womb-like “PODs†to regulate their sleep cycles, nourishment and entertainment. My most recent story, Meatworks, describes a smarthouse-type technology where robotics adjust all sorts of mundane things according to the user’s preferences.
In this scene, Desmond Poole, an ex-mechanic, is chatting with his phobia specialist:
“Recall the last time a housebot made an adjustment for you that you noticed. Maybe it dimmed the lights after you came home from a long day at work.†I managed to stop from scoffing at that idea. Probably because I was in panic mode over the thought of her stealing my arm. “Maybe it warmed your bedroom on a chilly night. Maybe it got your coffee just right.â€
Like the coffeebot at Corey’s place.
“Remember to breathe.†Now there’s something you don’t usually forget. “Inhale. Hold it. Now exhale gently.â€
My breath hitched on the way out.
“Thinking about your interaction with that piece of robotics, on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your anxiety?â€
“Five? No, not five. Not then. Maybe now, now that I think about it. Because for everything I noticed coming out of the bot, I’ll bet it was doing ten more things that were too subtle for me to see. The movies, the TV, the coffee. But what else? I’ve seen the guts of a housebot. There’s stuff like humidity and white noise that even the base models can control, and the advanced ones? I wouldn’t put it past ’em to be zapping subliminal messages into our heads. Makes you wonder if you can trust your gut at all anymore, or if the course of your life is just based on the housebot’s latest upgrade.â€
“So you’re saying the housebot was…manipulating you?â€
Was it?
The line where service becomes manipulation is fuzzy at best. Does surrendering the tiny day-to-day choices to something outside ourselves render our wills malleable and flabby? Hopefully not to the extent it does in my books…but it sure makes for some interesting stories.
Love,
Jordan
Meatworks Ebooks
In PDF, Mobi and ePub at JCP Books
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In various electronic formats at Smashwords
Meatworks Paperback
At Amazon
At Book Depository
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Copyright © 2014 Jordan Castillo Price, All rights reserved.