Things I heard about in the shower... (Part 1)

Like everything else that changes our world after it happens, I can remember where I was when I first learned that a team of physicists had managed to travel through time backwards – as opposed to the more popular mode of travel which involves space and/or time in a forward manner. I was in the shower. It was a weekday; I know this because I was running late for work and had that annoying brain itch that overshadowed everything I was doing and wouldn’t let me forget the fact that I was late and going to be later. My girlfriend was eating her bowl of breakfast as she nudged the bathroom door open with her foot.
“News stations are all going bat-shit,” she told me through the curtain.
Her mouth was full of milk and whatever, and the stream of water had been beating down on the back of my skull so I had to ask her to repeat it.
“Every station is talking about this science story thing. They’re really going nuts about it. You should see.”
Whenever I think of where I was when I learned of time travel (which is often, because people like to talk about it) I recall the noise made by my girlfriend’s chewing of her breakfast and the feeling of the rug beneath my bare feet and the thought that I really needed to vacuum.
The press conference was fairly boring by current news standards. The team of three physicists sat behind of table covered with microphones, in front of an enormous screen on which their “proof” was displayed. They seemed unprepared and definitely unrehearsed and it didn’t appear that any of them had shaved in a number of days. One of them was drunk, but that didn’t come out until much later and his reason for drinking was a profound fear of public speaking.
The crawl across the bottom of the screen read: ‘Team of M.I.T Scientists claim to have moved a recording device 5 seconds into the past…’
“What a waste,” said my girlfriend.
“No, this is huge. This is a big deal. Mark my words,” I told her as I re-wrapped a towel around my waist. “This is going to change a lot of things.” I remember her setting her cereal bowl down on the table without rinsing it, shouldering her bag, and using both hands to pull her hair into a pony tail and secure it with an elastic.
“Try not to get fired,” she told me as she dragged her massive set of keys off of the table and walked out.
I spent the next hour standing in front of the television watching the same loop of footage play over again as the news outlets scurried to find specialists to trot out in front of the camera. A new set of expressions immediately sprang into existence among the newscasters and indeed all of those who discussed the news – which was everyone, pretty much – who began to use them as if they always spoke of such things. Phrases such as ‘uncaused first cause’, ‘quantum superposition’, and allusions to Schrödinger’s cat flowed like details of the beach report or last Sunday’s football game from the mouths of newscasters who were normally about as deep as their hair coloring.

Superficial Intelligence

As far as contemporary clichés go, this one was spot-on. Four hours of mandatory business ethics training at the home office, lead by what we expect is a machine.

Word had come out of last week’s class that the guy running the class was automated based upon a number of notable items. Namely: a “co-presenter” who sat in the front row but didn’t actually co-present anything, the far-too-perfect photo of the guy on the promotional handout, the lack of ‘ah’ and ‘um’ in his presentation, and the same thoughtful nod (that was exactly four nods each time) after any class participation, no matter how mundane.

Automated Human Stand-Ins,or AHSIs (pronounced ‘aussies’, much to the dismay of our human Australian friends – but also known as dummies, moto-sapiens and hummers – due to a constant low noise emitted by earlier models), have been in wide use for the better part of a decade now; primarily in customer service and sales roles. Car dealerships were early adopters of them, since AHSIs don’t earn commission and can easily be loaded up with the required information on dozens of cars, plus they can hold a salesperson's empty, toothy grin for an infinite amount of time.

The recent use of them in more traditionally human roles (E.R. nurses, fire-fighters, priests) has caused some controversy, and many humans have made a sport of identifying (‘outing’) them. Hard coded into each AHSI is the requirement for them to identify themselves as an AHSI if directly questioned. Children are big fans of the direct question approach – asking just about any adult in any situation. Whereas bored adults are more likely to try and deduce the presence of one by more covert means.

“Ethics,” announced the leader, as we were all checking our portables one last time before the class started. He had written the word ‘ethics’ on the touch-sensitive white-board with his finger, and the letters were now flashing in alternating carnival colors that made my eyes twitch. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen,” he continued. Then he cleared his throat and looked at his watch. “We’re at about five minutes after eight, and we’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get started. Shall we?” I was absorbed in the task of peeling back the plastic lid of my coffee cup evenly. The kid next to me who looked to be fresh out of the university system was following the class leader with eyes like an eel and the set-jawed grin of a frat boy. My coffee tasted vaguely of BBQ sauce; you just can’t get away from the chipotle these days.

The guy leading the class told us that his name was Brian and his movements and mannerisms bore the careful aspects and creakiness of late middle age. There was nothing about him that suggested to me that he was an AHSI, but I'm not in the habit of picking them out. I am one of those that is usually surprised to learn that what I thought was a real human turns out to be a $90,000 machine (if you factor in the benefits you would need to pay a human employee, they pay for themselves inside of two years).

Within the first half hour, the kid next to me had caught the eye of a few of his peers in the class and after some stealthy pointing and nodding they began their testing. First they tried the paper airplanes. This “technique” used to work on the very early models, and the myth has been passed down like pop-rocks and cola. No-neck, who sat next to me, and his buddies tore sheets of paper from their notebooks and folded them into simple paper gliders, which they then threw at each other in intersecting patterns. The idea was, according to the legend, that the AHSI’s eyes, in an attempt to track both objects simultaneously would go to opposite sides of their head in a manner that was both hilarious to see and impossible for a human to duplicate. The only affect it had on Brian was to make him pause, sigh, and make a gentle, rattling, throat-clearing sound. It seemed to me that he was wise to what they were trying to do. He continued on with his presentation, complete with current, real-world references to items from the news. The others in the class brushed the downed planes off of their desks with mild annoyance. No-neck chewed ravenously on the cap of his ballpoint pen and studied Brian’s movements.

Throughout the next hour the boys tried various schemes – simultaneous sneezing fits, simultaneous standing, coordinated head-tics, and the sequential snapping of the fingers (like the wave that people do at stadiums, only with finger snaps). I felt like I was sitting in the waiting room for “West Side Story” auditions. None of this seemed to have any affect on Brian. At intervals he would regard them wearily and continue working through the Ethics Training handout. The woman who was listed as a co-presenter, turned around in her chair and peered angrily at us – not knowing which of us was involved in perpetrating the racket.

Three hours into the session, I was doing head fakes; falling asleep and letting my head drift back until I woke and whipped my head back to attention. I looked at the clock and bolstered myself for the last hour. When the right opportunity presented itself, I reasoned that I would skulk out the side door and get some air and more coffee.

Brian paused in mid sentence. “….and this refers back to the Golden Rule, or the Ethics of Reciprocity, which…..which….” He stopped and stared at the wall near the entry door. My neighboring sadist seized upon the opportunity. No-neck was on his feet and raising his hand – making the “oooh-oooh!” sound of a child who really knows the answer or really has to use the bathroom. This broke Brian’s trance. His eyes moved to No-neck and he asked, with genuine quizzicality: “Yes? Have you a question?”

No-Neck collected himself and recited (without any trace of melody): “A place, where nobody dared to go, the love that we came to know, they call it Xanadu. And now, open your eyes and see, what we have made is real, we are in Xanadu.” By the time he finished, all eyes in the class were on him.

“Olivia Newton-John & Electric Light Orchestra. Written by Jeff Lynne, 1980, from the original movie sound-track, ‘Xanadu’,” Brian rattled off with a precision that betrayed his programming. The index finger of his right hand moved tentatively up the side of his face towards his temple.

No-Neck went in for the death-blow. “What’s more scary, male or female ghosts?” he asked quickly.

The bizarre combination of these two non sequiturs (on top of the poor grammar) gave Brian great pause. His finger trembled near his temple and then went into a full-on vibrating twitch. The rest of his frame then froze solid – the look of contemplation stuck on his face and his eyelids lowered until they were nearly, but not quite, fully closed. The co-presenter got on her cell-phone and hurried from the room. No-neck’s buddies gave-out a cheer, and No-neck himself beamed with satisfaction.

Brian went into maintenance mode, lowered himself to his knees – all traces of fluidity now gone from his movements – and rested back on his heels. He placed his hands on his knees and his head lolled forward. One of the first AHSI mail carriers that we had in our neighborhood used to slip into this mode right in the middle of his route (my guess is that it was the high tension lines in the area). The first time I saw him on the sidewalk, his mailbag lying slack next to him, I thought he might be a human pausing to pray and I wanted to inform him that he wasn’t facing east. Instead, I stepped around him and continued walking.

Everyone in the class, those who were surprised and those who suspected, began collecting their things and checking their mobiles. No-neck was riding out his adrenaline high and was getting close to chewing the barrel of his ball-point pen in half. He smiled wildly at me and raised his hand for a “high-five”. I tried to meet his hand but, misjudging the arc of his swing, my fingers brushed the bottom of his palm and slid down his forearm. No-Neck looked at me with disappointment. I gave him the well practiced shrug I give the rest of my softball team every time I strike-out.

As I was leaving the room I moved to the side to let the two guys from the IT department get by with the wheelchair they were pushing ahead of them. No-Neck was having someone take his picture standing next to Brian; his hand resting on the machine’s bowed head.

Locks

The other day I had to get to a meeting at the home office. This required me to leave my client's office and take public transportation across town and then walk a short distance. I kind of like taking the subway.
The idea of paying once and riding as much as you want -- on as many different lines as you want, as long as you don't pass through the exit turnstiles, is pretty awesome -- if you like riding the subway. It's the same model that the Great American Buffet chain of restaurants uses -- you could stay there and eat baked ziti and fried chicken parts all afternoon, but you probably wouldn't want to.

Also inherent to public transportation is a certain lack of responsibility. Once you get yourself to the bus stop or subway station, the pressure is off. You can't do anything until the train shows up, and there is nothing that you can do to hasten its arrival. This might not work for everyone. You need to have a loosely-knit work ethic in regards to being on-time which, luckily, I do.

The walk from the station to my office takes about ten minutes on a path that leads over the set of locks that separate Boston Harbor from the Charles River, and vice-versa. The walkway leads directly over the gates of the locks. On one side you have the high-walled rectangular concrete chutes with matching pairs of massive swinging doors on either end. On the other side you have the end of the Charles River and whatever floating refuse that has made its way down bobbing patiently at the gates.

When you’re a kid locks are those things you end up building in the sand at the beach when you realize that you don't have the talent and finesse to make a decent looking castle, or a realistically menacing sea-monster, and you settle on digging troughs in the sand. The problem, of course, is that the walls of your locks slide in as soon as you begin to pour the water from your plastic bucket. Then the wall dividing the two locks dissolves, leaving you with a single flat channel of quickly diminishing water. You might, depending on how bored you are, attempt a second flooding -- this time using your hand has a gate. But this isn’t any good either, so you accidently stomp on one of the outlying buildings in your sister's sand-castle compound on your way back to the blanket where you try to get a sandwich out of the cooler before your mother tells you to go and play for another hour because it's not nearly lunch-time.

The first time I walked across the locks, I was surprised that it was allowed by whichever government agency that makes rules and posts signs. The potential for injury and litigation seems exceptionally high; with the gaps in the metal plates, and the oversized gear teeth slathered with axle grease, and the water spraying through the gate's seams like a dam that is about to fail. All those moving parts, confined spaces, churning water. Despite all of that, you can walk across them. It's the Harbor Master telling you that he's thought about it, and he feels you're mature enough to handle it now – as long as you don’t ride your bike, roller-blade, or engage in any other horseplay. (That much is posted on a sign.)

As I walked, I was aware of a few persons in my periphery without actually turning my head to look at them squarely. A woman with someplace to be, power-walked past me like she was stomping walnuts beneath her sneakers. She was followed by a jogger with surprisingly jangly legs and, I guessed, a solidly developing 10 year plan. The third person, just behind me and to my right, was walking at the same unwavering pace as I. Again without actually looking I was able to determine that he was a.) large, b.) male, c.) walking with his head hung down and d.) breathing heavily. As we approached the narrow entrance to the walkway over the locks, I paused to let pass a couple who were walking side by side before continuing onto the diamond-cut textured metal. My new shadower did the same and I heard his footfalls start up right after mine.

It was daylight and I had a meeting to attend; any danger was below me, in the water that was being denied its rightful flow and the stoic iron gates that were holding it back. It wasn’t behind me breathing through his mouth swinging an empty lunch pail. All the same, just as when I’m driving on a highway at night and the widely spaced headlights of an old station wagon fill my rear-view mirror, I pulled over to let him pass.

Over the second of the three locks is a widened area in the walkway, presumably meant for people to stop and contemplate things like locks. Here I stepped to the side and feigned sudden interest in the spongy wooden pilings extending tiredly from the river, and for a moment I even bought into to my own ruse long enough to begin to try and determine what those piling where originally used for.

I watched the thing that happened next as a spectator – not just in recall, but as it was actually occurring. I saw myself looking to the right, towards the group of telephone-pole like black pilings that were bound together with wide steel straps like a bundle of wet cigars. I watched as the man, a comic side of beef in a blue canvas jacket, placed a hand with casual purpose on the back of my belt and quite simply flung me over the railing. It wasn’t a push or a labored lift with his legs; it was this stranger tossing me over the waist-high railing as effortlessly as if he here tearing a paper-towel off of its roll. He said nothing as he did this. The only noise was a slight “huff” from his already open mouth. As I dropped from his hand and out of view, he turned and resumed his walking at the same steady pace.

I hit the green water and the bag that had been slung over my shoulder was yanked upwards. With my eyes open I kicked to the surface. There wasn't much to see from that vantage point except for the outside of the metal gates of Lock #2. Stenciled on the gates in white paint was: "Sound horn three times. Wait for green light."

I was cold and breathing heavily and I knew that there was no way that I was going to make my meeting on time.

I bought a new grill last week. It runs on liquid propane. I like it because it hasn't rusted yet.