>From: ROYBAL@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Subject: (untitled) by Uncle Grimsby
Date: 20 Sep 91 01:49:48 GMT
Supersedes: <91262.170622ROYBAL@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>


   The depersonalization began years ago with those pocket pagers people
were so fond of.  Really what they did was allow the inanimate telephone
of the times to get up and follow you around, so to speak.
   John is a product of the modern worker age; living in communal
quarters next to his place of work, which whose job and rank he inherited
from his father.  He is a Production Engineer, and since he is in
constant demand from appointments, queries, and the like, he wears a
helmet designed by Apple Computer in 1998.  Steven Jobs designed it as
a joke; but the managers and executives picked up on it.  It was seen as
a fine way to locate the whereabouts of employees and assure productivity.
   The helmet is white, with a broad Trojan style rib down the center
that holds eight "D" cell batteries.  Two directional 800 Mhz antennas
transmit signals every five seconds to the nearby receiving sensors in
the building, of which there are 3000 altogether.  John's position is
plotted on an 8' X 10' Lucite map, backlit with LED's to indicate his
location, accurate within 3".  Transmissions may also be received by the
helmet, which can send them on audible or subliminal audio channels to
the wearer.  The board tender can remind John of appointments, not to
loiter too long in the bathroom, or send Muzak to calm him.  John, for
example, picked out special Muzak selections from the list to have beamed
to him.  He has separate Muzak for lunch, work, and defecation.
   The board keeps in touch with a long list of other electronic devices.
The most important of all of these is the telephone.  The phone has
become huge and ponderous, a combination FAX machine, voice and visual
communications station, and answering machine.  Precision guidance
systems have become so advanced that the phone can shoot a gaffe-line of
Telecomm wires into a slot on the helmet, where they socket into place
to complete the call.  It can do this from eight  feet away, dead on,
in less than 1/10th of a second.  It is mounted on a chassis 1' X 3',
with bulldozer-style treads for all surfaces.  Normally it sits in John's
office. but if it receives a call it rushes to his  side, lights flashing
and whistle blowing.  It can reach speeds of up to 35 MPH, and has been
known to kill a man that has  been slow in heeding its baleful warning
whistle. Joni, one of the secretaries, was bisected at 28 MPH by the sheet
cutter on the FAX machine last June after opening her door, mistaking the
whistle for the siren of the motorized lunch cart.  The FAXes now have to
be laboriously snipped apart by hand.
   The helmet also has a built in holographic image projector which
displays the face of a computer-generated secretary who can be informed
of upcoming appointments or meetings when summoned.  The secretary gives
the information to a massive database which is frequently stolen, or
forgotten by the board tender.
   Since the helmets work off of radio waves, horrible abuses can occur
by outside parties.  Many times the manufacturers of the helmets have
assured customers that the helmets are "tamper proof" and their signals
cannot be intercepted by a third party.
   John knows better.  Salesmen are the worst; pirate radio chips from
the helmet can easily be duplicated, and the holographic secretary's head
replaced with that of a blond, Germanic salesman with slicked-back hair
stating:
   "Wouldn't that job be easier if you used a TLC-2448A, instead of that
clunky old Motorola chip?"  The face would be replaced with a gleaming
TLC-2448A, giving off an almost holy glow.  "Think about it."  A blinding
white flashing phone number would stay in front of John's eyes for thirty
seconds, almost long enough to trigger a brain seizure.  The number would
be etched into his retinas for several minutes.  This happened at least
five times a day.  As a result the helmet batteries, which normally
lasted several months, had to be replaced weekly,.
   The salesmen always knew when he went to the bathroom, and usually
just when he has begun reading his holographic "Wall Street Journal," a
huge holographic woman's face would tear through the pages, shouting:
   "IF YOU HAVE IRRITABLE BOWELS DUE TO PRESSURE ON THE ASSEMBLY LINE,
   CALL MOE HARRIS, ATTORNEY AT LAW, AND FIT THOSE GRUMPY OLD SUPERVISORS
   WITH A LAW SUIT TO HELP DISPERSE THOSE UNCONSTITUTIONAL ON THE JOB
   HARASSMENT BLUES!"
   Even more surprising, several enterprising Hackers had discovered
a way to access the radio control phone, bypassing the list of
authorized incoming numbers, so that the phone would chase after John,
the stern face of a salesman out to make a day's profit staring out from
the VidScreen.  Not even the big battery powered transport could outrun
the Telecomm.  The designers saw to that, so that nary an important call
would be missed.  The only place to hide from an insistent Telecomm was
in the restroom, as the toilet stall doors were too intricate for the
robotic fingers of the Telecomm to open.  Even there, the board tender
began to issue increasingly loud warnings to get back to work after five
minutes.  And you had to listen to the endlessly patient inexhaustible
rubber-tipped fingers of the Telecomm trying to open the stall door,
servos whining and metal scratching the vandal proof paint.  Every stall
door there looked like a desperate cat had been trying to claw its way
to a mountain of catnip inside.
   John is driven insane by two things:  Number one, the phone system
being constantly utilized illegally by salespeople, which he cannot
reconcile with his morality.  These salespeople become more and more
belligerent, until finally the phone scrapes a hole through the toilet
stall door one day, rips the door off, and plugs into the helmet whilst
he is enjoying his "quality time."  Frothing with anger, John tells the
salesman to fuck off, a cardinal sin.  Telling a salesman to fuck off is
equal to telling the whole capitalistic, democratic way of life to
fuck off, and the salesman informs John's supervisor of this.  Argument
ensues.  The only reason John is not fired is because the telephone
company does not want people to know that salesmen can break into the
phone lines, because then nobody would buy their multi-million dollar
telephone/ helmet systems.
   John, uneasy for his battle with the market forces, sees things
clearly.  He sees the horrible machinations of greed and stupidity that
runs his life, and he is paranoid.  That night while sitting awake,
unable to sleep, he hears his wife mumbling commercial jingles
subliminally planted in her head during the day.  He realizes that she
has bought a particular shitty cereal that he hates not because she
thinks it is healthy, but because the jingle is stuck in her
subconsciousness.
   The next work period he is groggy from lack of sleep, and falls asleep
on the toilet.  The controller yells increasingly louder for him to get
back to work, but it is not until he hears the telephone ripping at the
new stall door that he awakens to hear:
   "GET BACK TO WORK!" Rip!  Scratch, tear, fumble.
   "GET BACK TO WORK!" Screeek!  Rend!
   He goes insane and soaks the phone with the toilet fill line.
It shorts out.  The Muzak and the voice screaming "Get back to work"
cease with it.  He is free, and he runs out of the plant into the
sunlight, pursued by a horde of angry security guards.
                                                  -Uncle Grimsby