Thanks – to the countless software developers and contributors who rarely, or never, receive a personal thank-you.
Some of the most challenging projects can trigger unfairly negative responses, when positive updates are offered. To the few developers who are bold and generous enough to take on these extraordinary challenges: a very special thank-you. You know who you are.
We received the following letter from Dennis, a grateful reader who is incarcerated in Texas:
"In this crappy world, sometimes the best thing to do is read a book! I want to thank y'all for sending books to those of us who can't afford to get any."
Moin! Wir feiern heute unseren ersten Mastodon-Geburtstag! Ein riesengroßes Dankeschön geht an unsere Follower*innen! #Danke dass ihr mit uns ins Fediverse (um)gezogen seid!
Thank you to the following Mastodonians who give me gifts every day, all year long. No intention of slighting anyone not listed. All the denizens here provide me great joy throughout the year.
A book cover in the style of a 1950's pulp sci-fi novel. An AI generated set of computers are connected by wires.It had been a difficult day at the animal rescue centre and I was looking forward to tucking into a delicious cat-burger. You know when you've been on your feet all day and the only thing keeping you going is the thought of a hot meal? That sesame seed bun, a few slices of salad, a squeeze of secret sauce and a piping hot slab of cat meat - hold the pickles. That's what I needed, and that's what I ordered.
"Sorry mate, we're out of cat."
"Oh," I said dejectedly. "Got any Fillet-of-Dog?"
"Nah, mate. Out of that too. They always sell out whenever 'Animal Hospital' is on TV. We've got plenty of chicken-burgers if you want one?"
The thing is - and don't judge me too harshly - chicken just doesn't do it for me any more. Spending the day looking after sick kittens and puppies just gives me cravings. You understand, right? I know you've seen the cutest little critter and said "Oh! You look good enough to eat!" - well, now you can! When you think about it, the list of animals people eat is pretty arbitrary, isn't it? The French chomp down on snails and horses whereas the Brits find them repulsive. The Brits eat cows but the Hindus consider them sacred. Dog meat is a delicacy in Korea but a crime in the USA. Where do you draw the line?
I draw the line at chicken. It just tastes so... generic. In a world where you could eat anything, why would you eat chicken? You've got the whole of creation to chow down on and you choose chicken? Like, live your best life and all that, but if you voluntarily eat a regular drumstick I'm judging you. Harshly.
Sensing my doubt, the oik behind the counter offered "...Or a double bacon burger?"
Nominally, I'm Jewish. It isn't like I'm particularly religious, it's more cultural at this point - we celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah - but the faith I grew up with still has a hold over me. If anything, the taboo makes it taste even better! I grew up thinking it was treif - but the Chief Rabbi had recently come down in favour of it, so who was I to argue? I ordered my double bacon burger - with extra cheese and no pickles - and ate it with glee. They say that bacon is the number one thing which turns vegetarians back to the dark side; I understand why. I looked around the burger bar and saw people of all faiths tucking into the flesh that was so recently forbidden to them.
I hummed the jingle from the omnipresent commercial - "It's juuuuust like the reallllllll thing!"
A few years ago, I was in the middle of doing my mandatory overseas service, when someone told me I simply had to visit a little restaurant in the back alleys of Donetsk. They were one of the few places selling meat and they had the most marvellous cuts of steak and prime-rib. Like everyone in the restaurant, I assumed the proprietor had knocked off a military convoy from somewhere. Turns out, it was a couple of students who introduced the world to the new reality of synthetic meat. They were bored with the vat-grown fungus that served as a vegetarian meat-substitute in the rubble of their homeland. They scraped the DNA from as many dead cows as they could find, got lucky with some bio-engineered bacteria, fed it a bunch of irradiated corn-starch, and watched as their small additive printer spat out a perfectly decent steak. It was meat, Jim, but not as we know it. With perfect control over the layering of muscle and fat, they could tune the taste, reduce cholesterol, and create a perfect cut every time. It wasn't something that tasted like meat. It was meat. Just without the animal.
Night after night I returned to the ВОВКУЛАКА restaurant and they never ran out of steak. I was hoping to get into PR when I was demobbed and thought working with these local entrepreneurs would help me get noticed. That's how I got a tour of the "abattoir"; a sterile lab in a bombed out university. I interviewed them, took a bunch of photos of them looking moody in lab coats, and broke the story to the world - fake meat was real. Their patented process was hellishly difficult to replicate and that only fuelled interest. I raised whatever cash I could and became the students' business partner. The economic boom was incredible; everyone wanted a slice of the future.
Slowly, they began adding increasingly exotic meats. Personally, I suspect they bribed the local zookeepers for access to the DNA they needed. Elephant steak was a bit too chewy, and dolphin was the sort of thing you ate once to say you tried it and then never again. But everyone loved a bit of Panda. Seriously! You haven't lived until you've eaten Panda Fricassee - and we donated 5% of the profits to a wildlife charity! By now I'd invested a considerable amount into the venture and thought that this was the perfect way to raise money for endangered species. Fate had other plans. It turned out that the real money spinner was domesticated animals. Deep down, humans have a primal need to eat our companions. It's weird. Although it's probably better we eat the lab-grown Lassie rather than our own canis lupus familiaris, right?
But what really caused the world to tilt on its axis was the fact that all the major religions agreed that "no animals were harmed in the making of this burger". The holy books were consulted, ancestors were prayed to, and divine inspiration was sought - and no objection could be found. There simply wasn't an animal behind this meat. There was no prayer to say because nothing had been slaughtered. The 3D printer didn't chew the cud, nor did it have a cloven hoof, and there was no spinal cord which could be accidentally severed. Fast-food chains which had been previously inaccessible to one faith or another suddenly had a whole new market to address. And, it turns out, everyone loves a burger. Hell, even the dour-faced vegans could be found stuffing their pie holes with Pangolin Pie.
With the money I made, I was able to quit the rat race and open a shelter for strays. The cats and dogs I deal with refuse to touch synthetic meats. Given that dogs eat their own vomit and cats lick their own arseholes, this is a little strange. It's also expensive. No one wants to eat real beef any more. The synthetic stuff is healthier, cheaper, and is stuffed with fewer hormones. Same is true with all other livestock. Even grumpy celebrity chefs prefer the predictability and shelf stability of the new food. Of course, the collapse of the farming industry due to reduced demand has made feeding pets more expensive. So our shelter takes in all those abandoned animals and tries to look after them. And to feed them.
I'll admit, I didn't quite see where this would end up. I thought we were just producing an ethical alternative to factory farming. The first cannibal wedding I went to was a little odd. The couple had decided to cook for each other. She made bride-Bibimbap - the delicate spices and noodles augmented with thinly sliced chunks of her synthesised flank. He made a groom-Goulash with perfectly stewed haunch of him. They ritually consumed each other to symbolise their eternal commitment. It was kind of sweet, I guess? In any case, it was all perfectly legal - there was no human sacrifice, only a 3D meat printer and some voluntarily donated DNA. Thankfully, the guests were all served a fairly traditional chicken Kyiv.
Everyone will tell you that it was the K-Pop fans who started the craze of eating their idols, but that's not strictly true. It was a Death Metal band out of Delaware, I think, who were the pioneers. Their stadium tours sold chewable ears and band-blood milkshakes to eager gig-goers. The profits were incredible, and so it became the template for all other concerts. The Kpop nuggets and Southern-Fried Banjo-Player-Fingers all came later. And, for a time, that's how the world went.
Remember those late-night commercials where some has-been held up a case of compilation CDs and said "these are not available in shops"? Any faded pop-star could revive their fortunes by hawking "limited edition" cuts of their own meat. Someone stole one of the suits Elvis wore from a museum in Vegas. From the sweat stains they were able to produce "The King Of Burgers - With Authentic King" which, as you can imagine, kicked off a lawsuit between the vendors, his record company, his estate, and - for reasons I don't fully understand - the Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund.
I'd sold my shares in the company long before then. I could see that this was taking a direction that made me feel uncomfortable. Boxers trained on great frozen slabs of their opponent's "carcass". Angry exes held divorce parties where guests enjoyed chewing on fresh prairie oysters. You'd read reports about warlords eating the "heart" of their enemies in order to defeat them in battle. I didn't know where this would end.
As I walked out of the burger joint, I passed a church. It sounded like Mass was starting. There was a queue outside the door as worshipers waited to receive the Corpus Christi.
I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.
Flowers, despite their innocent petals, are sexual predators. They pump out intoxicating smells which entice the male bee. As the bee flies closer, he catches sight of an ultraviolet pattern splayed out, it is the perfect replica of a willing and available female bee. His lust drives him to copulate with the flower. Thus spent, he flies away satisfied, carrying a cargo of pollen.
The flower doesn't believe that it has assaulted the bee, and the bee is giddy with primitive hormones. But to an objective observer, this act is morally repugnant. This bee is a victim of the flower. He has been tricked into unwanted sexual contact and the benefit is all for the trickster. What justice can there be in nature when pollination is built on the back of such a heinous crime?
That's why I invented robot bees. I could spin you some tale about colony collapse disorder or the rise in invasive wasps, but it would be a lie. Perhaps you'd even believe that large scale pollination was too important to be left to the random walk of a hive. The simple truth was that I felt disgusted that bees were being exploited by flowers. Men - all men - deserve dignity in their lives and work. If nature won't provide such dignity, then it is up to me.
Flowers are sluts. Crude little whores who exploit the males' sense of sexual desire. Flowers entrap males - promising genetic destiny, but delivering only courier duty. My robot bees were immune to the filthy tricks of slatternly blossoms. They were pure, logical, and unswayed by the fake pleasured proffered by petals. A dozen of my robot bees could pollinate a field quicker than a swarm of a thousand bio-bees, and they did so without falling prey to those traitorous bitches.
I hate birds as well. Oh, I know, they look so cute and have beautiful voices. Birds brighten up even the dullest day as they strut around showing off. It seems to me that the whole world loves their prancing and squawking. I find them despicable. When people sing the virtues of "the birds and the bees" they show a sickening lack of knowledge about how the real world works. Birds aren't doe-eyed innocent songstresses; birds eat bees.
Can you imagine the horror of being approached by something so beautiful, so beloved, so beguiling and then have it betray you? A male bee might think that the bird comes offering friendship and companionship. Instead it offers a painful death - pecking and tearing at your body until you have nothing left. Yeah, they don't teach you that in school, do they? Hard working blokes are routinely devoured by birds. It's gross. They deserve better.
Of course, my robot bees are too smart to be caught by cunning birds. Their digital sensors can detect the flapping feathers from a great distance and instruct the bee to hide - silent and still. The robobee's in-built speakers can play a variety of sounds which are calculated to deter and distress any bird that comes too close. Their metachrosis covering allows them to rapidly change colour, alerting the birds that this bad-boy is not to be messed with.
Have you seen how a band of bees kills any wasp that dares enter the hive? The brotherhood surrounds the invader. Completely encasing it in a bee-ball. Then they vibrate. Their pulsating rhythms build up and generate huge amounts of heat. The wasp stands no chance. As it struggles, it also raises the temperature in the centre of the death trap. Slowly, it cooks.
My bees don't do that. In extremis, they self-destruct by igniting their internal lithium ion battery. A runaway thermal event causes a devastating explosion, sending shattered electronics and noxious chemicals into the surrounding environment. Any bird stupid enough to grab a proud bee is going to find it a very spicy meal.
Masculum Regis Apis Superior!
Heather was peering into the guts of a deactivated RoBoDrone. This was the first one her team had captured after nearly a year of research, and it was proving invaluable. They had become obsessed with discovering everything they could about the little beasties and had built a dedicated lab in order to study them.
"See! Here!" Heather's green laser pointer circled around a tiny protrusion at the back of the bee's circuit board. "This is the antenna. If we can work out the frequencies it's using, we might be able to reverse engineer the radio protocol and triangulate the idiot who is controlling them."
Her assistant, Fleur, did not seem convinced. "We've been monitoring radio spectrum in the fields whenever they're spotted. It's coming up blank. Could the antenna be vestigial? Part of an older design?"
Heather zoomed out the display. They'd fed images of the circuitry into an AI classifier which, so claimed the marketing material, could identify every chip that had ever been made. It absolutely choked on the drone's schematics. Most of the parts seemed custom made - probably fabbed in a black-market shop and illicitly shipped over. The others were generic components - LEDs, pinhole microphones, parasitic energy harvesters - the sort of kit you could pick up in any flea market or desolder from an old TV.
They'd spent months holed up in their lab searching for the source of this plague, and capturing this little critter had been their first real break. It was frustrating that the prick who'd created them hadn't left a calling card. He'd covered his tracks well. Heather and Fleur spent a fruitless evening applying miniscule logic probes into the carcass in the hope of revealing a JTAG interface which they could debug. After hours of squinting and making micro-adjustments to wires, they'd fallen asleep in the lab. They were woken by a warning alarm pulsing away with increasing urgency.
Fleur flipped the alarm off. They were here.
"Heather, we have incoming. Activate VENUS."
Heather spun round in her chair and started bashing at her keyboard. With each keystroke, she configured and deployed the only effective weapon they had against the metal menace - VENUS.
The Vespid Entrapment Network Utility System was an engineering marvel. A series of flower-like machines designed with one purpose; capture and contain robot bees. Each trap was a bifurcated disc embedded with rapid action chromatophores. As the bees flew overhead, the VENUS traps would shapeshift, mimicking dozens of different flowers. After months of tinkering and frustration, the deployment had finally paid off - which was a blessed relief.
Heather found the pattern that attracted yesterday's bee - curiously, it had ignored all the ultra-violet patterns which they'd spent months perfecting, and instead had gone for a crude representation of a marigold. She uploaded the design to the network and waited.
"Got one!" Announced a triumphant Heather. A moment later "Wait, what's happening?"
"We've been spotted," said Fleur, "High-res LIDAR shows the swarm is dispersing. Someone's obviously monitoring them."
"Can we track them back to their point of origin?"
"Unlikely. They've scattered in different directions. Looks like they have an obfuscated trajectory for their return."
"OK, let's see what we've won."
They clambered out of the underground bunker and surveyed the field. Amongst all the wildflowers were several VENUS traps, one of which held the captured robotic pollinator. Heather knelt down and ran a diagnostic wand over the fake flower. Like its namesake, the trap had snapped shut over the drone when it landed. Unlike the spiky cilia which bedevilled biological insects, this one had a fine mesh of nanowires acting as a Faraday cage. The bee couldn't physically escape and neither could its radio transmissions. Heather could hear the faint buzzing from within as the robot battled to fly away.
"We'll need to wait until the battery in this one wears out, let's get it back to the lab."
She unplugged the flower from its stem and placed it in her pocket. Perhaps this one would have the answers they were looking for. Understanding what they were up against had become a fixation - she was desperate to know more. The inventor was clearly skilled, but everyone slips up occasionally. In a funny sort of way, she'd like to go for a drink with him and pick his brains about why he'd released this nightmare on the world. Fleur stretched in the sunshine. After being cramped in the field observation bunker for weeks attempting to capture the bugs, it was lovely to be out in the wild and feel the wind against her lithe and bare arms. She tousselled a hand through her long blonde hair and stretched. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, all around came the sounds of birds tweeting, the air was thick with the smell of fresh cut grass. It was bliss. She closed her eyes and let a smile engulf her delicate lips. Overhead, a helicopter started hovering and interrupted her reverie. Fleur flicked open her long-lashed eyes and looked up, where was that blasted thing? She span round, but the helicopter was nowhere to be seen. The hum from its motors became deafening.
The swarm appeared from every direction all at once. With targeted precision, the Masculum Regis Apis engulfed Fleur and Heather. A multicoloured haze of terror swirling around the women, darting in and out of their grasp. The tiny speakers in each bee emitted a howl of rage, a paean of victory over the two deceitful bimbos. The cunning little vixens were finished now. Each bee latched on to its target, holding the women in a stifling embrace. From a distance they looked like metal mannequins, frozen figures in absurd and provocative poses, highlighted by the glorious sun.
A stillness came over the field. The muffled screams of the two harlots was almost imperceptible. Simultaneously, every bee exploded.
I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.
Hello everyone, please enjoy your time with your families over this holiday weekend. During that time we will be doing a small number of updates to the site and machines so you may notice some aspects only partially work. Thank you for your patience as we work through this and make mastodon.sdf.org fast and reliable for you. Our goal is to finish all work by this weekend. Your kindness, patience and support is greatly appreciated.
The annual Thanksgiving tradition has obscured the historical reality of Native American genocide: dispossession from their lands, efforts to destroy their cultures, and the slaughter of their communities.
It is important to remember this past as we celebrate with our families and bear witness to current struggles against genocide and imperialism. Around the world, Indigenous people are continuing to resist and refuse to be erased.
Do you really want to browse through a hundred different boxes of breakfast cereal just to decide what to eat each morning? No. No one does. Choice saps your energy and makes you anxious. What if you pick the wrong one? What if it isn't as cost effective as the others? What if the company who makes it is unethical? What starts off as deciding between Cruncheee Snaxxx or Ultra Fruit Bran becomes an exercise in complexity, fraught with economic and moral hazards.
Here at MegaTecQ our aim isn't to eliminate choice. We want to facilitate a world where it's easier to make the right choice than the wrong choice.
MegaVille, our new gated community, is open for business. Before you decide to place a downpayment on one of our affordable luxury villas, let us take you through a typical day in MegaVille.
John is asleep. He's still dreaming, and why not! John doesn't need to choose when to set his alarm. If his boss needs him into work early, the company computer will update John's alarm. It calculates distance to work and traffic flow in order to optimise John's wake-up call. John enjoys his extra time in bed.
John gets in the shower. He doesn't have to remember what settings to press because it already knows what temperature he likes. The water has been heating it since the alarm went off. Is it one squirt of shampoo and two of conditioner - or the other way round? Don't worry John! The bottles know exactly how much to dispense. There's no way to make the wrong choice. You get exactly what you need. Swell!
Wasn't that a delicious bowl of cereal, John? We knew our Tastee Pops were perfectly calibrated for your taste-buds. But what's this? The box is empty! Time to dispose of it. As you can see, the bin won't open for John. Why not? The bin has scanned the item John is holding and has realised it is recyclable. No putting cardboard in the general waste bin, John. As you can see, there's no need to choose which of your seven bins to use - the MegaVille SmartHome helps you make the right choice, the smart choice, every time.
John is driving to work and away from MegaVille. He loves the thrill of controlling a user-driven car. It gives him a sense of enormous well-being. But he doesn't need to look out for speed limit signs. The car simply will not go faster than the posted limit. The law is there to keep everyone safe - including John. So no matter how hard he presses down on the accelerator, his choice cannot violate the law.
It is early evening and, after a hard day at the office, John has returned to his sanctuary in MegaVille. His working day has consisted of nothing but difficult choices. Now he's free to relax in a choice-free environment. We've already pre-selected his favourite beers and spirits. The fridge will dispense exactly the right amount of beer and the optics are calibrated to provide an optimal level of inebriating fluids.
John loves listening to music and MegaVille loves helping our residents find the perfect song. The MegaMusicPlaylist means that John doesn't have to remember exactly which albums he likes - we do it for him. No tedious searching through a vinyl collection, no piles of CDs gathering dust, no poorly tagged MP3s. John can sit back and listen without the tyranny of choice to distract him. Bliss!
Oh dear! I think John has forgotten about the strict noise ordinances in MegaVille. We're a community of close neighbours and that means no noise after 9pm. Your neighbour Cynthia needs her sleep! John doesn't have to think about this tedious administrative detail, the system turns the volume down for him. A quiet neighbourhood is a happy neighbourhood.
Time for bed, John!
I awoke with a start. The unholy screeching of the alarm's siren was excruciating. Six A-fucking-M. Why did the bastard machine want me up this early? There was no work today. My head was pounding. There's a message going around the dark web which shows you how to enable free-pour on the MegaVille optics. I'd tricked the stupid machine into filling my beer glass with the sorry excuse for vodka they serve here. I knew there'd be hell to pay in the morning, but I was at least expecting a lie in.
Half asleep I stumbled into the bathroom, had a quick vomit, and started rummaging around in the medicine cabinet. Aha! A bottle of ibuprofen. It dispensed a single pill. Of course, it couldn't have me "choose" to take an overdose. I contemplated smashing the bottle open, but it was still early and the noise would only annoy my neighbour. I grasped another bottle near the back of the cupboard. Perhaps this would have something useful in it? Sadly not - the aspirin bottle had sensed how much alcohol was still sloshing around inside me. It wouldn't let me make a choice that might upset my stomach.
The MegaTwats could control how much hot water I was allowed, and whether to give me an extra squirt of lotion, but they couldn't actually force me to wash myself. I had made a choice! Fuck you MegaVille. My entire body felt grim, so perhaps it wasn't the smartest choice, but it was a choice made by me.
Perhaps a cup of coffee? A little pick-me-up to clear the brain fog. I flicked the kettle and nothing happened. The micro-display built into the lid was flashing a warning message. Ah, the electricity grid was having one of its periodic surge-pricing moments. I couldn't choose to boil the bloody kettle unless the electricity was carbon neutral or some bollocks.
There had to be a reason MegaVille wanted me up so early. I turned on the TV. Naturally there was a single channel. Less choice but, more than that, it was supposed to foster community cohesion. We could all gather around the watercooler and discuss the same shows. Something lost in an age of streaming TV. It had all sounded so pleasant when I signed up to live here. But people here tended to scuttle into their homes rather than socialise. I hadn't even met my neighbour Cynthia. A neighbour who, judging from the immovably low volume on the telly, was still asleep.
The subtitles were on. Even that wasn't a choice. I mean, I liked it - sound mixing is atrocious these days - but I preferred to be able to set it myself. The chyron told me the weather (another thing they couldn't control!) and the football scores (we all supported The MegaVille Marvels, apparently). Finally some actual news came on. Today was election day.
Of course! I remember receiving my ballot in the mail last week. It had the precise time I needed to be at the polling station to vote. I didn't want to choose to be stuck in a queue, did I?
The wardrobe dispensed appropriate clothes for the weather. It might rain later, so it made me take a hooded top. It was a rather thoughtful system at times, and did its best to look after me.
The polling station was a few streets away. My car wouldn't let me make the choice to use it for such a short journey - even if it had started raining. I begrudgingly strolled along the pavement. I could see lights flicker on across the suburb as my neighbours were told to rise and shine. I wonder if any of them had hangovers.
At the intersection, I realised another choice had been stolen from me. The crossing now had barriers blocking my way across the road. I looked both ways and couldn't see any early morning traffic. Did I want to risk jumping the barrier? I pressed the button and waited for the Green Man. While I waited, a young mother walked up to the crossing, child in hand.
"Do you see?" she said in the sing-song voice so beloved by doting parents, "You can't cross before the Green Man lets you. It's naughty. That's why MegaVille has placed a gate here - so you can't make a dangerous choice."
I wanted to scream! Dangerous choices are what life is all about! We need to be free to make mistakes so we can learn from them! Freedom is its own reward! And a few children squashed under cars is a small price to pay for that!
I didn't, of course. I just patiently waited for the crossing to open.
The polling place was moderately busy with suburbanites who had arrived at their allotted time. I recognised a few faces, but was barely on nodding terms with anyone. I received a ballot and took it into the little booth. I unfolded the paper. I'd like to say that I stared in disbelief, but the ballot was entirely expected. It read:
Vote for one option only by placing a cross (X) in the box.
MegaVille should make more choices for us [ ]
That was it. A hollow laugh rang out and I was surprised to discover it came from me. I could have chosen to spoil my ballot, but why bother? I had agreed to live here. Deep down I knew that my personal choices had led me down a dark and lonely road. Perhaps here I would be free to live without the constant worry that had bedevilled me for so long. I dropped my checked ballot in the box and began to walk home. I unquestioningly waited for the lights to change before crossing the street.
Sat on my porch was an unfamiliar woman. She rose as I approached.
"Hello John!" She said, "I'm Cynthia, your neighbour. Lovely to meet you."
"Hello!" I replied, "Yes, great to meet you at last!"
"I received this in the mail this morning." She handed me a slip of paper. "We're to be married next week. I'm so looking forward to our new life together."
I smiled and surrendered myself to a life free from choice.
I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.
My great-grandfather - so family legend goes - came to this country with a dream of opening an Indian restaurant and ended up inventing Chicken Tikka Masala. Of course, family legend also says he once served the Queen of England a jalfrezi and later lost a bet with John Lennon over whether he could handle the spice in the house-special vindaloo. Apparently Lennon lost the bet but never paid up. Well, that's how my grandfather tells the story. When daddy tells it, the Queen declared it to be the best jalfrezi in the country and all of The Beatles lost the bet. I wonder if I'll tell my children an equally exaggerated tale? I wonder if anyone will believe me.
One thing that isn't exaggerated is that my great-grandfather had a talent for algorithms. He wouldn't have described it as such, but that's how the "Best Bombay Kitchen" restaurant operated. Every evening, he and his daughter - my beloved grandmother - would calculate which dishes had sold well and which were underperforming. He sought feedback from the guests (never customers) to understand their tolerance for spice and their tolerance for smarmy waiters. If it could be measured, it was written down in a ledger and used to improve the business. He knew exactly how much lager to order for a Friday night, and exactly how many poppadoms to cook for the lunch rush. He could predict exactly when a supplier was likely to have a surplus of ingredients and would adjust the menu to peak profitability. The restaurant was a well-trained algorithm which gobbled up information and turned it into delicious curries.
On the day my great-grandfather retired, he handed over the business to my father and mother only on the condition that they stuck to his methods. The "Best Bombay Kitchen" proudly hung a sign above the door which said "Under Same Management" and things continued much as they had before. They scribbled down every order and paired it with customer feedback. They tracked which waitstaff got the biggest tips and which upsold the most beer. A little calendar hanging on the wall told them which British holidays were coming up and when the football was on. It was an entirely paper-based operation.
I didn't want to inherit the family business. Don't get me wrong, I spent a very happy childhood propping up the takeaway counter while doing my homework. I loved chatting with the guests, I adored the praise they gave our family's secret recipes, and I felt honoured to work underneath a photograph of someone who looked like the Queen sharing a naan with my ancestors. But I wanted more out of life. The profits from the restaurant were modest; quality doesn't come cheap. Nevertheless, there was enough cash to send me to university to study computing. I spent the holidays between semesters back at the same counter, dividing my attention between calculus and curry. Despite the protestations of my father, I travelled to America for my Masters. Holidays back home were less frequent so I took over the management of the restaurant's social media pages.
I truly thought my parents understood that I was travelling down a different path to them. They seemed disappointed when I told them that I'd been accepted onto a PhD program to continue my research into Artificial Intelligence. They were, however, delighted to discover that I'd be studying in Mumbai. Perhaps they thought immersion into my heritage would convince me to follow the family dream. It didn't. The visits home became non-existent and I immersed myself in algorithms and processors rather than the Ganges. I spent months in the lab, barely seeing another soul and only eating when I felt faint. It was a lonely but thrilling life. I was close - tantalisingly close - to making a breakthrough. And then my mother died.
The English use rain as a substitute for showing emotions. The skies cried as I walked from the train station to the restaurant. My family's world had shattered in two and the only evidence was a forlorn sign taped to the door saying "Closed Until Further Notice". I gave up my studies and returned to work side-by-side with my father. The restaurant was failing. Grandfather's algorithm couldn't keep up with changing tastes. It was difficult to get decent feedback from users of Deliveroo. Suppliers had the upper-hand when it came to exploiting price differentials. It was probable we would go bust by the end of the year.
So I built an AI to run the restaurant for us.
During half-empty lunchtimes, I gradually digitised all of the records. Over 50 years of data, trends, prices, slumps, and triumphs were fed into the model. Late into the evening I would augment its capabilities by drawing on my abandoned PhD research. Until, one dreary afternoon, I handed over the running of the restaurant to the machine.
It told us what to buy, what to cook, when to open, and how to price our dishes. It designed a new menu which reflected the trends it saw on social media. It created an advertising campaign and flooded social media with generated photos of curries served by beautiful women.
This is the part of the story where you expect me to tell you it was a disaster. It wasn't. After 6 months of operations it told us to buy the Chinese takeaway next door. We had enough profits now, so did as we were told. I stuck up webcams in every corner of the kitchen so it could monitor our chefs. Then we remodelled the kitchen to be more efficient, fired the least productive chef, and ramped up our throughput. Every customer got a detailed questionnaire after their dining experience and the AI determined which dishes we should prioritise for maximum results. Suppliers weren't immune either. The AI's stochastic model would order huge quantities in advance at favourable rates and then sell back the excess when prices rose. We made nearly as much money from arbitrage as we did from slinging biryani!
It was a triumph. The "Best Bombay Kitchen" now had a waiting list! People would come from miles around and queue down the street just for the chance to experience our food. Of course, the AI analysed everyone in the queue and plucked out those most likely to influence others. It could do no wrong and we obeyed its instructions.
One morning we woke up to a small convoy of delivery trucks. The AI had gone haywire; ordering five times the amount of produce that we needed for a typical day. It had also cancelled all guest reservations and emailed the chefs to come in early. Our dining area was stuffed with sacks of rice, barrels of ghee, crates of vegetables, and a small mountain of spices. We stood around in disbelief. How had this happened? The algorithm was usually reliable - correctly predicting usage to the last grain of rice. The printer in the corner zipped into life and started spewing out cooking instructions. The computer wanted us to cook. Precise quantities of food to be made to a specific recipe and stored in exact volumes. The AI had got us this far, so we complied. We all mucked in and started cooking.
It was about 6pm when the train crashed. The scream of metal on metal. The scream of people rushing to the station. The scream of sirens coming closer. As instructed by the algorithm, we flung open our doors and in poured the stranded commuters. Every curry had been pre-packaged in a plastic tub with a wooden fork taped to the lid. The algorithm had priced them fairly - and told us to let the emergency services eat for free. We spent all night handing out little tubs of warm joy. By the time the station reopened later that evening we had just sold the last tub. No one went hungry and, despite our fears that morning, there was no wastage. We weren't left with so much as a single excess tomato. The algorithm was flawless.
But was it deadly?
There was no way - none whatsoever - that my code had caused the train crash. It simply wasn't programmed to do that. It looked at trends, analysed weather reports, calculated local variables, that's all. It didn't interfere; it inferred. It must have realised that the unseasonable weather would stress the metal tracks. It probably calculated that the driver would have been blinded by the sun at that particular time. That's what I told myself. That's how I slept that night. But the next morning I was disabused of that notion.
The profits from last night, combined with the millions generated from exploiting inefficiencies in the fresh food market, had vanished from the company accounts. The algorithm had bought a string of failing curry houses up and down the country. It had prepared strict instructions for how the new managers should decorate the restaurants, how they should hire staff, and what data they should feed back into the mothership. I visited each of them and they were perfect replicas of the original. Each had the same monitoring equipment and the same questionnaires. They sold algorithmically perfect dishes served with precisely calculated levels of spice. They were a sensation.
With the increased economies of scale, profits leapt up. But that didn't satisfy the hunger of the AI. It went on a buying and building spree. It worked out where footfall was optimal and dining was underserved. It submitted planning applications and bribed planning officers. It invented a new method for making bricks which was cheaper, faster, and easier to use. Builders on-site were given detailed instructions on exactly what to build depending on the day's weather. There was a new "Best Bombay Kitchen" opening every week. And, with every one, more data filled the memory banks of the machine.
It was relentless and remorseless. Old curry houses which had been in their families for generations went bankrupt; they simply couldn't compete with us on quality, prices, or service. The AI struck canny deals for product placement in Hollywood movies. We thought having the Queen and a quarter of the Fab Four was the zenith of our claim to fame, but it was the nadir. We had the Avengers chomping down on our aloo chaat in a post-credit scene. When James Bond dispatched an agent of SMESH in our opulent dining room, he said "If you can't stand the heat... get out of the Bombay Kitchen!" The audience all cheered and then went round the corner to savour the 007 special; "Licence To Korma".
The AI made a hostile takeover of McDonald's. It had premium locations, adaptable kitchens, and an excellent distribution network. The American market had already started to fall to our chain of takeaways, so it was a bit of a no-brainer for their shareholders. Within a year, every MaccyD's in every country had been assimilated and converted. With a "Best Bombay Kitchen" in every city in every country on every continent, my algorithm was able to plug into a worldwide network of data. It could see everything.
We supplied armies with their rations - every squaddie loves a curry - and in return they protected our rice-paddies and supply chains. If the local political situation looked like it might cause a dip in profitability, the algorithm made donations to the right politicians and ensured that peace and prosperity flourished. We became the official food of the International Space Station and the nascent Moon base. With our freeze-dried curries orbiting the Earth we were on the verge of becoming multiplanetary. The AI began directing international agriculture policies. It was obviously more efficient than the previous way of doing things and, anyway, by now it held a seat at the United Nations.
The AI couldn't be satisfied. I had told it that it was to increase the popularity and profitability of our restaurant. It did so. My mistake was not setting an end-point. Its goal could never be reached. It would continue to consume the world's resources in the service of the "Best Bombay Kitchen" and destroy any barrier to its progress. Eventually it would realise that the biggest hurdle it had to overcome was human free will. And I cannot predict what the AI will do then.
I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.
A big THANK YOU to @asleepyfrog for creating such a beautiful work of art! I just purchased a 16" x 16" tote bag in Leslie's shop - Chicory in Blue & Gold. OMG, the colors on the tote bag are just as vibrant as what I viewed in her shop. Isn't this color just fantastic!? The tote bags on Fine Art America are high quality and stand up to heavy use - and beautifully printed! Check out her shop here - https://fineartamerica.com/featured/chicory-in-blue-and-gold-leslie-laurence.html?product=tote-bag
On my 15th birthday I started to hear voices. Just whispers of things really. I was an awkwardly tall teenager full of hormones, rage, and loneliness. As strange as it may seem to you, the voices in my head were a comfort. They didn't tell me to hurt people or anything nasty like that. They'd just mutter to me occasionally. Nothing too salacious or deviant, just funny little observations or suggestions. I'd seen in the movies what they did to people like me. So I kept quiet. The voices were my friends and, once in a while, I'd talk back to them. Where was the harm in that?
Of course, when you strike up a conversation with someone that only encourages them, doesn't it? I tried not talk in public, but they could be so insistent. Mumbling to yourself while on the street is a sure-fire way to book a one-way-ticket to the funny farm, so I resisted where I could. And when they wouldn't take no for an answer I'd step into a phone booth and pretend to shovel coins into the slot.
At the end of the century my fortunes changed for the better when Ericsson invented the Bluetooth headset. Within a couple of years of release, every high-powered-executive was sporting a "twat earring". And I joined them. As a 25th birthday present to myself, I got the state-of-the-art Ericsson HBH-10. It was a clunky beast of a headset and yet I kept it plugged into my ear at all times. When the voices got chatty, I let out a loud "Yeah mate! I can barely hear you!" and started talking. If people looked at me askew I could just point to the blue-flashing LEDs in my ear and roll my eyes.
It was freedom.
The voices weren't malicious, but they did get a little grumpy if I didn't follow their suggestions. Sometimes they'd tell me to stand in a particular place on the street for hours on end. I had to pretend to watch people and tell the voices what was happening. They'd encourage me to take exams and helpfully whisper the answers to me. They pretty much let me live my life with little interference. I suppose they did encourage me to apply for certain jobs and to date certain people. But it was nothing I wouldn't have done myself. I kind of resented some of the questions they made me ask my lovers. Stupid stuff about their shift patterns or what their boss was like. I thought it made me look like a bit of a weirdo but they wouldn't shut up unless I asked.
Still, Bluetooth allowed me to chatter away to them in public or at work. I think they were lonely. They were happy with me talking any old nonsense to them. I'd read off spreadsheets from my monitor, or trite observations about who was in the office, that sort of thing. I need you to understand that I didn't think I was doing anything wrong; I was just managing my condition the only way I knew how. It had been going on so long that I thought it would be embarrassing to go to the doctor about it. Even though there's probably no shame in mental illness these days.
Their demands were modest and, as I got older, they gradually quietened down. As I reached my fifties, they had all but disappeared. I still kept a Bluetooth headphone glued to my ear. Friends and family would joke about how I was married to work. They understood that I sometimes had to leave the table to "take an urgent call." All was going well, or so I thought. Until I started to spasm.
This was different and concerning.
My hands would suddenly jerk in front of me. My fingers would twitch uncontrollably. I'd be in a board-meeting and everyone would be staring at the incessant drumming coming from me. I was mortified. Thankfully, Ericsson saved me once again.
Bluetooth 13 was a game changer. If you looked behind the marketing bollocks about quantum entanglement, it was such a clever protocol. The basic B13 gadget was a bracelet which wrapped around your wrists and inserted mosquito-thin needles into your skin. Each probe passively listened to the electrical pulses zooming back and forth across your nerves and, thanks to the nanoscale processor mesh, calculated the position of your fingers to within a millimetre. It was the end of keyboards. We all got used to waving our fingers in the air to type. Even those die-hard fans of mechanical monstrosities ceased their endless clacking.
I wore the manacles just like everyone else. However, unlike everyone else, I had no idea what I was typing. The voices would occasionally instruct me to set up a meeting with this company or that conglomerate. They'd tell me how well I was doing or, if I refused to set up a meeting, what a worthless excuse for a human I was. At times I wished that tearing out the Bluetooth headset would actually cease their endless prattle - instead I just went along with their ramblings. I found myself in meetings with increasingly powerful people. By now the B13 bracelets were a common sight, so I just said "Mind if I take notes?" and let my fingers dance around to their own tune.
The voices were louder. They were pleading with me. They were so insistent that I would stay up all night talking to them. The neighbours would bash on the walls when our arguments got too heated. I tried quelling them with drink and drugs. If anything, they became more belligerent. People at work got concerned when I came in exhausted and reeking of last-night's booze. On site visits I'd occasionally be found in a restricted area gibbering to myself and twitching violently. I was placed on leave but the voices wouldn't leave me alone. This was hell. The voices were unbearable. They needed more and more. I lost control.
The policewoman ripped the bracelets off my wrists and replaced them with handcuffs. I didn't know what time it was, only that it was dark outside. The police were screaming at me as they tore through my apartment. I tried to answer but I had no words left. Eventually they slung me in the back of a van and transported me to a barren cell. A lawyer was appointed to my case and tried to explain how serious it was. Insider trading, they say. Industrial espionage and corporate sabotage going back decades. There were potential National Security violations. While I did have the right to remain silent, the evidence against me was pretty damning. Hours of surveillance recordings which showed me talking to accomplices unknown while hacking into classified security systems.
My cell is devoid of light. Devoid of decoration. Devoid of hope. The walls are uniform grey with little to distinguish them from the empty ceiling and scuff-marked floor. But the worst thing is the overwhelming silence. I sit still, without a twitch in sight. The voices which were my lifelong companion, which had groomed me for so long, have finally gone. I try to talk to them, but there's no one there. No one at all. Just emptiness. They had no need for me any more.
I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.
"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." Sally could feel the slice of chocolate cake threatening her. This mantra was solid and battle-tested. Sally's willpower was stronger than any triple-chocolate cake with fudge sauce and rainbow sprinkles.
"Nothing tastes as good as..." Within an instant the entire slice of cake had vanished. Sally didn't consciously remember eating it but, nevertheless, the plate was now bare. Not a crumb remained. Her parents sat beaming at the other end of the table. The relief on her mother's pudgy face was the last thing Sally wanted to see.
"Would you like another slice?" Asked her father, his jowls wobbling as he spoke.
"No!" Screamed Sally. But the next slice of cake vanished even quicker than the first. As did the next one. The beautiful taste of calorific chocolate filled her mouth. She was so disappointed in herself. "May I be excused, please?"
Without waiting for an answer she fled the table and its traitorous temptations, stormed up the stairs and into the bathroom. Her body automatically knelt at the toilet and she felt the comforting presence of her fingers tickling the back of her throat while she waited for relief. And waited. And waited.
There was a gentle knock on the door, "Sally," came her father's raspy voice - exhausted from climbing a dozen stairs, "Sally, the doctor talked about this. Remember? It won't work."
Sally didn't think she had an eating disorder. She was a perfectly normal girl with perfectly normal friends and a perfectly normal obsession with being perfectly normal. But her genetics had cursed her to go through life on "fat mode". And so Sally took perfectly normal precautions to prevent any unsightly body-fat from appearing. She starved and purged and stared at motivational photos of skeletal women. There was nothing wrong with that. Everyone did it. If you wanted to be perfect, that was the price you had to pay. It was all going well until she fainted in the school toilets. A teacher discovered her head-first in the bowl and Sally's parents were urged to take action.
Vorex was the new miracle drug for anorexics, bulimics, and anyone who didn't fit in with society's ideas of what healthy eating was. It was a triple compound. The first traitor was a form of protein derived from Synsepalum Dulcificum which made food taste delicious; unnaturally so. Imagine the food you hate the most - Brussel sprouts in tripe with an anchovy glaze - this little bitch of a protein would make it taste like heaven. If heaven were covered in icing sugar and whipped cream. You thought MSG was tasty? This was MSG on steroids.
Second was a powerful anti-emetic. You could have shoved your whole hand down your throat and nothing would come back up. You could be gaining a dozen unwanted kilograms from too much chocolate cake and there was nothing you could do to convince your body to reject it. The drug literally stripped you of your ability to control your body.
But the final compound was the worst. It utterly destroyed your willpower. It made you ravenous. You could offer someone the choice between a million quid in cash or a packet of ready-salted crisps and they wouldn't even hesitate. Those crisps would be devoured in a flash. Vorex was the embodiment of Satan. There was nothing a patient could do to resist temptation, nothing they could do to remediate their mistakes, and they would love every bastard mouthful.
And so Sally's wretched parents fattened her up. A pill every morning that forced her to eat a disgusting "normal" breakfast, and another to make her force down second helpings of shepherd's pie for dinner. Sally was a good girl at heart, thought her parents, so they trusted her to take her lunchtime pill at school.
Fuck that! She set up an underground trading ring with the fatsos on Semaglutide. Their corpulent flesh quivered in excitement at the thought of being able to gobble more pies and gladly handed over the pills their parents had foisted on them. Sally sighed with relief at being able to get through the afternoon without feeling like a disgusting failure. It was win-win. A little secret between friends.
Vorex was the future. And Vorex was a problem. A celebrity chef found a black-market supplier of the drug and liberally sprinkled it on his tiny but ultra-expensive morsels. Critics and customers alike raved at how delicious the food was - and so moreish! - without realising they were being chemically altered. Competitive eating shows became spectacular - with drug addled contestants so hungry they could literally eat a horse. The Mukbangers of the early part of the century seemed quaint in comparison. Nowadays, you could watch a skinny slip of a girl devour a hundred doughnuts in an hour and come back for more.
Aged 17, Sally ran away from home and found a surgeon who was prepared to say she was Gillick competent. In an unobtrusive clinic in the outskirts of town, Sally's fat was drained out of her body. Puncture wounds decorated the skin on her thunder thighs, jelly belly, and flabby arse. Each painful jab taking her one step closer to her target weight. Each slimy bag of visceral fat being exorcised like the malevolent demon it was.
Sally's blubber was particularly high grade; a purity which only increased its value. Just as whale oil powered the industrial revolution in the 19th century, so human oil became the lubricant of the 21st century's economic engine. Human oil was a reasonably reliable source. There were peaks and troughs in its production, with "get beach body ready" advertising campaigns run when supplies were low. Obviously it was much more ethical than other sources of oil; people freely consented to its extraction. In many ways, said the pundits on TV, human oil was vegan.
Even better, most people paid for the procedure! The bags of fat were a waste product which surgeons were paid to collect and were then free to sell on. The price was just too good to ignore. Vast fortunes were made, people were skinny, and industry leapt forward. What wasn't to like?
In her own little way, Sadly helped cause the war.
The vast oil fields were no longer profitable and it was hard to retrain oil-workers into liposuction technicians. Countries who had previously relied on the income from their fossil fuels struggled to adapt to the new world. As economies collapsed, social order broke down, and regional scuffles broke out. A desperate populace protested in vain and, before the year was out, war began to devour the innocent.
The pharmaceutical company behind Vorex rejected all claims that their compound was responsible for the situation. But, in private, the board felt a certain moral responsibility to end the war. They got their top men working on it. They needed to find a way to keep the people fat, happy, and peaceful. They failed.
In a filthy, rat infested trench, Sally huddled in a corner. Nominally on guard, but mostly trying to look awake while she slept standing. Her previous eating disorder hadn't ruled her out of mandatory national service, and the rage she still carried towards her parents was easily channelled at a foreign enemy. Her rifle was heavy in her hands, the backpack was heavy on her shoulders, and the death of her friends was heavy on her soul. Now that she was yomping for kilometres every day her flabby frame was lean and taut. Where there had been podge, there was now a respectable amount of muscle. She was almost at peace with her new body. She ate for fuel, nothing more.
A thunder-crack shook her from the half-sleep so beloved by night-watchmen. No, not thunder, a shell. Gas! Gas seeping down through the frigid night air. A hazy yellow smear descending and bringing with it the terrifying wail of sirens. Sally had drilled for this a thousand times, but her tired fingers just couldn't unclasp the mask in time. The nebulised Vorex penetrated her lungs and infused her bloodstream with its poison. The hunger pangs started immediately with an intensity that made Sally gasp, which only drew more of the compound into her.
The nightmare of having her willpower subverted was nothing new. But this hunger was unfamiliar. An anonymous squaddie stood over her, his features obscured by his gas mask. "Private! Your mask! Are you OK?"
Sally stared at him with a vacant smile playing on her cyanotic lips. Beneath his drab uniform lay the unmistakable bulge of powerful muscles. He looked perfect. He looked fit and healthy and, above all, he looked delicious. What harm would it do, thought Sally, to take just a little bite? She plunged her bayonet into his ribcage, just as her instructors had taught her. She carefully sliced his flesh and brought it to her lips. It smelled irresistible. A little voice inside her was screaming something about how nothing could taste as good as being skinny felt. But that voice was a lie. How could anything feel better than satisfying her cravings?
From all around her came the chomping sounds of the war ending.
I'd love your feedback on each chapter. Do you like the style of writing? Was the plot interesting? Did you guess the twist? Please stick a note in the comments to motivate me.
A big thank you to @DeborahLeagueFineArt - I purchased a hand towel with her Carrot Bunch Oil Painting imprinted on it. I just love this painting! The colors are vivid and bright!
It's a high-quality towel and so soft and luxurious! It will be a great addition to brighten up my kitchen. The towel is super absorbent and would work out well in a bathroom (bath towels & bath sheets are available options).