Troim-Kryzl

Tag: SciFi Short Story

  • No Ant Farm

    „You‘re kidding, right? You must be kidding! You can’t do this to patients. How are they going to survive a week at the hospital, with this app around? They don’t want to know! Sometimes, you’re so naive, Nerdie. Or would that be plain old insensitivity?“

    She‘s joking, of course. Her face tells him as much. Wrinkles around the eyes = joke. Eyes bulging under heightened brow = anger alert, last chance to avert row. Facial expression consistency, that’s one of the many good things, about companion robots. No ambiguity, none of the messy diversity displayed by conventional humans. He’s still intrigued by her reaction, has to ask:

    „What is wrong with transparency, chérie? My app will be telling them what‘s going on. That‘s always good to know, isn’t it? Aren’t we all longing for more information, about our circumstances, to feel in control and stuff, to quote a certain expert?“

    He’s proud. Remembering that last bit of psychology, that’s very much unlike his former, socially oblivious self. It was an excellent idea, to integrate a social intelligence unit into her capabilities. Sometimes, this leads to boring lectures, sure. But some of the knowledge she forces onto him is valuable, does actually help him understand what’s going on.

    She’s laughing now, and shaking her head. Looks cool, with her long braids.

    That‘s another upgrade he doesn’t regret. The standard model comes with short, no nonsense hair, and a very basic wardrobe. Three days in, he had had enough of being reminded of his bad old school uniform days. He bought her a set of six sexy wigs, and a closet full of 2030 style velvety dresses in bright colors. An excellent idea. Looking at her now cheers him up, even if she lectures him about stuff he’s fine not caring about. And here it comes, her next lecture:

    „Well done, Nerdie, well remembered, you‘re such an excellent pupil. Yes, people often do like to know stuff. Yes, understanding makes them feel like being in control. But, Nerdie Sweetie, often is not always. Let’s look at this together, shall we, to find out why your perfectly well intentioned app will be perfectly unwelcome in the real world…“

    He does love being praised. If only her tone was slightly less condescending. Mental note to have another go at the advanced settings manual, to find out if there‘s a way to fine tune her advice mode. All fine and good, to learn, but preferably without being made to feel like an idiot.

    „… If I‘m not mistaken, your reasoning went like this: ‚Patients in a private hospital room can‘t see how many other patients there are on the ward, or what the nurses are doing. Not seeing any action makes them assume there isn‘t any, which creates resentment. Fit the nurses with tags, create a map of the ward, show how the nurses are rushing around, ambiance improved…‘“

    He can‘t help nod his agreement, strongly. Hearing her spell out his app concept makes it sounds even more convincing than his own, less structured musings. This is one hell of a good idea, and should be worth a nice pile of cash. He can practically feel the efficiency improvements. How the patients with less than urgent needs will wait for a nurse to be nearby, to call her. This alone should save one FTE* per year per ward easy. His idea is a winner!

    „… Will readily admit this sounds promising, at first hear. Patients, and perhaps even the wider general public, like everybody in the area who funds the hospital through their taxes, and is bored enough to feel like watching, would be able to see how hard and fast the nurses are working. No more prejudices, about endless coffee breaks in staff rooms, no more public sector bashing…“

    That’s it, exactly, that‘s how he envisages this to work. It‘s such a splendid idea.

    „…  Nerdie Sweetie, would you please stop nodding? I‘m starting to worry about your neck. Thank you! Yes, you came up with a pleasant little fairy tale. Ward transparency app, as entertaining as an ant farm, and a much bigger thrill to watch. Nurse and doctor dots, different colors, of course, rushing around the map, from patient to patient. The patients in their beds, why not have them fade, each time they ring the bell, until they get cared for? 24/7 action, for free. The nurses are guaranteed to like the idea, no problem getting them to accept those tags.

    We agreed on no nodding, Nerdie Sweetie, need I remind you? Thank you!

    Now to the interesting part: Why is this app never going to happen? Not because of staff resistance. Their unions might object, because that’s what they’re there for, it’s their role, but the overwhelming majority of the actual staff would love to prove they’re worth their wages, and more.

    And that’s our first problem, Nerdie Sweetie. If your app proves, and beyond reasonable doubt, that hospital staff work hard, how the hell are we supposed to keep paying them so badly, without feeling awkward? No good feelings that way. Especially for extremely well paid office dwellers who’d never hesitate to perform some holiday research at the desk because they’re convinced everybody else is having their moment of on the job slacking, too.

    But it gets worse, Nerdie Sweetie, much worse.

    How the hell are patients going to survive all the stress and hardship that comes with a disease that needs to be treated in a hospital, if they can’t rage about lazy staff?

    Their anger about the bad luck that got them there needs to go somewhere. You need something, to complain about, to visiting relatives, and for the benefit of your own aggrieved self.

    Fuming about incompetence is still a possibility, if you take away the laziness presumption, but that way lies an awful lot of mental hazard. If incompetence, you might get worse, and even die. Who‘d want to think about that? Exactly, zero takers. Laziness, on the other hand, will cause some suffering that can be moaned about, but mostly none of the lethal kind…“

    She has got a point. Again. Her tone needs adjustement, definitely, he has to find and recalibrate those settings. But what she says sounds very much like the lack of rationality that will forever confuse him, and complicate his dealings with fellow conventional humans.

    They often don’t want to know.

    He’s one of them, but sometimes he feels closer to her.

    He could ask her how come, but somehow he’s rather not know…

    *FTE Definition: The Full Time Equivalent is a measure that allows the company to calculate the equivalent number of full-time employees it would have on a given period of time

  • Health SCare

    A syringe? They are proposing to use this big fat monster of a syringe, on him? Adam is upset.

    It says 5 ml on the ampoule, but this is one big blob of yellow stuff. Big and yuck. The whitecoat is pulling it into the syringe, slowly, slowly, as if to emphasize the danger. He proceeds by means of a needle big enough to moonlight as plumbing.

    Never is this a mere 5 ml. 50 ml, it should definitely say 50 ml on this ampoule. Typos everywhere, ever since the invention of the autocorrect. Bloody so called fucking progress…

    Adams injured left foot suddenly aches less. It’s sure to recover just fine on its own.

    No need to punch a hole into the poor body part, and certainly not by means if this enormous needle. Pumping in this big blob would make the foot hurt more. There must be another way.

    Waking up from anesthesia only to endure agony, Adam has been there, two years ago. 

    It took the stupid autonomous coffin of an ambubot eight minutes to find Adam, two to diagnose his ankle as sufficiently damaged to require medical attention and fit him with a self adjusting mold, and another fifty to trundle across the city. The dumb device refused to roll at more than the legal twenty kilometers per hour, for supposed bloody lack of a fucking emergency.

    When they finally reached the medpoint, a white coat confirmed ankle damage. Adam was told to breath from a mask, and went blank. He woke up with a headache to get told his ankle had been fixed. Except it wasn’t, hurting in totally new ways instead. For two more hours. And no running, for two days. He was barely able to walk home at his usual pace.

    Health care, they call this mess. Well chosen term. Works fine for the healthy.

    Adam wonders where they‘re hiding the mask, and the tank with the anaesthetic.

    With all the greens growing all over the place, fighting for the dim light from one solar paneled window and  four blue bulbs, it‘s hard to tell where the storage cabinets are.

    Nice hydroponics, though. Latest fashion, well implemented, makes for growth at jungle speed. 

    Some of the protomatoes should have been harvested two days ago. Judging by the sweetness of their smell, they‘ll have to go ketchup. The neoplantain and ultrachilli are overdue, too. Never would they reach that advanced stage of ripeness in Adams more humble office.

    Whitecoats, such a spoilt profession. Paid a fortune to hurt people, the lucky bloody bastards. And first in every queue, be it for potable water, energy or food and supplements. ‘They exercise a vital profession’, goes the legend. As if there was magic in handling a yellow blob.

    Funny, how the three cocannabis bushes are picked clean, just like everywhere else. There’s a human inside the white coat after all, and it shares some cravings with proper folks.

    Thinking about longing switches Adams mind back to his quest to locate the drawer with the mask. The question is gaining in urgency, fast.

    The ampoule is empty, except for some yellow smears hinting at a sticky consistency of its former content. The syringe is full. Adam has to steady himself to face its approach, about as nice an experience as looking down the barrel of a pump gun.

    Having him see the syringe that close up is causing unnecessary trauma. They could and should already have put him under at this stage, to spare him additional harm.

    Adam doesn’t get so say as much. The whitecoat grabs his damaged foot and goes:

    „Come on, citizen Adam, no need to panic. Just take a deep breath, look at my wonderful vitacranberry bush, hold on tight, and I’ll be done in a second. It‘s actually more like thirty seconds, to stick to therapeutical transparency rules, but you‘ll live and walk.“

    Adam is lost for words. This is supposed to be a civilized era, the age of bio and balance, in all realms of life. And this whitecoat is threatening to subject him to a massive intervention, without anaesthesia? Seriously? And if yes, what next? Driving around in cars belching toxic fumes? Smattering the world with radioactive particles? Handing every citizen a mocom, to make sure even the last bleeding idiot finds a riot to join? Back to Barbaria, anyone?

    Adam would love to argue his case, but his tongue got stuck to his palate.

    There‘s nothing he can do, about the assailant now taking aim with his lance of a needle. Adam should kick, jump and run, before it’s too late. But he stays put instead. He even stares down a particularly fat purple vitacranberry, just as he was told to.

    When the needle pierces skin and tendon in one go, right at the most tender spot, Adams heel explodes in the sharpest of pangs. And this is just the beginning.

    Next, he’s hit by a crescendo of ever stronger pain. It‘s no longer sharp, more a fast increasing pressure, as if someone was trying to pump up his heel way beyond its intended size. Every single yellow molecule adds to Adams anguish. His heel is going to explode, any second now, in one huge blast that will rip off his leg and tear apart his groin.

    Clutching to the last remnants of sanity in a mind overwhelmed by physical distress, Adam promises himself never to run a marathon again. If ever he survives. He‘s barely conscious by now. With all his energy going into suffering there‘s none left for breathing.

    „… and here you are, well done. Just stay like this for ten more minutes, to let the tendon repair agents do their fabulous biotherapeutical job, and you’ll walk and jog like new. Better luck for your next marathon, citizen Adam, and have a nice day.”

    Adam missed whatever first part of the message over the ringing in his ears. He is far from convinced of his survival, but there is improvement.

    His left heel is no longer getting bigger. It has switched to a new type of more pulsating but overall lesser ache. The strained muscles in his legs and groin that had been contracting in one big effort to brace themselves for the impending explosion dare start to relax.

    It’s all still very tentative, but there is progress. Adam will be sore for days, below navel level, but his survival becomes more probable by the second.

    And no headache. No post anesthesia dizziness. That’s nice.

    Adam would have granted himself half an hour of legs up, one shouldn’t rush recovery from major surgery, but the junior whitecoat with the thick beard, braided in red, and the thin hair, braided in blue, compliments him out after exactly ten minutes.

    The first steps come surprisingly easy. Adam crosses the reception in a proud swing, walking so fast he fails to overhear what his syringe wielder is telling the man at the desk:

    “One more wannabe runner sissy, and I’m done with this, Egon. One more of these whining pains in the posterior, I quit this job, I swear I will. I’ve had it with this lot.

    Healthy to cry for in the first place, running long distance without proper preparation, relying on us to repair any damage they do to themselves, that’s bad enough as such. But if they go crybaby on top, not even appreciating the marvels we perform, with zero understanding of what an incredible feat it is, to be able to cure a ruptured tendon in minutes, by means of one injection, with minimal discomfort… One of these days, I’m going to crack, Egon, I swear I will.

    Can I get one of the hip oldies next, please, please, please? The more ancient, the better.

    They recall how they saw people limping on crutches, for weeks, back in their childhood days. Scroll back fifty years, any failing joint was a big deal. They had some primitive devices, but you don’t want to look at the details, or the odds to reach full functionality. IoN wasn’t even invented back then, no one was dreaming to go one up and Improve on Nature.

    Tell an oldie that hip replacement will take two hours, including recovery, and he’ll cry, with joy. Tell him that he’ll walk and dance better than ever, after years of slow decay, and you risk getting yourself kissed. That’s a bit gross, OK, I do prefer my lovers on the fresher side of ripe. But it’s still a nice positive feedback, and that’s what keeps us going, right?”

  • Bad Timing

    „Phase two, step one, engage.”

    Olu wouldn’t mind Samaria’s voice to be a tad softer.

    He’s all in favour of lady bosses, because diligence, resilience, morale, and whatever else got praised in last years stupid gender awareness training session.

    In Olu’s school days, gender blindness was all the rage. Only as far as curriculumdom was concerned, obviously. Being past reproductive age, the teachers had little trouble pretending to believe there was no difference between the Adams and the Eves. Their charges, Olu’s teenage self included, begged to disagree, always fervently and sometimes physically. Olu knew exactly whom he wanted to get laid with, and gender blindness made about as little sense to him as wasting valuable games time on homework

    A little more than a decade on, science has caught up with Olu’s intuition. Unfortunately, it has also declared the ladies especially apt at management. Studies have been conducted. The gender awareness instructor, a lady, of course, had them track through a landscape of 3D graphs. On talent after talent, the guys were hills next to the ladies mountains. The ratio was only reverted for physical strength, and the ability to tolerate blood alcohol levels. Very important features, but unfortunately not from a business perspective. 

    A little less volume, and a little more melody, that’s nice to have, in a voice.

    Olu selects the phase two icon on his screen.

    He’s left handed and of course wears his control glove on that hand, anything else would feel weird. He fondly recalls how his late boss Kevin, who was right handed, switched glove sides when he arrived, to make sure his instruction would proceed as smoothly as it did. A nice gesture, from a superior, to welcome a new teammate.

    Having completed the demanded action, Olu confirms:

    “Phase two, step one, engaged.”

    And Samaria to snap back, much faster and more robustly than necessary:

    “Phase two, step two, engage!”

    Olu resents. This is not the fire brigade, they’re not about to perform news type heroics. There’s no life-or-death countdown, no nuke ticking in the basement.

    They’re on board an Arctic surfer, harvesting vintage ice, one thousand cubic meters at a time. If they drop one of these gigantic ice cubes, and go on to miss their quota, nothing happens. If they vanished now, some filthy rich snobs would have to make do with good old desal for drinking and oral hygiene, like everybody else. Olu is no union man, but a catastrophe this isn’t, that much he knows.

    Olu would love to tell Samaria to stop fuzzing.

    He won’t, because in this shithole of a workplace every single word uttered is being recorded. Someone might listen in right now, ‘for quality purposes’, as in surveillance. Quality of workforce life is not the target management is going for, obviously.

    Samaria would resent being criticized in public, and take revenge. By means of the shift schedule, obviously. Tougher blokes than Olu have been turned into weeping wrecks by one harvesting season of split standby shifts. You have to keep yourself available 20/7 to take over in a maximum of five minutes, and get paid a third of a minumum wage for a maximum of ten hours per day for the standby time. Stress plus financial ruin. Terrifying.

    The higher ups can watch, too.

    Most of the time, it’s an artificial intelligence scanning the video feed for early signs of upcoming trouble. It’s sure to have noticed how hard Olu has been staring at this screen, for the last two days. Never would an AI miss signs of anger. Unlike Samaria.

    If only the bitch was a little more like Kevin. He would have noticed at once, when Olu stopped smiling. Never would Kevin have dared not to ask, about issues. And he was always ready to remedy, never hesitating to choose his own discomfort.

    With Samaria, Olu is exhausting his grump muscles to no effect.

    Poor Kevin. He was so stressed by his minority status, always on the lookout for any signs of anyone resenting his presence, always ready to apologize. A bit tedious, his very Caucasian servility, but still nice to have around.

    Mostly nice. There can be too much of a good thing.

    Olu recalls how Kevin’s apologies for fetching the wrong protein bar from the canteen culminated in a mea culpa for colonial crimes. Yes, there’s a lot of history, behind something as simple as a coconut flavor, and it’s full of white-on-black crimes. But you don’t want to hear about the more gory aspects of slavery while eating. 

    Kevin never tired of telling anyone he met, about how sorry he felt, for all the misdeeds Caucasians committed, until well into the 21st century. He was most upset about them having enjoyed centuries of undeserved privileges, and forever grateful for his fine job.

    “Being allowed to harvest ice, instead of slaving away in often deadly flood or fire combat, such luck, no idea how I got here,” Kevin used to say, slipping on his own slime.

    Kevin’s presumed luck turned out the be deadly after all.

    Olu was glad never to have added to Kevin’s pressure, unlike some of the colleagues. Otherwise, that fatal heart attack could have felt like his fault. A full Karoshi death, right here, on the chair bloody Samaria is squatting now. Less gruesome than a fire fighter death, but still pretty bad, as far as the result concerned. Death by apology. Unlike some people.

    Olu hopes the monitoring AI can’t read his mind too well. He’s thinking a combination of Samaria and a fire fighter accident he saw on TV, and he’s well aware that’s not the kind of thought one is supposed to harbor, in a team context.

    “Phase two, step two, engage, now!”

    Samaria’s voice is so over the top, painful to listen to. Despite the discomfort, Olu struggles to refrain from grinning. Adding even one word, that’s against protocol. The bitch is at fault now. No need to look up from his screen to know her head will be in process of going steam cooker. When she’s angry, her eyes bulge forward, like ready to plop out.

    Taking care to add a little pause after every word, Olu goes:

    “Phase two, step two, engaged.”

    He’s sticking to protocol, come what may. Takes more than a nuisance of a shrill boss to impress him. Samaria dared not grant him a switch of shifts. He won’t be watching the Dota 5 Champions League final this year. A never no way. Ever since he played his first game, he never missed any major encounter, never mind a Champions League final. 

    A crime to beat all crimes has been committed, and Samaria will pay for it.