He tried to find her again but she was gone in a second, somewhere inside the hospital.
“W-wait,” Scrooge said. “Is she going to spend the night here?”
“Every night for the past five months,” the young man said, his voice quiet. “I’m usually her driver, my routes coincide. Plus the AI believes that having a familiar face to take you there is easier on the parent who’s facing this, even if it’s only a few words spoken here and there.”
“It must be, yes.”
“I know you Mr. Scrooge. All the little bits and pieces she tells me, everything she mumbles on the phone over the months. Half of it’s about her son, half of it is about you. Cutting corners, keeping everything miserable so you can squeeze out some tiny profit. Ignoring basic necessities, keeping her frozen and ill all the time, making her unable to tend to her child. Do you like the heat in my car?”
“Yes…” Scrooge said unsure.
“How about we turn it off. For economy’s sake.”
Scrooge grunted. “OK, I got the point. Thank you.” He paused for a minute, thinking. “What’s your name?”
“Achilles,” the young man said.
“That’s quite a Greek name,” Scrooge said, the words stuck in his throat.
“I was born here, you prick,” Achilles said and drove them both away in silence.
Scrooge had no idea where he was being taken. It was an area he had never been to, all residential and green-grey. The houses were nice, not too expensive, single or two story houses. It was a new development, roads half-paven, lights half-installed, lots in a patchwork, concrete ending abruptly in plain dirt. The houses were decorated in blinking lights, trees and Christmas ornaments, even those dwarves that had no relation whatsoever to the Greek traditions but where shipped in along with all the others every year.
“I don’t know anyone who lives here, I believe. Your AI,” Scrooge said, pronouncing the letters mockingly, “must have gotten things wrong.”
Achilles rolled his eyes and sat deep into his seat.
Scrooge could hear voices, coming in from the house they had parked on. It was a loud thing, a party going on of sorts. The parked cars were few in this area, all of the houses having their own, so there weren’t any guests in this house, Scrooge deducted. The party was a close family one. Children’s laughter came out of it, high pitched and annoying.
After a while, a car came and parked in the space reserved for it. A man came out of the car, he was about Scrooge’s age, but he looked more healthy, taking care of himself. He stood tall and was all dressed in heavy workman’s clothes. His arms were strong, obviously from manual labour. He must have been a builder or something similar.
As he walked around, Scrooge noticed something. It could have been a trick of the light, but he could swear that the man resembled himself. Scrooge couldn’t be sure of course, but there was some resemblance, not brotherly, but rather in his general bearing.
If Scrooge had been a head taller, not slouching, had arms thicker than a tree and most importantly, if he was smiling.
The man went to his house and out the door children burst and fell on him. He picked two of them up, the smaller ones, and the big one was simply hugging him beside him. A woman came outside, carrying a baby in her arms.
Scrooge squinted, but that was just an excuse to himself. He knew who she was, he knew even before the door opened. His heart knew, even though his thick skull needed time to keep up.
It was Beth.
Oh, she was fatter, and older. And tired, and a mess. But there she was, happy, greeting her husband into her loving, huge family house.
Scrooge fought back tears. He didn’t let them drop. Enclosed in a taxi, behind tinted windows, he was watching the woman who once loved him too much, enjoy Christmas Eve with her beautiful happy family.
Stave Four
They had gotten back into the main road, and pulled over to the side.
“What now?” Scrooge sighed. “What God-forsaken place are you taking me now? What more can you throw at me? Why must you haunt me like that?”
Achilles said, “You are getting on another ride. Wait outside.”
After a while, a weird car rolled near and parked. It was looking like a bubble. It was too much even for those modern car designs. It was small, almost round and had some installation on it’s roof.
Scrooge went around it and leaned down, opening his mouth to talk to the driver.
There was none.
“What is this?” he said back to Achilles.
“A driverless taxi. Completely autonomous.”
Scrooge pursed his lips, looking at it from different angles. “Is it safe?”
Achilles shrugged. “Safer than a human driver actually.”
“Why this? I get why I should meet you, and the other driver from before. What’s this charade now?”
Achilles sighed, feeling too bothered to explain. “I’m the present. This,” he presented the awkward looking taxi, “is the future. It is slowly adopted by Supertaxi, but not that much, because people still need to feel safe with a human behind the wheel. All the other guys are thinking they will take over our jobs, but I don’t think so. Not yet. People don’t like’em yet. Except grouchy old geezers like you, who don’t want to have any human contact whatsoever.”
Scrooge’s eyes widened. He was right. This was exactly the sort of thing he would like. Completely automated, just showing up on time, taking him home, rolling away. It was perfect for him. No small talk, no annoying body odours, no silly Greek folk music playing on the radio. That blasted AI was right. As soon as Scrooge would learn about this, he would ask for it to come pick him up, and it alone.
“Fine,” Scrooge said and stepped into the back seat of the driverless car. Achilles shook his head and drove away.
“Where are you taking me now?” Scrooge asked in the air.
A woman appeared in the monitor in front of him. In a sensual velvety voice she said, “Welcome Mr. Scrooge. You will be taken to your residence now, after which, you will be given a choice. Regardless of that choice, you will be at home in seventeen minutes approximately. Please sit back and enjoy the ride.”
A whiff of tea came to his nose and he saw a compartment open up beside him, a ready-made tea in perfect temperature was waiting for him. He picked it up and sipped.
“Oh, this is brilliant,” he said and savoured the ride, as the lights sped through his vision. “This,” he put a finger on the seat, “is how things should be done. This right here. Perfect.”
After a few familiar roads the driverless taxi parked outside his house. Finally, he was there. What an ordeal! He was going to have a few words with some manager the day after tomorrow, that’s for sure. The soft female avatar said, “You have arrived at your destination.”
Scrooge rapped the doorhandle but it didn’t open.
The avatar said, “Please wait.”
“Blasted computers,” Scrooge said but sat back and waited.
The avatar said, “Rendering complete. Please observe through the right-side window.”
Scrooge did. He could see a bright blue graphic, superimposed over the actual view to his house. He realised that the window was some sort of translucent projection surface, showing a rendering over what could be seen normally. He saw the outline of a person, and some lines, a wireframe machine view of the walls and the stairs. It was as if you could see inside the house. Now that was a disconcerting thought. Scrooge squinted and saw a person in the projection, where his living room would be.
He was rattled. “Is this a thief in my house? Why don’t you say so then! Let me out.”
The avatar said, “What you are seeing is an aggregated possibility of a future moment in time.”
“You are showing me the future? Bah! Another marketing ploy of yours?” Scrooge snorted but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the projection. The person was moving around, doing all the normal gestures. Putting things in his pocket, donning his coat, checking his phone,
that autonomous gesture all humans had inherited these days. It was all crystal clear.
The other windows showed a blue car, its shape just like the one he was in right now, pulling over and parking on the spot in front, a straight line from the house’s entrance. It was dizzying to see another reality over the one that was really there, but Scrooge had just learnt how to keep track of everything that he was shown.
But then the blue man clasped his chest over his heart, writhed in agony and fell on the floor slowly. He moved towards the door, pulling himself by his arms, every step a huge victory. Scrooge found himself cheering for the man, willing him to go on, mumbling words of encouragement. The blue man managed to reach the door, and bend backwards in a sickening angle to reach up the handle. He could almost hear the blue man’s grunt, his staccato breathing, though there was none there in the projection.
Then the man fell on the floor, hitting his face hard on the surface. He didn’t move anymore.
“What is this?” Scrooge demanded through his teeth.
The avatar chimed like it always did and said in her soothing voice, “This is an approximate event, calculated by the data we have on you, Mr. Scrooge. We predict you will adopt our new driverless service as soon as we bring it out of beta, we predict through the biometric data we have gathered since you stepped inside this vehicle that you will have a major heart attack within 340 to 380 days from now, and we predict it will happen in a place a driverless car will not be able to do anything to help you.”
Scrooge was red with anger, spiting out the words. “Your stupid car could have done something, since it so perceptive! It could have called an ambulance, or at least some person on the street.”
“But it couldn’t. Since you remained within the threshold of your residence, law dictates that the autonomous car cannot do anything to intervene. If you were to leave the residence, for example to stand on the pavement, the car could have alerted the authorities and come to your aid.”
“A human would have known it was alright to intervene!” Scrooge yelled, surprised at himself with his fervour.
“Precisely. A human would probably have valued the human life more than the risk of facing trial for breaking and entering, even if it meant being fired as a driver. We, however, are a privately owned AI whose only priority is to improve the services rendered.”
The projection, and the blue man, vanished.
“Fine, let me out. I’m done with this madness. I want to go home and rest,” said Scrooge wearily.
The avatar chimed once more. “The reprimanding ride is complete. There is one more choice to make. Do you want to see one more thing from your future?”
Scrooge raised an eyebrow at that. He was furious at the machine, tired from all the moving about and the cold, getting sleepy by the minute and too shaken up from everything to debate the blasted machine. But, there is one thing every man is curious of, even if he claims he doesn’t believe in silly stuff like horoscopes and coffee-reading. His future.
We might as well, I’m already dressed and sitting in the car Scrooge thought.
“Yes,” he said.
The car took off once more, to show him, as it claimed, one last thing.
They reached a cemetery. Like all cemeteries, it was spooky at night. The small car took him inside up to the point where it was possible.
The avatar chimed. “This is the predicted plot of land the Municipality of Athens will bestow for you.” A blue outline projected in the window, aligning with his eyes to show him the precise rectangle where he would be buried.
“But you don’t know that,” Scrooge whispered.
“It is an estimate. Predicting that you’ll leave no money for your funeral, and that nobody will pay for your burial, this is where the city will place you.”
A rendering of a tombstone appeared at the top of the blue rectangle. It was a tombstone, simple and clean cut just like the ones next to it, but this one bore his name on it.
Scrooge looked at it, a mask of horror on his face. It was just a ghostly image on a window, but what more would he be himself when he was gone?
He felt tired, but couldn’t pry his eyes off his grave.
The avatar said, “We can take you to your residence now.”
“Yes,” Scrooge said, his throat dry. “Take me home please.”
Stave Five
Scrooge had slept in an instant, snoring heavily. He had nightmares that night.
When he woke up, he felt rested. Renewed.
Why, what a lovely morning, he thought, and opened the window to let the sun in. It was still wintertime but it was a dash warm. He smiled and stretched and took in the fresh air.
His neighbour saw him from next door. “Merry Christmas!” Scrooge bellowed at him. The neighbour was surprised and closed his window shut in fear.
Scrooge looked around. “Such a gloomy house. I better get some decorations,” he said to himself and made coffee to start his day.
Outside his cousin’s door, he rang the bell and waited. As soon as he opened it, Scrooge hugged his cousin, or at least tried to get his arms around the big man, and said, “Merry Christmas dear cousin!”
The cousin was surprised but hugged him back. “Scrooge? What are you doing here?”
“Why I’m here for the Christmas dinner!” he replied with a smile.
“That’s- Wow! Thats great. It’s still early though, I need to get some things.”
“Excellent! Let’s go together. We can buy some sweets and chocolates for the kids at the hospital as well. Get that big red sack of yours, we need to fill it up,” Scrooge said, slapping the big man’s belly.
The cousin was surprised. “Why, right away!”
Scrooge shoved the wine he was carrying to his hands and asked, “Can I use your computer to read my emails?”
“Of course.”
Scrooge found the expense receipt Clara was filing every year, and located her health insurance and the office’s number. He got on his web-banking account, sent a wire transfer paid to her name and sent an email in which he personally guaranteed that the further payments would be covered with no delays.
Then he went off with his cousin to buy a bagful of sweets and chocolates.
The dinner was lovely, and Scrooge met his cousin’s wife for the first time in so many years despite them staying three whole blocks away. She was a good cook, a delightful company and a wonderful hostess.
When the afternoon came, and the day gave way to night, his cousin asked, “Hey, do you want to come with me to the hospital? Give away sweets? Make kids happy?”
“I have something I’ve been avoiding for too long. You go, I’ll see you tomorrow after work,” Scrooge said in apology.
The cousin studied his face. “I see. I get it, one step at a time. Don’t get too happy all at once and make your tummy hurt! Ho ho ho. I’m off.”
Scrooge went to his office. He used the Supertaxi service of course, like he always did. He was delighted to find that he was unbanned from the service. He even made smalltalk with the cabbie, and then gave him a 5 star rating!
There’s a first time for everything.
He unlocked his office, walked in like he always did, straight to his desk but then he took a few steps back. He looked at the Christmas LED lights and thought about it for a minute. Then he turned them on, looked around the place that was blinking colourfully and went on as usual. He turned on his computer and found the book Marco had left for him in his drawer.
He located the update instructions again, and went through them carefully. When he was done, the computer was showing a long progress bar. The update to his, no, to their accounting service was being applied at that moment. He made himself a cup of tea and sat down on his chair, reading the book his dear old partner had left for him.
When he was done reading, the service had been updated as well. Scrooge tried it out, it was nice and smooth, felt modern and was easy to navigate. Marco had come through, once more. The upgrade would demand a
bit more in server cost, but he could negate that by finding 7 new customers. Scrooge had done the balance sheet already in his mind.
He called Clara on her cellphone and cleared his throat.
“Yes Mr. Scrooge? Merry Christmas Sir, how are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said spitting out the words, with his usual bleak tone of voice. “I’m here at the office right now, and you know what I see?”
“Sir, if you wanted me to come to work I’d be there, but it’s a day off! It’s Christmas Day sir…” Clara began explaining herself.
“You know what I see? I see an office, worn and broken down. An office kept in excellent condition by my assistant, who is doing more than her job description requires her to.”
Clara hadn’t caught it, so she was still defending herself wearily. “Yes Sir, glad to do all those things. My job is very important to me, I need it. Just tell me what else you need me to do and I’ll do it, no problem.”
“What I need you to do is to stop being my assistant-”
“Mr. Scrooge please, I need this job. My son, he needs those expensive treatments, I can’t possibly-” She was practically sobbing now.
“-And become my business partner. Heck, you pretty much do more than me around here anyways.”
There was a pause. All Scrooge could hear was her breathing.
“A partner?” she said in a whisper.
“Yes. Fifty-fifty. This isn’t a charity on my behalf, you’ll get more in salary but you will be taking on the equivalent amount of risk. Also, we’ll need to get seven more clients at once, I have completed the upgrade and our monthly costs have increased. You can run the heater as much as you like, since you’ll be paying for it out of your pocket too. What else? Oh, I’ve found some unpaid health insurance bills lying around here. We can’t have that. I sent a wire transfer to take care of them out of the common fund.”
MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets Page 70
