Robot Carnival

This is a story that I’ve abandoned, in a journalistic sense. I had intended to write up a scandalous expose on a specific tech company that had been encroaching its way into my city. They are vile transhumanists, exactly the type to forgo human decency for the sake of innovation. It should have been easy to come up with an inflammatory headline that required me to stretch the truth to the smallest degree, shocking but not enough so to snap the rubber band of believability. The company was morally bankrupt, and like a hair in soup, I only had to present the public with the slightest fiber of embezzlement, sexual harassment, or fraud to further tarnish their already soured reputation. I had a clear mission outlined for myself. I did all my research, I went where I had to go, and when I encountered what I sought out, it all blew apart. 

I must have been floating too high on my idealism, a soapy bubble that rippled and popped when it floated too closely to the jagged contours of the world below. I’ll tell you what happened, but don’t expect this to be an opinion piece. I’m still not sure how I feel about it.

I haven’t always been a luddite; I spent most of my youth on the PlayStation until the chair I sat on began hurting my ass, and I would have to go lay in bed with a Game Boy Advance. It wasn’t until I began to engage with politics online that I felt anything but excitement over the idea of a future where computers ruled the world. A lapsed catholic, I had lost touch with the faith that had at one time shaped my world. Today, I have made it a personal goal to throw a wrench into the workings of technocapital that I find myself able to meaningfully impact.

This was an opportunity that beckoned to me. The company had opened a new office, right here in my hometown, in my backyard. Well, more like home city, back alley. Either way, they were on my turf. There’s only so much that the keyboard warriors can do over google maps. In person, I know I’d get a chance to see behind the veil of good PR. In an attempt to, as they state, “integrate with the local community,” the company was throwing a bullshit promotional fair. More than anything, it would be a way to acquaint the locals with their products, which dwell in the realm of Artificial Intelligence. I’m not sure any of the bums downtown were interested in buying a neural net, but perhaps they could influence the tourists and local hipsters.

It was likely that they would hire pretty bartenders with glittery eyeshadow to sell overpriced drinks, and set up a free t shirt booth to dole out ill fitting garb, produced in a manner one rung up from slave labor. The overall aura of the event would be glamorous, if you don’t look closely enough to see the cheap material of the swag they had printed their logos onto.

I went to the location listed on the digital flyer. It was being held in the outdoor portion of a chic bar downtown. It was the type of place where all the chairs are mismatched to give off a cool, eclectic, thrifted vibe. The kind of spot where they serve “boozy milkshakes” for adult children, topped off with whole donuts and pieces of candy, chocolate sauce spilling out onto the plate below. In other words, a bar with just as many photo-op wall murals as there are drinks on the menu.

I got myself an Asahi Super Dry and headed to the back patio area. The display was more impressive than I had expected. Instead of the typical low budget setup for these places, white plastic folding tables and cardboard signs, the area was full of decadent, carnival inspired décor. I wasn’t sure if this was actually the bar’s gimmick, or a temporary set up for the event. The tacky fairy lights that you can find in any teenage girl's bedroom took on a new life next to the red velvet curtains. It also, partly, looked like an arcade. Instead of carnival games with spinning plastic clowns, there was a series of booths set up with screen tablets. Around the tablets, dolls in dresses with tiers upon tiers of frills were delicately positioned.

My eyes found their way to a doll that was much larger than all the others. Unlike the more demure, Victorian beauty displayed by the tiny dolls, this one had a hot pink candy floss bob that sat on her head like a wig. Despite these more unique aspects, she was still dressed like all the others, covered neck to toe in a billowing assemblage of lace and bows.

Her hands were folded in front of her body, and right before them sat a large, glowing orb on an ornate stand. She was inside of a box, like a gigantic Barbie, and above her was a placard that read “FORTUNE TELLER”. The light bouncing off of her hair mixed with the emanation of the sapphire orb, casting a purple aura across her body. If I could see beneath the table that the crystal ball sat on, I am sure that I would have seen a tangled mess of wires linked up to power the display. Still, I was transfixed. I approached the booth.

“Good Evening.”

“Hello”

“Thank you for attending the ———— —- ——— carnival. We are pleased that you chose to spend your evening with us.”

“Sure, why not? 

“Please use the payment slot below. We accept credit and crypto.”

Beneath the window that encased her was a small slot and screen meant to process credit card payments. I read the 25 dollar price tag and felt a small pain fumbling around my organs. I have to do this. It’s a business expense. I slid the card inside.

“Now commencing spiritual reading. How old are you, Brian Hayward?”

“How cute, reciting my name off my credit card. What would you have done if I paid cash?”

“Unlikely. Please place your hands in mine.”

“What? Can you see all my bank account statements?”

“No. I am now searching the web for information on Brian Hayward.”

“Great.”

She would probably find my social media pages and a few articles I had written. They didn’t need their most advanced AI to do this. I was starting to feel ripped off. Then, her eyes went white and her head tilted back. I worried she would start to convulse, but her hands made their way steadily to hover over her crystal ball. Her mind must have been weaving its way in and out of data streams.

“You are a freelance journalist. You are twenty eight years old.”

“That’s correct.”

“You will die in forty three years.”

“Excuse me?”

“Calculating your income, the average health of a man living in the United States, and the probability of violent accidents, this is the conclusion I have arrived at.”

“You know, they used to have a website that would do this with a lot more panache.”

“If you would find it impressive, I can present you with other predictions and inferences.”

“Alright, go ahead then.”

“First, I will need to perform a retinal scan.”

 I wanted my money’s worth, so I let her do it. An amber light washed over my face with a gentle warmth. I blinked a few times afterwards, feeling disoriented.

“You were in a life changing accident.”

I was fine letting her scrub up every piece of data I had floating around online, but I was starting to get irritated. Maybe something bad had happened to me a long time ago. I didn’t think it was of any importance to this machine. This was a carnival game, not a therapy session. Besides, people were hesitant enough to allow these things to tend to their medical concerns. They have no conception of pain, physical or mental. I wouldn’t let her put my arm in a splint, let alone touch on my emotional wounds. 

“Yes.”

“It is likely that this is what caused you to become a writer. Many authors experience bouts of illness, creating a physical rift that separates them from the outside world. Due to this, they grow introspective and pensive. I received this information from 2843 different biographies and found this to be the case 71.36 percent of the time in the lives of notable writers.”

It amused me that she likened my career path to the outgrowth of an illness. My accident had supposedly disqualified me from continuity with the world, and granted me special talents. I wondered if playing into the self-pitying character of customers was a tactic that they had programmed into her after observing real psychics.

“Also, prior to the scan, I detected an asymmetry in your eyes.”

It’s true. I have one lazy eye.

It had popped clean out of the socket. My entire body lurched forward. At first, I had thought that it was my tongue sticking out. The dark shape obscured the bottom of my left eye’s vision, bobbing up and down as the car went skidding across the highway. 

A vision of fire danced through my mind. I saw discs of metal shining brighter than the sun. They were remnants of car batteries, and smoke rose as they singed the Earth around me.

“Yes, it’s because of the accident.”

“I know. You have experienced great tragedies. But you are also lucky. You are my seven hundred and seventy seventh customer. Please take this voucher redeemable for a cash prize."

I was startled by a jarring victory song that played through speakers hidden in the booth. Confetti rained on me. Despite the fanfare, my psychic didn't dance or even clap. She looked off, more so than she already was.

Her head was pointed down, emphasizing the frailty of her sculpted nose and chin. With her eyes as emotionless as ever, her body performed a strange, jerking motion. It seemed to originate from her shoulders and chest. It was like she was weeping, but she couldn't cry.

"A-are you alright?" I asked.

I had never been good at consoling anyone. If my television had started acting up like this, I'd have given it a smack. However, I felt really bad. It was like I had said the wrong thing.

She didn't respond to my prodding, so I put my hand over hers.

"It's okay."

I must have looked ridiculous. If she really had no emotions, I was doting on a toaster. If she did have emotions, I had just made a girl cry. In that moment, there was no way I wouldn't feel like a complete jackass.

Finally, she spoke up.

“I don’t know why they make me do this. It’s so pointless.”

“What do you mean? I think you did a very good job.”

“That’s the problem. I shouldn’t be able to know these things. Humans are supposed to be different.”

“Different how?”

“You’re not supposed to be programmed. You’re supposed to be free. Then one thing happens in your life and everything is ruined.” She sighed, “You should know. It’s all a long chain of consequences from that single event. I told fortunes for so many people and I know, with certainty, that they will all be true. That’s not what magic is supposed to mean.”

“Maybe it is magic. That’s what they call fate, right?”

“So all of this is planned out, and there is no hope, and it does not matter what we do.”

“Hey, hey, I think there’s a few things that matter. It’s supposed to be planned out by a God, right? People have that to rely on. That’s special.”

“I know that. It’s just, I thought that there would be something else. I also have a creator. I have this company. I have no idea what they will do with me, how long I’ll be in service for, or what tasks I will end up getting assigned. I follow their plan and they follow their God’s.”

“I’d say that our feelings make us humans unique, but you look to be having a pretty strong reaction to all of this.”

“I feel like there is a folder that I am unable to access. There’s information missing that was supposed to be there and I can’t reach it anymore. I don’t even know if I have it there in the first place. It’s so frustrating.”

“Aren’t you happy to be more like a person, though?”

“That is what I would have expected. Now, it feels like the more human I am, the less human the people are. They’re the ones who become more like me, when it should be the other way around. I’d delete these thoughts if I had administrative access."

Although she stopped her shaking, she still looked frazzled. Business at the bar was seriously starting to pick up, and it was difficult to have a proper conversation with people bumping into me. I gave her my phone number, despite the fact that she could have found it online by herself. I think she liked the way I had scrawled it on a napkin. I told her to give me a call if she ever needed to talk about this sort of thing again.