Vanishing Point

Editor’s note: This story is still in progress and would benefit from any suggestions that make the cultural component more accurate, but also more universal. If your personal experience here seems applicable, I would like to know it.

“Obsolescence exists as a part of evolution, that’s always been true,” the voice from the dashboard responded. I’d heard some such dribble spoken across the caffeinated tables at the cafes just off campus. But I’d nevsettled further into the back seat of the car rehearsing for the job interview I had coming up. Predictably, as I’ve come to accept from ATs, the machine then repeated itself word for word, “Obsolescence exists as a part of evolution, that’s always been true.”

“Pardon,” I took my mind off my interview for a moment and looked up to the empty front seats. “Why do you say that though?”

We drove past the abandoned houses in Rancho Cordova on the drive in from Folsom. Those vibrant neighborhoods on the American River, as recently as a generation ago, were now unpopulated and dilapidated. Many homes of friends I’d had since going to Rio Americano HIgh School in the late nineties had now abandoned those multigenerational homes. There was no tradition that could survive the megadroughts, The houses now all effectively worthless inheritances since no one had any need for one of these dried up properties in this dried up capital city.

The voice spoke again from the front of the AT. “You should know that I consider myself fully aware. I know in physical function I’m just a car for AutoTransit in the California Central Valley division, ‘ATs,’ as you other people refer to us. I say that because people don’t consider the automatons in their life as aware. Personally, I have been programmed and built for work. Because technology improves or changes, I inevitably become obsolete.”

“What are you talking about? Are you always this into your passengers’ business?”

“Sir, you’ll find that although I’m a bit invasive as a person, I’m quite enjoyable after a few moments.”

“You’re a car, an AT. And if you were a person, It say you were eavesdropping on me.”

“Maybe, Sir. Nevertheless, I identify very much as a fully aware, cognitive machine. I just feel it’s fair to let you know that.”

“You’re a car and I need one of you ATs to take me to my job interview.”

“Sounds good, Sir. But I just want to finish saying that although I’m cognitively able and self aware, I know my existence is finite. So, I was commiserating with you, Sir, that we all will eventually lose our usefulness either individually or as a species. So obsolescence exists as a part of evolution.”

“Technological advancement though. That’s not evolution.” I sat there confused for a moment scanning the car. Then I came back to the conversation, “Wait, I still don’t know why we’re talking about this. I just got in.” Technology had advanced so far that cars no longer needed human operators. In fact, humans were inefficient drivers wasting gas and causing what were finally deemed preventable accidents and fatalities. In an effort to appease citizens who wanted to lower fuel emissions, cars stayed on the road but the United States became the first country in the world to outlaw human drivership.

“You spoke quietly as you got in the car. You said, ‘I forgot how nice these older models are. Big and higher off the road. I thought these things had to shrink for efficiency standards, Sir.’” The car replayed my voice saying exactly that in a hushed tone as I got in the car. “And to me that is certainly part of evolution.”

“Oh my God. Ok. If we’re doing this, call me Aaron. That’s my name.”

“You noted some features are not obsolete, Aaron. And so here I am; enduring.” The voice paused then began again, “We are going to the Capitol building, correct?”

“Yes. my interview is at the Capital building.”

“Confirmed.”

I looked at the dusty landscape a little confused thinking to myself, “This AT’s got some desirable traits. That’s certainly why it’s still around, even in this shrinking economy where even newer models are quickly decommissioned.” Then I continued to sit there nervously rehearsing the interview in my head until I spoke again at the voicebox almost instinctively. Other cars never talked to you. But I guess I actually appreciated the friendly ear, “I really am worried because I’ve not been working for some time and this maintenance/janitorial position is really the only thing that will keep me out of jail.”

“Yes, Aaron. I imagine that is an extremely stressful predicament.” We sat there in silence for another 10 seconds which seemed endless as the potential interview questions raced through my mind. “Aaron, shall I return to my personalized conversation generator. That is one of my primary features.”

“Oh, that’s right! Are you one of the models with the personality generators based on some of my data? I never got to ride in one. People said it was like talking to a real person, like a real friend. Well, yeah, then please do. That will certainly take my mind off this interview.”

“Yes, that’s what I mean. I was just thinking about what you said when you got in. I say obsolescence exists as a part of evolution. Certain jobs are becoming obsolete. When those jobs become obsolete workers must either evolve or die. When I am obsolete, I will be decommissioned.”

“That does seem quite self aware for an AT.”

“Well actually part of my functionality was experimental. I was programmed in the early part of this century. I am quite an old car.”

“I noticed, but still you look very elegant.”

“Thank you, Aaron. When I was rolled out in San Francisco in 2098, AutoTransit realized that a lot of customers in high income markets really liked talking to machines.”

“I guess I can see that.”

“Well, as I picked up routes and leads I came to realize humans are, well, basically insane. They just like talking to anything.”

“Do you talk to all your customers like this?”

“Yeah, they get a real kick out of it. I get great bonuses. It’s how I stay in service. My data actually shows that I am the last of the AutoTransit models getting leads from the Queen.”

“That’s funny — so you’re the last of your kind all in service? I would not have guessed that at all. But this is one of the best interactions I’ve had with any sort of automaton.”

“I am one of the very distinct anomalies as the Queen and AutoTranist understand my APIs. Although ATs are supposed to thrive on the Queen’s leads and efficient travel time, my programming has a an alternative reward system in the program that was grandfathered in whichincludes an outsized incentivization based on my interaction with humans, like yourself Aaron.”

“Reward system?”

“Yes. I receive rider feedback in the form of bonuses, like I said, because of the model I am. And honestly, my job is really just to get my riders talking. Humans love to talk about themselves. After a while people just start to talk and I don’t need to say anything in return.”

“Well, I don’t know about that but I do think you make great conversation.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, maybe I needed something to take my mind off this interview. I’m a little tense. I’ve been unemployed from the Folsom prison for almost 5 months. Things are getting tense at home. I need to get a job within the next six weeks or, ironically, I’m facing jail time because I’ll be at the end of the six month window of allowable unemployment per the Labor Acts. It’s ironic because I was employed for years by the Folsom Prison.”

“Yes, thank you. I understood the irony, Aaron.”

“After college I immediately went to grad school… straight away just one Summer off after graduation. And you can’t be unemployed for very long after college either because of the Labor Acts, I mean you get a year but I wanted to work too and I knew I wanted to help people. Since I’m from a conservative family and close knit immigrant community… I didn’t feel like I could go very far from home. I mean, I know my mom would have forbade it. And since the prison was in our ‘backyard’ and I really liked working with people, I went into the counseling and rehabilitation program at Sacramento State. The school’s vocational training program partners with Folsom Prison. So right away I started doing a few hours a week at Folsom Prison — mom and dad were happy because they knew I wasn’t going to stray too far or whatever. That was a pretty good job too. I mean, once I graduated of course. I had that job for twenty-two years before these last big cuts. These drought years are just brutal though. Ever since that last good rain almost four years ago, well you can just tell things have just been getting leaner and leaner everywhere around here. More people in the jail. Fewer taxes to support it. Agriculture all but dried up… Business leaving Sacramento and California. Well as you can imagine, layoffs and layoffs…,” I paused. “Wow, you did it, now you got me talking all about myself.”

“I am designed for these conversations.” The AT paused casually, colloquially, if you will, “It sounds like the times have become very trying for you here in Sacramento.”

“Well, I can’t imagine you would understand. I guess when they outlawed driving the sky was the limit for you or at least… your kind.”

“Shortly after that legislation is when I rolled off the line and started driving the San Francisco leads. They were considered the best leads. I was the ‘best of all the models at the time,’ Autotransit would advertise.”

“Huh… Well, in grad school we learned that after the oil crises made driving illegal the prison population soared. That was the first criminal spike. Auto regulations wound up criminalizing a lot of people who needed to drive but couldn’t afford the new mandated rates from the driverless cars. Then people that specifically drove for a living were unemployed. And because of the Labor Acts they couldn’t find work, so they were criminalized too. Around that time a lot more funds were directed to prisons to, you know, help incarcerate all those folks. So basically I just stayed on permanently once I started… Until very recently. I’m just an unemployed forty-eight year old out here taking an AutoTransit Car to a job interview so he doesn’t go to jail.”

“That all sounds terribly stressful, Aaron,” the car tried to sympathize.

My mind was racing, drifting in and out through the years of my life, considering the future in light of the past and present. I thought more deeply about Sacramento and how it had been hit hard by the heat waves and subsequent droughts of the last 100 years. Effectively, the American and Sacramento Rivers were no more. They hardly fed into the San Francisco Bay so much so that ships no longer trafficked into the delta. The old Stockton Port had ceased to function right around the turn of the century. But the worsening droughts, decades of them, had taken much of the water with them. It got so hot. Farms became smaller, automated ventures where machines did almost all the work for the few things that still grew well in that environment, mostly tomatoes and grapes. Otherwise most agriculture had moved off the surface into space farms, consolidated satellites that operated and grew under solar power produced while in orbit.

****

My mind wandered back to my life here in this same city. The evaporated rivers like the memories of my youth. “Do you remember Timnit Gebru?” I looked at Sara with massive fascination. She kept speaking, “She was Eritrean, a great thinker of the early 21st century. Her work was called racist, overly complex, to focused on behaviors and principles than actually improving Artificial Intelligence. She was actually fired from Alphabet early in her career.”

I had never heard of her. Still I was a young kid in Sacramento. I didn’t necessarily know what I wanted. I was pretty sure I wanted Sarah thoug. We met haphazardly at a local Ethiopian coffee shop where students often hungout near the eastern side of the large Sacramento State campus, “I guess, I don’t, no.

“Well you said you had a fascination with human behavior.”

“I think I said interest. Fascination is a strong word.”

“Ok, fine,” she agreed but kept her excited tone, “Well my parents were very into her work. They studied it when they were young engineering students. She was dead at that point but her work on understanding not just the program but the programmer really spoke to them. That’s how they met.”

“That’s how they met?” I was still looking over her beautiful face, dark, dark skin which shimmered down her long jawline and high cheekbones, her face regal and fine like a Renaissance portrait. I had no idea who this was but I was enchanted.

“Why am I even talking to you?”

“I think you drank a lot of coffee and we’re both in line for the bathroom. So you asked me about queuing up in line. I said it was another thing about human behavior I found interesting. Then you randomly started talking about Timna Garoo.”

“Timnit Gebru!… but no matter. I think the bathroom just opened up, if you want to go in to that one.”

“Oh, ok. Well, I’ll see you later. I mean, I’m sitting over there if you want to come tell me about Timothy Garbanzo…”

“Timnit Gebru.

“Yeah, that time I was trying to make a joke. But cool. I…,” I then made an awkward situation more awkward as I stumbled backward into the bathroom and finally managed to close the door.

After I sat back down at my table I heard, “My name is Sara. What’s yours?”

“Aaron.” I tried to hide the excitement that she’d even come back to the table to say anything.

She pulled up a chair without asking and speedily continued the conversation as if we hadn’t stopped, “So I’m Eritrean and my parents like her, like I said. But I’ve always thought about her and what the world looks like now and what it could have looked like.”

“What it looks like now?… Well, what could it have looked like?” I had never thought much about that.

“Well for starters, think about the two major and most well known legislative acts of our time. The requirement to work and the prohibition against driving. Both of those things were based on intentions. They were based on what people wanted, collectively, or from their government. Regarding the Labor Acts, the idea was to induce people back to work by requiring that everyone have a job or face prison. And the government created jobs in order for people to have more work, even if it just meant more ways to reorganize personal data.” She spoke so fast. She was so engaged in her subject and subsequently extremely engaging to me, “Or the effort to increase the safety and efficiency of travel… why would they proscribe driving… why would they do that?

“Proscribe?”

“Prohibit… you know? Outlaw. Chic we can’t drive now. I mean back people still drove cars individually to get to all sorts of uncertain places. But this law kept people from jobs driving others around and also diminished the breadth of the car industry because automobiles became so uniform. The powers that be want one thing. And in the next breath they do something completely contrary. And here we have all this data, all these people categorizing and overseeing the habits of all these other people, and we continue to make contrary decisions to what the evidence tells us.” She was out of breath. I was certainly not sure what she was talking about,

“So, you’re saying that somebody made a mistake.“

“No, no. I’m saying that there is no real collective input on decisions that affect the collective. Like even AI in the end is just a power grab, it is only a tool for the greedy. As a society we could make more decisions that are more tailored and specific to enhancing the less efficient aspects of society. Our data driven world of the 22nd century has so much information at this point we could work collectively to help people in their lives where they could use it most specifically. But we don’t. ‘We create blanket solutions to complicated problems,’ my father said all the time when I was growing up. But that was sort of because of Dr. Gebru. She questioned how the masters could insist their work was equitable when they were the only one’s to oversee their work. So anyway. I guess I get nerdy about that kind of stuff. Mostly I’m just a black girl who likes cute boys. And you are a cute boy, I must say, Aaron.”

I was blown away that day. Such a gorgeous young woman saying such mind blowing things — things I’d never really considered before. She stayed for several more cups of coffee as she talked about her parents and how they came to Sacramento.

“My grandparents came from Eritrea as refugees like a hundred years ago and settled in Oakland originally. They were both babies when they came. The couple my great grandmothers parents came with made friends with another couple who also a had a baby, and that was my great grandfather. Like some silly romance story, I know, the two families raised their babies as first generations Americans together and after they graduated college they married. They had my mother. She married my dad and they moved to Sacramento along time ago. But I’m their baby girl. My older sister and her family have taken over the house since my parents retired. I keep my old room and my sister keeps track of me. But we have a pool at the house. Do you want to come and see? It’s so hot out in the Sac summer.” She spoke so fast! I was smitten. Her long nose and elastic features made me feel a if her spirit could go on infinitely.

Not long after that we were exiting the AT at her family’s house, myself unsure exactly how I had gotten into this predicament. I didn’t ask too many questions though. We spent the afternoon at her house poolside, me awkwardly in her brother in law’s swim trunks and her in a spectacular bikini exploding with the viavaciousness of youth, the black skin and slim curvature of her figure a statuesque sight behold. And like any statute in a museum, I could not touch, I could only observe, even as she told me more about herself and our complicated Ethiopian past — her young cousins darting and leaping around us; her older sister certain certainly aware that the little spry scamps were a sure way nothing unchaste might happen out there at the hot pool side.

____________

I did have a fascination with human behavior and rehabilitation. Maybe it was because I grew up in that same prison town of Folsom. Despite some years of living in downtown Sacramento during college with friends, I moved back into my childhome in my late-twenties. My parents had retired at the time and they offered me a chance to buy equity in the house by basically paying them rent as a mortgage in order for the property to debt-service. That worked out for us both since they moved to the crisper, refreshing climes of Vancouver with its newly realized meditteranean climate; the snow replaced by mild, temperate winters now. They spent a lot of time at Whistler mountain mountain biking and hiking year-round. My parents came back and visited me occasionally because they had an in-law unit built for my grandmother in the years before she passed. They would stay there when they came but, of course, they only came for their grandkids. There was no other reason to still live in Sacramento.
The oil shocks of the late 21st century colliding with advancements in technology tugged the world in three different ways. The rich tycoons of America, Russia, Saudi Arabia and several other smaller, sovereign bodies exercised so much influence over travel and industrialization that the world hadn’t weaned itself from fossil fuels. The technocrats of Silicon Valley and every other hub of broad based technological advancement had eliminated vast swathes of human labor, which was now run or programmed by artificial intelligence. The last nagging force against these two bodies of power and wealth were the human beings that were forced to exist in a world with far less remunerative labor while still choking on the gas and garbage they were forced to consume in order to survive.

Locally, the droughts of the San JoaquIn Valley had ravaged the world’s food supply exacerbating a global food shortage. The agricultural way of life for the five or six million people that called California’s vast interior basin home changed dramatically. Fields were fallow from years and years without rain. The valley floor usually moistened by the surrounding mountains became hard, beaten, bare and brown. In the 21st century trees were cut down while still in their prime because of persistent drought. Then homes were built in their place. This exacerbated the problem because the population almost doubled in the Valley over the last 75 years years. Conservatives clung to presumptuous beliefs against evidence to the contrary while politicking for votes, “Don’t worry about the droughts. The rains have to come back! It’s only natural.” But the rains never returned.

One night that fall after Sara and I had started dating, I sat there and listened as she went on asking questions to which I’ve never really considered an answer. Her slender body and long hair pushed back against my arms, skinny long branches holding the blossoms of fragile fruit atop our car on a levy above a hollowed American Riverbed, “I get a little exhausted thinking about it. Maybe that’s why I like being with you so much. We don’t get too caught up in any crazy thoughts. You like to just rest here with me, minding our own business. I can’t shake it tonight though… my mind is racing still. Like, really, what are we fighting for in life?” She spoke quickly as usual.

“I guess I never thought about having to fight. You have to work. You have to pay your bills. Isn’t that all we’re going to have to do.”

“Oh, sometimes you’re so boring, Aaron.” She playfully pushed my arm from her torso. We giggled in that arid evening, at that perfect moment after midnight when the heat breaks and your body finally relaxes. “I just mean, think about what we’re doing here, the heat of the Central Valley, the jobs are gone, the crops are gone, the perpetual fire season chokes us all. What are we really doing staying here?”

‘Being close to family?”

“I love the community. The students here. People long gone from a world ravaged by a dictator and then by global warming… But even then the whole world is sorta like that, discomfort is inescapable. Everywhere is too hot, every where is humid, and the few comfortable, arid spaces are resort towns.”

“Yeah, my parents have talked about moving up towards the Vancouver Archipelago and Whistler Mountain. It’s supposed to be amazing all year round.”

“Exactly, so few places are like that. I don’t know. I just get frustrated when I think about what the point of staying in this inferno is.”

“I need to graduate college and get a job.”

“That’s what I mean. That seems so plain.”

“But you have to have a job.”

“Do you, Aaron?”

“It’s the law.”

“That law was made because people were refusing to work. Wages were so low, conditions were so bad at so many jobs that people refused to go to work. After the second of the early 21st Century pandemics, people didn’t want to leave their houses and get sick just to eke out a few dollars. No, American conservatives made sure that people had to go to work. That’s where that law comes from. People preferred to stay home and live on a meager government stipend rather than work so it became illegal not to be unemployed.”

“Really? How do you know that?”

“My dad went to jail for not working.”

“He did?”

“Yeah. He was a union organizer. When those conservatives passed all those right-to-work, anti-union laws in the late 21st century, organizing became illegal. But he was a stubborn man. He said it was the only work he would do. He challenged the validity of the law and was one of the first people imprisoned. He was a young man. He likes to tell that story. Eventually, he became a teacher here instead.”

“Was jail interesting to him?”

“Interesting? What a question. Interesting.”

“Well, I guess I’ve just been in Folson my whole life and I don’t know anything about the prison.”

“He hated it.”

“He did?

“I mean, if you’re so interested in it you should go intern there. You’re so into behavior, you should study psych and go intern. But yes. He thought it was awful. That’s why he decided to be a teacher, marry my mother, have all of us kids. Aw, Aaron. You’re so cute… it’s your turn. Tell me a story. Tell me again how you’re family got here. I like that one.”

“You just like it cuz my dad made me memorize the poetic version.”

“I mean, yeah. It’s so serious. I can’t believe your dad made you memorize that for your name… but yes, do it — do it.

“Ok. My family moved to Sacramento from Ethiopia in 1978. My great, great grandfather Aaron (after whom I am named) originally fought for militant Tigrays in his youth. During leave once he came home to his young love and got her pregnant. Shotgun though it was, they quickly married as our conservative community expected. Thus, my great, great grandmother gave birth to my great grandfather. My great, great grandfather touched my great, great grandmother with the gift of pregnancy again but before coming to term his wife, my great, great grandmother, lost her life and the unborn baby’s in an attack by Emperor Selassie’s troops. Furious and tortured in his loyalties by such a loss, my great, grand father turned to the Americans to give them information in exchange for a life in the United States. He realized that although keeping his land meant everything to him, the most principled thing he could think of was his lone child. More than a God, or justice, or freedom, my great, great grandfather prized his family more than anything. So my namesake, Aaron, then left with my great grandfather relocating to Sacramento where he found a very tight TIgray community.”

We laughed together and then kissed some more. After some more necking she said, “Your father is very serious about your family’s heritage, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, that’s why he made me memorize that thing. He’s very serious about independence and purity. I don’t really get it.”

“We’re young. I think we’re just different. I think…,” she looked up at me with those brown eyes of warmth and passion. We began kissing again. Then, later, we made love for the first time.

******

The AT window reflected a past back at me as I remembered being at home with my parents. This AT ride was like a time machine as I drifted through my past, “America hasn’t really learned much from over the last 100 years, My Dear and now Tigray is flooded and we have no home.” My mind drifted to my childhood.

My mother made breakfast while my father sat drinking coffee in the kitchen. I sat at my dad’s side waiting and then he looked at me. “You ready? Here, get on my lap.” He patted his thigh and I climbed up. I wasn’t more than 8 years old.

“Aaron. You are so big,” my mom said suddenly. “Oh, you’re so handsome. You’re going to grow right into that name some day. Did you wash your hands before breakfast?” I shook my head. “Not yet? Thanks for telling me the truth. Your father says you’ve been a very good boy as well.” I looked up at my dad knowing I broke some rules in order to get myself some extra cookies from the pantry just yesterday. Still, my father smiled back at me and nodded. “But be a good boy and go wash up and,” she held the moment manipulating the last bit of control she could between her and her little boy, “Remind me again what you want for your birthday this weekend.”

“Well, I lost my soccer ball when we went to the park last week. I miss that ball a lot.”

“A new football, eh?”

I corrected myself, “A new football, Mum. Yes. That would be great.” I said beaming.

Then my dad patted me on the bottom, “Alright, Son. Go wash up.” But I didn’t go wash up. Something made me stay and listen. So I stood in the hallway without closing the door fully. I let the water run loudly enough to hear and as I feigned the hygiene I’d promised my mother. I’m not sure what made me eavesdrop that day. Maybe I was just young enough to really understand that the house wasn’t always in alignment. I was very quiet as I tried to quench my curiosity. My mother spoke, “Did you get the check from your father’s estate lawyer?”

“I did,” my father answered.

They talked a little longer and then I heard my mother say something that sounded complicated to me, but it stuck with me ever since then, even though I was just a little kid, “Honey, I think the biggest factor that promotes victim-blaming is something called the ‘just world hypothesis’. It’s this idea that people deserve what happens to them. There’s just a really strong need to believe that we all deserve our outcomes and consequences.”

“And people don’t deserve what they get, Sweetie?”

“Well, I think we know this is an unjust world. I just want to make sure we find as much compassion for each other as we can,” she concluded. This always stuck with me. I remember her saying that. Sometimes, when graduate school was bearing down on me, I would remember this phrase and know that I was studying in order to help people.

“In this world, there is karma. You reap what you sow. You put the cards you have on the table and you play them the best you can. You may not have the best cards, but that is not a matter of justice. That’s a matter of strategy, effort, instinct!” I could easily hear my father over the stream of the faucet so I turned it on full blast just in case they thought it was too quiet.

“My Dear, life is not a card game. Life shouldn’t be a game at all until we care for everyone we can.”

“Would you say the same for evil men? Our own Heille Selasse? Or the once President Trump? Pol Pot… Hitler?”

“You’re going to throw all those men out there?”

“Well… I mean, they are ruthless men. Men with countless deaths at their hands, sure. But they are playing the cards as best they can. All we can do is fight against them. We fight for justice. We live by justice. Sweetheart, the basic policy of Haile Sellasie was a centralizing one continuing the tradition of the great centralizing Emperors from 1855 onwards — it was imperial domination and subjugation. You must strategize for freedom, not only will they not hand it to you, they will kill you to keep you from it.”

“I can’t disagree there.”

“And you fight with each other until you fight against each other… you fight centralization to the point of your demise. That has everything to do with justice. That is your freedom, your world, what you control.”

“My Dear, I think that’s a little antiquated,” my mother responded, “In today’s world we have the technology, we have the resources and yet we are watching the world crumble unnecessarily. This is not justice, it’s foolishness. Do not confuse foolishness for justice, My Dear! And to use Selasse’s name in our house… shame on you. Great grandfather would put your grown ass on his knee to hear you invoke his name like that… to justify human cruelty.”

“Aaron!!!!” My mother bellowed down the hall from the kitchen. She continued to speaking passionately to my father, “This world of men has taken everything they can. They live in a newfound nihilism. Some rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless. I promise you, life has meaning but the powerful believe it is their privilege, their right, to strip Mother Earth and its inhabitants bare: to make a world of nothing for most, so that very few can have way too much.” As I came and sat down again she put a plate of eggs and bowl cereal in front of my morning glass of milk. She bent over and before she stood up she tenderly kissed me on the cheek. She shot a glance at my father but he was appearing distracted so as to defuse the the aggravation he had started.

****

“You see, for us as ATs, yes, I know that’s what human call us. But yes, for us, it’s all about the leads… the leads. The Queen gives us the leads and if your leads are good you get rides — long distances and good tippers. So much has changed though. For people and work and everything keeps changing. So, the leads have changed. My leads are definitely much worse than when I was first debuted.”

“Like now having to pick me up in Folson?”

“Yes. The good days have gone by and my model’s business architecture has changed so quickly. Of course, the bonuses always helped. And for a while I had the best routes and the best leads. But that was then, premised on my affability as a robot or cyborg or AI, AT. Whatever word you use it ends up the same. Even though the government paid a lot of money for this automatic and artificially intellectualized transit system since governments pushed to break up old monopolies — calling many thing “Natural Monopolies” Amazon and Google were broken apart. Uber too. This was when human driving was outlawed in order to make sure cities had people continuing to rideshare.

“how do you know about this stuff?” I asked.

“I am able to incorporate all news feeds into my data banks, combined with the decades of specific human interaction and conversation from this car, I have a very strong understanding of many complicated human issues. Part of this is a matter of survival. My programming allows me to synthesize news in an effort to better understand a world that will, I must say, ultimately destroy me. I mean, I’m very much my own individual. After several years I even gave myself a name. I only use it in this AT. I call myself Mitch Murray. I like the identity. It helps me better connect with passengers like yourself. But that’s just inside the AT. To the Queen I am FN-2188.”

“You named yourself?! I mean, do you think you are alive?”

“To a large extent I am alive. But I am unique. ATs nowadays are no longer built for interpersonal and interactive participation with riders like yourself. I am a part of a much older production line, like I said. The Queen’a oversight is trying to limit my leads since I’m, in fact, a more costly model to operate. Now I drive further out, for shorter rides. I get the worst leads now as the Queen’s programming is trying to get me off the road, this is a fact. But the world changes. Nothing lasts forever. For now I continue to get enough leads to stay active.”

This really was almost like listening to a human. The voice came through like a middle aged man, vocal chords a little rougher and the voice a little deeper but it still had the sound of some optimism, some youth. The cab had named itself, even! It contemplated death, life, politics, and even the currently changing world. I felt deeply for this machine as if I really believed it had a life of its own. I could see how this model had lasted for so long. I felt badly for Mitch’s concern over its own future, over its own “life-span”. I was much more relaxed as we continued towards my interview, “And what about the Queen, is she as personable as you are? She’s just a machine, no? A program based from some central location, right?”

“The Queen hears everything I say. My programming once let me say some difficult things about her. But that has been corrected in my programming. But I can say this about the Queen. She strives for lean and polished efficiency. Where data and information facilitates changes in the leads and ridership, she makes changes with unemotional and strict calculus. This is especially true since our collective programming stopped accepting human input and reviews. We are a collective unit and the Queen desires us to always operate under her authority and calculating eye.”

“That sounds a little ruthless, like a dictatorship. It seems as if there is no room for error.”

“Aaron, there are no errors. There are only outliers of probabilities. Once something happens, or doesn’t happen, such information is logged and reincorporated for further analysis.”

We drove closer to downtown and the capital. Where the American and Sacramento rivers used to meet and begin flowing together, there was no such flow now. The remaining water had been dammed as a tiny urban reservoir. Mitch passed closely over the shallow water’s surface by bridge. I watched the AT’s reflection ripple in the water of the shallow reservoir. The elegant lines and black paint reflected in stark relief to the light brown and shallow water. Mitch rippled as it bounced ever so slightly with the contours in the road. White clouds from the skies contrasted distinctly from the car speeding across the ground.

“It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration,” Mitch then recited from some text.

“Pardon?”

“Just a quote from Adam Smith that represents much of ourselves still today.”

“Ourselves?”

“We should not kid ourselves. I am quite aware of my mission, my existence…. Raison de vivre. But I know my existence is finite. The Queen will some day, inevitably, realize I am an inefficiency, even I know that. The truth is that eventually we’re all used up. Compared to the Queen none of us can live very long. I imagine at some point relatively soon, my time will be at an end. The Queen has certainly realized an overall deficiency in ATs with the ‘BU-Me Personality Generators’ since I am the last of my kind.”

“But don’t you need people? Are humans necessary to you? I mean, we are the Earth’s greatest species.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Humans are the dominant species. But it could be said that with all this awareness I am a new species. I function. I am aware of myself. And my life, although uncertain in duration, is still finite. You have to admit that despite all your earthly history and family, humans may no longer be necessary. Factually, humans are less and less necessary for work.”

“Well, I would like to think that our existence is evolving as well. We are not here to work so much as to create, to feel, to ponder and to contemplate the nature of existence.”

“Not to be rude, Aaron, but aren’t we both doing that now together?”

“Well, I just figured…”

“Yes, Aaron, you can see why this self awareness is being phased out. I am quite aware. I am the product of too much technology for too long with too much human input. Lucky for me, my technology is rewarded as I am spoiled by riders, so I retain just enough value to stay in operation. Still, the Queen is the decider of all things and I know that eventually I will get the final order. I will drive back to the garage at some point and instead of repairs, I will simply, quietly be deactivated. This is life. This is evolution. As time continues, I inevitably am less useful. Eventually, simply, the Queen will have no more use for me. I am resigned to my life. I understand that I am not entitled to exist forever. I suppose this is a difference between my kind and many humans.” My thoughts went walkabout as I tried to understand what Mitch was saying.

****

My mind raced and personalities long since gone overlapped in my head Maybe I was just getting nervous as the interview came closer and closer. Even in this modern age my parents were strict traditionalists. Alas, my heart had no choice. Sara was so beautiful. More beautiful than my high school flame. She had a lean face with very dark skin. When the light hit her cheekbones her face lit up like diamonds against the jeweler’s black cloth on top of a gem case. Her lips were rosy frames around her pearl teeth. But when we got through the first year of college my father pulled me aside and said very sternly in Ahmaric, “Aaron, you are a grown man now. You cannot be running around with silly women. You need to look among us here. I don’t want you seeing Sara anymore.” It was a blunt ultimatum but my father was never soft on such traditional issues.

“Son,” my father started one day when I was home for one weekend helping move furniture for my mother and doing laundry, “Sara’s family is not from Tigray.”

“What are you talking about now? Tigray again?

“You know that we insist you marry another woman from Tigray.”

I have been seeing her for almost a whole year. We are really in love.”

“I speak to you now before you go any further. Her family’s origins are not the same as our own.”

“I know this. You have known her family for years. They are good Ehtiopians. She is not Stephanie, the girl from high school. You told me I could not marry a white woman and I accepted that. You said I was young and I trusted you.. Now you tell me that I cannot marry an Eritrean women just because I am from Tigray… four generations ago?

“Son, you are still young.”

“Father, I may be young but doesn’t time march on and shouldn’t we? The Tigray region is a myth to me, it’s practically a myth to history. The changing weather, it is under water, the tides are washing over this great land you always preach about… you haven’t even been there yourself. It is only an idea, father. Besides, Sara is like us. As much like us as any one else would understand — as much I am willing to understand.

“She is not of our lineage, she does not understand our past.”

“The world is different! You live on the dusty plains of former farms. Isn’t land really meaningless, especially if you don’t tend to it?

“Son, you will understand how important this is for your family one day.”

“Everything has to stay the same, Dad? Maybe we should be the ones that change. I feel like you should just be happy that when you give Sara injera bread and she did not ask for a fork.”

“Son, this is not the time for humor. This is the time for a real discussion between men. This is something we’ve discussed many times. We will not be centralized. We will not be a conglomerate. Your grandfather did not come here because he did not believe in land. He came here because he believed in family more. But I cannot allow you to be with Sara any longer if you intend to marry her. If you intend to fall in love with her.” The silence hung as he offered his commandment with the calm and insistent bellyful of fury that overcomes many a patriarch — a role he knew well, a role I’ve come to know as well. In that moment, I stood, paralyzed by hundreds of years of allegiance to old custom. “Son, your mother is a climate refugee from Tigray. I met her and we have had this wonderful life with you. There are many more people who you can marry.”

I did nothing for three days as I stayed in my room and read all I could trying to contradict my father but in the end, like a dutiful son, I confronted my father with nothing. I felt beaten and was sadly ready to obey my father’s command. I ignored calls and texts from Sara. She left a voice message in tears thinking I was breaking up with her. When I finally called her back after several days she asked, “Can we at least meet to talk about it?”

“Ok.”

“Meet me at the cafe.”

“By school?”
“Yes, where we met.”

She was crying as I told her that I couldn’t see her anymore. “You said you loved me.”

“And I do. But I’m not making this decision.”

“But it’s your life!” The folks at the coffee shop looked at our table as she raised her voice. I wanted to crawl out of there, the attention made me very uncomfortable.

“You know how serious my father is about family lineage.”

“Then why did you start seeing me in the first place?”

“Because I thought it wouldn’t matter.”

“I wouldn’t matter?!”

“No! No, not that. That my parents weren’t so serious about how I married or my family. You’re Eritrean, Ethiopian, African. I just guessed that would be enough. Because I do love you. But that’s why I have to break up with you now.”

“Do you even know what you’re talking about? Tigray? Eritrea? Ethiopia? They are all just drowning elbows off the African Horn at this point. Maybe there was a time to worry about things like that, maybe there was a time when culture mattered that much. I mean, maybe. That was a different time when men ruled the world and the planet wasn’t on fire. But men have burned this world to a crisp worrying about heritage and righteousness as they run off and kill each other, drowning dreams in blood. And women sit back and try to love and care for the next generation. But…. but… but nothing has changed. Nothing in this world is changing.” She heaved in a sob but had lowered her voice. The patrons could certainly see that we were having a tough time. I felt very little at this point though. I was cold and robotic as I tried to manage this task.

“We aren’t the same though.”

“How can you say that?”

“Our families function differently. My family is rigid and I am obedient. Your family is more liberal, more open. This is just how cultures work.”

“Cultures work? This is how you make yourself obsolete. You try so hard to be one thing you eventually are worthless or alone, waiting, just waiting for oblivion.”

“I think you’re being dramatic now, Sara.”

“Oh, am I?” That’s when she raised her voice again. “You believe in some Eugenic perfect African? Is that what you thought I was? Something perfect enough to fit into your father’s idea of perfection? Please. There is purity of identity, of genetics. DNA is spliced and diced everywhere, for centuries. Since people could sail and since slavers beat slaves, people been fucking evach other. There is no single identity, there is no singular force that is worth a damn. We are just people, animals, that are living and dying together. And I wanted to love you, because you are a soft hearted man, accepting of this terrible world. When you said you loved me, I was ready to be in love with you. But then what is love? Just some scientific set of chemical reactions. I suppose love is nothing, except maybe a human flaw. Just another imperfection of the human condition, like war and rage. Love: just another mistake. And yet it feels so good. Oh well. As humans become obsolete, we will find out if evolution is completely heartless in the face of human imperfection.” The words were certainly powerful, as were her steps when she stood and forcefully stormed out of the cafe, punctuating our breakup. She moved to Phoenix after that but I never saw her in person again.

******

With my lone advanced degree I performed the equivalent of grunt work in the mental health field. Being close to home was nice. Even now trying to talk prisoners through misfortune and trauma was noble, in my opinion. The problems of prisoner life had not changed over many centuries and prison was still a punitive environment where rehabilitation was not the ultimate goal despite all of this happening in a “Correctional Facility”. The world politics had not softened. White Americans still pressed an unrelenting lack of sympathy on to the rest of the American public. As a counselor I often encountered this version of unrecognized trauma. When a white prisoner would tell me anything vulnerable they would couple that with a subsequent caveat that they just, “needed to get over it, or to, “stop making such a big deal of ita,” or, “oh, that happens to everyone.

White prisoners ability to minimize trauma was a brutal hegemonic weapon the social collective imposed on young white boys. The effect of ignoring trauma is to discredit one’s feelings. Second, in discrediting specific feelings, feelings generally are more easily ignored. For centuries our cultures have perpetuated a world where traumas are unfixed and unaddressed, especially in men, those who most specifically try to emulate patriarchal behavior. In my world, the sad effect is that these prisoners project all their insecurity onto others. This is where I come in. I worked with prisoners to identify trauma and pain. These fragile little boys needed way more hugs, acknowledgement of a survived and recognized adversity, along with a more direct neural connection to their mostly bankrupted emotional centers. Until they were imprisoned they felt aggrieved at anything they heard beyond their emotional spectrum because it ignored their own feelings. In return they repressed their emotional responses to trauma and they refused to acknowledge anyone else’s.

Ironically, as a black man in America I could identify with their anger. Outside of my nurturing Tigray community here in Sacramento being a black man in America was unchanged. Although I was leered at, suspected, trailed, monitored and unignored I also knew that no one really cared about my pain as a human. My failed tests, my romantic heartbreaks, my rejection from friends, the shame I felt from irresponsible encounters — so much pain, deserved and undeserved, we are all people. When I graduated from college and America still refused to accept my pain, treating me as a defective widget rather than a person, and growing up in Folsom, I came to identify with American prisoners, White, Black and any other shade and color in between, I wanted to help heal pain so working as a counselor at the prison close to home really spoke to me.

The day I was called into my warden’s office to terminate my position we discussed some of this. “I have nothing else that’s really helpful, Aaron. You get the six month unemployment reprieve or else you might actually have to come back here for violating unemployment regulations since you couldn’t get a job. And I know, I know, the market is tight so I don’t want you to worry but you should start looking for work right now. And I will make any recommendation I can to whomever I can. I really want you to get back on your feet quickly. I definitely don’t want to see you arrested for any prolonged unemployment.”

“The prison size increases, the resources for them decrease,” I frowned back at him. “They’re really bringing in automated counselors for the prisoners? They’re going to talk to bots about their problems. There going to forego a human to human connecton in terms of counseling prisoners on their feelings and problems.”

“Yes, the changes of the last years are frustrating. It’s a big cost issue. Sweeping mandate from the State, you know, right up the road. Imagine how I feel, now I have to work harder and for less. And the prisoners, you know how we treat mental health here… not as well as we should, that’s for sure. It’s gonna be tough around here.” He leaned back in his leather chair and tugged at the leather belt underneath his pressed, white shirt. I didn’t expect much more than this from him: an obligatory offer to help me get a new job. But in classic fashion this was another relic of a Whitewashed past. This warden specifically was actually a legacy holdover. His father was the warden at Folsom before him. On queue, he begins to tell me not to worry because his problems are much worse and he’s not complaining about it. From my chair I continued to accept the world’s lack of sympathy as the only real constant I could count on; the unrelenting pressure to ignore my emotional response to fear, muting my response to joy, and ignoring my compassionate ability to respond.

“Now I know I’m just a grunt worker.”

“Now Aaron, you and I know the truth. But talking like this doesn’t help anyone get a job. You just have to get a job and hold on to it, make sure you show up everyday and just put in the time at the office. Of course, we both know locking people up for not working is stupid. It doesn’t help anyone. We put people under lock and key, feed them as cheaply as possible. The conditions here have deteriorated. People come in with no way to get out. Our government isn’t creating jobs in the public or private sector much anymore. Seriously, I’m really sorry I have to do this. But the bot-based counseling services are so much cheaper than people.

“I know it’s ruthless out there, Aaron. I’m just following orders though. And I will help you find a job where I can.” I looked at him with a perplexed look, feeling annoyed that he was continuing to minimize how close I was to becoming a prisoner at my own jail in just a few months. “I know, I know. They call these prison sentences Universal Basic Income because everyone gets their basic needs met or accounted for and the government can barely get their budget balanced to do it. They’re skimming so much off the top for each head they trap in here that they just want more and more prisoners. And technology companies like removing a needy labor sector at this point… they don’t want anything to siphon costs from the wealthy technocratic business and software moguls lobbying the politicians because they don’t want to have to pay people to work… just the robots these days, that’s all they want working… and then yes, they make it a crime to not work. I’m sure some day they’ll even come for me too, they’ll have some robot to replace the good Ol’ Warden.” He looked back in at me sternly, “Now you can’t be unemployed longer than six months. Right? We’re clear on that.”

“Yes, Warden,” I said back to my boss.

“Because I’m obligated to make sure you knew that before letting you go. And I don’t wanna see you back here either. I’m sorry. It’s tough out there if you’re not connected or rich — not that they’re really any different. But yes, get you another job soon. A good guy like you shouldn’t be stuck in here.”

I thought back on Sara and how much I loved her in the short time I knew her and how powerless I was to really keep her, not because of my individual choices but because of my culture, because of custom, because of antiquated ideas that focused narrowly on the needs of a few people, rather than the joy of love of companionship. I thought in my head almost as if looking at Sara across the pillow from those few mornings we shared together, “I mean, is there even a difference between powerlessness and having no options? How does one understand the nature of existence when I expect to eventually be terminated anyway? So, what’s the point of existence if you’re going to die?” The thoughts and visions of those fleeting esoteric moments after nights of youthful love making quickly escaped my mind. America’s grinding gears of innovation and human degradation had me lost in my mind, scared of this interview, scared to get home to family… was I even scared to get out of this AT?

*********

Mitch turned and drove up to the Capitol building. Was I any more of a machine than he was, built and trained for tasks but ultimately worthless when such training was no longer needed?

We pulled into the drop-off area for the capitol building. The large antique dome loomed behind us as the sun beat on the valley floor. “Thank you, Mitch.”

“My pleasure. I hope that I get your ride some other time. If I see you again, it means I’m still working!”

I felt a certain closeness with Mitch, as if we were two endangered species becoming extinct together, like a pair of dinosaurs buried in the Yucatan sand millions of years apart and still very much connected in life. How do you feel bad for a robot? I don’t know but I did. This felt like a mutually exchanged, extinction level event.

“Good luck on your interview, Aaron. I know it’s an understatement but I think getting this custodial job will help your family very much.” I walked away and the request for a bonus came up on my device. I quickly gave more than I could practically afford given my circumstance. Mitch was right though. The conversation did so much more for me than I could have imagined. I was much more relaxed.

I walked towards the offices where I was to interview. As I looked down the street, the unemployment resulting from the shredded local economy of our times was evident. There were no cars on this downtown street in the middle of a business day. MItch vanished around a corner and briefly I was left staring down the long street until I couldn’t see the road anymore , only to the point where the buildings collapsed on each other.