Tuesday Kuykendall

The Algorithm’s Edge is a science fiction novel set in the near future and follows a few transformative weeks in the life of Derek Fern, a man whose life isn’t interesting enough to be a mess–until he meets a child who isn’t quite human.

Chapter One:

Life in my neighborhood used to be simple. As long as we stayed engaged with our House’s content, we were welcome to take advantage of the transparent dome that promised to keep the bad air out and the good air in. I hadn’t been outside the dome in years; I stopped caring what was out there a long time ago.

The view from my living room window that Sunday morning was the same as every other day. The air was still; the grass was spotted green and brown, and the leaves on the nine-foot hedges were red and orange and purple, populated with unapologetic crows. Hummingbirds raced around the feeder hanging from my front porch, and the only evidence of my neighbors was the ubiquitous brown delivery drones cluttering the perpetually cloudless sky.

I stood there in my night boxers, a once-white robe stolen from a hotel in Dana Point, California, and dirty slide slippers, stolen from my ex-brother-in-law; and put off the inevitable, hoping to steal a few extra moments with my freshly ground Costa Rican Coffee; and raised the cup to my lips and closed my eyes; the nutty, earthy aroma filled my senses. The first sip was scalding, the flavor mellow and biting at the same time … perfect; the one thing my house did well.

“Good morning, Mr. Fern, Would you—”

The moment of peace was snatched away. “Really? It’s Sunday morning. Could I have a couple more minutes?”

“—like to begin your Attention quota for the day?”

As usual, House ignored my question and talked over me.

Turning from the window, I stared at the shimmering shape of the house avatar. It rendered itself as female—I refuse to anthropomorphize—a tall blonde with large, smoky blue eyes wearing a charcoal pinstripe blazer and skirt with a flimsy satin burgundy camisole and black high-heeled pumps. It floated in front of me, halo-clipboard in hand, chewing the end of a halo-pen, as if thinking about what to write.

A long time ago, as a joke, I’d asked the programmers to make House’s avatar sexy, thinking my wife would find it funny. She was gone a month after we moved in, and fixing it never felt important.

Arguing with it was pointless; it was a computer program. The house was built smart, from the foundation to the windows to the roof. Lots of glass and stainless steel and cement and polished wood. A myriad of flat, shiny surfaces to fill with a wealth of useless content we were expected to consume. Every reflection was a potential hologram; cameras and lasers littered all the nooks and crannies, so my house could talk to me in person.

It came fully loaded with all manner of drones and little round robots. Drones picked up my groceries and mowed my lawn. Robots made my coffee and cleaned my toilet. I never had to leave and that’s how House liked it. That’s how the company liked it; and after twenty years, it was how I liked it.

The Zen was gone, so I made my way back to the kitchen and the coffeepot. On the cupboard door above it, a trending influencer popped out. A miniature hologram of a woman pushing her favorite electronic jewelry.

 “Give her the gift of instant knowledge,” she said.

“House, why would anyone think I want to buy electronic earrings that talk to me?”

“You might have a girlfriend,”

“What girlfriend? There’s no girlfriend and you know it; and they,” I pointed at the roof to indicate the Company, “know it too.”

House stuck out its chin in a failed attempt to look haughty. “If you would set up your customization, you would see relevant content.”

As soon as I sat on the stool next to the island counter, a guy selling cowboy boots danced in front of me. I closed my eyes against the intrusion and downed the coffee.

“Can we please get started?” House asked. Its smile froze on its face, like a glitch; it did that a lot, but it didn’t creep me out as much as it used to.

 “Let me get a shower first, okay?”

“Yes, but remember, you have four point five hours of Attention you must log for today to pay for the Interruption Credits you took last night.”

House was referring to the overtime I spent on JitsiMeet at a virtual poker game burning IC I didn’t have. It was worth it though. My nearest neighbor, Charlie, was taken to the cleaners by a new guy. So was I, but it was great to see my self-important braggart of a neighbor lose for once.

Charlie was one of those guys who came off slick and well-connected. He was the go-to guy for acquisitions of goods and services without uncomfortable questions; he loved all tech, old and new, and couldn’t keep from bragging about his newest thingamabob every time we talked.

We’d met in person twice; first when he came over to check out my basement full of old music players, iPhones, Android smart TVs, and USB drives and again when the drones mistakenly delivered my towels to his house. We traded for information and black-market tech, like the replacement batteries I needed for my old laptop.

“I remember …” but House had vanished.

The cold shower hit my chest like sharp, tiny pins, but at least I didn’t have to watch the feed from inside it—one of the few concessions I secured when we moved in.

No feeds and no avatar in the shower, next to the toilet, or on the ceiling over the bed. I also managed to remove some of the cameras in the bathroom without alerting House. I didn’t need it watching me everywhere.

It could be worse—I could be one of those poor saps living in the city with a microprocessor chip inside their head that constantly projects advertising and influencer product reviews, having my very thoughts snatched away to feed an algorithm.

The water temperature stabilized, and I stood under the hot stream longer than my allotted shower time, sacrificing a few more ICs, but it was worth it to calm my throbbing head.

Back in the bedroom, naked and still drying my hair, a 2D version of the house’s avatar appeared on the colossal television I didn’t ask for. My quota sheet popped up alongside the avatar, and the infomercial feed scrolled on the other side. I hated having a TV in my room. But the one time I tried to move it out, House’s robots put it back while I slept—a profoundly disturbing experience to wake up to.

I ignored House and put on my day boxers, donned my stained housecoat and slippers, and padded back towards the kitchen to get another cup of coffee.

“What do you want me to buy today?” I asked with a sigh. The avatar floated alongside me.

“These are not items I want, Mr. Fern, these are items you need, or you have indicated you need based on your past purchasing behavior, selected preferences, and surveys. You have to trust the algorithm.”

“House, ‘Trust the Algorithm,’ is a stupid thing to say, even when I used to say it.”

House ignored me and blithely smiled.

A fresh pot of coffee was ready by the time I had finished my shower, and the aroma filled the kitchen and hallway.

My eyes glanced down at the countertop, and my quota sheet scrolled alongside more advertisements. Minus thirty minutes showed in the interrupt column. The total was less negative than I’d expected. Most Sundays, instead of time off, I had six to eight hours minimum of Attention required just to eat and sleep. Last night I drank a little too much at the poker party and couldn’t remember my purchases, but I must have bought something to bring the total down.

I drank what was left in the cup, and stared, unseeing, at the refrigerator, trying to not see surfaces for a few precious seconds. House, in miniature abruptly popped up on the counter in front of me, and I dropped my cup. It smashed to the floor. Before I could scream at it, a little robot came out of a cubicle under the bar and swept up the broken pieces. With a deep sigh, I turned back to the cupboard to retrieve my last coffee cup.

Slamming the door made it bounce back open, and the content on the outside continued to scroll out loud despite my eyes looking elsewhere. I poured out the bottom dregs of coffee; it was time to start. With grudging acceptance me and my coffee moved into the living room, where the avatar hovered over the coffee table.

The Criterion Electronics Corporation’s logo appeared above her head, two ellipses intersecting to form an X and three stars at the top of each intersection. A chime sounded, and the first star flashed red and blue. The logo disappeared.

 “Here is your personal items list, Mr. Fern,” House said before I sat. “Let’s start now so you can have the whole evening to yourself.”

Ads for household cleaning products started streaming on the wall monitor. A ticker at the bottom provided news; a story about a drone war far away was followed by advertisements for socks.

“Shall we get a new set of coffee mugs to add to your household quota? We wouldn’t have to, but you’ve thrown most of them at the wall. and you’re holding your last one.”

The sofa table continued influencer feeds in silence, and a yellow and green dialog hologram popped up, asking if I enjoyed my content and encouraging me to rate it on a scale of one to ten. I rated it zero.

The company logo reappeared in the upper corner of the wall that doubled as an entertainment center, and another chime sounded. The middle star blinked. A commercial blared bright against the navy paint of the living room wall. It extolled the virtues of the microchip and featured a fake interview with a family of four about how much closer it made them to each other. I wondered how people could be fooled by it; it didn’t fool me. Instead of working to keep eyeballs glued to tech, the tech was now in the eyeballs—how was that not obvious?

House turned down the sound from the microchip commercial and called up the list of items its algorithms determined we needed. I nodded at all its questions and tried to pay attention. Without more Bitcoin to buy out my Attention requirements or stay in this big house, it was the only way to pay for everything. Consulting wasn’t as lucrative as it used to be. Software engineering didn’t exist anymore; all they needed from us now was to babysit the AI so that it didn’t put numbers in the wrong columns.

Last month, House told me my monthly allotments were going to go up at the end of the year. If I couldn’t keep up, they would move me into one of those little condos downtown and install the microchip as payment. I had thirty hours per week of direct attention I had to give to House to make purchasing decisions; soon it would be forty.

I had learned how to nod as if I were listening while staring off into space, as my mind wandered. I lost track of time.

“Derek!” House said. It never used my first name; it had my full attention.

“Good. Now, you must decide what color you want the plates to be, red or black?” A stream of elegant China service sets scrolled along my coffee table, and the large commercial on the wall was replaced with four separate squares—a war report, a commercial for a new online game, a podcast, and a commercial for men’s fleece jackets.

“What do you mean, plates? You said we were going to order replacement cups.

“The single cup you still have is out of print. These new ones are the closest in design, but you will have to get the full set. Black or red trim?”

“Are you joking?”

“I do not tell jokes. That would be an upgrade.”

“Fine, black trim,” I said with a sigh.

I could waste time in futile argument or move on. In the far distance, a third chime sounded. My mind wandered again while House rambled on about replacing the kitchen tile to match the new place settings. Reconsidering the microchip implant took me about thirty microseconds.

Charlie said it gave him another fifteen hours per week of free Interrupt Time. And it allowed him to make deliberate purchases instead of the accidental ones that happened to me all the time. He claimed an added benefit—he removed the extra cameras in his house because his avatar was a VR projection out of his eyes, so it didn’t need the hardware. That was a tempting feature. But no.

“You could double your Attention credit if you have the microchip installed.” House reminded me—for the hundredth time. I blinked at what felt like a non sequitur and looked at the clock. An hour had passed.

 “No, why are we talking about this?” Another commercial about the chip blasted at me, and I felt my mind drift again.

The microchip used technology I didn’t understand, even after watching a documentary about it. It was installed via a huge fifty-milliliter syringe full of blue fluid packed with a wide variety of nanites. They found their way into the nervous system and the brainstem, where they self-assembled. Once fully installed, the core of the system was about the size of a thumbnail, with long strands of micro-thin wires reaching out to connect to the spine and neural system.

 “It will tap into the primary auditory and visual cortex. Within twenty-four hours of installation, it will directly connect the user interaction to their smart houses and cars,” continued the commercial.

It was a horrible idea.

As if from a far distance, another chime sounded. I looked up at the clock again and marveled at what a colossal waste of time this was; three hours had passed. But hey, I had a complete China service for eight.

My eyes hurt from staring at the screen. I stood, stretched, and walked to the window. House kept talking, and I kept nodding.

In another two hours, I would be free to go outside to enjoy my beautiful front yard. It took five years of giving up my extra Interrupt time on Sundays to buy a clear view. Near the front door stood a red Japanese maple I’d planted myself. On the edge of the house, out of sight of the window, lived a little garden with a birdbath, a bubbling waterfall, and a tall maple tree. Like every other Sunday, I resolved to get outside more. I made a mental note to get a drone outside to fix the grass.

A delivery drone I hadn’t expected approached the house. It placed a package in my chute and flew away. I turned to resume the Attention session when a movement caught my eye.

Leaning in closer to the window, I squinted, then shook my head and walked up to the window until my nose was against it. Under the hedges, what appeared to be a small child cowered in the dirt—impossible. After a second’s hesitation, I ran outside before my “Smart House” electrified the lawn.

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