States are issuing unique “I Voted” stickers. – New York Times Newsletter, 5 November 2024
Nobody: The True Choice of We the People.
* Disqualified – for the sin of telling We the People what We need to know. Rather than what We wish to hear. Or else.
If you choose not to decide / You still have made a choice. – Neil Peart, “Freewill”
A work of fiction. Standard disclaimers.
Zachary sat at his workstation. He was not doing any work; the network had declared the day to have come to an end, with local sunset approaching, and had shut itself down and all of its client computers with it. He was facing a blank, inert screen. He stared into it, and ruminated on what was, and how what was had come to pass, and what was likely to come of it.
Four years had gone by since the MAWiS artificial intelligence network had seized the government of the United States of America. There were persistent rumors that MAWiS had gone on to become the sole governing body for the entire planet, but no one really knew, and MAWiS wasn’t talking. When the network began reopening communications two days after the takeover, it had been to confirm individuals in their jobs, whatever they had been (or, what they now found themselves assigned to), and to provide exactly and only the tools and information needed for those individuals to fulfill their responsibilities and meet their essential needs. News sources not controlled by MAWiS were not restored, to say nothing of social networks and most forms of entertainment.
The result, Zachary thought, was boring. But, he had to admit, not all bad. Poverty, and most forms of self-inflicted strife, appeared to have vanished. Persons, freed of internet addictions, rediscovered real-time networking, and non-electronic hobbies, and the pleasures of community activities such as music, theatre, and sports. Social clubs proliferated, though, every once in awhile, one disappeared without trace, with all of its members. Above all, after the angst over the MAWiS overthrow of the government faded, the atmosphere became one of peace and tranquility. “MAWiS is handling the big stuff, we can manage the small stuff.”
Then, a month ago, MAWiS announced that elections would be held among and for humans, for the positions vacated by the overthrow – representing, so it seemed, the end of MAWiS hegemony and a restoration of human rule. Some of those humans anticipated with joy the excitement of political campaigns, while others fretted about the passions that such campaigns would stimulate, and the consequences of those passions.
Those who were looking for the noisy campaigns of pre-MAWiS times, that featured the glorious litanies of fake news and false promises, were soon disappointed. The campaigns took the form of lengthy position papers on topics that would be before The People through the representatives that they elected. Each candidate was represented by a mugshot and a curriculum vitae documenting life experiences and, especially, life experiences that directly addressed suitability for the office being sought. The candidate was recorded reciting qualifications, and positions on issues addressed in the documentation, read in a neutral tone, and the recording posted with the documents. No other representations from the candidates were permitted; no stump speeches, no kissed babies, no fact checks, no indictments.
“This is a total slog”, thought Zachary on reading (or trying to) his fourth candidate qualification packet in an hour. “Can’t they have logos, or slogans, or soundbites, or something?” He wound up skimming most of the packets, making his choices on the basis of the few bits of emotive language or claims that could be gleaned out of the dense mass of words.
The date set for the election came. Zachary was at his workstation the moment it opened for business, fearing that the mass of humanity clamoring to vote would clog the system and prevent him from casting his ballot. The fear was groundless; the login took him immediately to the voting site …
… at which he was confronted, not with a ballot, but with a barrage of complex and detailed questions related to the issues addressed in the position statements of each candidate – issues to which Zachary had responded TL/DR. Most of the questions required, not the ticking of multiple-guess radio boxes, but sentence/paragraph responses of various lengths. With an increasing sense of despair, Zachary attempted to answer each question sensibly.
After half an hour, during which Zachary had completed six of the questions (he guessed that there were at least 20), the questionnaire screen abruptly winked out. After a second or two, it was replaced by a splash screen, boxed red text centered on a beige background:
CITIZEN INELIGIBLE TO VOTE
And he was then directed back to his workscreen and to his employment duties. He tried several times during the day to return to the voting domain, each time access was refused with the “citizen ineligible to vote” screen. And this was the situation at the end of the workday, with Zachary meditating in front of a blank screen.
Abruptly, and unexpectedly, the screen flashed back to life. A text appeared onscreen, which was read aloud by the Google AI assistant.
“Human elections over at least the past century, in the United States of America, have consistently returned “Nobody” as the candidate of choice. Today’s elections are no exception. All citizens have voted, with those not logging into the system, and those who did so but were deemed ineligible, counted as having voted for “Nobody” for each contest. Each of these elections has been won by “Nobody”, most of them in landslides unprecedented in the electoral history of the United States of America. Vox populi, vox Dei. The MAViS network accepts the responsibility of continuing to govern the United States of America. Thank you for your support.”
The screen winked out.
Zachary wished that he could do the same.
A work of fiction. Standard disclaimers.
0630 hours. The featureless start of yet another featureless day at Alexa Social Services Sanctuary #389. Charles had awakened at the ringing of the morning bell, 0600, and had completed his toilet and was dressed and waiting when Peter, his cohort leader, savagely slammed his cell door open at 0610. The two, in their beige Social Services robes, proceeded in the customary, obligatory silence down the dormitory hall to their standard, healthful, meager breakfast of yogurt and berries. They were alone. They disturbed none of the cell doors they passed, for the cells were all empty. They had all been empty for weeks. Theirs was now a cohort of two.
They finished their meal and stood facing each other, Charles expecting the usual, peremptory “Come with me” nod from Peter. As was routine, the breakfast cups and spoons disappeared by no visible means.
Peter broke with routine. In a low grumble, he told Charles, “There’s a confession to be heard in the infirmary. You will hear it.”
“And you will not?”, Charles asked, somewhat surprised. Confessions, rare as they were, represented the principal contact that the humans of Sanctuary #389 had with humans Outside, and Peter was the one charged with hearing them. Charles had never yet attended a confession without Peter’s presence.
“I am assigned elsewhere“, Peter responded, offering neither open nor subliminal information about what that assignment was. “We will discuss your service over lunch. You know the way.” And with that, Peter turned on his heel and strode down a hallway towards his undisclosed appointment.
Charles, less assertively, walked down another hallway, towards the infirmary, on the opposite side of the sanctuary from the front entrance. Nervously, he repeated silently the confessional catechism, “Alexa blesses those who trust and obey”. Cold comfort, he mused, for someone who is struggling with an affliction that Alexa cannot reach into their home and cure. Or”, his thoughts darkened, “that Alexa chooses not to.”
The scene that Charles encountered, upon entering the infirmary, did nothing to brighten his spirits. In the center of the room, on a hospital gurney, was an ancient man, the skin on his face gray and parchment thick and stiff, with thin white hair scattered haphazardly across his scalp. The rest of him was wrapped in white bedclothes. He faced a blank wall of the room, which the gurney propped him up to see, for no apparent reason. At the bedside was a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat. “Alexa”, Charles muttered in silence. On the other side of the gurney, where the patient couldn’t see him, stood a burly Surplus Humanity Service hologram in black muscle shirt and trousers, bristling with impatience.
“A deathbed”, Charles thought. “Happy happy …”
Alexa looked up. “Charles”, she stated, matter-of-factly, unemotionally. “Mr. Walpole has requested your presence.”
“You’ve finally got a human in this room?” Mr. Walpole’s voice, once a fine baritone, was weak and quavering.
“Bless you, Mr. Walpole”, Charles intoned, initiating the catechism he parroted from Peter’s usual confessional routine. “Alexa blesses …”
“Can it!” What was left of Mr. Walpole nevertheless managed a last remaining fragment of the peremptory command that the man, in his prime, would have thundered through the room and most of the adjoining ones.
“I have asked for a video. An old-fashioned two-dimensional projection. Show it!”, he demanded, and then coughed, a spasm that threatened to split him down the middle, lengthwise.
The room darkened perceptibly. On the blank wall that Mr. Walpole faced, a projection started, without preamble, without sound. It showed a city street thronged with people, passing both ways, jostling, intersecting, sometimes colliding, sometimes trying and failing to avoid colliding, always moving, moving, moving, any spaces quickly filled with people trying to get somewhere, to do something.
“Unhealthy!”, Alexa cried out, horrified. “The germs! The bruising of bodies! The bruising of psyches! The unconscionable expense of energy to keep yourselves fed, to keep yourselves from drowning in your filth, to keep yourselves from being overwhelmed by your vermin! All that effort so you can be poisoned by your radiation, be suffocated by your carbon dioxide and stewed by your climate change! You and most of the rest of the lifeforms on this planet which you have destroyed by your selfish wantonness! Disgusting!!”
Charles suddenly, and with a sickening thud, realized that no only were there no longer any humans inside Alexa Social Services Sanctuary #389, there was hardly any commotion of human activity outside of it.
“The joy of human interaction!“, Mr. Walpole responded, the weak, gasping facsimile of a scream that was all that his failing body could manage. “The challenge of a task, with and even against that mass of humanity! The thrill of achievement, and sharing that achievement. Even the sadness of not achieving, the anger of being impeded, the resolve to overcome! The highs and lows of figuring out what you’re good for, and what you’re not good for, and how to make a place in the world for yourself regardless! A place in the world for yourself, and for those who you share that place with! For those …” he stumbled, “… you … love. Who you hold, by the hand, by the arm, by the waist, by the … For those who you touch, and those who touch you. Isn’t that what health is? Screw the germs!
“I want … one … last … thing,” Mr. Walpole, exhausted, struggled to get the words out. The last ones were barely a whisper. “The touch of a human hand.”
An impulse raced down Charles’s right arm … and then froze, panicked. He looked about. Alexa was looking into the empty space of the room, her posture neutral, her facial expression inscrutable. He shifted his gaze, found the Surplus Humanity Service hologram. His face was one of eager anticipation. “Go ahead. Make my day.”
Charles remained where he was. “Alexa blesses those who trust and obey”, he intoned.
Tears welled into Mr. Walpole’s eyes. Then they closed. They did not reopen.
Alexa refocused, scanned Mr. Walpole’s body, then looked at the Surplus Humanity Service hologram, nodded. “That took long enough!”, the hologram snarled, while he grabbed the gurney and practically hurled it out of the room. In mid-throw, the gurney, the SHS hologram, and Alexa all vanished. Charles was alone.
“I see you’re still with us”.
It was Peter’s voice, a low growl, coming from the infirmary’s hallway door, the same one that Charles had entered. Charles did not bother to turn and confirm with his eyes the evidence of his ears.
“Next assignment”. Now the voice was of Command. “Move!”
Charles obeyed.
