The most telling point of Joe's conversation in the woods was that he wasn’t as mad at the World AI for the spider trauma as he was with Dr. Putzhead and all that he stood for. It wasn’t that he loved his tormentor. It was that his tormentor was programmed by real people who were the real problem. Joe's enemy wasn’t the World AI. It was the MOO-VERSE. He was just living his life, plodding along, and harming no one, but the moo-verse had decided that he was a detriment to society. It was the moo-verse that had ruined his life, but what could he do about it?
Why a moo-verse? Cows. Cows are lined up in these horrible pens where they wait in line, not for the roller coaster, but for slaughter. Humans line up like that too, at the polls. The thing being slaughtered is their actual power. They end up at the polls between babysitters, PTA meetings, and job stress. They go between coffee breaks, lunch meetings, or otherwise busy lives. They go because they are supposed to go and they vote how they think they’re supposed to vote, according to whatever advertisement resonated with them most.
People liked to think they were sheep, but that was too benevolent for what was happening. Sheep were herded, did as they were told or they were eaten by the wolves. That was the fallacy. People were more like the cows. The wolves ran the ad campaigns and even the wolves didn’t know why. Wolves wanted, so they said whatever made that want into something real. If people were sheep, then the wolves were building the pens, not eating the sheep. So people were much more like the cows to Joe.
Cows weren’t so much herded as driven. They spent their lives being fed whatever was popular. They were then driven into the pens and up ramps into the trucks like folks were driven to the polls to do their civic duty. The trucks ran them by all that advertising and told them what to think, then dumped them into the lines at the polls where the cows went in one hole of the building and hides came out another. What kept bothering Joe was that the cows going in didn’t even see the hides coming out as something to worry about. The cows just kept moo-ving in the direction they were driven all their lives.
As Joe's mind rattled around that concept, his body stumbled back onto the current set with their motel, his Stella parked next to the black Thunderbird of the Remmington sisters, and even old Mabel (he’d learned her cast name) puffing out a billowing cloud of misty smoke from the little plastic window. Joe stood looking at it and tried to get back into character. He didn’t know when he’d started thinking like that, but he credited the enhanced VR experience. Who really knew how to wield a sword before they played an MMORPG? And yet they played it just fine. Joe didn’t know much about being the star of a serial TV drama, but the program was enhancing him in such a way that it felt almost natural.
He was still a cow being herded around, but he knew where the trucks went. Did it change how he moo-ved? Could it? Avoiding the slaughterhouse hadn’t helped. What could? Could he change the advertising message? Was he in the position of one of the wolves? Not yet, but maybe…
“You lot staying another day or checking out and back in again?” Mabel called out to Joe across the parking lot, a feat of impossible lung capacity considering that she did it through the little plastic window.
“I’ll check with the ladies and get back to you,” Joe called back, a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth as he told himself to giddy-up and get back on track.
“Well, hurry it up or I’ll charge you for another day! It’s fifteen minutes past checkout, you know!” Mabel snapped her little window closed.
“Right,” Joe said on a blown-out breath, jogging toward the girls’ room with more energy than he’d had in years. All he was really thinking was that they needed about half an hour of content for their upcoming episode. He didn’t have a clue what that would entail, but since he was following the Remmingtons’ lead, he figured that was something he could do. Going with the flow was familiar and Joe also figured that they’d had weeks of AI time to come up with something fun to do next. He’d just follow them for now.
“It’s too early!” came the wail in response to Joe's knock and he was pretty sure it came from Tami. “If that’s housekeeping, send them away so I can sleep in.”
“You already slept the morning away,” Jean’s voice was lower, but Joe heard it coming closer to the door.
“Hey,” Joe gave his wittiest smile with that inane dialogue.
“Oh, it’s you,” Jean kicked the trash can against the door to prop it open.
“Dreaded light!” Tam buried her head under the covers.
“The motel clerk says she’s charging you guys for another day if you aren’t checked out in fifteen,” Joe said softly.
“Like hell!” Jean grit out and stuck her head out the door, yelling the rest. “You charge that card again and I’ll burn the place down and blame your cigarettes, you old bat!”
“Try it! You vagrant!” Mabel didn’t miss a beat, and Joe leaned back to avoid the exchange.
“I paid cash,” Joe shrugged.
“I got the sheriff on speed dial!” Mabel hollered, sticking a very old phone with a curly tail of a cord out the window to illustrate her threat.
“All right, I’m up,” Tami flung the covers off herself and dramatically stomped to the bathroom where she slammed the door. If she hadn’t been wearing pajamas with clowns all over them, it might have been less disturbing.
“I got Motair bookmarked!” Jean was yelling back to Mabel. “I can tank your already pathetic motel rating with one picture of the cockroaches I chased out of here last night.”
“You got twenty extra minutes! But not a second more!” Mabel slammed the window closed again, the misty smoke dissipating slowly.
“Why’s it always so bright early in the morning?” Tam complained around the toothpaste in her mouth as Jean was scooping stuff into their too-small carryalls.
“It’s almost noon,” Jean shook her head, but as she turned away from Tam, Joe caught the smile.
After yesterday’s escapades, Joe understood the relationship better. Tami was the talent and Jean kept her safe and sane. Moneywise, Tami was the muscle, but afterhours was run by Jean with Tami as the distraction. It was a decent drama setup, but it had holes Joe could drive a truck through in real life. But it wasn’t real life. Then again, it was AI plotting and it wasn’t so bad that if he was watching he couldn’t suspend disbelief a bit more.
“Early!” Tam insisted, then ducked her head back in the bathroom to spit in the sink.
“If you hurry, I can let Hex ride with you for the first stretch of the road,” Joe suggested.
“Two minutes,” she perked up with bright eyes and scrambled for clothes that Jean hadn’t stuffed away yet.
“Ten minutes,” Jean corrected after Tam slammed back into the bathroom to change.
“Two,” came Tam’s muffled reply as she poked two fingers out of the bathroom door for emphasis.
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“Where are we going?” Joe asked as he left them to their scrambling, shaking his head at the well-choreographed routine. They must have spent a good amount of time on it. Joe ambled to his own room, trusting in Jean’s lung power to answer him even as he propped open his own door and let the furballs scamper out and around him excitedly, another great little scene.
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As the human, his job was to close up some of those plot holes, and shove in his share of creativity. Joe was pretty sure he could do that. It was a little like the Jean and Tam relationship in that they fed each other. In some ways, Joe could be like Jean for the AIs who tended to be wildly out of touch with the reality of the sun rising before noon. In other ways, Joe could be like Tami and bring some chaos to the AIs’ methodical drudgery plots.
“South,” Jean called out, ever so helpfully. Joe bent to give the critters scritches, Hex using his crouched stance to scamper up into his hair.
“Hey!” Mabel’s voice boomed out of her opening window again. “Pets are extra.”
“Paid cash, ma’am,” Joe drawled to her as Kodo stuck out his tongue and gave her a very wet raspberry, Podo covering her nose as if to cover a snicker. “You can’t overcharge me.”
“I can put your name on a list,” she threatened, undeterred.
“What name did I give you again?” Joe asked scratching his head. “I use so many these days.”
“Dammit,” she slammed the window closed again.
Joe was thrilled to have his Clickbait abilities back. He gave a thumbs up to the ferrets and ducked in to scoop up his meager belongings, surprised to find himself chuckling. It didn’t take more than a few seconds, since he just didn’t have much stuff. The wonders of having the AI do his hair and wardrobe was one of the best parts of VR in Joe's opinion. While Tam may have brushed her teeth, Joe didn’t have to. He was never going to be stinky or offensive unless it was part of the script.
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They did indeed head south. Tam had tentatively pried Hex out of Joe's collar and then crawled in the back seat of the Thunderbird because Kodo had curled up on the passenger seat. Podo was the more brave of the two in that she’d taken to hanging half out of the side car to waggle her tongue at passing cars. The cutest cut must have been of Kodo and Podo grinning at each other as Joe coasted the Hoverhog next to the Thunderbird. Tam was sprawled asleep on the back seat, her sock-covered feet hanging out the window and a little black cat curled up in her hair. Yeah, that montage was a winner. Joe wasn’t as sick as usual, so they’d fixed the nauseating nature of the fast forward even though it was almost like paging through a scrapbook of the road trip south.
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“Why are our viewers still going up?” Joe asked the World AI, as they pulled into a parking lot of a hotel that was not going to take cash and no ID for a room.
While we only ran one episode, it’s getting rerun views, the World AI explained, as Joe took off his helmet and shook out his hair, which defied helmet-head.
“Cool,” Joe thought at it, swinging a long, tight-jeans-clad leg over the bike to dismount. Podo hopped up onto his seat and then flung herself through the open Thunderbird window to pounce on her brother.
“Are we there already?” Tam yawned, with a dopey smile on her face as Hex gave a big stretch.
“Yep,” Jean answered with her usual chattiness.
“And where is here?” Joe asked, waving his hand at the posh hotel on the pristine beach that could only exist in a place like Palm Beach, Florida. Super-white towers of balconies ascended into the sky like gravity didn’t exist.
“That smells like the ocean,” Tam sat up and looked around. “Is it already August?”
“Yes,” Jean told Tam.
“Damn,” Tam swore, and it took Joe back a bit.
“I’m pretty sure I can’t afford this,” Joe gave Jean a dubious look.
“Relax, kid,” Jean shot back at Joe even though he was pretty sure she was younger than the real him, but maybe not screen-him. “The bride booked a suite for us. You can have the pull-out bed.”
“Ugh!!” and Tam flopped back down into the back seat with a groan. Joe leaned into the open back window around Tami’s feet. Hex took Tami’s legs like they were a red carpet, accepting a pet from Tam as she walked by her hand. “Why did we agree to this again?”
“Not money,” Jean replied easily, reaching for a bag that had been behind the seat.
“Not enough money in the world,” Tam protested, sitting up to get one more pet on Hex before Hex scampered up to Joe's collar.
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“Fine, she’s your friend and she’s getting married to the Prince of Persia or Prussia, and you told her to ask for anything for a wedding gift and she said for you to cater the event,” Jean ticked off her points on her fingers.
“It’s working with a half dozen historically accurate AI super-chefs with all their egos crammed into the equation,” Tami whined. “If she’d just left it to me, it would have been easier.”
Joe gulped. Now he was pretty sure none of them had the wardrobe for that either. Had he really upgraded the backstage enough for this? Well, maybe they wouldn’t have set this up if it wasn’t possible.
“In my defense, I was drunk,” Tami admitted, finally pulling her feet out of the window and blinking at the scenery.
“In my defense, I’m going to need to be drunk for this,” Jean muttered, slamming her door with only a smidge more force than necessary.
“Uh, they’re going to throw me out of the lobby of this place,” Joe broke into their dialogue.
Tami rummaged around in her back pocket as she sat up. “That’s what this one is for,” she proclaimed, holding up a glistening gold-rimmed, clear credit card.
Somewhere around the 2100s, the poshest of hotels had taken on a fad of gravity-defying remodels. Only the most successful had managed to keep these feats of engineering with space-aged materials from falling into the oceans they dangled over. The Breakers had been one of the most daring designs and the first to fall in the real world. It was now available in VR for a modest fee. Joe's office’s Christmas executive retreat had been held at one of these VR places, but it hadn’t been this nice. If it was advertising on the NOOB channel like this, it must be desperate. VR was the only place those swirls of suites that extended over the ocean in their own mimicry of the waves below could have survived a hurricane.
We get funding for anyone who clicks through to their website and purchases a VR suite, the World AI explained to Joe. It’s open advertising. Anyone can do it. Our Media Relations AI is optimistic. Another perk of the pre-production upgrades.
“Either that or they’re celebrating their latest upgrade by indulging in high hopes,” Joe snickered behind a hand that he was using to pet Hex, who purred at him lazily.
“I’m not getting trussed up in something that costs more than my car just to serve hors d’oeuvres,” Jean protested, pointing a finger at Tam sternly. Tam gave her an innocent look that made Jean turn and walk toward the hotel.
Tami rocked her head from side to side as she mimicked Jean’s orders behind her back, but she did get out of the car, not bothering to grab a bag. “This place has great security,” Tami said with a winning smile, cramming her feet into shoes that didn’t fit the décor any better than Joe did. “You don’t even need to lock your car. The cameras and patrols have a 5-second response time for thieves.”
Joe tried to think of something he could say to reinforce her commercial pose. “Awesome,” was what he got out and he could only hope the camera didn’t catch Tami’s eye roll. Okay, maybe he did need to put some points in Trend Adhesion. It was just that every time he saw the stat named TA, he couldn’t help but think of it as the other kind of T&A and he was trying not to be that kind of cad.
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That would be my point, the World AI told Joe, and he winced. Brand Insertion is a skill you should be trying to earn.
“Wonderful,” Joe thought, then said aloud. “Glad I’m not a thief!” Who said he couldn’t use Clickbait to get Brand Insertion?
Joe heard a groan in his head and figured he didn’t get it. Ah well, he’d tried.
“Come on, you,” Tami was snickering at Joe as she linked her arm with his and led him toward the lobby. “Don’t bother with a bag.” She plucked his bag out of his hand. “There’s nothing in there that we wouldn’t have to replace.”
“I think maybe I need the bag?” Joe prodded her as Kodo and Podo their heads up out of it.
“Then again,” she pondered almost to herself. “I wonder if they make ferret pouches in Louis Vuitton?” Tami definitely had the Brand Insertion skill.
“Friend?” Joe prodded Tami, hoping to get some clue as to what they were headed into. They crossed the little street to the hotel’s doors. Joe had never seen streets as clean as Palm Beach. Even virtual streets had a reasonable amount of dirt. These streets were so clean you could eat off of them.
“Let’s just say that we have the same kind of cooking credentials, but she chose to make money and I chose to make a difference,” Tami explained simply, and Joe wondered at her ability to enter through the doors without flinching at her own clothes. “Relax, this is a beach hotel. They’re used to all sorts of attire.”
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Did she not see the security guards talking into their walkie-talkies as they walked through the doors?
Don’t mind them, the World AI assured Joe, and he was liking this new relationship they were tuning into. They are a part of a side program that allows for a cat burglar fantasy side quest.