Tag: Will McIntosh

A Friend on the Inside by Will McIntosh

A Friend on the Inside by Will McIntosh (Future Science Fiction Digest #14, March 2022) begins with Candace, a poor student, on the roof of her high school trying to hack into the school’s Axon network to get credit for lunch. Then, when she succeeds, she receives a message from an Izzy Mahfouz asking her if she is “outside”. Candace quickly disconnects and leaves. Later, after she is the victim of some routine bullying in the lunch hall (insert your own Heathers, Mean Girls, etc. scene here), Candace looks up Izzy’s name—only to find it belongs to a dead college basketball player.
When Candace next goes up on the roof and connects to the network Izzy comes online again and begs her not to leave. He tells her that his last memory was of a car crash, and that now he is in darkness and connected to three other “nodes” who are people like him. Then Izzy asks Candace to call his mother to let her know what has happened to him. When she pleads poverty, he provides her with a code for a “system” like the rich girls in school have, and which she later picks up from the shop:

[I] told her I was picking up a system. I gave her the code, and held my breath, half-expecting a platoon of Axon security people to come busting out of the back room, heaters raised.
A sparkly transparent ball rolled out of a slot. The ball, which felt like skin, broke open in my hands, like it was giving birth to the system rolled up inside. Triumphant music played.
I ran for the exit.
“Have an A day,” the associate called.
“Eat shit,” I called back as the door swung closed behind me.
Moving out of the flow of pedestrians, I unrolled the system. It was silver with green speckles, lighter than it looked, the material so thin it felt like it would dissolve in my hands. I pulled the sleeve up my forearm, looped my thumb through the smaller hole on the end. It extended just past my elbow.
Everything shifted. The air took on a golden tint. New Main Street was perfectly jet black, and each building was a different pastel color. Everyone who passed was smiling brightly. It was like I’d stepped into a new reality. I knew what the world looked like through a system—I’d seen it on TV a million times, but I’d had no idea it looked this real. I didn’t understand how something I put on my arm made my eyes see differently, and I didn’t care. I wanted to see like this for the rest of my life.  pp. 7-8

The benefits of the system don’t last long because the phone connection drops when Candace tries to call Izzy’s mother: Izzy realises that Axon are monitoring the calls, and disconnects her from the net so she can’t be traced.
The rest of the story (spoiler) sees Candace learn from Izzy that there are lots of nodes, and Izzy later says to Candace, “I’m just a brain, aren’t I?” They realise what Axon’s “revolutionary [network] technology” is and, when Candace learns that Izzy’s body was donated to Good Medical like her sister’s, she wonders if her sister is one of the nodes. Candace tells Izzy that if he wants any further help he needs to find her (and during this conversation she learns that the nodes suffer terrible headaches and pain when they are not doing the network tasks assigned to them).
The story turns into a chase when Axon put Candace’s picture on the net and she is recognised by a group of teenagers. As she evades capture by them and the others who start pursuing her, she repeats her demand to Izzy about finding her sister.
Eventually, and after a few more narrow escapes courtesy of Izzy’s magic hacker skills, the story comes to a conclusion when Candace contacts Izzy’s mother and Candace is then shot and wounded by an Axon guard. A driverless car then drives into him, while Candace is protected by a cyclone of drones and vehicles controlled by the brains/nodes. Video of the event goes viral, along with the nodes/brains’ demand for time off and pay for their families. Finally, Izzy tells Candace he has found her sister.
This is a well enough told story (McIntosh is a slick writer), but it is essentially a piece about stealing brains for God’s sake, something that might work in 1932 but terminally strains credulity ninety years later. And even if this is all a metaphor about the way corporations treat their employees, it is a silly one. (I’d also add that having “Pay for our families. Time off” as the brains’ first demand is ridiculous—what about the fact that Axon have essentially been kidnapping sentient beings, using them as slaves, and torturing them?)
** (Average). 8,250 words. Story link.

Philly Killed His Car by Will McIntosh

Philly Killed His Car by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s SF, July-August 2021) opens with the protagonist, Philly, trying to sell his sentient car:

“How many miles did you say?”
“Madeline,” Philly said. “How many miles do you have?”
“That’s a rather personal question,” Madeline shot back. “How tall are you without the auto-lifts in those dashing faux-leather cowboy boots?”
Philly winced as the dude glanced down at his boots. He was so sick of this fucking car. “Can you just answer the question, please?”
“I’ve traveled fifty-six thousand incident-free miles, rounding up.”  p. 48

Matters do not improve when Mr Timms, the prospective buyer, offers a price:

“Madeline, how about it? He seems like a good guy, don’t you think? If he was your owner, he could take much better care of you than me.” Philly caught himself. “If he was your client, I meant to say.” Madeline went apeshit when Philly used the O word. He braced himself for one of her ass-chewings.
“Do you work with other vehicles, Mr. Timms?” Madeline asked.
“I own three,” Mr. Timms said proudly. “A Mercedes convertible AJ seven, a Tesla
Humvee Elite, and a mint 1982 Mustang.”
“So, you don’t really need my services. My presence in your garage would be meant as a further display of your economic prowess.”
Mr. Timms’ eyes narrowed. “That’s not at all the way I would put it.”
“No, I’m perfectly sure it isn’t. Let’s go, Philip. I’m ready to leave.”
“God damn it.” Philly raised his fist over Madeline’s hood, just barely resisting the urge to slam it down.
“That’s one nasty car you’ve got there. No wonder you’re not asking more.” Mr. Timms turned on his heel and headed up his driveway.  p. 49

The rest of the story details Philly’s increasing irritation with Madeline (his family badly needs the money). Then, while Philly is bitching to a friend called Gibsy about the wider AI situation (they gained limited rights after a one day strike and are now considered a nuisance by many), Gibsy suggests to Philly (spoiler) that he crash the car and claim on the insurance. Philly duly does this and, when the car doesn’t go in the lake, smashes the CPU to bits while Madeline begs him to stop (in an overly brutal scene). Then he and Gibsy push the car down the ravine and into the water.
The second part of the story sees his wife visit him in hospital—just in time to see all the lights and equipment in his room switch off. The AIs in his shoe lifts (which Philly had forgotten about) have told the rest of the AI world about his crime, Philly is now sanctioned—no AI controlled equipment will work in his presence beyond the very basics required to keep him alive.
The final section sees Philly doing manual labour in an onion field, having nightmares about killing a human Madeline, and then, after smashing the house toaster when all the appliances starts chanting “Killer”, repairing it. When he promises to modify the rest of the appliances we see that Philly may eventually be able to win forgiveness, at least from some of the AIs.
This is an okay story if you don’t think about it too much (e.g. a world where AIs are sentient and have rights but can still be sold as property is completely inconsistent, and an untenable situation—and the idea that the AIs may forgive the brutal killing of one of their number for a few modifications is just ridiculous).
** (Average). 8,500 words. Story link.

Dollbot Cicily by Will McIntosh

Dollbot Cicily by Will McIntosh opens with Cicily, the down-on-her-luck narrator, in a burger joint eating her basic menu food and browsing gig economy jobs when she is hassled by a young man. He asks her if she was the original model for his dollbot (sexbot). She rebuffs him but, after she leaves the restaurant, he and his (premium menu) friends hassle her again:

I picked up my pace as Red Sideburns’ friends raced from across the street to intercept me. One was carrying a lifesized female dollbot in a negligee. I wound through pedestrians.
“Just look,” Red Sideburns called. “Tell me this isn’t you.”
They weren’t going to give up. I’d have to make a scene. I stopped short, spun to face them. “Leave me alone. Stop following me, or I’ll call the police.”
One of the premium boys was holding the doll out, its lifelike nipples visible through gossamer fabric.
It looked exactly like me.
Not sort of. Not even, Oh what a strange coincidence. Exactly like me, down to the freckle. Down to the crescent-shaped scar on my knee I’d gotten roller-skating when I was ten, although not the long surgery scar on my shoulder that I got in the car accident.
A small crowd had formed. They looked at the doll, back at me. I was blinking and swallowing. A teenaged boy let out a high-pitched giggle.
“Were you the model for the body, or just the face? It’s hard to imagine this body is under those clothes.” Red Sideburns gestured at me with his chin, his gaze locked on my chest.
The boy holding the doll switched it on. Its eyes rolled open, revealing my light brown irises, flecked with hazel. The doll turned its head from side to side, taking in the scene.
“Is this a gang-bang?” she asked brightly. “You know me, I love a good gang-bang.”  p. 54-55

If this squirm-worthy (and unlikely) encounter doesn’t put you off reading further, the story then sees Cicily set off to her home in a drainage tunnel (I wasn’t kidding when I said she was down on her luck). On the way there she realises that the 3D images used in the dollbot’s construction probably came from a previous modelling job she had when she was younger.
When Cicily arrives home she tells her friend what happened to her before she changes her appearance (during this section we also learn that Cicily is a single mother whose child is in the temporary care of Child Protection Services—something that will become permanent if she can’t get some money together).
The now disguised Cicily starts looking for gig jobs repairing Cicily dollbots so she can learn more about them, and her first customer (of three) is Conrad, a seventy-something “old bastard” who Cicily notes isn’t even “mildly embarrassed” at getting his “fuck doll” repaired, and who refuses to pay when she leaves a scar on the dollbot after she has finished. Cicily, seeking revenge, quickly installs a patch to the dollbot’s software that lets her remotely telepresence to it later that evening. When Cicily does so, she finds the old man asking his dollbot to the prom, at which point she starts overriding the software and giving her own replies to his conversation. Later on she uses the override to take a hundred dollar bill and throw it outside the window while Conrad is having a shower.
Cicily later sets up the same scam with two other dollbot users, Jasper (a sensitive type who reads Anna Karenina to her) and Joey (who runs nine different types of dollbot, “a veritable United Nations of ethnicities”, through various fashion or strip shows, etc.). These jobs take place in the same time period that Cicily visits her daughter, who has been rented out as child labour by CPS to do hazardous tasks. We also, at another point in the story, see Cicliy almost drowned in the tunnel when it floods.
Over time (spoiler), Cicily become increasingly attracted to Jasper—he thinks his dollbot has become sentient, and they (Jasper and the dolbot, with Cicily telepresent) later go away for a couple of nights to a dollbot conference. Eventually, of course, this burgeoning relationship turns out too good to be true, and Jasper loses his temper when he and the dollbot (Cicily) argue: he goes on to trash and bury the dollbot.
Some time after this pivotal event Jasper summons Cicily to repair his dollbot and, once she has finished, she slips into the bathroom before leaving to change her appearance back to what it was before her encounter with the Premium boys at the start of the story. Cicily gives a stunned Jasper his money back and (essentially) dumps him out of a relationship that he never knew he had, giving him some life advice on the way out the door (peak irony from someone who is living in a drainage tunnel, is a voyeur and thief, and is perilously close to losing custody of her only daughter).
The final scenes see Cicily steal a lot of money from Conrad (she has the dollbot make it look like the money is burnt so it isn’t reported as stolen) and, on the way to recover her daughter from CPS, she telepresences to Joey’s dollbot and throws all his other bots out the tower block window before making the Cicily dollbot do the same.
On finishing the story I thought it reasonably well done (McIntosh creates entertaining and/or amusing plots), but the more I thought about it the more the piece soured. This reaction was, I eventually realised, due to the story’s facile worldview and its stereotypical characters—the three rich, male (and probably white) characters (as well as the Premium boys at the beginning) are all portrayed as losers, weirdos, scumbags, or all three—even Jasper, who Cicily is attracted to at one point, flies into a deranged rage towards the end of his story arc. Meanwhile, our hero Cicily is painted as a sexually and economically oppressed single-mother. These are, essentially, clichéd identarian characterisations that stem from viewing sex and wealth through the lens of critical theory, where men are always oppressors and women always the oppressed (likewise for the “rich” and “poor”). These binaries also suggest that Cicily has never had any agency in, or responsibility for, anything that has ever happened in her life.
The other thing that bothered me is the way that reader sympathy is manipulated—I’ve already described what the men are like, but more troubling is the story’s portrayal of Cicily as some sort of hero, even though she is someone who, with her gross invasion of privacy, thefts, and criminal damage, is more unpleasant than any of the men—unless, I guess, you subscribe to the idea that, if you are in the oppressed class, anything you do to your oppressors is fair game (for Old Testament types, think “an eye for an eye”). That can, of course, mean you end up as morally repellent as your so-called “oppressors”.
If you can stomach the above, there may be something for you here.
∗∗ (Average). 17,350 words.

Nic and Viv’s Compulsory Courtship by Will McIntosh

Nic and Viv’s Compulsory Courtship by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s SF, July-August 2020) sees Viv and her partner Ferruki out on a date when the Hempstead town AI texts her:

GOOD EVENING VIV. THIS IS TO INFORM YOU THAT, BASED ON AN ADVANCED ROMANTIC COMPATIBILITY ANALYTIC I’VE BEEN DEVELOPING, I HAVE IDENTIFIED AN IDEAL PARTNER FOR YOU. I’D LIKE THE TWO OF YOU TO MEET TOMORROW AT 6 P.M., AT TANGERINE TOWER ROOFTOP CAFE. IN FACT I’M SO CONFIDENT IN MY CALL ON THIS THAT I THINK WE SHOULD TENTATIVELY SCHEDULE THE WEDDING DATE! THIS IS A NEW SERVICE I’M PERFORMING TO IMPROVE THE WELL-BEING OF OUR COMMUNITY, AND NO ONE WILL BENEFIT MORE THAN YOU AND NICHOLAS.
LOVE,
JOURNEY

Viv calls Journey to protest, pointing out she is already engaged to Ferruki (as the AI knows) and, in any event, she doesn’t need its advice on dating. However, when Viv refuses to meet her suggested date, Journey threatens to throw her out of the high-tech paradise that is Hempstead. Although Viv realises she could appeal to the Town Council, that would (a) take time, and (b) probably be futile as the council usually agrees with the AI’s decisions—so she decides to go through with the date. Then she finds out that Nic is the janitor at the hospital where she works as a doctor.
The rest of the story proceeds along standard rom-com lines with the two of them reluctantly meeting for their date. When they do so Viv sees that Nic looks like a Neanderthal type who (a) also has a girlfriend, Persephone, and (b) doesn’t know the difference between “moot” and “mute”. Then Viv’s fiancé Ferruki arrives and drops a hint about his forthcoming karate black belt test. After Ferruki leaves, Nic tells Viv her fiancé is obviously insecure, but Viv defends Ferruki’s “enrichment activity” and then asks what Nic’s is: he says he does interpretative dance.
Their date does not go well so Journey ends up insisting that they make a proper effort to get to know each other. It then offers them 10,000 bucks if they meet for eight dates—or else. The pair reluctantly agree, and these dates (the Mars sim, a visit to a food bank, etc.) provide some hilarious set pieces, in particular the one where they are both in a steam tent with a female “experience leader” called Sharon who is trying to get the group to connect with their inner selves. Sharon hears one member’s traumatic experience before moving on to Nic:

Sharon pressed her fist to her palm and bowed slightly to Rita. “That’s a powerful insight. Thank you for sharing.” She looked at Nic, who was next in the circle. “Nic? Do you have anything to share?”
Nic wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve. “I’m hot. I’m really hot.”
Sharon’s smile was kind, if a little tight. It had grown tighter each time Nic’s turn had come around. “Dig deeper, Nic. What do you feel?”
Nic squeezed his eyes closed. “I feel hot. I wish I had a giant block of ice I could lie on.”
Viv bit her lip, keeping her gaze on the flames. She knew if she looked at Nic, she’d lose it.
“Okay. We’ll come back around to you. Keep digging.” Sharon looked at Viv, her smile relaxing. “How about you, Viv? How do you feel?”
Viv stifled a laugh. Hot, she was dying to say. Really, really hot. This was serious, so she kept the joke to herself. “I was thinking about the purpose of this ritual, whether we create this artificial suffering as a means of reaching an altered state of consciousness, or if it’s really some sort of proving ground, to show we can take it, something to brag about to our friends.”
“Interesting,” Sharon said. “Try to draw that back to your own experience. Are you, personally, using it as a proving ground? Do you feel you have something to prove to your friends? Try to push through your intellect, dig down to how you feel.”
I feel hot. It was on the tip of her tongue, and it was suddenly the funniest thing Viv had ever thought. She bit her lip harder, trying not to laugh. Everyone in the circle had been pouring out their souls, speaking their truths. Except Nic. Each time his turn had come, he’d said the same thing: I feel hot. Each time he said it, it got funnier.
Sharon moved on. “Beto. How do you feel?”
I feel really fucking hot. Viv burst out laughing. She couldn’t hold it in anymore. She laughed so hard her stomach hurt, even though everyone was staring at her, confused.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I’m just so hot.”
“Right?” Nic said. “Thank you.”  p. 29

As well as the set pieces the story is also peppered with some very funny one liners:

“Shoot. I just remembered I have work in the morning,” Viv said.
“Yeah. Me, too. There’s a toilet I need to replace.”
Viv laughed. “You sound almost eager to get in there and replace that toilet.”
Nic shrugged. “I get a lot of satisfaction from replacing a toilet, so it’s a win-win for me.”
“What is it about replacing a toilet that gives you satisfaction?”
Nic studied her face. “Is that a serious question, or are you just mocking me?”
“Mostly I’m just mocking, but I’d like to hear your answer, in case it’s mockable, too.”  p. 32

Apart from the almost continual hilarity (I laughed out loud several times) provided by both Viv and Nic and their partner’s interactions, the pair also discover that the reason that Journey has embarked on this matchmaking endeavour is because its contract is up for renewal, and it fears it will be scrapped in favour of a newer model AI. Viv also finds out that Journey is partly made of human material and is a cyborg of sorts.
The story eventually rolls round to its (spoiler) admittedly predictable but satisfying conclusion. The dates end without the successful conclusion that Journey wanted to show its continual worth, and it then finds out that it is going to be replaced. Nic (who has now split up with Persephone) confesses his love to Viv, but she knocks him back. Then Nic invites Viv to his solo dance recital, another hugely funny set piece that shows Nic to be a not particularly skilled but wildly enthusiastic dancer. During his performance Nic offers to improvise to any music or sounds the audience offers, and we subsequently see his car-crash interpretation of drum music, a baby crying (Ferruki’s sniping choice), an Albanian ballad, a bear roaring, etc. During this, Ferruki, who has accompanied Viv to the perfomance, provides a constant stream of sarcasm and disdain and, when he and Viv are later trapped in an elevator for several hours, she eventually climbs out of the top of it to get away from him. They later split up.
The final section sees Viv and Nic get together. Then they rescue Journey, and take the AI to improve a neighbouring township that is less successful. The story ends a few years on with Journey talking to the couple’s daughter Lucy.
With this level of comedic talent, McIntosh should be working in Hollywood, not SF.
****+ (Very good-Excellent). 17,600 words.