OK then, I have a lot of serious explaining to do right up top here, to clarify what it is I’m about to impart to you who live in the 21^st Century. I phrase it that way because I have recently come back from my century, the 29^th, to this timension.

You will notice a distinct upgression of the Newvo usage, as by then the advancement of our languism had become highgeared. I started to write this tract in a toned-down style, but found it difficult, so I’ll just write it in my natural manner, perhaps just leaving out those words and expressions which I know you wouldn’t understand, as they have their antecedents in a later era.

I’m frankly in a tangle as how to proceed. I’m going to attach these words to the end of my story, as this nowframe (2010) is at a juncture after I finished the manuscript, but before I published it.

Things are obviously now in a doggone dither, thanks to me, and the future that’s about to play out will most definitely be a different version thereof. Sofore, I may as well spill the mustard as to how it went down the first time thru, as it was a wildwooly 21-C, and a rollcoaster of a seven centuries after that, with enuff curlyturns for a myrillion novels. Which reminds me; I have about a half-million of those books in my nano-digital ilibrary (which is about the size of a library card) including the 33 I’ve written in the next 800 years. BTW, books get shorter as the future progresses, so some of those 33 are 90-120 pages long, which is far, far from the most interesting thing I’m about to pass your way. It’s just that I’m having trouble untwisting the top off this pickle jar so I can begin.

I suppose I should just start by explaining my reasons for t-traveling back here, then proceed to tell what happened once I made the traversal. Then I’ll go into why it is that it’s alright for me to share details about the future with you without despoiling the timeline (Short answer: I’ve already screwed it up beyond repair.)

I’ve only known the truth of this for a scant 50 years; that I was destined to return somehow to the early 21^st Century. The evidence is admittedly thin, but utterly convincing. In the rubble of the most secret chamber of the most secret society still extant on Urth in the middle of my last century (by which I mean the 28^th), a vault was opened which revealed the group’s best-guarded documents.

It was in a field of rubble because the long history of the secret societies on our planet came to a violent conclusion in that place. The Majestics were the descendants of what in this time are called Illuminati, and they were the last of the surviving secret organizations—surviving a full-out war with their rival, the Eastern Hemisphere’s Silent Pearl (whom they had destroyed to a man) as well as surviving, until a fateful day in 2762, a death-match with the OneWorld government.

Anyway, not to start telling that story, except to say that the conflict between the two societies had spilled over to cause much distraction and destruction in the regular world, and the OneWorld government put its best assassins on the case, with orders to exterminate any and all of them, and placed (the equivalent of) 100 million dollar bounties on the heads of all their living members.

So, back to me! I was very close to one of the investigators doing the cleanup of the site, and she showed me a datafile that had the detailia of a secret ceremony that began with these words:

A.B., A.B., to your Majestic 29 we come,

Within our chrysalis your secrets ever keeping mum.

Striding forward to the entrance hall of forever’s climb,

To the future—one day to become the Present Sublime.

Where live the Masters who peer into Infinity,

Whose Golden Key opens the Palace of Eternity

The third and fourth verse, and some lines later in the ritual, were from a poem called “The Majestic Climb” that I wrote in the 2600’s under one of my many assumed identinames

The last three lines were written by one of their members in the same metric as mine, altho the very last verse is an echomage of a John Milton line. It refers to what they consider time travel to be, ie, the entrance to the Palace of Eternity, from whence one may defy the usual strictures of mundane time.

On the title page of the document, along with several cryptic geometrics, was the number 2009, encircled by a snake that, in a long-used symbol of these mystical types, was consuming its own tail.

The pudding-proof of the whole matter was that there were also pictures of buildings and skylines very specific to the early 29^th Century, pictures of Raxa and Bolla taken from orbit, informadata about the political, economic and social life of the 29^th Century, and a list of certain signal events from the intervening 800 years between your time and my (used-to-be) current one.

There seems to be no other conclusion but that I time-traveled back and made contact with a member or members of the Illuminati. During my first time thru this era I certainly knew several such individuals—and before that as well, going back as far as William Randolph Hearst—including some 6th Degree Pilgrim Society members. (These were 33^rd Degree Freemasons who had graduated to the higher climes of leadership within the internationally operating Illuminati.)

In the wake of the vault discovery, I ponderflected the mystery of how I could have traveled back in time. This conundrum left my sense of rationality perplexed to the point of utter confoundment. In the first place, I had never believed for one nano that the space-time continuum could be actually violated. I brought it up once in a talkversation with Tro, and I remember his words exactly (because I would trot them out in debates on the subject). He said, “What is, is, and what was, was. Never confuse the two on your way to what will be.”

Starting in this the 21^st, many, many attempts at building a time machine had failed miserably, and I was among the loudest of hecklers of such dumbfoolery. But in the first year of the 29^th Century, someone named John Ritto announced that he had built such a machine, which he called a Timensional Conduit Navigator—commonly called a TCN, or “teacon”—and had thrice tested it, going back as far as 50 years before safely returning. (Unlike the H.G. Wells version, Ritto’s gizvention only sent one backward to already-occurred time.)

People were all warncautioned not to try to change anything in the past, as that would in all likelihood mean that they would no longer have a timeplace to return to. Disobeying that edict was one pair of neolibs who went back to 2000 to (unsuccessfully) try to change the US presidential election. All they accompled was the fuzzlement of making it closer, followed by a recount and the Supreme Court decision which ended it. (Back in the 29-C, nothing seemed to change, except that the historical records were suddenly and mystically altered to mention the event, and a movie called Recount was list-added to the films of the time.)

Much excitement ensued after Ritto went public with his Time Navigator 001, and he launched a company to massufacture the things. Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of people successfully used it.

I held back until now (by which I mean my currenthenly “now”) out of a fully admitted trepidation, but also because I knew it wasn’t yet time. How I knew this was that one of the photos from the Majestics’ vault was of a building that was not yet built, a spaceport in Madagascar. Well, the spaceport facility was completed in March of 2812, and I teleported over to pho it. (Yes, tporteration—up to 8 miles per jump—became a reality around 2680.) The other pictures I saw from the vault, and the Majestics poem, were all carefully assembled as I prepped for the journey.

But there was an additional problem. In Urth’s distant past, but your immediate future, there were two macro-events that—how shall I say—caused electro-magnetic continuum distortions. Those few who had gone back that far had experienced the equivalent of extreme airplane turbulence and a loud static buzz in their teacon. Worse, their machine had to be repaired before they could return. Those Bush-election saboteurs were stranded for almost two years until a rescue team could go back and find them, and repair their unit. The basic circuits in the machines tend to get themselves fried coming thru the disturbance, and have to be replaced.

And there’s anothering. While the settings on the timecraft are very accurate—within a week of your target time even going back to 2015 or so, earlier than that (due to the above-mentioned problem) the exit time can be off by as much as 8-10 months—in either direction.

Yet another part of the considerquation was that the timensional theorists say that one should never be in direct proximity to another version of themselves; some bullquackery about the soul-mind being split and reasserting itself in one of the vessels, blah blahcetra. It was only hypothetical postulation, as nobody had the nerve to test it out realtime. And that included me. I made three practice jumps, all to times when I knew I wasn’t on-planet. And I did the same this time, as I remember I was living back on Raxa from 2009 to 2013. I went there to live with Kat after people on Urth found out that the old beachcomber with the startlingly lovely young wife was in reality the returned Ambrose Bierce, the author of Newly Found. When I thus became newly, newly found (I must’ve given too many details at the end of the book, starting with the city we lived in), I was deluged with media intrusions, and had to move to Raxa to get away from it all.

I gave all of these factors my deepful thoughtsideration, by which I mean the kind of thoughtsideration you give something that you want to make go away. But in the endframe of my ruminations, I had to comeclusion that it was a no-getting-around-it destiny thing. So I went out and bought a full complement of replacement parts for the TCN, and the manual instrucs to help me install them.

Several months before I left 2812, there was yet another incident of someone risking a pre-2014 trip that resulted in a rescue team being sent for him. But the poor fruck was so damaged that he died during the return. So, as governments do, even benign ones, they stuck their nose in for the purpose of interposing their good judgment over the free will of the citizens; a law was passed forbidding anyone from hazarding a t-travel back beyond the 2014 barrier. All new TCNs were assembuilt to preclude such a venture, and all registered owners (such as myself, having already bought one) were issued a stern messagestruction about the new prohiblaw.

So I had no choice but to surreptitiously make this time trip, telling no one of my plan. (Altho, if I were to return, I would surely be arrested and heavily fined, as they have sattlinks that detect any perturbations in the continuum.) In fact, the only person who knew of my knowlism regarding the Majestics was my paramour Shari, the daughter of the one who gave me that info.

When the appointed day came, I locked the vehicle, double-strapped myself in, and set sail. True to the reports, my teacon shook like a Home Depot paint-mixer, as my ears were assaulted by the sound of a thousand angry bees. When I climbed out (in the Australian Outback where all trips are autodesignated for), I stumbled a few feet before collapsing in a heap, unconscious.

For many hours I would only wake to cough and dry heave. Eventualater I recovered enuff to take out the fried components and place in the new parts. But, fruck me with a spoon, no activation lights came on, which meant that I had either bought the wrong circuits or the replacement parts were also damaged in the transit. I took the motorbike out of the teacon, which I buried behind some bushes (using my Quik-Dig 3000), then made my way to the nearest town, cursing my luck with every long, passing minute.

So, here I sit. As they used to say, “The best laid plans of mice and men . . . often go astray.” Or, I should restate, as they say in this time period, because it appears I am stuck back here in the 21^st Century.

I had aimed the machine for December of 2009, wanting to avoid if possible meeting my then-self, who was on-planet till May of that year. But I came out in April of 2009, and that created the beginning of the problem.

I debated with myself about laying low for several weeks, until Bert Breakstone (the name of the body-person I was living in then) left with Kat to go to Raxa. However, and this was the criticalportant mistake, I let my stubbornness about the two-soul paradox and the changing-the-past paradox, in addition to my abject curiosity, get the best of me. IOW, “Damn the paradoxes, full speed ahead!” I went to Venice Beach, Florida to have a meeting with myself, and to once more look into the violet eyes of my long-since-departed true love, Ekatia.

I stood on the patio-deck of what was once my home (I somehow remembered where we used to stash the extra key) and waved at Kat and my former self as they walked up the driveway. But, suddenly I began to experience a strange queasiness, then nausea, then a severe spinning sensation. As I slipped to the tile, I noticed my other self falling to his knees.

I awoke to Ekatia screaming at me. Screaming “Who the hell are you?,” screaming “What did you do?!” And screaming “Ambrose is dead.” I got to my feet at that last one, jumped the railing down to the lawn, and went over to the body. Kat followed me down, pulled out a phone to call 911, but I grabbed her wrist and said, “Call Tro.”

“How do you know—” she began, then ran to the car to retrieve the comm-unit that could accomplish that task. She quickly dialed in, got an immediate answer, talked to someone, waited a moment, then spoke to Tro, crying but coherent enuff to give him the basic facts. She then handed the unit to me.

With a dry mouth and a quavering voice, I addressed Tro: “Commander, this is Ambrose, circa 29^th Century. I’m afraid I’ve screwed things up mightily back here in the 21^st, Sir. Can you please come right away?”

“Not so easily done. I’m in the midst of a thornacious arbitration out here in Saturn’s orbit. But I will plead an urgency and come forthly. About 90 minutes.”

We carried the body into the foyer and waited. I explained a little to Ekatia, but she was not in the mood to know much about the whys, wherefores and how comes as she continued to cradle her dead husband’s head.

True to his word, a saucercraft dropped onto the lawn 88 minutes later. Out jumped the Commander, followed by Randa and Jaka, the doctor. Jaka made some quick assessments, followed by an injection into the neck, directly on the spine. Randa and I hoisted the body and put it into the shuttle, while the Commander muttered something about “was” and “is” and “confused the two.” Five seconds later the craft lifted off, and five seconds after that it was out of sight.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at Kat, but then I heard her voice. “You need to get out of here now, Mister!”

I turned to beg her forgiveness, and saw a good, old-fashioned six-shooter pointed squarely at my noggin.

“But … but, let me explain,” I stammered.

I heard the cock of the gun, a .38, and the sound of a woman’s voice who was not in the mood to hear anything but the sound of footsteps leaving.

“Get the fucking hell out of here or I’ll goddamn blow you to motherfucking pieces.” (Yes, I suppose I did teach her how to swear in English.)

Not seeing any immediate alternative, I turned and departed the premises. The last thing I heard was, “And don’t ever try to contact me!”

Which, after I found out that the body couldn’t be saved, and that I had made a mess of things—starting with my own life and probpossibly the timeline itself—I didn’t ever attempt to do.

To summarize the answer to the riddle of why I would reveal things to the Illuminati (who I never had much truck with), this is what happened. After I was sure that I was stranded here, and still hopeful that I could preserve the natural order of future events —ie, before I fully realized the impactfulness of my role as interloper—I contacted a man who I knew, from my life as Bert Breakstone, to be a higher-up in the Pilgrim Society. After convincing him that I was the future persona of his Venice Beach neibor (by recalling some nightlife adventures we had perpetrated together), I confided in him the basic facts of my plight. I told him of my worries concerning a tainted time horizon, provided him with the photos from Urth’s “Majestic” future, then spoke to him regarding that which I had witnessed unfold over the centuries.

I know that these secret societies—the closest thing we’ve had thru history of a permanent, albeit hidden, government—have many of their members in highthority. Furthermore, they keep it as a central part of their mission to assiduously guard and carry forward to upcoming generations their knowledge of many aspects of Urth’s real history. So I gave him the guideposts of the future centuries, culminating in a description of life in 29-C. I did this for the purpose of entrusting them with the responsiduty of orgestrating the events chain, analogizing it as a croquet course, and the events I described as the wickets. I cautioned him, and the other members I later met, including the Grand Poobah Himself (Boyoboy, would you be surprised to know who he is!!) that they should use their powerthority to ensure the properly programmed progress of the world.

I stressed to them that any major deviation, or even minor deviation from what I laid out as unambiguous benchmarks, might result in suddenly large deviations. And even if something looked to be a short-term improvement over what I listed for them as the intervening future, 29^th Century Urth is such an indisputably ultratastic time and place, a virtual Utopia compared to the 21^st, that any change would be a possible loss of that forthcoming era.

As my line of reasoning in those first several days after the fiasco went, I believed that I perforce needed to personally adhere to the events that I knew to have “occurred,” so as to minimize any disturbances to the fragile future. Otherwise, I could become the butterfly of Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder” or, for that matter, the allegorical butterfly of Chaos Theory. I would be forced to recreate my every life over the course of the next eight centuries, and repeat my mistakes as well, even knowing that they are mistakes, and that they would lead me and/or others into painful circumditions. (Later I would come to the heart-searing realityization that, instead of a metaphorical butterfly, I had become the proverbial bull in a china shop who, with a single clumsy motion, causes a clattering crash.)

And what of the life of Bert Breakstone? Certainly he (I as he) wasn’t a major player during the remaining several years of that life, mostly spent in the divine clutches of my lady love, and mostly on Raxa. But I-he did interact with scores of individuals, generously helping some, unintentionally upsetting others. What about all those arcs and trajectories? Would I have to get plastisurgery to resemble the Bert body (I was close to the same size) and smooth it over with my former wife in the interest of keeping things stable?

But a few days after the meetings with the Adepts, I was informed by Tro of the negpurcussions I had engendered, and all those speculations became dust in the blowing wind. What I was told opened my eyes to how things had suddenthuddingly become hopelessly changed. The negotiation the Commander was conducting fell apart during his short absence, as the Lyrian ambassador assaulted the Zetan ambassador in a hallway, and now the two worlds are at war.

As is the standard in wars of this type—those that don’t threaten any orbs outside of the actual combatants—an immediate trade boycott has been put into effect by all League members. This usually, but not guarantsuredly, keeps these things relatively short, as all the Astanian worlds are heavily intertwined by imports and exports.

Lyra is one of the fourteen Exoterrian races that first initiated contact and trade with Urth in 2018, so there becomes at least one big ramification that I can detect. The Lyrans become our main source for about a half-dozen terraforming products—products needed for the upcoming, or what was the upcoming, Mars Project—including the massive oxygenater pumps. That trade agreement is now in limbo, because Lyra may retool their industrial base for warmaments, or may sustain damage to their industrial sectors. As I recall, these are mostly located in two isolated provinces, rather vulnerable to a concerted attack.

Or else the conflict may drag on for several years, followed by more years of quasi-ceasefire and renewed negotiations, in which case the time window for the Mars Project may be severely delayed, or never undertaken at all. As I recall, the funding and authization for the project took place around 2022, with the Lyran reprocrat on the dais as one of the key components of the agreepact.

And the Service Corps won’t be available to me for a while, perhaps a long while, as Tro is as mad as I’ve ever seen him. On the hooklink with him, he sputtered that he wanted to chop me into little chunks and feed me to a Balaxian wolfdog. He doesn’t own a Balaxian wolfdog but said he’d buy one, just to watch it chew and swallow my bloody remains then (disgusting habit that they have) regurgitate it out and eat it again.

And another thought, even more uglacious: What if I’m now permanently on the outs with Tro and the Service Corps? That would mean that I won’t have further access to the mediciques which give me periodic new bodies. I’d be like (pardon my spoiled-to-the core “Ughh”) the rest of humanity, condemned to wait for the inevitable breakdown of my not-getting-any-younger fleshcase.

But even if I’m able to smootherate with Tro and the Service Corps, and get them to give me new bodies, it still looks like I may be locked in to the sufferquences of an endlessly repeating merry-go-round—except maybe not all that effing merry. I’ve thought about the possibility that I may meet someone from my time who can get me back, but I would have to decline that if it was offered. I’ve decided that I need to ride this out as well as I can, playing the roles I’ve already played in the multivarious bodies that I have reanimated; all this in an attempt to keep-keel the overall situation.

Such an infernal puzzle this is! I can only hope that, once I re-trudge the centuries back to 2812, that I don’t somehow end up returning again—and again and again—to try to set things right, and foreverly find myself self-tortured into my own personal “Groundhog Millennium.” Or, remembering the symbology on the cover page of the Majestics document, I pray that I am not now doomed to be like that ever-encircling, never-ending serpent.

I just checked the ilibrary and there’s a whole section of files missing, but thankfully not any of my writings. What’s disconcerting is that it’s the section that has all the maps, plus the section that has the translated poetry of several other species, including the Lyrians. It’s most likely that this occurred during the timensional distortion that wrecked the timecraft, and not because those maps are going to be radically different, and those writings never came into being. (I think. I hope. But I do not really know for sure.) But I must keep as positive an attitude as I can to get thru this, at least until I know how much I’ve actually muddlefrucked things. And, come to think, those missing items were among the last things I added to the ilibrary so perhaps they were the most susceptible to the electromagnetic effects of the time trip.

As I’m sitting here trying to decipher my new status, one thing which bubbles into clarity is that my nonfiction writings (only five of the thirty-three are fiction) will never be published as such, as they are based on my reportage of events and historical trends—events and historical trends which may now never occur. It pains me a little to think so, but I may have to release some of my non-fiction as “fiction.” So, since I want people to know about their positive future possibilities, I will commence to do just that, starting with this augmented tome.

Following this explanation/apology/introduction I will present, for purposes of exposition, some writerial I “penned” between now and the end of this current century. The first will be what I published (so long ago that I couldn’t even tell you by what publishing house) in 2029, after I had completed an underguise role as a linguistics expert assigned to programming androids with the American vernacular.

The brieffact back-story on that is that I was given the body of one Jeremy Winger, who got lost in the woods of Maine and died of exposure. He was an Ivy League rich guy, with a Masters in advanced linguistics. After “I” recovered from the operation, I (as Jeremy Winger), pursued a career in the field, something he never aggressively did, preferring to live off his inheritance. Under a grant from the University of Washington—which I didn’t need, but I wanted to become credentialed within the mainstablishment—I compiled a collection of commonly used words, phrases and sentences (6000+) and titled it “The American Commonacular.” This I will apparently also have to republish, altho I may just put it online. (Note: The Commonacular can be surveyed at thecommonacular.blogspot.com.) The bald truth of it is that the I mainly employed the list that we used in the Service Corps to train new crewmembers, especially those who would be doung groundwork.

My cataloging came to the attention of a large robotics company preparing a breakout model of androids capable of extensive bi-communication with humans, and so I was hired. The rest of the story you will find in the pages immediately following.

After that will be what I consider to be an important section in this omnibus. Called The Golden Trigger and written in 2094, it outlines the political-economic system that was instituted in the not-too-distant future of America—or rather, the North American Union, as Canada becomes combomerged. Over the course of this century, tweaktuned along the way, this so-named “Big Fix” relieved Americans, and later the entire world, of the scourges of poverty, crime, war, lack of healthcare, etc, while creating government surpluses in the process.

This was originally written as a monograph to be read by the returnees from a space expedition, more specifically the children of the 3200 pioneers who set out in the 2030s to colonize a planet in a nearby star system. Turns out the colonizers were allergic to the planet, despite every medicique applied, and had to return sixty years later, along with the 40,000 or so descendants who had been procreated.

I was living as a professor of American Macro-history at Tulane at the time, and was one of a dozen writers who were contracted to prepare summaries for the reintegrating population. This is a good piece for me to share in this exercise, as it’s written for an audience with little prior knowledge of said events, and basically gives a broadview of 21^st Century North America, at least in the political/economic arenas.

It distresses me to contemplate how my coming back could much affect this wonderful transformation of the international socio-economic landscape, and I strenuously hope it doesn’t but, just in case (so people will know what to do, ie, what worked) I will provide this chronicle. What transpired during that course of events would lead Urth to a general prosperity and, ultimately, membership in the Astanian League.

Ohmaga!! I just realized how that disruption of The Big Fix could happen—probably in fact will happen. A big part of the inspiration, if not the full impetus, for the passing of the lawulations of the Golden Trigger was due to the influence of the Exoterrian races who landed on Urth in 2018. It was after learning of their fairbalanced politico-economic systems (no poverty; rich families, but not excessively rich) that North America moved to create a more perfect Union.

(To just take a moment on the Exoterrian First Contact, it was coorded by the Service Corps, and supervised by Commander Tetrov. He chose fourteen species to send landers, the races which most resembled Urthians, and had them land in the high desert near Parumph, Nevada, as a way, I suppose, of displaying a humorsense about the event.)

Sofore, if the war between Lyra and Zeta drags on for any length of time, or spreads to their close allies, then the First Contact could be delayed indefinitely.

I’m not entirely decided —and wish I could talk to the Commander about it—but I’m considering adding something in the rear of the book, listsembling the major historical events of the planet between now and 2812, as they occurred during my experience of them.

If I decide to do that, I will also give a synopsis of life in the idyllic 29^th as it will, if nothing else, serve as an inspiration to those of you who toil in the muddy (and sometimes bloody) fields of this era, wondering if your hopeful idealism is but a foolish contagion afflicting the reality-challenged. But let me assure you that it is not—that in fact it is the hopeful idealists who, at every turn of the screw along history’s construction, elevate the general condition toward a greater good.

So, dear reader, I must apologize for any dizorientation you may have endured during your perusal of this account. And forgive me if my past and present tenses have been a little glubby, as I understandably am, moment-to-moment, a bit confused by such distinctions. Moreover, I am filled with guiltgret for what I have inadvertently caused. Hopefully, it won’t detour things too much from what turned out to be (as you’re about to read) a quite magnificent future for our little blue planet.

This is not other than a damnably impossible situation! I find myself in a quandary within a labyrynth wrapped in a conundrum. But carry on I must! I will, however, promise you this. You will find the following accounts (once my nonfiction reportage, but now relegated to fiction), to be not only interestworthy, but an incentive to trek forward thru what will problikely be a rough patch ahead.

Double fruck damn-damn!! I just thought of the more apropos metaphor for this mess I’ve made. Forget the butterflies and groundhogs and snakes; here’s the possible soulbreaker for your poor old correspondent. I could be like Sisyphus, from the Greek story about the arrogant man who tempted fate and the gods one too many times, and was condemned to an eternity of pushing a large boulder up a long hill. It would roll back down just as he got to the top, again and again and again, endlessetra.

History as I have already experienced it is the boulder, and the next 800 years is the hill. I know enuff about my personal predilections to realize that if I get thru to the 29^th, and it’s only a pale or unpleasant version of what to me was the original, then I will be stubborn enuff —altho I prefer to think of it as a straight-spined idealism—to go back and tinker/try again.

The only possible impediment (other than Ritto never building his machine; I hadn’t thought of that till now) would be if Tro and the Service Corps refused to keep doing my body transfers. But I’m not seriously worried about that, as I’ve been their Johhny-on-the-Spot many times, and have a drawer full of medals back in 2812 to prove it. That little Raxan brush-up you just read about was far from the last time it took some red-blooded American kick-ass to get a job done. I even saved the Commander’s skinny buttbone on two occasions, when he was being held hostage by some unfriendly foes. No, he’ll get over this latest high dudgeon in a year or two, long before I have to trade in this fleshcase for a newer model. That’ll be the Jeremy Winger, a fairly fun life that you’ll be reading about as you continue

Perhaps I should just go ahead and share the soup about those two electro-magnetic “disturbances” I was alluding to earlier, in case those can be averted. Surely no harm can come from trying to avoid these two unforturns.

The first was an accident at an advanced physics facility called the CERN Large Hadron Collider, an underground facility in Switzerland that shoots particles at incredible speeds along a 17-mile long circular track. The purpose of this massive project is nothing other than scientific curiosity, and after several years of successful sciencing, doing things like semi-recreating the Big Bang, they run out of mildly insane things to do with their multi-billion-dollar toy and attempt something which ends up blowing up Geneva, as well as the corner portions of neiboring France and Italy. Lyon, Grenoble and Aosta were completely demassified, and Lake Geneva became a mud pond.

As of 2812, no rebuilding had occurred in the cratered region, as graph readings still showed the area to be dimensionally unstable and filled with quark particles called “strangelets.” Speculation by pseudo-scientists that the affected area was, in fact, shifted to an alternate-dimension Urth (it wasn’t, as there’s no such thing) persisted for at least a hundred years, with kookies carrying homemade giztronics while patrolling the crater.

Before the facility was ordered shut down, The Hadron Collider did play a central role in an important discovery, that of the component parts of electrons. These wave-particles (they were somehow both simultimely) were, in each electron, exactly one-hundred in number and were the force in the universe which caused gravity. They were named “newtons,” after an early postulator of the Law of Gravity.

As I dimly recall, the fatal accident had something to do with an attempt to support the (since then heavily revised) “string theory,” and the name of the experiment had the number 8 in it. The catastroclysm didn’t happen till 2012, so I have some time to figure out a means of stopping it.

This is a good example of the problem that occurs with scientific orgs, same as with any other highly funded group, including government burrocrats. They don’t fold up their tent when they’ve accompled their primary purposes, but seek to extend and prolong their existence, even if it leads to meaningless, rickety-chancy or even negative activity.

The other thing is problikely not anything that anyone can do something about altho, justncase, I’ll make some inquiries. Near the end of December, 2012 there’s a monstrously huge coronal ejection from the sun that does large-scale fire damage to China, Eastern Russia, India and Australia, knocking out the electrical grid of virtually the entire world. I wasn’t on-planet at the time, but I know that the devastation and loss of life was profoundly high in the Eastern Hemisphere, and the resounding impact of no electricity—for a week to ten days—in the West created a complicrisis of unprecedented proportions. (That wasn’t the only deadly invasion from the sky that year, but the one that caused—along with the Supercollider accident—an electromagnetic wall to be emplaced on this timeframe.)

So, not wanting to leave you with a mystery biscuit, that’s what I meant by a “rough patch.” But the planet will keep on keeping on, and I stand as a witness that a magnificent forthcoming millennium is not only doable, it’s already been done at least once already.

Therefore, I shall affix to this volume some pieces I wrote later in the 21-C—writings that you should find interesting—concerning how your current century plays out. This I shall do to thumbsketch the majorvelopments along this century’s road, so you can picturemagine the idealities of Urth’s future progressions, and hopefully retrace those steps. One last thing: In the interest of keeping a tight narrative flow to this volume, I’ve truncated some of the commentary chapters from Dances with Droids, and placed them instead in the appendices. As well, this includes some lists of Newvo, the neologisms.

One last thing before I leave you to my future/past, past/future writings, It's been so long (in my mind) that I almost forgot about the projected ecocatastrophic icecap slippage which prompted my quitting the Service Corps—as detailed in Chapter Fourteen of the first section of this volume. My disagreement with the Sector government's attitude, ie, to remain hands-off while we reaped the results of our hyper-carbonization of the atmosphere, led to me wanting to spend time on-planet during the duration.

But you should all be pleased to learn that what actually occurred is that, under President Obama, a strenuous environmental plan was emplaced, one which was in concerted cooperation with Europe, India and China. Operating with the advice of almost-president Al Gore, Obama's team (led by Nobel Laureate Steven Chu) instigated programs and remedies which mitigated the effects of global warming just enuff to prevent the worst (icecap slippage) from happening. What nobody realized was that, like an airplane in a nose-dive which pulls up at the last moment before crashing, Urth came within a hairsbreadth of a Second Great Flood. But, as they continue to say all the way into the 29th Century, all's well that ends well.

Introduction

January 2029

First, an explanation of the title: As editor of the first four editions of The Android Trainer’s Phrasebook, I have written the introductions to those volumes. But now, with the publication of the fifth of these (Dances with Droids: The Android Trainer’s Phrasebook) and my looming retirement from Anderson Robotic Corporation, I’ve decided to write a more personal account. In this I will endeavor to tell the story, and the many exigencies, involved in the training of the servoids at ARC and elsewhere, as well as give a thumbnail account of the history and problems of droids in the culture-at-large. (And, perhaps as well, some personal commentary on that culture-at large.)

Thus and so, I’ve decided to use my nickname at the company as the formal title—for no better reason than that it pleases me to do so. And, I suppose, the term stands as a metaphor for the entire field of advanced robotics, in which I am proud to have played a part.

Why did they call me “Dances with Droids”? To tell the story, on my second day at ARC, back in 2018, I was being given a full tour of the premises. In one of the rooms I was led into, a trainer was dancing with one of the units; actually, he was attempting to teach the mechoid how to dance. They were doing a slow waltz, and badly. Having myself taken several years of ballroom dance, I inquired if I may make a suggestion or two. Next thing I knew, I was myself swinging around the room with the android, coaching it on the variations in rhythm and style of the classical waltz. After that, I was induced to teach a few other steps that I was expert in, and it became a three-hour exhibition, while people from the nearby offices came over to see what the new guy was doing. From that episode I earned (and proudly accepted) the appellation “Dances with Droids.”

The Commonacular (as it is usually termed) had its origin in a project of mine conducted in 2016-2017, that of compiling the most commonly used word strings—phrases and sentences—and denoting internationally usable symbols for them. This book was well received and continues to be printed and translated in an ever-expanding list of languages and countries. When Anderson Robotics was preparing to produce its breakthrough line of high-vocabulary servoids, they approached me regarding the use of the compilation. I ended up agreeing to take the position of Director of Implemented Language, to oversee the android training. Since then, ARC has become a very lucrabig company, and the Commonacular has become the industry standard, used—for a fee—by every major android manufacturer.

Now, with this newly expanded version, over 1000 additional phrases and sentences have been added, bringing the total to over 5000. (And this with the generic use of he and him, as a syntaxual surrogate for she, her, we, I, me, they and them.) My main source for the list, besides notes taken during and after conversations, was several hundred films, especiallymost those from the period 2000-2010, before the recent decline in screenwriting took place.

CHAPTER ONE

Problems and Solutions in Android Training

There were those in my former company who objected to my new additions on the basis that it would cause at least another 20 days of programming, and here we get to the nub of the matter, summarized in that durable old phrase: Time is money. My former boss at Anderson told me point-blank that, “We’re a million units back-ordered, and this will only make it worse! The Asians are eating our market share as is.” What I said back to him, in retro20, was intemperate, especially considering that he, a) was the company president, and b) was Mr. Anderson’s prized nephew. But there had been some other things going on at the company which had me rankled, things I needn’t detail here.

I was sent immediately to Jonas Anderson’s top-floor office where I continued to vent to the old man’s face, concerning a number of grievances. After a few minutes of this, he said, “Perhaps it’s time for you to take early retirement, Winger, and get away from all this maddening pressure.” As a man who makes his living as a wordsmith, all I said was “Done,” and turned on my heel. Soon after this I was gone, but my settlement included the fulfillment of the contract for the fifth Phrasebook edition, and this previously planned companion volume, with ARC receiving 75% of the profits.

As for me, I’ve already signed on with a project I’m very excited about. Being an aficionado and promoter of Newvo ever since the publication by Ambrose Bierce (nee, Ambro Pyrce) of his return-to-Urth story, I have signed up as Newvo editor of the upcoming Webster-Johnson New Americana Dictionary, which will highlight the neologisms of the past 20 years or so in blue ink.)

ARC had been shipping around 150,000 finished androids per month, by far the biggest purveyor on the planet, but Taiwan Works has been steadily increasing their output, until it’s over 60,000 per month as of this writing. In combination with the other corporations in the field, mostly Asian, and some American (who came late to the game due to political pressure from their religious conservatives, who branded our factories “The Devil’s Workshop”) our market share was around 60% but steadily eroding.

Even with a 96-97% satisfaction rate with the droids, there have been problems—gleefully magnified by the scandal-loving media—and most of these have had to do with language misunderstandings. Some of the problems were of course purely mechanical, and most of those were from sloppy handling and poor maintenance by the users. The units are, despite their human-like appearance, just glorified computers, and thus need to be handled with a modicum of care, and not made to work nonstop 24/365.

Language Problems

But the language misunderstandings are what most concern me, as it has been my job as DIL to “give the list,” the working compilation of commonly used phrases and sentences used by us organics. Let me just say in my defense that while, yes there were some oversights, more than a few of the snafus which made such news these past few years were the fault of the programmers charged with teaching the androids the requisite language paradigm. This was especially true in several instances in our West Coast branch where, apparently, many old hippie types took to adding their own pet phrases to my lists, resulting in several misunderstandings, two of which were centered on the wrong grasp of the term “far out.”

Then there was the programmer who taught a droid to call him “you old bonebag” and a few other pejoratives during their processing. Failing to remove this instruction, ARC soon got an angry call from someone who had just paid half his life savings for a servoid that was insulting him.

The mechoids are programmed with a speaking vocabulary of approxly 35,000 words. (By comparison, the average 40-year-old has a grasp of 16,000; the average 18-year-old just under 9,000.) The servoids understand the meaning of over 200,000 words, but these are not for speaking purposes, otherwise their speech may become too erudite for human comprehension. Knowledge of these words are for comprehension purposes, to cover a multitude of situational contingencies. But they’re allowed to speak them if called upon by a human, eg, their owner asks them the meaning of a word for a crossword puzzle he is working on, in which case the expanded database could be accessed.

I have another note on the programmers. From the beginning, ARC employed two individuals, working 12-hour shifts, to do the full programming work, six days a week until completed, which was at minimum 14 weeks. As daunting as this could become (but they get a full month off in between assignments) it was thought best, so as to minimize “personality interface” problems from multiple contacts during the cyberoid’s vulnerable initial matrixuals. This policy is, with few exceptions, industry-wide, as most of the other outfits copied our procedures as much as possible.

The programmers would, in their routine, read a new phrase or sentence, and give examples of that particular usage. One of my last recommendations before I left the employ of ARC was that they needed to go to a three- or four-person rotation, thus nullifying the possibilities of fatigue (with the concomitant slurring of words and skimskipping of the requisite list) in these human workers. I believe that a fair share of the problems have occurred at this root level.

It became obvious to me, from the reported language mixups, that not all permutations and figurative variations were being covered in the programming regimens. Absent a clear meaning on a word or term, the android will first go to his ‘Similars File,” and try to ascertain the intended meaning. This can easily lead to a severe rupture in communication, as the English language is full of nuance and curlyturns, a meaning sometimes cartwheeling on something as minor as a preposition.

Just to cite a few examples, breaking up, breaking down, breaking in, breaking thru and breaking news all have severely different lexical denotations. And break down (in the sense of analyze) as a verb phrase can be confused with breakdown the noun. Then there are the phrases, seemingly opposite, that actually mean the same thing, like fat chance and slim chance, and holy mess and unholy mess.

Of course, Android Rule #7 states that, “When unsure of a proper meaning or procedure, it is best to ask for clarification.” But this is not always practical, as the owner may not be present at that moment, or immediately available to answer a question about some writstructions or e-voice notes left for the servoid. Also of course, the unit may think he knows what is meant, but does not truly understand.

Linked in with this, although difficult to adduce, is that the owners themselves might mis-speak or use the language incorrectly, thus delivering a bad instruction into their unit. This was clear in at least one case, when the owner, a baseball executive, was murky on his usage of the word “sanction” while giving instructions to his servoid office assistant. This word can be used as a strong positive or a strong negative, and must always be used in a clarified context. As many of you probably read, the embarrassing result was that a player banned for substance abuse was given an award for “outstanding contributions to the community” from MLB’s front office.

If your servoid does not understand a phrase you have used, first repeat the words with your best articulation. If that doesn’t help, check to see if it is included in The Phrasebook; if it is not, then follow the manual’s instructions on how to put the servoid in Receive Language mode, then say the word or phrase, then say “Meaning.” At this point, give your definition as best you can, followed by a few examples. The hope is that these sessions with your servoid will be few, as our latest compilation of phrase and sentence additions has covered many of the reported gaps.

Inflection, facial expression, body language and general context of the conversation are also supposed to be inculcated, so as to prevent the cyberoids from misappropriating someone’s words as meaning something other than what was intended. This was particularly vital in the discernment of sarcasm, of which Western culture is disconcertedly rife.

Of course one of our biggest mistakes with the earliest units was not schooling them properly in the discernment of the many and varied uses of the F-word and other of the vulgar slanguage so many people use as (pun alert) a matter of coarse. The number of misunderstandings this created prompted a recall of the first 15,000 servoids, until this oversight could be fixed. They were then rigorously coached on the nuanced variations in voice (and the context of the moment) which would tell them whether the F-word usage was an angry exclamatory, a sign of awe, a sexual reference or something else.

The telling of anecdotes and jokes was another weakness that was worked on. It was thought that, to soften relations with coworkers, the androids should know some anecjokes. A lot of the problem was in the poorly coordinated facial expressions—since improved—but the programmers did drill the units on better inflection, as they often came across as too monotonic while going for a laugh.

There was some debate among my staff as to whether or not to include a passel of words and phrases once popular but now considered passé. I mostly deferred to my (younger than me) underlings on this, but have reinstated a few dozen of them, as we have heard from individuals who apparently still use these archaisms. One funny story involved the term “cat’s pajamas.” Another, even more disastrous (and ribald) proceeded from the owner’s badly timed use of the expression “pig in a poke.” Needless to say, those terms are now part of he programming regimen.

Buyers of the service mechanisms are of course cautioned that the language mastery of the androids is not, and probably never will be, perfect, but of course expectations (due to those damnable commercials) continue to be sky high.

Cultural Training of Androids

When the programmers have finished with the list, they show the droids a selection of around three dozen films and documentaries and forty or so TV show segments and webisodes, all the while discussing what is happening on screen. These sessions proved to be very instructive also for the programmers, and I sat in on quite a few of them myself.

From these feedback conversations with the droids, we learned a great deal about their “viewpoint” and ability to “rationalize” what they observed. The most pronounced thing was, being cybernetically created, their minds had no intrinsic reality filter, as humans over the age of five or six do. Thus, they had to be trained, as best we could, to recognize various levels of reality, eg, happening-now personal reality, documentary-level true material, semblance-of-reality fiction, and implausible-but-entertaining fictional material, like science fiction.

At this point, there would be an infusion, directly from implanted chips, of a cultural database. Included in this would be the stores of the website IMDb, Bert Wesley’s 20,000 Movie Capsules, and the complete works of Roger Ebert, Leonard Maltin and Frank Rich. Also in the mix would be book review compendiums, and the tome 1000 Greatest Books of the Second Millennium.

When it came to the music section, I chose a committee to make selections. They came up with an eclectic mix of classical, jazz, country and other forms—about 1600 pieces, we then added the entire Rolling Stone “Top 500 Songs—1970-2020" list. For the years since then, and the years 1950 to 1969, Billboard’s top 10 for each year are used.

Then as a conclusionary process, a series of reference books—almanacs, books of quotations and encyclopedias, including sports compendiums—are downloaded into the mechoid’s permanent files.

Religion, Philosophy and the Internet

Here is a thorny issue. All of the servoids are prohibited from, on their own, reading philosophy or religious texts. This can only be circumvented with the permission of the owner, and in the owner’s presence. Even then, written permission is needed from our offices, at the risk of warranty revocation. This edict was instituted at ARC (and the other manufacturers, who have all adopted a similar position) because too many machines were coming back to us after problems caused by the reading of these materials. Our shorthand way of describing the problem was “Analysis Paralysis,” ie, the androids knew too much for their own functional good. It should be noted that, while hightelligence is a plus factor in androids, in the workaday world academic acumen is just not that optimal an attribute. (Just ask any former philosophy major.)

Religion and philosophy are a wide-ranging goulash of life assessment theories, full of contradictions with each other. The human consciousness can (mostly) handle these matters, but you can’t expect a mechanism to understand, for instance, the brain-numbing aspects of faith, or miracles, or the supernatural, let alone cosmic principles like infinity and eternity. They are simply not equipped. We do, however, provide a sanitized summation of several dozen religions and schools of philosophy for their referential use.

It is crucial to keep a clear head and an even keel when dealing with the mechoids. They are, at their cruxcore, hard drives, cybernetic calculators and computer chips—metal and plastic skillfully tailored to fulfill human needs. They are very locked into the three dimensions, or four, if you include time. While the android units have been meticulously crafted to mirrorflect humans as much as feasibly possible, people have to bear in mind that they are in no important way human. They do not possess the characteristics that most define humanality: real emotions, the ability to self-reflect on their consciousness and the possession of the spiritual attributes sometimes referred to as a soul.

The droids have no dreams, somnolent or otherwise—no aspirations, no guilt, no recriminative motivations, no traumasodes of childhood to assuage or play out. When not in directed activity, the cyberoids are the progenitor and recipient of—mentally speaking—unimpeded silence. There is no brain chatter going on, no perusal of memory or rehash of past mistakes and conflicts, and no rehearsals of anticipated conversations. (Ah, the very thought of it, even for a day!)

Similar to the stricture on religion and philosophy is the one relating to the Internet. As spelled out in Android Rule #5, the units may not use the W3 except as specifically ordered, and only with human presence. This was put into effect during the first year after their introduction, as a large number of the early units became confused and overwhelmed while surfing the Net and downloading massive amounts of material, some of which, by the very nature of the I-Net, was of a highly suspect nature.

Some specificity is allowed (for an additional cost) for those who want their unit to be pre-trained in the jargonese of a particular field. Examples of this would be for medical or law office employment. For those of you wondering if any special training is given to the sexmate lines, the answer is yes. When their general training is complete, they are shown dozens of movies, starting with steamy R-rated ones, and on thru selected hardcore fare (some even sent by the client). In addition, they are downloaded with a slew of sex manuals, from The Kama Sutra and Nabu’s Night of Pleasure to the recently popular Sexorama: The Human Orgasm.

Unfounded Myths about Androids

Of all the comments received at our offices and monitored on the bloggonet, it has been the sci-fi fans who were the most disappointed in the products. They’ve endlessly complained that the cyberoids were not as physically strong and courageously resourceful as Commander Data of Star Trek, or as indestructible as the Captains of Enok androids. Dissatisfaction of a ranker type, generally from the Religious Right who call themselves “humanity purists,” warn of dark deeds, even eventual insurrection, by a cyborg race. They cite such screen fiction as Battlestar Galactica (the Cylons) and Robo Wars (the Robotoid race) as if these were some kind of proof or reason to distrust the formation of a mechoid population.

What these sorts fail to comprehend is that we programmed the androids with very low-grade willpower, just enuff volition, as we used to joke, “to come in out of the rain.” Put in basic terms, they are about 95% dependent on human instruction to perform their actions.

Another factor to alleviate the paranoids’ anxt (but somehow doesn’t with the hardcore crazies) is that the units are in no way networked with each other; they can’t silently communicate with each other, let alone plot any kind of insurrection.

Also, they have no anger buttons. This is absolute. No matter what is said or done to them, they take it with equanimity. But we did not leave them defenseless against cruelty. Each servoid sent out from ARC, and most of the other (reputable) companies, has a multicomm linkup, connecting it to a satellite and two ground stations. The droids are rigorously trained to recognize danger and at the slightest sign of it (say a teenage son of an owner looking for a sick laugh) the servoid signals out, and one or two operators go live with the feed. The ears on the droid flash red, and there’s a loud beep, to let anyone in their vicinity know that they’re being viewed and recorded—that a Code Red has been received. At that point, there’s an investigation, verifications of ownership, threat of warranty cancellation, reports, andcetra. With these safeguards, and the attendant publicity of incidents, it’s fairly rare that a serious incident ever occurs.

CHAPTER TWO

Android History—A Quick Course

For those of you who are very young, and don’t have a clear perspective on the development and history of the droids, I will provide a thumbnail of how things came to be.

The very first OIDs (Operationally Independent Devices) were the little robot dogs that appeared near the beginning of the century, I’m thinking 2004. These were soon followed by variations on non-talking computerized robots that could walk and follow basic orders, but were not made for the general populace.

In 2008 the Vietnamese inventor Le Trung introduced “Aiko,” a rudimentary android female who was language- and touch-responsive, but in a tightly programmed way. Altho not built to walk, and having no facial expressions, this represented a true breakthrough in the field, and spurred investment monies into the field. Le Trung himself became the cybernetics chief for a successful company (AikoBot) that later manufactured androids for work as receptionists, toll-takers, ticket-sellers and information desk personnel.

The first real breakthrough in robotic facial expressions came from the work of Hiroshi Kobatashi of the University of Tokyo. In 2009 he introduced the Saya model, an elementary school “teacher.” In reality, it did little more than roll-call the students, set tasks and provide the platform for the video monitoring of the class. But it had nearly ten expressions and was a progresstage in the techvelopment of the field. Japan also began using these simple pre-androids to direct traffic and act as companions to Alzheimers patients.

Thru development after development, these early ventures into cybernetics eventually yielded the android revolution that has so changed our world. But first, as in other areas (it’s said that prostitution is the oldest profession) sex became the prime mover for an industry being born.

The Sex Droids—Opening up a Market

There will be those who object to my detailing of the sexbot industry, but to undertake a chronicling of android manufacturing without the sex aspect would be like giving an account of the video or DVD or Blu-ray or UDD industry (or even the I-Net) without the substantial “adult” portion of the market.

A company called RealDoll began to sell properly weighted, anatomically correct sex dolls in 1997. Though appealing in a limited way to the lonely male, they had no computer chips or language capabilities. It wasn’t until 2013 when the first android in female form was manufactured and sold. This was by FemLine 3000, which is still around, specializing in custom-built droid sexmates—male, female, hermale, and fantasy creations.

The industry really took off with the entry of celebrities for the resemblike sexdroids. The Denise Richards Inti-Mate® line, the synthmate her company manufactures, was the first megaseller. These squeezies become so lucrative a business for her, in addition to her virtreal productions, that she quit almost all of her TV and moviemaking work. As the first celebrity to get into the field, she was the target of scathing criticism, no doubt mollified by her amassment of what by then was known as “Oprah-money.”

Pamela Anderson, a popular blondbomb from the turn of the century, declined to authorize a replicoid, but the Superlicious model, so suspiciously similar to her features that she brought legal action, became the best-selling sexdroid of all time. Not as hotcakes, but a steady seller, was the Jessica Alba line. That was the first synthmate I owned, and many new models came along before I ever bought another type. I still have it, tho for the most part deactivated, in a closet at home. Alba had a low PRI (Phrase Recognition Index) but that was fine by me. Dealing with words all the time left me appreciative of her quiet, vacuous presence. And that super-cute dimpled smile always managed to lighten and heighten my mood.

Altho I’m as aware as anybody that the synthmates aren’t real people, I’ll confess to a bit of a sentimental attachment to my Jessie. I’ll occasionally reactivate her, especially during my Nantucket vacation, so we can bicycle thru the scenic foliage, or walk the beach at sunset like we would back then. Even tho she was from the earliest batch of sexdroids, and had an audible hum, and a plasticky smell when moist, I could never bring myself to trade her in or sell her, not even now when the Albas have such a high retro-collector’s value. Nor could I ever loan her to a friend, or Craigslist the unit out as a rental, as many owners do with their older models. And I still remember my feelings of irrational guilt the day that my new Charlize Theron model arrived, which I guardedly left in the box while I stowed my Jessie in a walk-in closet

Among the early male sexbots were the retro-stud line which featured the George Clooney, the Brad Pitt, the Rock Johnson, and the very-retro, but very popular, Burt Reynolds. Then of course the Haley Joel Osment, the Robert Pattinson, the Birch Sumner, and the near-endless array of others. The commonly used slang for these are “Spikes” (despite Spike Lee’s threat of legal action) but, along with the female versions, they’re all officially called “lifelike companions,” or, in polite circles, the “anatomicals.”

There’s an interesting tale shared by our new offworlder friends from Gamma, who tell of a world in their sector where a gender war had gone way beyond what we call “the battle of the sexes.” Almost 80% of the planet was living separately, as divorces increased and new marriages practically ceased. Decades-long political movements—feminists, maleists—had led to unisex colonies on different continents. (The females reproduced with artificial insemination.)

As the fractiousness grew to actual guerrilla war, terrorist acts and military skirmishes, more individuals left for one colony or another. These became large countries unto themselves, inevitably setting off a trade war with the “mixed” population. Complicating this further was a moon colony for couples only, which played one side against the other to receive great prices on its imports and exports.

One economic spinoff of their contretemps was the development of lifelike, sexually operational, androids. The Arbonian manufacturers, incentivized by both the profit motive and physical needs, took these simulikes to a high state of the art/science. This may well have contributed to a delay in the final resolution of the matter, while for a number of years both males and females enjoyed having a compliant mate who never argued with them. One could actually train the things to, for instance, say “Absolutely!!” whenever their owner asked, “Am I right?” Or program in a trigger-word, after which the synthmate would initiate sex.

This even led to some ersatz civil unions between the owners and droids, as the Arbonians were thrilljoyed to have companions who enjoyed the same activities, types of music and art, choice of friends and interior decor that they did. But this eventually, and inevitably, grew stale for most of them.

Consequent to the above androidal development, prostitution on the resort moons and planets (which is apparently a regular practice on all the other inhabited worlds) saw a steady increase, employing these new’n’improved programmable companions as a popular adjunct to the fleshblood sexworkers.

Here on Urth, at every step of the way, the government burrocrats have impeded progress with their over-regulation, but I do agree with their strong stand against the patently absurdiculous “right” of people to marry their synthmates. However, it now appears that Massachusetts will soon allow civil unions to be entered into—with Vermont and California putting similar propositions on the upcoming ballot.

Feeding this situation, and I use the term deliberately, is the obesity epidemic of the Western World, most visibly in the North American Union. With over 70% of those between 18 and 55 in the “very obese” category—more than 50 pounds overweight—people who might normally be dating and mating are left to stew in their condition, often spiraling further into food binges as the frustravexation of loneliness and rejection grows. I suppose it’s no wonder such people turn to the “lifelike companions” for intimacy.

Tractor Jockeys and Trucker Tommys

The next area for the burgeoning android market was that of simple laborer. The agricultural giant Archer-Daniels-Midland ordered 2000 units from ServUSA for the sole purpose of riding on field tractors plowing and planting and harvesting their crops. They requested only that the droids understand rudimentary commands, and be able to make basic comments concerning the job and any problems they encountered.

This gambit proved to be a big success, as there are few things more boring than riding a tractor all day, not to mention the heat and dust that one has to put up with to get the task done. So, many more thousands of units were ordered, and led to the beginning of confidence in the utilization of the machines for jobs previously done by humans.

Next came the truck-loaders, or “Trucker Tommys,” as they soon came to be called. These were assistants for the truckdrivers, specifically for use in the heavy loading and unloading duties. The long-haul guys at first would leave the units in the back with the cargo, then reactivate them for the heavy lifting. Then someone at LaborDroid got the idea to install sophisticated antennae in them so they could pick up satellite radio stations (and the remaining land-based) from around the globe. This put the Tommys in the front seat with the drivers!

Then ServUSA got in on the quickly expanding market by installing upwards of 3,000 audio-books into each unit, in addition to the satt-radio capabilities. The truckers could now have a companion to them that was, in effect, reading to them. It’s now estimated that there are 175,000 Trucker Tommys in service, mostly in the NAU, but growing rapidly in other parts of the world.

During those early years (2015-2018), the mechoid companies were trying to push sales into the factories, which logically were a place where the servoids could be of great use, but resistance from the unions and workers in general was fierce. Finally, in 2018, after much wrangling, the US Labor Department mediated a settlement between the labor force representatives and the mechufacturers. Called the 10/20 Compromise, this set a limit of 10% on how many cyberoids could work at any factory, a limitation that would obtain for 20 years. The mechufacturers wanted more, but realized that just getting their units into American factories would prove their viability and worth, and lead to sales around the world. Which is exactly what happened.

Fast on the heels of the first emplacements of androids in Detroit car factories, after they were demonstrated to be fullficiently effective as workers, and workers who worked around the clock and required no health package or pension, orders for the workdroids flowed in. Outside of Europe, which retained a strong labor presence (and enacted similar restrictions as the NAU), most countries didn’t have the same regard for “worker’s rights,” and placed no such restrictions on the numbers of androids allowed as factory employees.

An additional boost was achieved for mechoid emplacement when the Christian Right Party (with their Republican roots intact) won the presidential election and congressional majority in 2020 and fastmediately pushed thru legislation to make the 10/20 a 30/5, allowing up to 30% mechoid for the following five years. This was at the behest of the big factory owners, who saw how their overseas competitors were saving money and increasing production by going android.

The Domestics—Workdroids for the Home

The third wave of android units was all about service mechoids. Due to the completion of the Mexican Border Fence in 2014, and the deportation of so many illegal immigrants in the years before that, there was a severe shortage of domestic workers—housecleaners, laundresses, manservants, property custodians, gardeners, etc. Into this vacuum came ARC. I was not yet with them but remember their early products—the perpetually smiling maids, mowers and butlers in their ReadyAble® Servoid line. Altho low in PRI, these early droids filled a great need, especially for busy professional types.

I probably should have bought one of their Miles4U units but instead went for a cheaper robo-butler—the chrome-headed one from Mechtastic—to take and type dictation, do some basic cleaning, answer the door, and serve drinks when I had guests. I had to turn it back before the one-year warranty expired, as it was one unforturn after another, and left me more stressed than assisted. For one thing, it could easily be lied to or duped by salesmen and other unwanteds who came by. I returned from a trip once and the foyer was filled with Amway products, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses were having a meeting in what they thought was their new headquarters. (And the damn contraption never could get the meaning of “easy on the ice.”)

But then some enterprising folks realized that they could combine the two; have servoids that performed as maids or butlers but also as sexmates. Those were very pop, but received stiff competition from another combomerge concept—domestic helper plus entertainment performer, usual-case that of singers. The latter would have the sponsoring singer’s voice, and be programmed with his or her stage mannerisms.

The first in this category was actually that of a comedienne, the innovative Maria Bamberg. Her replicoid would clean your house, sort your mail, do your online and in-store shopping, but also was programmed with a dozen hours of Ms. Bamberg’s comedy. For those who bought her product, a periodic update of new material could be downloaded for free. Her later versions contained the option (but substantially more expensive) of also being a sexmate, but with the quaint condition that nothing occur until 15 days into the “relationship.”

The immediate success of the Bamberg opened the door to the other performers to sanction synthmate models. Most came with the (again, more expensive) sex option, but sales were equally divided between those and the models that were just servants/performers.

The biggest sellers of that period (2019-2022) were Carrie Underwood, Beyonce, and Julia X, none of which included the sex option, but their legions of fans would pool their money if necessary to own one, then do a timeshare with it. These celebrity singing servoids would have 4-6 hours of “concert” within itself, —requests always honored—with more material downloadable as the artist created it.

A variant of this product line is the usage of mechoids as resemblike tribute bands, especially of the nostalgic metal groups of earlier times. Mostly for rental, but doing a swift business in that regard, these androidal rockers mimic the bands at their peak, while enacting the group’s biggest hits from their entire catalog. Failing in his attempt to throw cold water on this phenomenon, Sir Paul McCartney said in an interview last year that “The whole thing is an abomination!” and he’s refused permission for the Beatles resembike bands. (I suppose he’s finally gotten to be an old man.)

The most pop-pop appear to be the retro-favorites AC/DC, the Hagar Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen and Aerosmith, plus the more recent Anarchy’s Stepson, Screws and Jimbo Squad. But the mega is the indefatigable Rolling Stones, who somehow put out a studio disc on the 60^th anniversary of their first “album.” (I will withhold my critique, as like when a dog walks on its hind legs, you’re not supposed to criticize the quality of the performance.)

On the impetus of the huge retro-rock revival among the culture-starved youth of today, these bands, and current active ones like Renegade Army, Pipsqueak, Justifiable Suicide and the Silver Spoon Blues Band, are hired to work parties, gym dances, mall openings and weddings. Charging a modest $8-12,000 ($15,000 if they’re made to trash a place while you vid them) they’re easily affordable for events requiring high amplitude and raw attitude.

Getting back to the combo lines, then there was the Marilu Henner model, which acted as a “personal assistoid,” ie, in addition to being a domestic and a personal shopper, would be a life counselor on health, diet and exercise. Another of the breakthrough droids was the BFF line from GirlDroid. These were housecleaners and assistoids but also were pre-trained to bond with their female owners (target demog of 18-30) and give relationship advice, personal counseling and the always-there shoulder that so many young females need.

In 2021 came a big-news product from Rachael Ray Productions. The cookshow guru modeled a simulike that shot to the peak of the top-seller lists and stayed there for a full year-and-a-half. The synthoid would clean, do assistoid work, sing a little, tell jokes, answer the door and phone, and cook up a storm day and night. My neighbors on both sides had one and many’s the night when I couldn’t get that voice out of my head.

The Artificiality Wars

But the more serious problems and dilemmas are found in what is being confronted in three areas that are linked under the banner of “The Artificiality Wars.” Firstly, as for the controversy sayrounding the artificial actors, I don’t see this to be a problem at all. Using mechoids for some of the supporting roles, in particular the ones that end up falling out of buildings or being blown to smithereens, seems like a common-sense idea, and the Actors Union needs to pull back its threats. And so what if the occasional leading part is nabbed by an android? That’s the fault of the human actors who tried out for the role and were beat out. Sour grapes I say!

Who the sucking hell is Hollywood anyway, the absolute Artificiality Headquarters of the known universe, complaining about what’s not real? (On a lighter note, I just won a bet with a friend on the guessgame built into the porno series, Real or Not Real? I guessed right on 8 of the 10 main “actors.”)

The second area, android teachers in the schools, is rather more important, and will have the most significant repercussions, long and short term. Short term, the last thing we need is another national teacher’s strike. Long term, if these Teachatron products are not banned or curtailed, hundreds of thousands of future education majors will be forced to instead major in administration or business or, worse, add to the glut of psychology majors tormenting us all.

The best solution would be to make it mandatory that the mechoids, however proficient they eventually become, only be used as assistants to the teachers, and can never exceed the number of teachers employed by a school.

Third, and this controversy is dying down of late due to the popularity of the workdroids in question, there’s the restaurant employee servoids. The earliest ones, dating from around 2016, were back-kitchen workers and busboys, but by the next year some large diners were buying the “Alice” series, (named for an old TV show waitress).

These servoids were adequate, but not that pop with the clientele, mostly because they couldn’t flirt with them. But then came a bigger step, the specialization of the servers into various celebrity replicoids—some of which were already being manumade for other market segments.

The Hard Rock Café, with its more than 3000 locations, is probably the most well known in this category. There your order can be taken and served by everyone from Elvis Presley, James Brown and John Lennon to Jimmy Q and Staci Melville. The droids rotate their way through stage appearances during the course of their table-waiting schedule, doing about 15 minutes each.

For the kids (and the comic-book freaks in many of us) there’s the Legion of Superheroes restaurant chain. At Superheroes, there are replicoids based on Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Iron Man, Wolverine, Enviro-Man and the Flash (who’s designed to move extra-quickly).

There’s a restaurant near my home that I’ve long frequented which recently switched to the celeb servers, this one from hit television programs. I recognized the cast from Slash Thomas (about a billionaire serialisto), the characters from Psychoville (the town which harbors dozens of evil twins) and my waitress of choice, the title character from Barbi Beaver. Most of the other synthoids I didn’t recognize because I limit my TV viewing to the classier shows.

Along these lines also there’s the restaurant chain Oscar’s Gold, which has movie stars who have won the Academy Award, and the Cooperstown Eatery franchises, which have Hall of Fame baseballer lookalikes as the waiters. Opening soon will be a group of restaurants (Sports Palace) that has famous athletes from many different sports, so people can sit in whichever section they want and be served by, for example, Tiger Woods, Eli Manning or Brett Mankowski.

One concept that didn’t catch on was Comicstrip City, which opened several restaurants employing characters from the Sunday funnies. Especially disconcerting were Dennis the Menace, Nancy, Sluggo, and the kids from “Peanuts,” operating as full-sized food servers. (Most especially Charlie Brown, with that grotesquely large, round head.) And making Dagwood—“Who’s he?” the youngsters would ask—into a clumsy oaf who once a night would cause a huge spillage, was just bad mojo.

One androidal restaurant concept that is doing very well but which I distinctly disliked during my one visit is the Flintstones eateries, called Bedrock Barbecue & Grill. Their decision to have dirt floors and limestone tables just gives the place a dusty feel. But having the Bamm-Bamm and Pebbles droids serving tables on bumpy roller skates is a good touch.

Then there’s the Suzie-Q’s, sometimes called the Nudie-Q’s, which I have to mention because they’re probably the most prevalent. These are eateries that have nude synthetics waiting on tables and bussing dishes. Many communities that have laws on the books prohibiting such a thing with fleshbloods were powerless to stop their sudden influx. Losing business rapidly to the “naked places,” some regular restaurants were forced to adopt the same, at least in a segresection of their place, with either unclothed synthoids or humans. It’s not uncommon anymore to go into a restaurant and be asked by the hostess as she seats you, “Nude or normal?”

This craze, if you want to call it that, has now spread to many different types of businesses, even, as I found out recently, to a hardware store down the street from me. But my biggest shock was down at the bakery the other day, when the widow O’Reilly was standing there behind the counter, her tiny, freckled tits in full view. When my jaw dropped she gave me a wide smile as she said, “A gal’s gotta do what a gal’s gotta do.” (For what it’s worth, I did find myself ordering an extra loaf of rye.)

The “Dilberts”

As some people don’t know, the reason that office droids are called “Dilberts” is because of a comic strip—a great one—which ran from 1989 until 2015. In those 4-panel episodes, cubicled office workers were continually assailed by the ignorant and evil machinations of management and the raging incompetence of their fellow employees.

Just about the time the strip was being retired, the first test-model Dilberts were starting out in London. They were trained for low-level office work, like typing, copying and filing. There was a bit of a hue and cry over their taking jobs away from humans, but the jobs in question were of such a humdrum nature that the objections soon faded. Since then, with the gradgradual improvement of the machines, they’ve been able to take on more difficult office tasks, and the satisfaction rate remains extremely high.

Among the advantages of the office droids are that they only have to be instructed once (if instructed well) and this addresses a longstanding peeve of many in middle management about the need for constant repetition. In contrast to their homo sapiens counterpart the workdroids don’t need to take smoking breaks, don’t have periods of depression, don’t waste time in idle netsurfing, browsing for porn, hitting chat rooms, or playing computer games and virtreals.

The android workers don’t have mood-swings, doctor and dentist appointments, or emergencies with their children. They don’t waste company time on personal calls and texting, gossiping with their coworkers, chatting up the secretaries, complaining about their spouse, lamenting their latest bedmate, or bragging about their brilliant children.

The cyberoids don’t go thru painful divorces, or get pregnant, or file sexual harassment suits, or periodically have to go into rehab. They don’t exaggerate on their expense accounts, use company cars on personal trips, or take two-hour lunches at a tavern.

The office servoids don’t ever call in sick on Mondays, or leave early on Fridays. They don’t bring their germs and coughing spasms and drippy noses into the office when they’re out of sick days, they don’t have body odor problems, they don’t steal yogurt from the breakroom fridge, they don’t waste time discussing the latest screenies, and they’re always polite and respectful to everyone else at the company. And they obviously don’t take bathroom breaks, let along suspiciously long ones.

(No, I’m not finished.) They don’t lie on their resumes, have noisy visitors, or play pranks on the managers or their cubicle-mates. They don’t quit on a whim, or because they found something marginally better, or because they’re starting their own business, or because they’re getting married. They would never steal or sabotage data files, or pilfer office equipment. They never pretend to be working by shuffling papers and making phony phonecalls. And they never take naps when the boss is out, because they hardly ever sleep.

In fact, most companies that employ cyberoids work them 23-24 hours a day, powering them down to Sleep Mode for an hour once or twice a week to keep them “fresh.” Factoring in the weekends, and the considerations listed above, it can safely be stated that business establishments are getting at least a 4-1 boost from using androids in their workforce.

So never mind the slew of scandals surrounding the office managers who surreptitiously bought anatomicals for office work and got caught, shall we say, giving late-night dictation. Overall, the program has been a resounding success, and has helped productivity reach new levels of highficiency.

I wasn’t planning to get into this next matter, but feel now that I must register my considered opinion, for the record, on a controversy raging within the ranks of cyberoid manufacturers: the training and sale of workroid units as corporate middle managers. This misbegotten notion started at ARC and has since spread to the others in the field. And, truth be told, it is the underlying reason I took early retirement from the company.

They took my original (and groundbreaking, thank you very much) servoid-training paradigm– SIMU, which stands for Social Interaction Module for Understanding and layered over it, against my explicit objections, several hundred instructions and routines for training as a middle manager, calling it SIMULA, for Social Interaction Module for Utilizing Leadership Attributes. As first hatched, the plan was for the office servoids to be trained only to fulfill a leadership role over the standardized office droids, the so-called Dilberts. This would please many of our corporate clients, whose midmanagementarians often felt queasy dealing with the mechoids, especially if most of their underlings were in that category.

But then someone, I’m pretty sure it was Quincy Anderson, the prized nephew, decided that the company could charge as much as 600k (as opposed to 100-120) for a full-scale corporate office manager (which they’re calling the “Peterson” line), one that could handle the responsibility of mid-level management without the attribute most associated with that ilk, which is skulking ambition. Thus, upper management would have a totally compliant toady below them who wouldn’t be looking to undercut them in the hopes of taking their job.

Sounded like the perfect crime, er, plan, until one analyzed the prospectuals involved. Sure, we could easily enuff train the Petersons to go up to a recalcitrant employee’s desk and say, “Johnson, I see here that your output is down the past two months. Please see to it that you increase your efficiency rating.” But how do you train it for the myriad-and-a-half potential responses that Johnson would throw at the Peterson, less than half of which would be truth-based? Like about how he was sick, or his divorce was distracting him, or how he needs a new ‘puter-link, blah blahcetra. It will never be possible to train the droid to sort out the real from the feigned, to master what some call a b.s. meter.

Sure, we can train them somewhat in body language, as we already do to some extent with the standard models, especially eye furtiveness, but that won’t dispeliminate the Petersons being fooled by the skilled malingerers in his department, the ones who have self-trained to finagle and wheedle their way thru their worklife giving half-measures in return for full pay. These types would take immediate and ongoing advantage of any cyberoid put over them.

What about when there’s a disagreement between the Peterson and one or more of his minions. There’s little chance that we could train into him the necessary give-take negotiating skills which would include, in human-human interaction, knowing the individual well enuff to gauge how a kick in the ass was better or worse that flattery, or cajoling better than an ultimatum. Or if “Let’s go out for a beer after work and discuss it” would be better than “My way or the highway.” There’s just too much contingency to ensure the right handling in all such situations. And it would have to be, if not all, then almost all, when it came to problem resolution, because any poorly handled resolution would cause resentment—probably already breeding—in the human employee who had an android above them.

It’s a given that a majority of the organics who would be stationed under the aegis of a non-human would experience at least some unease. They would often feel themselves dehumanized, especially when getting memos or direct instructions from their mechoid boss. In other words, the relationship between the human and his droid superior would be a ticking time bomb, leading to fractiousness and an exodus of many of the better employees to a different department or an other employer altogether.

Even if, against all odds, androids could navigate the pitfalls of midmanagement, the path from there to the top tier is one that they will never traverse. That lane is for those who can schmooze, and stab others in the back, and be straight-faced duplicitous, who can argue in all earnestness for the company profit margin above any and all other considerations—personal, environmental, moral, even legal (which is defined in most corporo boardrooms as what you can reasonably get away with). There’s no way that an android can be trained to be a morally bi-equivalent, truth-trampling practitioner of situational ethics, as seems to be the absoquirement of most of the successful honchos these days.

CHAPTER THREE

Current Uses and Misuses of Androids

When first developed and put onto the business and consumer market, few, if any, could have accurately predicted the almost endless array of occupational uses for the cyberoids that eventuated. At first more of a novelty, with the sexdroids and stunt actors, and later a household necessity, with the dry-up of the Mexican workforce, and still later a good way to get dangerous jobs done, the servoid influx has now taken on the makings of a social revolution. This landmark development is daily changing the way Urthians live their lives. And the movement is still gathering steam.

Other Occupations that Androids are Filling

Besides those already mentioned, occupations which these versatile and highly trainable cyberoids have filled include the following:

§ Factory workers of many descriptions, especially where the required hours are long, and extreme speed and dexterity are necessary.

§ Nuclear plants, nuclear waste companies, and any hazmat occupation.

§ Space exploration. Two androids—“cybernauts—will be accompanying a human crew leaving early next year on their way o other solar systems, on the interstellar cruiship received in the Interworld Trade Pact.

§ Librarian/researchers. These sit at desks and assist library patrons, and do high-speed research in between.

§ Roofers, pavers and highway construction work—especially useful in very hot or cold or rainy conditions.

§ Deli workers.

§ Apartment building doormen.

§ Hotel night auditors.

§ Sports referees and umpires. These droids are primarily used for their eyesight acuity, and ultra-def recording function—a more instant version of instant replay.

§ Store shelf stockers.

§ Beekeepers.

§ Drummers in deathnoise bands.

§ Bomb squad personnel.

§ Paparazzi. This for their ability to hide in bushes nonstop, requiring neither food or sleep, ready to spring out and photo their celebrity prey.

§ Bureaucratic government workers, managing the files and computers of the burgeoning Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare departments.

§ Mail sorters at the post office.

§ Prison guards.

§ Rainforest collectors of plant and animal species. Thousands of new species and types of plants have been discovered by these 24/7 remote-controlled workers with built-in lab and camera equipment, including many dozens of medicinal herbs.

§ Forest rangers and lighthouse keepers.

§ Laundry workers in hospitals and hotels.

§ Package couriers in the metro areas. These units, at 7-feet tall, stride rapidly thru the cities, their yellow uniforms and beeping noise alerting all in front of them to make way.

§ Deep mining, especially in older mines.

§ “Attendoids” in hospitals and nursing homes where they keep company and provide basic care for Alzheimer victims and the broken-down Boomers who need constant attention.

§ Readers (1) for the blind and bedridden, including the above-mentioned patients. Because of their high-grade articulation, some droids have been used as the readers of books-on-disc.

§ Readers (2) for literary agencies and publishing companies. Programmed with the necessary criteria of their employer, servoids read the deluge of incoming manuscripts from prospective authors. (These are often called “sludgeoids” by people in those fields.)

§ Oil and mineral exploration/extraction at the arctic poles and certain offshore areas.

§ Locker-room attendants at all levels.

§ Masseuses and masseurs, especially at health clubs.

§ Engine room workers on ships at sea.

§ And not to forget the firemen helpers, who come in especially handy in high heat situations, smoky buildings and upper story rescues.

Additional Uses of Androids

The androids made by ARC, and some of the other companies, can be used like a super-satt-dish, picking up all of the approxly 4500 stations that are available from around the world, recording any that their owner has expressed an interest in. Their viewscreen, of ultra-def qual, is located on their back.

They also can serve as reservoirs of music; they come with a built-in 20,000 hours of recorded music and can be limitlessly programmed by the user with their musical favorites. In addition, the droids can pick up any of the countless satellite radio stations and most of the remaining land-based ones. Their speakers, as everyone knows from the adcasts, are the best that Bose produces.

Also-add, the mechoids can be utilized as a video or still camera, as they are always recording what is before them. The owner merely has to find the time of what he wants to preserve and download it, or preset them for digiteo or stillpic mode and, as the ad says, “Just point and shoot.”

We wanted to put a holographic projector in the cyberoid’s head, like they had in Bicentennial Man (the thoroughly unrealistic but nonetheless enjoyable old Robin Williams movie) but, with everything else already in there, it would have made the head too large. So any of the droids with that capability project the images from their solar plexus area.

There have been numerous attempts by the various mechufacturers to produce an android with highistic artistic abilities. Altho this endeavor continues to intrigue and challenge cyberdesigners, it has not yet been achieved. A few years back at ARC, I was brought in to consult with a team that was aiming to be the first to break this barrier. Maybe I was in a bad mood that day (or maybe I’m just a prick) but the first thing I said was, “What makes you think the world needs more artists? It’s not like it’s nurturing all the ones it already has. Is it your plan to make money with your design by creating even more starving artists?” They made some harumphing noises, but not one said a word back to me.

“Besides, it’s a fool’s errand to begin with. The fulcrum of great art, art worth seeing again and again, is what it demonstrates and makes visible about the human soul, its aspiration and/or its suffering, its perceptual joy, its striving for spiritual attainment. You ain’t gonna program any of that onto a neuronic motherboard.” I might have thrown in another word there at the end that also started with mother, but at any rate I was forthwith pulled off the committee.

That project, the Picasso 6000, dutifully programmed into each of its pilot units something like 40,000 images of paintings, 10,000 of sculptures and thousands of mixed-media pieces, but to no avail. It just wasn’t going to happen; probably never will. The closest to success that a robotics company has come in this area is in the related field of architecture, where Creat Things of Baltimore has recently produced a line that sketches everything from skyscrapers to townhouses, merely mixing and matching all the design concepts that have been programmed into it.

One successful product that ARC produced was sort of an accident. We had an early-model android that would wheel a sandwich-and-donuts cart around the top floors of the building, hardly saying a word for around three years until Roy Johnson, one of the tek boys on the ninth floor, decided to program it (Ralphie was its name) to tell a short joke with each sale. After it would tell a joke, usually a mediocre one, sometimes a borderline ribald one, it would make the most highlarious titter-giggle you’d ever want to hear. Well, the general result was that the people present would all laugh, rarely at the joke as much as the sound which thereafter emitted from the unit. Soon after, the company retooled the Ralphie line with a jokebook database and sold them as foodcart pushers, ballpark vendors, cafeteria line workers and even waiters in diners.

A ‘Sales Pitch’ for Androids

As employees, the android legions already in place (nearly seven million) have proven themselves to be more than adequate replacements for the human worker; in many, many cases providing such an improvement as to be termed exemplary. Whether it’s in a hazardous, toxic or daunting environment, where they clearly surpass their predecessors (and work much longer hours without complaint) or in the business offices across the world, productivity and profit are definitely on the rise wherever they are utilized.

The many plusvantages of owning an android, especially the newer models, have been well-documented, but allow me to make a promotional pitch. (Here, as a sort of exercise, I will amp up the usage of the Newvo words.)

The synthoids, especially those assembuilt by a leader in the field like the technovanced ARC, come to their new owners with a wide range of skillbility. As domestic workers or office assistants, they fullficiently do the required job with dedication, a scrupulous honesty, and an easygoing acquiceptance of their duties. This in contrast to a hired human who, while possibly more charmful and haplaughy, has the possibility of being laxadaisical and/or having angeruptions. Also, and we find this in so many of the young, the servoids don’t suffer from short attspans, misplaced aggressattudes or intransigent rudehavior when asked to perform a difficult task. (And the mostjority of the under-35 generation these days are total vidiots, so addicted to their virtual reality games that some sneak their porta-virts into work with them.)

Contrastingly, the android population is an eversteady source of high productivity who don’t disturb their coworkers with egoful distractions; instead, they enrich the workspace with their helpattude and calmplacent reactions under pressure. And it goes without saying that the mechoids don’t suffer the woes of drug abuse or alchosumption.

One final pozpoint to be made regards cost. At approxly 100,000 dollars (NAU) per fully trained workdroid, the unit is more than costfective for any business. Since they are capable of putting in so many hours, they’re basically paid for in one or two years by the savings an employer gets from not paying salary and benefits to an organic. After that it’s gravy.

The latest trendalysis figures estimate that, by the year 2050, 50% of large businesses in the NAU and EU (with a workforce over 50) will employ androids, and that well over 30% of the households in those regions will own a new or used servoid. So this field will continue to be a ripe ground for corporos and entrepeurs to profitably innovate.

But we should look upon this transference of work not as a loss for humanity, because it is no such thing; instead it is the beginning of an era which will free us from the most dangerous and drudgerous jobs, allowing us to seek out careers in more intellectually and spiritually rewarding fields.

The advance of the androids into the workforce will allow humans to more actively seek out themselves as humans or, as stated more eloquently by noted cyberpologist Max Heinstetler: “In the coming soontime, the masses of mankind will be able to pursue lives of actual achievement, entering careers in the arts and sciences and the exploration of philosophy, theology and cosmology. Pleasure, satisfaction and happiness will be recognized as the natural state of our species. The peoples of collective Urth, unhinged from the destructive spirals of war and poverty, and freed from the monotonous tedium of most labors by the androidal creations, will be allowed to usher in the promised Golden Age of Humanity.”

If we as a race can just keep the population stabilized around 8.2 billion, move quickly into deployment of the fusion generators, and resist the lures of nationalistic militarism, then we have a real shot at a bright future on this long-tortured, unreasonably scarred sphere.

Uses of Androids that Failed

One experiment which went awry in those early years was the ill-fated police assistant model. Pioneered by the imagineers at SynthCo, these units were meant to be stationed “on the beat” in rough neighborhoods, and to ride as a second “officer” in police cruisers, to give the appearance of added manpower during stops and arrests. But they were constantly being shot by gang members and criminals who knew that, if caught, their penalty would be far less severe than murder; more like destruction of government property.

Addingly, there were about a half-dozen lawsuits resulting from wrongful arrests and unnecessary shootings, as the “copoids” proved themselves to be very unsavvy on the streets and back alleys of the urbareas they were foolishly assigned to. Anyway, SynthCo gave out 15,000 test units free to PDs, then went out of business as the orders never came in, and the lawsuit monies continued to go out.

Another glaring miscalculation occurred when androids were—after a rash of abuse and neglect scandals—tried as substitutes for humans at some daycare facilities. (But any mother could have predicted that.) Other overt misfires were as tech-support phone personnel and hotel desk clerks, as there were just too many contingencies and permutations of possibility for them to prepare for. And most everyone remembers the SuperCuts experiment with android hair stylists that went so very, very wrong.

Probably the largest case of overreaching has been the Hall of Presidents. It will most likely be shuttered by the time this book is out, as it has become a source of embarrassment for Anderson and the Washington DC Tourism Council. Over my objections, let it be noted, ARC built and programmed 38 replicoids modeled on ex-presidents, and the recent vice-presidents. (And oh, the hooting and hollering about the left-out presidents, especially from the homestate senators of Tyler, Taylor, the nondescript Harrisons, et al. But that turned out to be the least of the problems.)

In a decision made at the top of the company, in defiance of myself and other directors, the presidents were given egos and aggressive personalities. Not real egos, mind you, but simulated paradigms, so as to make them, well, politicians. As the senior Mr. Anderson was quoted as saying, while defending the debacle, “You can’t have a successful national politician without massive ambition and drive. Without that, then he’s the guy at the end of the bar who won’t ever shut up.”

Be that as it may, we had always steered clear of anything resembling ego structure in the synthoids, and this was clearly a crossing of that line. Within one week of the opening of the Hall, after several minor incidents of droids yelling at questioners from the public gallery after questions they took offense at, a fight broke out on stage. This was between the Reagan and the Jefferson, after someone in the crowd had asked about states rights, and Jefferson had interrupted Reagan’s answer with an insulting comment.

The exhibit was shut down for a few days, but no sooner had it reopened when another fight took place, this one more of a melee. The root problem seemed to be that, as Mr. Anderson noted, you couldn’t very well have a realistic portrayal of these men without a swaggering self-presence—in the case of Bush the Younger, an underlying mean-spiritedness verging on bellicosity. Well, the GWB was well-programmed, because he sucker-punched the Hathaway replicoid in the middle of an answer he was giving on global warming, during which he called Bush “a sold-out fraud of a president.” At that point, several of the Republicans got into it with several of the Democrats, and it became a brawling free-for-all, with a fully appreciative audience screaming like they were at a wrestling match.

From the report I saw, the Bush/Hathaway problem had started behind closed doors, as they nearly came to blows over various policy matters. Also behind closed doors, and kept out of the media, was an altercation between the Cheney and the Gore, in which the Cheney hit the Gore over the head with a steel chair, temporarily disabling it.

To have two androids arguing, let alone engaging in (sloppy, to say the least) fisticuffs, is a first in the annals of robotics, and something that I feel strongly should never be allowed to happen again. The attempted emplacement of an arrogant individuality into the machines goes against the accumulated wisdom concerning the purposes and limitations of the android units, and these restrictions and parameters need to be held firmly in place in the future.

I almost forgot the Bill Clinton incident, altho the tabloid media had a field day with it. Between performances (six a day of 90 minutes length) the androids were kept in a large meeting room—fully activated and mingling with each other. It was there that, on the second day, the Clinton—even tho it was made without sex organs—openly propositioned the Margaret Chadsworth, who slapped him. Apparently the Clinton personality overlay (!) was so strongly imbued with sexual aggressattude that the machine became subject to an imperative to act on the acquisition of the only female within his territorial perimeter.

Right now the exhibit is closed, “pending repairs,” but the word I’ve received is that they will be shutting it down. The alternative would be to have reprogrammed droids who are little more than stage dummies, reciting their old speeches and waving to the audiences.

The Recent Android ‘Crime Wave’

I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but I can’t really say I’m surprised either. Discussions of just this possibility occurred several times, as we realized the potentiality of a reprogrammed droid being instructed to commit crimes. The biggest advantage for the criminal, besides not personally risking his neck, is that even if caught, the mechoid wouldn’t rat him out to the police. They simply wouldn’t be allowed to have any useful info in their databank.

Reminding one of last century’s Bonnie and Clyde, and the 19^th century’s Jesse James, most of the dozen or so android bank bandits currently at large have achieved a popular notoriety among the citizenry and the mediastablishment. Even the New York Times, known for its sobernalysis, trumpeted a recent rob-job with the headline, “Someone call Robo-Cop!!” This was in a front-pager quoting several witnesses making casual and humorous references to the perpetrator.

Somewhat more disquieting is the recent rash of bank robberies in the Oklahoma City area, all done after hours by what is apparently a three-droid team. Security cameras and investigators have not yet been able to pinpoint how they got in and out, a fact made more ominous by the recurrence of the same team in two of the robbed banks a few weeks later.

Suffice it to say that the most sophisticated equipment, including the kind of sonic vibrachines used to find the Egyptian hidden chambers, is being utilized to find the passages being used by these culprits. One interesting sidenote here is that one of the droids is a Rachael Ray model, and it smiles directly at all the security monitors it passes. And it apparently knows the location of all the cameras, even the hard-to-discern micros.

The so-called Dallas Cowboy is a different matter. Robbing banks with an impunity not seen in this millennium, this android’s signature “Yippie-ky-ay Motherfucker!” as he departs the scene, often punctuated with a shot into the ceiling, has attracted a rather rabid fan following. (This is a throwback to a Bruce Willis movie character. Ask your parents. Or, on second thought, just G it.)

Like the semi-mythical Robin Hood of ancient lore, the stolen money is subsequently given to the poor—usually in the form of silver dollars dropped off in bags on the sidewalks of Texas ghetto areas. There’s nothing to legally link the converted money to the crime, only the notes found in the bags which say (yes) “Yippie-ky-ay Motherfucker,” and this: “Share and enjoy!”

But whatever the merits or entertainment value of these android criminals, I think we can all rest assured that they will be caught and, if not brought to justice in the usual way, at least be reprogrammed back to their original mode of servility and civility. And here is a bit of quandary: Some are of the opinion that these machines, once desecrated in the above fashion, should be destroyed, lest a kind of “cell memory” (ie, a corrupted circuit memory) persists and leads them astray again. I’m glad to leave that question up to the technicians and cyberpologists.

But the most disturbing development of all, if recent reports are to be believed, is that some androids are being reprogrammed to be hit men and assassins. It could just be tabloid speculation, as they’re always stirring up things on the margin of the truth, but in several unsolved murder cases, the unapprehended suspect acted “suspiciously androidal.”

And now they’re saying the assassattempt on EU leader Charles Windsor could have been a mecho. After the shots were fired, the suspect ran into a burning building about two blocks away and escaped. The fire had been set, with gasoline, just before the former Prince began his speech, and firemen were already on the scene. The fact that he ran straight into the hottest-burning area, added to the fact that two officers swore they heard metal when they fired directly into him, lends to the belief that it was one of the firefighter droids, which come with a very thin “skin,” covering a heat-resistant triple-coated titanium shell. Investigators are searching the rubble for either the remains of the would-be assassin; more likely, they’ll find an escape tunnel leading to a nearby building.

I’m not sure if this next item is a problem or not, altho the squeamish seem to think it portends many problems. In the past several years, and by now perhaps numbering in the hundreds (some say thousands) are the so-called “hobo-droids.” These are androids who, for whatever reason, are abandoned or fired or, more likely, stolen from their rightful owners, and can sometimes be spotted with the hobo gangs on the outskirts of most urbareas.

My personal impression, having scoured such a zone once down by the old Camden train station, is that not all the suspected droids are droids; that some are merely humans with either great strength and/or stoic facial expressions who are mistaken as mechoids. But the police in many cities have arrested vagrants who have had in their possession an android which it would use for food procurement, wood-gathering and other tasks.

So, just in summary, it has to be noted that all positive inventions are misused by the wrongheaded and evil, be it drunken car-driving or the hijacking of airplanes, or those who use their c-phones to vid themselves during sex. It’s no reason to blame the technology.

CHAPTER FOUR

Androids as “War Toys”

In one of the biggest growth fields of the 21^st century, British Mechtastic and several American manufacturers have led the field in the creation of over two million security guards since 2016. These securobots now survey the environs of nuclear and chemical plants, bridges and airports around the world, mounting a strong line of defense in the ongoing war on terror.

But this is to be differentiated from the use of servoids in the formation of military armies. This is a line that should never be crossed, and I’m proud of the fact that ARC was in the forefront of the intra-industry “protest movement” which (so far, anyway) has stopped this possibility in its incipient tracks.

The initial requests from the North American and European Unions for synthetic soldiers (or the advanced tech to build their own) was centered on the premise that these would be used only as sentries and Humvee patrollers in the Occupied Territories of the Middle East, and the most dangerous cities of Venezuela. But anyone with any knowledge of how such things work knows that it would eventualater escalate from there into fullscale cyber-armies, touching off a new arms race, and leading to many more warzones than we already have, as richer nations bought readyquipped battalions by the gross and invaded their neighbors.

I was among the 77% of company staff who signed a statement proclaiming our opposition to any military contract, a percentage matched at robotics companies around the globe. (This despite the potentially huge profits that could be made.) Everyone who signed swore that they would quit if any contract with any country’s defense department were made. The general consensus was that we didn’t get into the cybernetics field to become a wing of the military-industrial complex.

As much progress as has been made in this century, one thing we as a race have not overcome is militarism, born of a mindset which sees organized death and destruction as a noble pursuit and an extension of political prerogative. These types thrill to the unsane displays of rampaging martial power, and in their tiny hearts believe that might makes right, as they conspire with the madgreedy military-industrialists to sell this all as patriotism and necessity. But I rant.

The majormost points here, besides the glaring need for the world to finally and irrevocably move away from violence as a solution and tactic, is that if mechoids are used as soldiers, then there will be more wars, and there will be less usage of the servoids for the peaceful purposes now being assigned to them. Companies would be vying for the synthetic soldier contracts, which would be in the massive-numbers range as countries scrambled for parity or superiority. (I grew up in the 70's, when the US and Soviet Union diverted—wasted—their best minds and resources to building up a mind-boggling arsenal of potential planetary annihilation.) The governments would undoubtedly pay top dollar to the android-makers to fill their orders, and the companies would inevitably back-burner their other models.

Plusly, as in the original Cold War, the defense budgets of the competing countries would swallow the tax revenues that could be much better used on healthcare, housing, education, infrastructure and the like.

We as a people, the humans of Urth, must stand firm not only on the non-crossing of the line of mechanical soldiers, but on the whole subject of war and militarism, to continue to curb those primal impulses, and elect leaders who believe in a peaceful planet working its problems out in a civilized manner.

But a kind of solution seems to be at hand. An idea has been forming, based on a leaked story told by the Plaxans about their history, in which they went thru a transition period from planetary warfare to an era of peace. (It should be pre-mentioned that the Plaxans are allowed up to three clones of themselves.)

Weary of wars, and on the verge of another one, the two continental powers on that orb agreed to have “The Last War.” Drawn up and promulgated by the wiser heads from both superpowers, they each agreed to send 2,000 clones into a staged “war-game” battle, the winner taking possession of the disputed territory, as well as receiving a huge gold payment from the other. (Yes, gold is a valued commodity everywhere.)

Each of the clones had to be from a different gene-donor, and the contest would be won when one side was reduced to under 200 soldiers. Hundreds of the clones were equipped with cameras, and the battles that proceeded on a multi-terrain field of mountains, desert, jungle and sea was avidly watched by the planet’s nine billion inhabizens. But, after a protracted period of combat, with both sides hovering around 250 survivors, an armistice was enacted by the leaders of the two nations.

It seems that the watching masses, as the cameras backforthed between the two sides (and bear in mind that the clones were fully sentient humans) had become quite invested emotionally with the soldiers, and grieved every loss. And, in something not contemplanned by the leaders, they became rather involved with the other side’s soldiers as well (they spoke a similar language) as they struggled and cried and bled on the killing field.

The two countries split the territory and became friends, a friendship which has endured for a millennium. During this continuing peace, no longer occupied with warmaments and the constant drain of conflict, they together mastered space travel and colonized a dozen planets and moons in their solar system. Along the way they became one combomerged country, incorporating the other smaller nations on their way to a onified planet.

To this day, every two solar years, they engage in commemorative competition, enacting a version of our Olympics, but with clones from each of the regions of the globe. In the alternating two years, they have a sports competition using regular fleshbloods but, in the reverse order of what is scheduled to happen here in 2042, the clone competition came first, and the other came later.

The compromise emerging from this is as follows: Using only manufacturers from their own country, the NAU, EU, SAU, China, Russia, Japan and India will each train and put into mock battle a mini-army of perhaps 5,000 mechoid soldiers. Either the moon or the Arctic would be the staging ground, the latter appropriate because the dispute over its ownership is creating quite a bit of superpower tension.

The number of functioning units left when the two- or three-week war is deadlined to completion would decide the winner. The hefty prizes would include a large amount of gold (from the combined ante-in of the participants), exclusive mining rights to a segment of the Arctic and a portion of the disputed ocean floor. Definitely also at stake will be bragging rights for the inhabizens of the winning countries, and strutting rights for the militarists (who if the world was at peace, would likely be in basements directing cockfights or dogfights). These simulated wars could be re-enacted every year or two, as a way of keeping the brasscrats occupied.

I have heard insider reports that the Plaxans and Temurians are willing to act as monitors of the action. This same source has filled me in on the prelim negotiations with the major TV networks, as well as Google and CNN, for the broadcast rights to the camera-intensive proceedings, said to be in the ballpark of 250 billion Euros. The major stumbleblock is the degree of violence to be allowed. Most on the industry side, but also some politicians, want the “kills” to be made in a simulated manner, ie, electronic sensors would dictate whether a unit had been disabled by opposition “technicalized” fire, like those directed by a laser gun. The army guys, feverish with the possibilities of these new war toys they get to play with (like when they were kids in the backyard) want to be able to “blow them up good.” A compromise will likely be reached, in which a certain percentage of the weapons are “hot” and a certain number just pseudo.

Here’s a quote-nugget from someone who was in the room with a television execuhead who proclaimed: “We’ll pay that kind of money for HALO-type action, but not for a glorified paintball-meets-capture-the-flag. Can those damn things be made to bleed? That would be fucking helpful.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The Three C’s of Conservatives’ Wrath

From the very beginning, cyberindustries have had to contend with those of the conservative political persuasion, a large portion of which has been fueled and fired by the Religious Right. These folks were very slow to defend nature when their allies were despoiling it at a record pace back around the turn of the millennium, but suddenly they were trumpeting their protests with “Cyberoids, Cryonics and Cloning are Against God and Nature!” To all this I say hogtwaddle, as it seems to me that nature (or God, or the Supreme Intelligence) gave to mankind a brain and a mind that solves problems by building tools. And the best tools we now have are the androids.

But as much flak as we in the cyberindustries have taken from the Christian Right(eousness) Party and their buttboys at ABCFox, it must be conceded that it would have been a lot worse if their sputtering outrage wasn’t more vehemently targeted toward the cloning industry.

These companies, which can now legally clone you or anyone in your family (or your pets), are making bogglesums from their sales of celebrity DNA, from both the living and the unliving. Altho the transactions are shrouded in semi-secrecy, industry sources estimate that cloning generated upwards of 85 billion dollars in revenue in 2028.

The leading seller, by far, among the celebs was (and remains) Urth Ambassador Angelina Jolie, who was the first major figure to make her cell-clusters available. Reports put her sales numbers at nearly two million, which at $99,999 per successfully delivered embryo (half of which she gets) would come to … Oh-My-God money. This would explain why one sees so many dark-haired little girls with over-sized lips everywhere you look. (And those large, spooky green eyes!)

Another celeb from that time who didn’t fare so well was Britney Spears. Clonetastic was adselling DNA-derived embryos from the poptart singer—who had a ton of personal misbehavior and legal issues—for $79,000 at the start, but after a no-thanks reception from the public, continued to lower the price to a basement-bin of $29,000. Some were then sold to her hardcore fans, but the item soon disappeared from the adcasts.

All of which brings up that old chestnut of Ted Williams’ frozen corpse. His family isn’t disclosing much but rumors persist of the secretive selling of DNA cell-clusters from the remains of the Splendid Splinter (a nickname that has truly taken on new meaning) over the past dozen years. People have meanwhile been reporting a tremendous upsurge in the number of lanky left-handed Little League kids with great batting eyes and surly personalities.

After all the mega-hype from ABCFOX. it was certainly exciting (and plenty bizarre) to see the Walt Disney Reanimation Special. A bit too long at three hours, they made us wait until the third hour to actually see the 20th century imagineer sit up from his hospital bed. The 30 minutes of highlights from the 7-hour operation was altogether too technical and rather gory, although I suppose it has its histifigance.

His first barely understandable words—"Is it going to work?"—were probably the last thought he had before he "died" in 1966. The footage then shifts to the next day, when we see him sitting in his old chair at Disney Studios, a haggard, wasted shadow of his former self but—Holy Mouse Ears!—fully alive.

The part with Michael Eisner, where Eisner fills him in on the company's various expansions and developments, and his own improbable return to the helm in 2019 at 77 years-old, came across as a very self-serving promo for all things Disney. But it was funny to watch old Walt's face as he heard about all this, his jaw hanging open and his head lolling about on his muscle-weakened neck. (I loved it too when he called Eisner, who’s 86, "young man," but after years of rejuve products (even before the Exoterrian stuff) and multiple p-surgies, the Once and Future King of Disney looks like he did (with proper lighting, anyway) circa 2000.

After 20 minutes of this, with Disney saying about 50 words, the "interview" was over, and white-clad assistants wheeled the old entrepeur out of the room. I'm told by someone on the medical staff that he needs injections (adrenaline, amphetamine, oxygenators and several other ‘ceuticals) every hour and must nap twice a day, plus sleep 12 hours at night. Also, he can't eat solid foods ever again, and must ingest his meals intravenously or thru a straw.

Some have made a negative judgevaluation of the entire cryonics industry based on Walt Disney's ragged appearance and weak mentacuity, but two things should be borne in mind. First, he was one of the first to be frozen, and the preps were vastly improved as time went on, and second, he was not in very good shape when he died—his dying being a reliable indicator of that fact.

But I must admit that it was a bit haunting to see the camera close-ups of his craggy face, with its semi-vacant eyes, and hear his hoarse whisper pause for several seconds sometimes when speaking. It was reported in the Vanity-‘Squire article that he's not aware of this pausing, that it's some kind of neuro-synaptic problem, ie, his brain's pistons aren't yet firing on all cylinders. If they ever will is a question only time can answer, but I am curious if these lapsings will occur in other returned cryo-patients. This is one possibility I want to absosure dispeliminate before I sign myself up for popsiclehood, not that I’ve decided to, and not that I believe I’ll need to anytime soon.

From the Death-Isn't-What-It-Used-To-Be-Department comes the recent AP/Reuters report that, in addition to the 6% who were cryogenically frozen last year for future reanimation, 14% of deceased people in the US were frozified in part or whole, head or entire body, for their gravesite "presentations." This trend also has the conservative community all up in arms, bewailing and bemoaning the “desecration of tradition.”

This all started, as many things did, with the late Lady M, or as she will forever be called, Madonna. After her demise, based on her own specific requests, her head was freeze-dried atop a wax replica of the rest of her body, and encased in a lucite orb atop her walk-in shrine/tomb. For those who haven't seen it yet, her face is in a smiling, brows-up pose, as if in delight at the visitor's arrival.

The site is like a 24-hour Madonna museum and showcase, with her videos, movies and interviews running constantly against the four walls. Fifteen million paid to enter last year, proceeds going to her favorite charities, the same organizations (Gay Dancers Fund and the Kabbalah Centre) that received the lucrabig proceeds from the online auction of her various body parts.

Similar to the ancient custom (but then it was the Catholic Church) of selling bone fragments of deceased saints as “relics,” her body was slivered up into thousands of plasticased pieces. These went for an average of $800, and are reportedly now already worth around $4000 apiece.

The buyers and purchase prices of the major parts have by now mostly been made public, and include a hefty 4 million each for her breasts (preserved in a freeze-dried see-into chamber), one million each for her fingers, excepting the middle ones which of course commanded more, and nearly 6 million for her (“landing-strip-shaved”) pubic region from a still-undisclosed Japanese gentleman.

After that, Celebodies, Inc. took off as a full-service post-mortem company, starting with the Billy Joel enshrinement, the singer opting for the full-body treatment. But the body one sees at the Long Island tombsite (him sitting at a piano inside a large clearsight dome) has artificial fingers, as his originals went for a combined 2.8 million to collectors and fans.

Celebodies and the other fast-rise companies in this new industry project a multi-billion dollar gross in the next 10 years, as many of America's 3000+ celebrities near their last stage door, including some of the biggest stars from the domains of music, cinema and television. (And sports! Those old jocks only think they can live forever.)

CHAPTER SIX

Androids as Sports Players

By the time this book is printed and publicast, more will be known, but I’ll share what I know about an exciting new venture, a new sport being developed. For the first time, there will be a professional sports league that has teams with both organics and cyberoids playing together and against each other. The droids will have physical prowess the rough equivalent of the athletes they’re modeled on, but in no way will they have any super-abilities, not even the ultrasight most of the servoids generally come equipped with.

Jazzball will be played on a softball field using rules based mostly on baseball, but with borrowed elements from kickball and soccer. I was a consultant on the android aspect, and have consented to be trained as an occasional on-field umpire.

Just to summarize, in Jazzball, so named because there are endless possible riffs on any and all actions, a player at the plate, whether holding a bat or not, can kick, punch, bat, slap or karate chop the incoming ball. This ball, tentatively slated to be bright blue with an orange equator line will be dimpled for easy gripping, and somewhat smaller and softer than a soccer ball. The pitcher also has options, as they can throw overhand, underhand, roll the ball, bounce the ball or, if they think they can do it with accuracy, kick the ball to the plate. Balls and strikes are called as in baseball, except there’s no pitch too low, and the high pitch is above the eyeline. Among the tantalizing features will be the presence of a soccer net in shallow centerfield and two rows of fences (for bonus points to be scored).

There’s still discussion going on as to the nature of the league. For example, do they put several droids on each team, or have one or two purely mech teams?

My preferred format would be for one or two of the teams to be composed entirely of synthoids (not including the manager and coaches). These players are already being designed and trained based on the physicality and relative skills of professional athletes (who give their permission), mostly from baseball, but including some other sports as well. The fleshbloods being recruited and signed are mostly recent retirees from baseball, basketball, soccer, arena football, boxing, and other sports, or some who are off-season from when their sport plays. The schedule for Jazzball is being structured October to January, as they will be playing in the dormant Arena Football venues.

As for the specific cyber-players being developed, I am privy to the following ones, mostly based on recently retired baseball stars: Evan Longoria, Ryan Braun, Jay Bruce, Jacoby Ellsbury, Randy Johnson, Justin Upton, Josh Hamilton, Vance Peterson, Chase Utley, Chipper Jones, Joe Mauer, Prince Fielder, Russell Martin and Grady Sizemore will be represented by resemblikes named Evan Longball, Ryan Brawny, Jay Bruiser, Jacoby Hellsbury, Wrangler Johnson, Justin Pumpton, Smash Hamilton, Lance Peterson, Base Utley, Chipper Bones, Joe Mauler, King Fielder, Hustle Martin and Grady Scoremore.

Others I recall under construction were (based on the faces and physiques of Shaq O’Neill, Kobe Bryant and LeBraun James) Shock O’Neill, Go B. Bryant and The Brawn James. Also under consideration, pending agreement with the reclusive ex-champ Evander Holyfield, would be a resemblike called Evander Wholefield (for his ball-punching ability). There also was mention of having a Babe Ruthless synthoid, but nothing was yet decided on that.

Making a big splash just now are the android surfing squads. Equipped with the same waterproofing as the underwater workdroids, these units also have an advanced gyroscope within them that allows for near-perfect balance. I saw an exhibition of one of the squads—who do individual and synchronized performances—while I was last in Hawaii. ESPN 11 is planning to b-cast an all-android event in late summer from Malibu, altho I’ve been told that recent champions Bo Summers and Hodge Finley are scratching to get in.

Then there’s boxing and mixed martials. Altho it has been decades since I was remotely a fan of such proceedings, I have been to several of the android matches. The replicoid fighters are the most interesting, from a fan’s viewpoint, as BAM (Boxing Association of Mechoids), the so-called “Pound-for-Pounders” consist of exact replicas of the in-their-prime greatest fighters of history, except… they all weigh the same 180 pounds! The present “league” is comprised of nearly 100 competitors, who round-robin with each other throughout a given year.

The 180-pound stipulation means that their height has to be adjusted, which makes for some fairly funny looking boxers—6’5’’ flyweights and 5’8’’ heavyweights. But they have been carefully calibrated to match the speed, dexterity and punching abilities of the boxers they’re based on, so this supposedly allows one to answer the long-asked question of, “Pound for pound, who’s the greatest fighter.” Well, so far, it appears to be Sugar Ray Leonard, from the 1970’s, with Muhammad Ali a close second, but every year starts fresh, as the data from their previous matches are programmed into the replicoids. This allows for adjustments to be made going into their rematches.

The Simbox 7 fighters, a mixed martials league which just recently started up, has so far done poorly in TV ratings and in-house attendance. Some say that it’s too “pussified,” that it doesn’t allow for the real action (read: bloodlust and physical damage) that the human format did before it was banned several years ago after too many deaths, paralyzed fighters and lawsuits.

What’s viewable during a Simbox 7 match are two highly physiqued androids trading blows. But these blows are based on actual blows being delivered in a contest of head-to-waist-padded fighters in the basement of the building who are wearing extra-padded gloves and have on big foam boots.

Electronic sensors judge the accuracy and impact value of the kicks and punches, deducting points from the mechoid counterparts as they go along. For instance, a clean kick or punch to the head would take a full point away from the synthoid who received it. When the point level gets down to 30, that unit goes down for a 6-count. When the points descend to 20, it goes down for an 8-count. When the total reaches 10 for one of the droid fighters, they go down for a full 10-count. One criticism of the action is that it’s near-silent on the part of the synthoids, so the new units being delivered will come with an assortment of grunts, moans and curse words, to satisfy the fans’ need for such things.

The other sport that the mechoids are beginning to excel at is racecar driving. When I first heard this, I thought it a bit odd, because no mechoid has ever been able to master driving a car, at least not in a city. But they do very well on a closed-system track, with few distractions, no pedestrians and constant radio contact. There are now four NASCAR tracks that allow mechos to race each other, and there is a burgeoning fan-base for these drivers as they push the limits of speed and maneuverability in daredevil fashion. Plans are being made to build a special 3.6 mile oval track near Talladega, where the cyberdrivers can really open it up.

What the android racecar league comes down to is a competition between the various android manumakers. Each of the biggies in the field has their own team, and the going is fierce. The top three last year, in a very close finish, were The Mechtastic Marvels, the ARC Angels and the RoboMill Renegades.

One sports area that is doing very well in terms of units sold and customer satisfaction is that of sports coach/personal trainer. This started with tennis, as our droids were found to be very proficient at placing the ball wherever they aimed. The ARC R&D engineers had them playing each other, and the result was usually an unnervingly repetitious volley, sometimes 10-15 minutes long.

Someone then had the idea of using a tennis-trained mechoid as a tennis instructor, thus utilizing their talent at ball placement as a volley partner. So they loaded all the appropriate data of a tennis coach (we hired one and picked his brain) into the unit and used company employees as test subjects. Because the droids could place the ball with so much accuracy, the human trainee received just the help they needed in practice balls to hit, eg, work on their backhand, then balls near the net, etc. I myself was one of the volunteers, and found my game much improved.

After these were put on the market, we could hardly keep up with the orders, and other similar functions were exploited. The biggest one of those was probably that of batting practice pitcher for baseball. From semi-pro to the Majors, most teams have at least one of these units now, which come in righty or lefty formats. We called the righty “Cy Guy” (for Cy Young) and the lefty “Mr. Southpaw.” We only had to give them a two-day language course, which kept the cost relatively low.

They have been very useful to teams, even some youth and amateur leagues (who would typically buy a unit or two used, then rotate them among the teams) as a valuable practice regimen, usually focusing on imitating the style of the next pitcher the team will face, but also working on the individual weaknesses of players, eg, high fastballs, slow curves, etc.

A few sidenotes on products that never made it to market: We rigorously trained several androids to be super-expert chess players, programming them with hundreds of thousands of game permutations and the multiple strategies employed by the chess masters of history. The idea was to have them be teachers of chess, but also game sharpeners for the world’s elite players. But what happened, on six or seven occasions, was that the unit would seize up and shut down while contemplanning a move.

This would generally be in a pose like in the old Star Trek holodecks when someone would say, “Computer, freeze program.” The mechoid’s fingers would be hovering just above a bishop or rook. Upon investigation, we found that the problem occurred when, after its database of moves and counter-moves was analyzed, three or more exactly equal playable moves were registered. It was this quandary that caused the overloads, as the units would repeat the search over and over with the same results, then be forced to make a decision. This has never been revealed until now, as we at the company were instructed to keep it on the hush.

The other gambit in the arena of competitive androids that didn’t pan out was that of fencing instructor. Two problems: One, the technicians couldn’t figure out how to make them less good at fencing, so as to give the student a chance at parrying; and we discovered upon inquiries that the relationship between teacher and trainee in the fencing schools was paramount, and no one would want a synthetic instructor. So, sitting in a warehouse on Anderson’s back lot are 40 or so leotard-wearing cyberoids, perhaps awaiting the time when Hollywood decides to remake some Errol Flynn swashbucklers.

I have to add that we at ARC tried our best units at a lot of sports, with mostly disastrous results. Especially bad—but in a humorous way—were basketball and hockey. (And lacrosse! A full-scale fiasco.) The problem, in a nutshell, seemed to be that the droids, for lack of a better term, didn’t have any “team intuitiveness.” This led to many pile-ups around the ball or puck. But with baseball and jazzball, team sports composed of individual actions, they clearly excel, and will no doubt provide much liesurejoyment for the fans in the years to come.

As for football, we ruled that out from the get-go, as it would involve too much banging around of the products. This decision was made after watching droid after droid get knocked out of commission playing basketball, a so-called non-contact sport.

CHAPTER SEVEN

a Future Extraordinaire

The future use of androids is full of possibilities, most all of them very exciting. The one area receiving a lot of attention and publicity lately is that of the utilization of mechoids for theme-park functions.

Perhaps the most ambitious/audacious android project presently being conceived and built is that of the old Brit himself, Sir Richard Branson. Still mostly under wraps from prying eyes, his planned extravaganza will be staged in the Australian Outback, on 50 square miles of his land. From what I know (some of which is just from overhearsations in the ARC lunchroom) it will be called “Virgin Vistas” and entail the recreation, within giant domes, of the landscapes and life parameters of at least a dozen Exoterrian cultures. When inside the various domes, the audience will see a recreation of the different homeworld skies as they pass thru their respective days, complete with whatever moons may traverse that vista.

Several dozen droids would be employed in each recreation, exactly mimicking the far-foreigner races physappearance. Each presentation will show a slice of their life (a village, a metrarea, etc.) from their native shore. Branson’s plan includes half-price airfare on his Virgin Disklines, first night free at his Virgin Resort Hotel, and generally lowfordable admission prices at the Virgin Vistas’ exhibits and rides.

As a World Ambassador for three years earlier in the decade, Sir Richard literally “knows the terrain” of what nonetheless sounds like a daunting challenge. At his announcement conference, he expressed the hope that the SuperPark will help people adjust to the presence of the Exoterrians, and acclimate them to the wide diversity of extant species in this galactic sector.

Not far behind in the ambition department, especially in terms of size, is Disney’s plan for “Disney Imaginarea.” I was at the prepentation by the Mouse officials early in 2028 when they outlined their draw-ups for this android-based Superpark to fill the last of their Florida property.

It will have seven main venues: Castle County, where tableaus involving Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and Beauty and the Beast will be played out; The Forever Forest, where tales of King Arthur and Robin Hood will occur; The Jungle, which will display stories from the Lion King series, as well as Tarzan and Bomba; Aladdin’s Arabia; Pirate City, which will feature Captain Hook, Peter Pan, Captain Sparrow and the Pirates of the Caribbean; Wonderland, where Alice, the Mad Hatter and the rest of those characters will enact the scenes from Lewis Carroll’s book; and Mickeytown, with all the classic Disney characters romping around.

I also heard that Disney tried to buy the rights to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter goldmine (like she needs any more money!) to use in an adjacent park. The word is that she turned them down and is planning her own synthoid locale, working thru Mechtastic in Britain.

Great news for baseball fans is the upcoming android repromodel league of great teams from baseball’s storied past. Tentatively titled Diamond Dozen Mechoid League, the 12 teams will play in MLB stadiums starting in 2031. Their games will generally be on those days when the home team is out of town, but occasionally will be slated as the back-end of a double-header, with the home team playing first (with no extra charge to the attendees). The synthoid players will be created with a close approximation of the original players’ physique and abilities.

Here are the 12 teams:

v Georgia Peaches—Ty Cobb’s phenomenal Tiger team circa 1910.

v Murderer’s Row—Yankee powerhouse of mid-20’s that included Ruth and Gehrig.

v Gashouse Gang—Dizzy Dean’s raucous Cardinals team of the 1930’s, with Leo Durocher and Ducky Medwick.

v Boys of Summer—50’s Dodgers, with Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snyder and Gil Hodges.

v M and M Gang—Early 60’s Yanks, led by Mantle and Maris.

v The K Squad—1960’s Dodgers, with the immortal duo of Koufax and Drysdale.

v The Amazins—1969 Mets, with the pitchers Seaver and Koosman.

v Big Red Machine—Mid 70’s Reds, with Bench, Rose and Morgan.

v The Bronx Zoo—Late 70’s Yankees, with Munson, Reggie, Sparky Lyle and Goose Gossage.

v Harvey’s Wallbanger’s—Manager Harvey Kueen’s Milwaukee powerhouse of the early 80’s, which featured Molitor, Yount and Cecil Cooper.

v The 86ers—1986 Mets, with Strawberry, Mookie and Keith Hernandez.

v Rays in the Sun—The 2010-2013 Tampa Rays, led by Longoria, Crawford and David Price.

As pleased and excited as I am with this development, I had to give Commissioner Costas a call to offer him a suggestion to take it from wonderful to absowonderful. When I got him on the line, I said, “What about Willie Mays? What about Stan the Man Musial, A-Rod, Dimaggio, Ted Williams? Why don’t you make another team, composed of All-Stars, and have them play all the other teams?”

Bob mumbled something about an All-Star team like that being better than any one team, but added they were thinking of going with an additional 8-12 teams as soon as the first group did well enough to support the investment.

“Here’s the funny thing about that—” Costas said, “one of the teams we want to put in there later is the 1916-1918 Boston Red Sox, that won two World Series, and had the Babe setting pitching records that lasted till the 60’s.”

“Yes,” I interjected, “I still remember that Whitey Ford quote of 1961.” (Note: when he broke Ruth’s World Series scoreless-innings streak of 29 innings, the same year as Maris’ 61 home runs.)” I chuckled as I recounted it. “He said, ‘It wasn’t a good year for the Babe.’”

Costas had heard that story to death, so in his inimitable friendly-yet-sarcastic voice, said, “Great story, Jerry. But what I was getting at was that we could have the Babe pitching to the Babe several times a year. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

After I agreed, he went on: “The teams with all those players you mentioned are on the list for inclusion, but I think an All-Star team for all the other greats is a good idea: Ernie Banks, Willie Stargell, Rogers Hornsby, Ken Griffey, Jr., Pujols, Josh Hamilton. Yeahh, that’s probably the germ of an idea. Thanks.”

I hung up as soon as I could after that, before he could take back his rare acknowledgement of someone else’s good concept. So, hopefully, in a few years, we baseball fans will be enjoying some tremendous games, thanks to the android revolution. We’ll be able to watch as baseball’s past stars and teams (figuratively) come back to life, and not have to worry about injuries, salary disputes, steroids or off-the-field antics from them. Worth noting is that each droid player will come as a pair, with them alternating which one plays on any particular day. And in case of a (rare) mechanical failure, the other can step right in.

Another proposed SuperPark utilizing androids harkens back to one of my favorite childhood television programs: Fantasy Island. The basic idea was that these individuals (often well-known actors slumming it a bit to appear on the somewhat cheesy show) would arrive on the island, and have some long-deferred fantasy come true. The Park owners have even ordered resemblikes (five each) of the show’s two famous characters, Ricardo Montelban and the differently heighted Herve Villechaize, who were the mysterious greeters and officiators of the place.

The initial format will concentrate on four common fantasies. These are 1) a man comes to a resort, meets a beautiful younger woman, and has a hottastic sexual fling. (This will include a menu of famous female celebrities); 2) the woman’s version of that; 3) a person comes to the island, is told by a mysterious stranger that he has a map which leads to a pirate’s buried treasure, and together they brave danger and retrieve it; 4) a man goes on a safari with realistic-looking lions, tigers and rhinos as his prey.

A fifth fantasy was debated, and decided to the negative, altho its proponents within the sponsoring company claim it is merely temporarily shelved. This one would involve a man (or woman) acting out James Bond type heroics, and killing several “people” in the process of fulfilling their assignment.

I personally think that we have quite enuff simulated killing going on in the vidgames, holovirts and interactivideos of the current misappropriated culture, without trying to make it even more realistic for those desirous of committing unpunished bloodgeoning.

One last bit on the Fantasy Island venture. It was reported by Reuters that they were planning on having a fullscale brothel on the premises, both fleshblood and mecha, but that they’ve opted instead for a more family oriented approach, and will include a large amusement ride park for the kiddies, to keep them busy while the parents are off searching for treasure and pleasure.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Other Uses of the Commonacular

(I was going to call this chapter “Secondary Uses of the Commonacular,” but realized that, for those employing the list in these ways, it can be a valuable tool.)

Before I get to the revised Commonacular, I would like to discuss the various other usages that have come to my attention. Apparently, there are many other ways that such a comprehensive accume can be utilized.

Since the initial publication of The Android Trainers’ Phrasebook in 2022, it has been communicated to me that this collection of phrases and sentences (the largest ever assembled) has several alternative uses. One obvious one is that of a foreign student who is trying to learn communicable English, fraught as it is with idiomatic expressions. They read the phrases and sentences aloud with someone, who corrects any pronunciation errors, explains meanings and nuances, and gives examples of context.

A few examples, among the countless: Simple expressions like “It’ll be a cakewalk,” or “He’s jumping the gun” may not have a precise parallel in another language. Consequently, a person learning English might be confused by the relentless idioms. Also, our language is rife (more than most people realize) with sarcasm and irony, like “You don’t say.” This can also be confusing to someone at a beginner’s level. Teachers and professors of English as a foreign language should consider employing these pages as an aid in their lessons.

Another potential use, I’ve been informed, is for English-speakers when learning a foreign language, utilizing these phrases as a template of sorts: Pointing out sentences, they ask their friend or teacher, “How do you say such-and-such in that language?” Along this line, I received two letters, one from a Spanish professor and the other a Russian teacher, who said they had begun the job of translating as much of The Commonacular as possible into their native tongue. These projects, a linguistic form of reverse engineering, could represent an advancement for the global village, if undertaken by language experts around the world. I recall that the Russian wrote that his mother tongue was at least as textured with colorful idioms as English, and that I should immediately begin to learn Russian. (Maybe one day.)

The reading of several of these pages can serve as a “dialogue starter” for a writer, who may find himself a bit blocked, or just sitting down to the keyboard to do some work. A writer in the process of writing a novel or screenplay, or even a non-fiction work, has a pre-set modality/groove—the voice of his characters and his own narration. Many professional writers don’t like to clutter this tunnelistic consciousness by the reading of some other writer (while they’re immersed in a project), fearful that the different style will impinge on this inner voice, and cloud or detour them. The Commonacular can serve as a neutral-voice stimulus, allowing them to limber up their mental muscles without reading the kind of prose that might derail their train of thought.

Skipbrowsing thru these phrases and sentences may trigstart something in the author’s mind as to what a particular character (or the narrative voice) might say. This might lead to a string of dialogue or a plot development. I’d analogize it to the “priming of a pump,” but lessnless of you know what that refers to. A more apt modern example would be making popcorn. When you put it in the m-wave, it has to heat up to a certain degree before the popping begins. A writer who reads pages from The Commonacular can metaphorically “heat up his brain molecules” enuff to start his thoughts and ideas popping.

Among those who could also benefit from the secondary uses of this list are students who have to do some assigned reading, or perhaps write an essay. It may be found that the Commonacular is especially useful for these students, who so often have just spent their pre-homework time viewing and/or listening to some form of visual/aural entertainment, thus being, brain-wise, in need of some kind of switching mechanism. Likewise, if a student (or anyone) has just spent substantial time talking, especially on the phone, they also may need to re-gear their brain hemispherics to handle textual input.

I’ve also received letters from actors and acting teachers, remarking how valuable an aid the first volume was in their work. Actors use The Commonacular in their articulation drills, skipping thru the pages to find phrases and sentences that challenge their tongue. As well, acting coaches have found the list to be a useful resource in acting drills, taking, for instance, a single phrase and giving it several different interpretations of mood and inflection (or dialect).

I even received a letter from an improv company in Toronto who employed the material as a sketch starter, randomly reading something from The Commonacular, and going from there. They also reported that their group leader would pick out 2-4 disparate lines, and they would be challenged to improvise a piece in which those lines would somehow be used.

Similarly, but perhaps more productively, there was a composition teacher in Oregon who wrote that she, as a writing exercise for her advanced high school students, would take a 10-page slice of the book and pick out 20 or so lines, then give these out to the kids. Their assignment would be to construct a story somehow using as many of the lines as possible.

Dr. Lawrence Lerner of Boston, who I met during my annual two-weeker in Nantucket this past autumn, brought this next example of outside-the-box usage of The Commonacular to my attention. Dr. Lerner is a practicing psychiatrist who had the book because he owns two of the units (one for his office, and one as a house servant). He came upon the idea of utilizing The List in a similar manner as he previously utilized word association.

With his patient in a deep-relaxation state, he would review the pages of the book, finding his highlighted sentences, picked as they could possibly contain emotional charge, eg, “What are you doing now?” and “Why can’t you?” He would then repeat these lines with different inflections, uptocluding invective, in an attempt to unseat buried memories and resentments. The doctor found these exercises “at least twice as productive as simple word association.”

Alt-artist Jonnia Zone copied 1000 sentences from the Commonacular, typed them in colored 48-point type, and then cut them out individually. These she pasted in every nookcranny in a mock-up of a living room at an art museum in London. Patrons, while in the room, would hear the entire collection being spoken, from muted shouts to whimpers and whispers, as if from a “ghost family” which, come to think, was the name of the showing.

Then there’s the still-running, albeit in an Off-Off Broadway loft, experimental production called “The River’ where a troupe of performers, each a distinct stereotype (debutante, playboy, cheerleader, businessman, jock, nerd, housewife, and an occasionally appearing execuhead who barks orders) recite phrases and sentences semi-randomly. It’s a bit numbing at points, but comes alive when the actors direct their words at each other, or ricochet from one to the next, playing off from one or more words in the previous speaker’s statement or question. (Like I said, Off-Off Broadway.)

Lastly but not leastly, The Commonacular can readily serve as a valuable aid to the under-vernacularized, by whom I mostly mean the vastjority of the so-called Generation Now, who can somehow get thru most of their conversations with about ten phrases (“Weird but true!,” “That is, like, so slasher,” “Just kill me now!, etc.) For that reason alone, parents should buy this book for their children, to instill in them a sense of the width and breadth of their native tongue.

Let me also state my appreciation for all the emails and smail I received in the course of my editorship of The Android Trainer’s Phrasebook. Let me assure those who took the time to communicate that all of your missives were read, if not by me, then by someone on my immediate staff, who provided me with summaries.

Notes to readers: The Commonacular, which in the original version of this work was emplaced at this point, can now be found at thecommonacular.blogspot.com

Also, certain other material found in my original Winger volume are now located in the Appendix section of this book. This includes an extended section on the neologisms, ie, Newvo.

—Ambro Pyrce

The Continuing Lives

Monday, February 1, 2010

Introduction

CHAPTER TWO

Current Uses and Misuses of Androids

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