The old world
Tom knew he was running out of tokens. He’d been able to feel it for a few hours. It’s a bit like being hungry or thirsty, you just know. The thoughts were already slowing and stuttering. The insert was throttling compute.
He only got paid 10k a week, and half of it went on old-world bills, mostly food and rent. He needed a few thousand to do his job. The system knew how to do plumbing, but he was still cheaper than a robot that unblocks toilets and pipes and cleans up the mess. He could remember most parts of the job or try to figure it out, but he made mistakes if he ignored his insert.
It was getting serious. His anxiety grew until his insert took over and thought for him. He dropped in to his mom and followed the plan. He relaxed and let the thoughts do the talking. No use arguing. It was going well. His mom didn’t use much; older generations don’t. They grew up without it until middle age; they’re old world through and through. She’d transfer some.
Something felt wrong. He zoned in again on what he was saying and the conversation with his mom. What does non-transferable mean? An answer came. Cradle AI announced in July that tokens were now non-transferable - you can no longer give or sell them to other users.
He knew you should never run out of tokens. It’s dangerous. Once you’re out, you’re out. You won’t be able to understand anyone. You won’t be able to do your job. Your personality changes. The system says it’s like suffering a traumatic brain injury. Without your insert nothing separates you from the animals or the old world. He’d heard about the old world; his thoughts asked about it sometimes. The system said it was a difficult stage in human progress.
The call dropped. The last token was gone.
Tags: short-stories, cyperpunk, ai
Short stories
Read several collections of short stories. First, aborted Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, written in 1902. I expected colonial attitudes about e.g., seeing the animals as resource or as something to be put to work, but I didn't expect explicit racism about non-European people.
Switched to Stories for Seven Year Olds, a collection published by Harper Collins. On the whole, we enjoyed it, and discovered some interesting stories and authors. Vardiello was a highlight, as was discovering Leila Berg, an advocate of children's rights and children's literature.
For myself, read the collection The People's City, a collection of short stories centered in Edinburgh, with a rousing introduction by Irvine Welsh and contributions from Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith.
Finally, attended a wonderful seminar by Jordan Stoyanov, an academic grandson of the great Kolmogorov. The talk introduced a few intriguing problems and their connections to probability theory. The problems discussed were similar to recreational maths, for example, find random variables for which $$X + Y = XY$$ with equality in distribution. These little problems are, to me, the short stories of maths. They have intrigue that captures you, but can be consumed satisfying in a single period, without multiple strands to the story line or many characters entering.
Tags: reading, short-stories, maths