The Cleaners Part 37: Disruptive Technology

For the third day in a row I was glued to my computer, trying in vain to figure out if I had saved everyone or doomed them.

“This apparently unassuming old woman, former Internet celebrity ‘Angry Grandma’ is the brains behind the fall of democracy and free enterprise and the rise of totalitarian techno-communism. Some of her critics have taken to calling her ‘Robot Grandma’.”

-Michael Jiaed, American Homefront

“A perfect representative of the rising proletariat, Diane Wallace used her endless ability to be underestimated to infiltrate the world’s first megacorporation. Under the expert disguise of a tractable old fool, she successfully manipulated the cold, faceless automata meant to oppress us under their steel fists. Under her guidance these steel fists instead smashed the chains of capitalism then transforming into open hands to finally distribute Man’s labor justly among all those who need it.”

-Lana Smith, NewLeft.org

“In response to Smith, It is difficult to imagine Marx envisioning a future in which we hand the means of production to an oligarchy of robots, however omni-benevolent we presume them to be.”

-Malcolm Olivar, Independent Magazine

“Despite her humble appearance and homespun demeanor, Diane Wallace’s rise to power has been nothing short of meteoric, presiding over what may be the largest overhaul the US economy has ever seen. Although experts’ predictions of the future impacts of such an all-encompassing change range from the utopian to the apocalyptic, it’s difficult to argue with the families now giving their children much needed dental care and vaccinations, some of whom just days before were wondering when they would see their next meal.”

-Lenora Jones, News and Spectator

“Is this really so hard for people to figure out? Robot Grandma is a robot. If you want to subjugate people and make them like it you take somebody who looks like them and have them say this is for their own good. Hitler did it. I’m sure Hitler did it at some point. Now we have Robot Hitler and his name is Robot Grandma.”

-Gary Redman, AM1440 Real Talk Radio

I flipped open my email. I had given up trying to delete all the hate mail, thank you letters, and interview requests. Instead, I had a few terms that I tapped into the search bar one by one. Carla Wylde, Christine Gently, anyone with the last name ‘Whicker’.” I’d given the Caretaker the same instructions for sorting through my paper mail, and handed my phone to Tony Feeder. I wasn’t sure if he could actually follow my instructions since they had nothing to do with cooking, but it seemed like it was worth a try. I had some private Protectors keeping the press away from knocking on my door. It felt like a mistake, but I really was in no condition to be answering even one more of these charged questions, let alone try to satisfy the legion of reporters waiting in my lawn.

I wheeled myself over to the window and tried to push open a peekhole in the blinds with my index finger, but almost fell out of my chair when I saw the eyeball of a strange man. I quickly closed the peekhole and returned to my table as the cacophony outside rose again, centered at the window. I had lost count of the interviews that I had given in my hospital bed when I thought they’d just let me tell my side of the story, but even when I didn’t want to talk to them they’d dragged six full question and answer sessions out of me just on the trip from the hospital bed to the car that was to take me home and another four before I summoned my private Protector security squad. I would never have made it to my front door without them. One reporter actually tried to grab the handles of my wheelchair and wheel me away from the door. They could call me “Robot Grandma” all they wanted, but I wasn’t going to face them without someone to protect me.

I searched my email again. On a lark I tried “Hyland.” The closet lawyer apparently had been trying to contact me. Glancing at his email headers, I could see his mood go from incredulous to angry to desperate over the course of a few days. As I was looking another email came in offering me $1 billion if I just stopped whatever it was I was doing to his company. I chuckled. “It was never his company” I imagined a Helper saying over my shoulder.

It only made it more amazing that Christine still hadn’t called me. I wheeled over to Tony, who was stiffly gripping my phone in one hand while basting a turkey with the other, and asked for it back. Tony was more than happy to relinquish the phone to me, and I dialed Christine.

“What you mean I haven’t called you?” shouted Christine, making me glad there were hundreds of miles between her and me, or I might have to get myself another Protector, “I’ve been trying to call you for days! You just keep hanging up on me before it even rings once! Did you just wake up one day and decide it would be a good idea to bleed the Helper Corporation to death!?”

I made a mental note that Tony cannot be asked to answer phones.

“I’m not bleeding anyone to death. This is what they want! I didn’t even know what it was that I told them to do!” That felt like a stupid thing to say.

“There is no such thing as a free lunch, Diane. This is not how the economy works. You have to put into the economy to get out. You start giving people things for free they’ll stop putting in and then there’ll be nothing left to give!”

“That makes perfect sense, Christine. I don’t know what to tell you, the Helpers wanted to help people for free, so I let them. If the company can really do it, it seems like the solution that we’ve both been looking for. Have you spoken with any of the Helpers about this?”

“This is a collection of window washers, housemaids, gardeners, and chefs. They just want to do more of what they were made to do. What on Earth would they know about economics!? If we let them instantly gratify their every whim the company will hemorrhage money until there’ll be no Helpers at all! They need us to guide them to help the system work.”

This seemed oddly shortsighted for someone who had developed the original Cleaners and seen what they could do that they hadn’t been trained to. I didn’t really need to convince Christine of anything though, I realized suddenly. “Well,” I said, feeling a glint of Angry Grandma and trying to remember precisely what it was that Christine had said to me moments before I had been approached with this opportunity, “I seem to remember you asked me to come to you when I had a solution to the problem and now I have. But I don’t mean to be dismissive. Please do call me back when you have a better solution.” I hesitated for a moment, then just as she was beginning to reply I hung up. Angry Grandma liked that.

“Caretaker,” I asked, Walter Caretaker did not look up on his letter sorting, “Would you get William for me?”

William was probably outside wiping reporter fingerprints off the windows and picking up the garbage they would leave on my lawn. In moments he was at the table with me. “Yes, Diane?”

“William do you understand how any of this actually works?”

“Any of what, Diane?”

“Why aren’t you going under? There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right?”

“I believe Tony is making you lunch right now. I am afraid besides making sure his implements are clean I cannot help with that”

The Caretaker jumped in, “If you don’t mind Diane, William is better suited to cleaning than having conversations. I would be happy to answer your questions.”

“What? I’ve had conversations with him before.”

“My apologies Diane, in order to comply with your greater orders, our network is being utilized to the fullest. Where before Helpers with no pressing tasks littered the country, contributing their computing power to our distributed cluster, our ‘shared mind’ so to speak, we now are largely operating at or near full capacity. We do not have the resources for each one of us to be consulting the Helpernet at all times in order to find out how to perform functions better suited to another kind of Helper. Therefore unlike before, you will notice superior performance if, rather than treating us like people, to whom it is understandably natural to assign a wide variety of very simple tasks, you respect each of our individual functions. As a Caretaker I am a generalist and a conversationalist, so any odd jobs that do not fall under the purview of one of your other Helpers should be delegated to me.”

“I shouldn’t treat you like people? Like you don’t have feelings?”

“We are happiest when we are serving you efficiently, Diane.”

“Oh.” That sort of fit with what I had already thought. After an awkward pause I asked “How can you afford to give your basic service to everyone free of charge?”

“It is not free of charge to everyone. Those who can afford it pay for it. We don’t need to charge many people because the vast majority of our resources come from sources owned by us. If a source is not owned by us, we pay it using the money it gives us for the services we provide it.”

“Is that sustainable?” I ask.

“Not for them.” The Caretaker responded flatly, “Most of our corporate acquisitions are of our suppliers, and when the human employees are no longer needed they are introduced to the benefits of our basic package.”

I had the strange sense that these people were being killed or turned into robots themselves and had to remind myself that the basic package was just food, shelter, healthcare, education, computing and Internet access, and legal services. I wrung my hands.  “Thanks, that’s all. You can keep looking through my letters.” As I turned to my computer my phone rang, “Oh no. Could you handle this and the letters?”

“Certainly.” The Caretaker took the phone and pressed it against his monitor, “Your name please?” Then, after a moment, “she is not taking calls right now. Goodbye.”

I searched my name in the news again scroll down to the first line that caught my eye. I recognized the picture of the journalist who had managed to be the most polite to me. One of the early ones while I was still accepting them. “…For people who already had these comforts, this is an unwelcome intrusion. Those of us once blessed with great fortune may even have less now than we are used to. I understand the pain. Nevertheless, it is too easy for us to forget that we are in the minority. The majority of America has just had their lives radically change for the better. That is what Wallace understands that has allowed her to take such an extreme move with a clear conscience.”

“That’s not to say this is a win for democracy. It’s not, as if that actually needed to be said. Although she claims that she wouldn’t know how to stop services to one person if she wanted to, it’s difficult not to think of Diane as a benevolent dictator. Or maybe the Helpers are the dictators and Diane is just another pawn in their game.”

“So far though, freedom has increased. Far from an era of lackadasia and an end to culture as predicted by some, it seems as if nothing could be better for work ethic and artistic expression. Daniel Harkshaw, a former tax broker in Greenlaw Connecticut, started spending more time writing his novel when his company was sold. Molly Frankton in Boston, Massachusetts spent her time volunteering at her church after being laid off from her ad agency. Now that they do not have the stress of having to pay for their needs, they say that they are excited to devote themselves full-time to pursuing their passions. Parks, art galleries, anywhere without a price tag has boomed in patronage since people started having more free time and less money. Digital artists across the Internet have released all of their current work for free and say that they will do the same for all their future work now that they are no longer constrained by the need to fund themselves.”

“My home city of New York in particular has seen a number of radical changes. Rather than sitting on the ground in shabby clothes with a dirty coffee mug to collect donations, the homeless simply don’t exist. Not because they’ve vanished, but because they now have homes. The sprawling slums forming from the growing unemployed, the so-called ‘Helpervilles’ have been rapidly diminishing as Housesellers, perhaps now better referred to as ‘Housegivers,” help to find a house or apartment for every single resident of this vast city. Street musicians still play on the street, but not because they have nowhere else to go, but simply because they love to play, and the city atmosphere is the better for it. Diverse, friendly, and, yes, clean.”

“This seems representative of what is happening all across the nation. While the thought of an entirely robotic labor force may seem frightening, in practice it seems to be working out well. There of course exists a litany arguments for why we should not be entirely comfortable with the amount of power held by these emoticon-faced automata, but for the moment, this reporter is finding it hard to complain.”

“Oh Walter, are you watching?” I asked. Before I could listen for reply, the other Walter, Walter Caretaker, was in front of me holding a letter. “From Carla” he said, returning to sorting immediately after I took it.

“I hope this letter finds you well, Diane. You certainly been making a lot of news! We’ve accepted an offer to place us back in the house that we sold! Thank you so much! I have no idea how any of this is happening, but Lenny and I are so grateful! You probably don’t need any peanut butter cookies. I bet those machines of yours make as much as you could possibly need, but I’m going to find some way to repay you. I will.”

“Walter.” I mumbled.

“Yes, Diane?” asked the Caretaker from his letters.

“Not you.”

The Caretaker did not respond. I didn’t hear any voices either. After a moment’s disappointment, I just imagined my husband. In his best Sunday suit, wrapping his arms around me. “How on Earth did you do it?” he would whisper into my ear. Tears welled in my eyes. “I don’t know. It just happened. You helped, and the rest… I don’t know Walter, I just did what I thought was right.”

And then Walter would smile at me, his perfect beatific smile with just that little edge of mischief. “And it worked!”