Communications Breakdown, page 15
After we get Dyne in bed, we sit on the sofa with the half-finished wine from dinner. That’s when I finally tell Barya about our meeting with Dr. Ortiz. I show her the printed packet and hand her the page that summarizes the recommended actions. She flips through it, scanning for relevant information with the practiced ease of a researcher, then sets it aside and looks at me.
“I don’t see anything in here that we don’t know, and we’re already doing a lot of what they recommend. Maybe Dyne is more sensitive because of his age. We can hire a carebot to look after him until he’s a bit older.” She shrugs and refills her wine glass. “It’ll be expensive, but we can make it work.”
I give her a skeptical look. “Dyne hates carebots. The doctor said that EHS could affect his learning and development. I wish you’d come with us, had seen how much brighter and more cheerful he was there. It’s hard to explain, but I could feel it too—not just my symptoms going away, but a sort of mental quietness and clarity. I really think we need to consider a different lifestyle, for his sake.” And mine. “Shouldn’t we put him in an environment where he can thrive?”
She sips at her glass, then says, “Removing ourselves from society will only disadvantage him in the long run. What happens when he gets older? Think of all the experiences he’ll miss out on. How is he going to have friends if he can’t connect to the grid? I get that you had a good time at the retreat, but you were on vacation. You can’t live like that every day, and neither can he. So he has EHS. You’re doing okay with it. He’ll learn to do the same.”
“I didn’t get a diagnosis until I was fifteen,” I snap. “When I was little, the medbots told my parents I had too much stress, and then later, they blamed it on puberty. I was miserable. I knew something was wrong with me, but by the time my parents heard about EHS, they didn’t believe that they had to make any changes at home. I used to hear the same thing from them. You’ve done okay all these years, so it can’t be that bad.” I downed the rest of my wine and stood. “Bullshit! I am never okay. I just put up with feeling like crap all the time because I haven’t had a choice. Dyne’s sensitivity is ten times worse than mine. I don’t want him to suffer. I don’t want him to learn to live with the pain. But you wouldn’t understand. You didn’t come to Peace Valley—”
“I couldn’t!”
“—and you’re not the one who has to deal with his meltdowns at school every morning.”
“One of us has to pay the bills. Dyne started preschool four months ago, and you still haven’t switched to a full-time contract.”
“Maybe that’s because I prioritize our child’s well-being over money.” I don’t really believe that, but I can’t help hitting back, and I know where to hurt her.
Barya takes a deep breath and says softly, “Clearly this isn’t going to be a productive discussion right now. You’re tired. So am I. Let’s talk more on the weekend.”
I nod and wash the wine glasses as a peace gesture. We go to bed together, but I can’t sleep. After staring out the window for an hour, I get up, lie on the sofa, and try to read. The low-level noise from my smartglasses fills my head like an unwelcome visitor. I try to ignore it like I always have and fail.
I close the book, pull on my haptic gloves, and look up what I can about EHS and development. The more I see, the more convinced I am that Dr. Ortiz is right, that Dyne needs a healthier, pain-free environment to thrive. A lot of the information I come across is anecdotal—stories from non-EHS parents who eventually figured out what was going on with their children after years of suffering and misdiagnoses; or stories like my own, recorded by adults about their childhoods. The most severe cases ended up with developmental delays and permanent injury.
All of it convinces me that we have to take action. At the very least, we need to find Dyne some kind of nonelectronic schooling. At best, we have to find a new way of life. I search for somewhere we can live that would meet all of our needs. Finding a place where we can build a house shielded from network constellations is the greatest challenge. New zoning ordinances have driven most people away from suburban, single-family lifestyles and into multifamily clusters like ours. Many of the older neighborhoods have been cleared and turned into green spaces. We aren’t so rich that we can buy a plot of land in the communities that allow it, not unless we move out of state. I distanced myself from my family when I left for college, but Barya is close to hers, both physically and emotionally. Convincing her to move halfway across the country would be hard—harder than the already high barrier of upending our lives. I skitter around the idea of splitting up. I’ll do what I have to for Dyne’s sake, but I love my wife. I don’t want to choose between them. I want to find a solution that satisfies all of our needs.
I spend the next two hours trying out budgets, researching housing costs in different areas within a day’s drive, seeing if I can get a tutoring certificate. I find some EHS families who have shared their solutions, but most of them have milder cases, like mine. They use the same kinds of mitigation strategies that we already do. The more severely affected live on meds with willing family members, or they suffer through in-home carebots, trapped in a vicious cycle of dysfunction, or they go completely off-grid.
Peace Valley keeps cropping up as the only place nearby to find an ideal environment for people with EHS. I almost wish I hadn’t gone, that I hadn’t discovered that a noise-free, pain-free life could exist.
I wake to a sore neck and a headache. Barya sits in the armchair sipping a coffee.
“Good morning.” She greets me with a lopsided, rueful smile. “Sorry about last night.”
I yawn, stretch, and sit up. “Me too. I didn’t mean to fall asleep out here.”
She puts down her cup. “Let me take Dyne to preschool today. I didn’t use any vacation time last week. I can take the whole day off, get him settled at school, and then we can really talk.”
I nod, too groggy to respond coherently. I stumble into our bedroom and fall into a deep sleep.
When I wake, it’s almost noon, and the house is quiet. I peek into Dyne’s room, but he’s not there. I find Barya in the living room, the paper packet spread out on her lap. She sees me and her expression turns to one of almost comical dismay. Then she stands, strides over to me, kisses me full on the mouth, and wraps me in a tight hug.
“Ani, I am so so sorry,” she says when she pulls back. “I had no idea.”
It takes me a second. “The crying?”
She nods. “Ye gods, that was awful. I can’t believe you’ve been dealing with that every single day since he started. I would’ve cracked months ago.” She shudders. “I did a bunch of research about EHS while you were asleep. Let’s talk about it over lunch, preferably somewhere that serves cocktails.”
We walk to our favorite café and order Bloody Marys and salads. The server leaves us with a basket of warm, fresh-baked bread with a perfectly crispy crust and chilled butter. Across the street sits the nightclub where we used to go dancing every weekend. The sun brightens our shaded patio, and in this idyllic setting, hope rises in me that she and I will work this out.
“So I did some reading while you slept in,” she says. She goes on to explain how she tracked out some theories on the biochemistry behind EHS and how a few researchers, including Dr. Ortiz, have developed diagnostic tests for it. “I agree with you that we have to do something for Dyne, especially given the potential long-term neurological damage that this can cause.”
“Great—”
“I’m thinking we should buy our own place and get shielding put in for Dyne’s room. There are materials you can apply to interior walls that act like a Faraday cage. We can put him in private school rather than attending a cluster, somewhere that’ll accommodate his needs and allow him to learn with a low-emissions home setup. I looked into those, and they exist. He can have breaks in his room during the day, and you can take him to park playdates in the afternoon. With both of us back at full-time work, we should be able to afford it.”
She goes on talking, laying out her plan in detail, never once stopping to ask my opinion or considering how I’m going to manage a full-time job and taking care of Dyne. For her, it’s all about minimizing disruption and allowing her the freedom to continue living on her terms, just as it was after we had a baby. I listen. I try to keep an open mind. Her idea could work if the priority is to allow her to work comfortably from home, but it’s not optimal for Dyne or me. When our food arrives, she digs into her salad.
I hold my fork and say, “I’m really glad you’re on board with making changes to help Dyne.” I put the fork back down. “But there’s no way I can oversee Dyne’s schooling and socializing and work a full-time contract. Plus, the parks are usually crawling with carebots and microdrone swarms. The instant he goes outside, he’s going to be inundated by electromagnetic signals.”
“Do you have any better ideas?”
“Yes. Peace Valley. All of their buildings are shielded and they have minimal electronics on site. They have a protective enclosure to keep out swarms, a day care on-site, and a commuter van for people who need to be in the city. You could use that to continue doing your work.”
“Didn’t you say it’s almost an hour each way?”
I nod and take my first bite of food.
“I don’t want to waste two hours a day in a van. I’ll have less time with Dyne.”
“You don’t do anything with him until the evening anyway.”
“Are you serious?” Barya’s voice rises.
“And that way I’ll get relief from my symptoms too, which I won’t with your plan.”
“What about your work?”
“I’ll take one of the on-site jobs. Maybe they’ll fund my project to help attenuate constellation signals in the area. I can work on that during the weekends in the city.”
“Do you even realize what you’re saying? Peace Valley is hours away from anywhere interesting. Hours from my family. You’d force me into a commute. All that so that you can be a little more comfortable?”
“All that so that Dyne and I can be healthy.” As my heart rate picks up, so does the throbbing in my head. “EHS is more than discomfort. And Dr. Ortiz thinks—”
“Nothing I read said that.”
“And your expertise rating in this is what exactly? Because his is in the nineties.”
Her lips compress.
“Look, I know this is a lot to ask, but imagine if we were talking about a toxin. Wouldn’t you want us living somewhere free of it rather than somewhere with a constant low to medium dose?”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“For Dyne, it might be.”
“I’m not moving to Peace Valley.”
My heart drums against my ribs. “I don’t think I want to live anywhere else.”
We stare at each other, lunch and drinks forgotten. I didn’t want it to come to this, but if Barya is going to drop ultimatums, then so will I. I’m the one taking care of Dyne all day. I’m the one bearing the guilt for his EHS. If I can give him a better life, I will.
I pick at the salad, my appetite gone. We pay for the food in silence and walk home without holding hands. At the door to our apartment, Barya turns to me. Her eyes glisten with unshed tears.
“I don’t want to split up over this,” she says.
“Me neither.”
And then we’re both crying and clinging to each other like two trees about to fall over. After we get inside, after we dry our tears and blow our noses, we sit on the sofa face to face, knees touching. I take her hands in mine.
“What if we just try it for a year?” I say. “Peace Valley is a lot less commitment than buying a place of our own. If we end up feeling stifled or too far away, or if your commute makes you miserable, we’ll leave.”
She bites her lip, takes a deep breath, then says, “I think I can do that. Okay, let’s do it.”
And this time, it really is okay.
It took Peace Valley a month to print and furnish our new housing. We pulled Dyne from preschool during that time, and we told him on Christmas that we were moving.
“You mean I don’t have to wait until I’m a grown up?” He gasped dramatically and said, “My life is complete!”
He didn’t understand why his mommy and I burst out laughing.
After talking with the resort’s owners, we settled on our roles there. Barya would courier things to and from the town office, a job no one really wanted, and after dealing with that, she would stay in town and do her biogenetics work. I started on getting an early education certificate to teach Dyne and take over the fun center during the weekdays, and on weekends, it would be my turn to go into town and work on my communications project. Dr. Ortiz and the other founder gave me a modest budget to research the idea I’d had while horseback riding—a system that could mitigate the signal strength coming from the stellas, which would make the open spaces safer for people with EHS.
On January 2, we pull up to the familiar wooden gate. A moving service had taken the bulk of our things, including our static furniture, the week before. I unbuckle Dyne and heft his sleepy form into my arms while Barya gets the luggage. As the car drives itself away, I take a lungful of the dry, pine-scented air. The buzzing in my head starts to settle down. The gate opens and Malaika waves us in, a joyous smile on her face. Barya takes my hand, and the three of us step through into the quiet.
8
My City Is Not a Problem
Tim Maughan
Vanessa hated doing Newsnight.
This was her third time and it was no less terrifying. The video package was hurtling toward its conclusion, but she was largely oblivious to it. It looked basically like the same one they’d run the last two times she’d been on—the same critics and naysayers, AI ethicists and privacy advocates, the same infographics of budget runovers and delays. It all just flowed over her as she focused on the clock on the monitor, digits dissolving into nothing as it counted down, the panic bubbling up with each passing millisecond. She was so paralyzed by both that she almost didn’t realize they were back.
“I’m joined now in the studio by the Clara project’s lead engineer, Vanessa Allen. So, you’re going to flick a switch on Thursday and suddenly all of London’s problems are going to be solved, is that right?”
“Well, technically speaking, the switches have already been flicked. Last year, in fact. Clara has spent the last nine months really plugged into all the data we can gather about London, at every level. London is, y’know, a very complex collection of many thousands of interlocking systems, which as a whole is beyond the comprehension of normal human intelligence—”
“So you’re saying your software knows what London needs better than its mere residents?”
Dry mouth, damp palms. “Not at all. I think as residents of London we all know what the city’s biggest problems are, and we can agree on them. What’s harder for us to see is the underlying systems and structures that link all those problems, that seem to make them insurmountable. Plus Clara has been watching Londoners’ behavior for patterns—”
Shit. She knew, even as the words were falling out of her mouth, that she’d fucked up. She suddenly pictured Robin and Sara watching at home, damp palms going to their faces.
“Watching? So you’re now—as the project finally comes to fruition, and after years of denying it—admitting that you’ve built a large-scale surveillance tool?”
“Not at all, Emily. I understand it’s easy for the press to frame our work this way—”
“How do you respond to those critics that say you’ve just built another Facebook?”
“I mean, with all due respect to people’s concerns, that’s ridiculous.” She heard her voice tremble, fought back a dryness at the back of her throat. This, this was the one trap she was meant to avoid, and she’d stepped right into it. “Facebook is a private corporation, and they use their AI systems largely to leverage data for advertising. We’re very different. We’re publicly owned and get most of our money from the public sector. We’re a nonprofit. And we are using data to identify—”
“You bring up funding—let’s talk about that for a second. So far this project has cost in excess of two billion pounds of public money. There’s a lot of people who think that money could have served London in far more immediate ways, overhauling the tube or rail links. Housing, schools—the list is as long as it is obvious. Haven’t you just wasted all this ‘problem-solving’ money on another useless boondoggle?”
Vanessa took a breath, but not long enough to create dead air. Fought down the urge to take a sip of water, in case that just meant another salvo being lobbed in past her defenses.
“Look, I think on Thursday a lot of people are going to be pleasantly surprised. I understand the comparisons with Facebook and Google; outside of the military, there are only six active AI systems of this scale in use, and ours is the only one in the public sector. It’s the only one owned and built by a city, for a city and its residents. And that’s important. Like you said yourself, most Londoners will agree on what the city’s biggest concerns are. The problem historically has been getting politicians to agree with them, let alone getting a plan of action drawn up. I mean, we’ve all watched millions of pounds and endless years go down the drain as endless committees and hearings and pilot studies achieve nothing, or just to be shown by the end a list of vague recommendations or a report that is never acted on. We’ve got rid of all that—”
“You’ve got rid of democracy?”
“We’ve got rid of all that because it’s not efficient. Instead, we’ve replaced it with a system that can look at the data and facts around events as they happen and can respond instantly with actual action plans. All based on knowing exactly what the people of London want and need. It’s democracy in real time. I really believe that, very strongly. And I think that—”
“And I’m afraid that’s all we’ve got time for. Thank you, Vanessa Allen, from the Clara project, for joining us tonight.”
