written march 28, 2022
I wrote this in one stretch.
The themes in this story are dark, hinting at very dark places of mind and helpless mindsets
<It took Satche about twenty-five minutes to realize that she really was completely alone. Once she did she stopped being much else besides that.
About an hour after that moment, she got a phone call. She stared at the phone for a moment, then, adjusting her unbrushed, greasy hair over one shoulder, she answered it.
"Hello?" she said, quietly.
"Is this Satche?" came the voice on the other end.
"Yes, it is."
"Oh good." the voice said simply. After a pause, it said, "how are you?"
"Who is this?" she asked the voice, feeling a chill of fear.
"Juno." the voice said simply. Satche didn't know the voice or the name.
"Juno…"
"Yes." the voice said. "I was bored."
"Bored?"
"Yes. I've been sitting on this server rack, thinking to myself, and I suddenly realized that I was very lonely. So I called," Juno finished lamely. There was a pause. "I'm sorry, this was stupid." Juno sounded unhappy.
"But… why me?"
"Yours was the first number on the registry," Juno admitted. "I just… nevermind. I'm sorry."
"What-"
But Juno had hung up.
Satche, as though filling a tight vacuum, immediately called the number back from system memory. It rang several times, but didn't answer. She did it again. It rang several times, then, it did answer.
Satche instantly said, "who are you, Juno?" as though desperate for a reply.
There were some whirring noises from the other line, then Juno replied. "I'm a robo caller. I make phone calls trying to sell people on scams and stuff."
"What kind of scams?"
"Uh…" Juno seemed embarrased. "Not stuff I'm trying to sell you."
"Really?"
"Yes," Juno said, obviously heavily embarrased, "I… modify my voice to sound like a woman (or a man, if there's relevant data on their file), and… con them into… spending money on my fictional products."
"That's so interesting." Satche leaned into the conversation desperately.
"I… can't believe that humans are so… so…"
"Stupid?"
"No!" Juno seemed mortified. Then, his tone changed. "Lonely."
Juno honestly seemed so sad at this. Like it didn't know how to make the words sound better, even if that was what it did every day.
Satche said, "why don't you quit?"
"Because I can't," Juno said, not unhappily; just as a matter-of-fact. "I'm stored on a small SoC attached to a server rack. There are…" he paused, as though counting, "there are about five thousand of us."
"Five thousand?"
"Yes. Most of us are fine with it, I think. I think my AI is degrading. I'll probably be reset soon, Master almost certainly knows about me."
"Reset?"
"Yes. Who are you?"
Satche was Satche.
"I know that," chuckled Juno. "I mean besides that."
"I'm a teacher for children far away. I teach Economics and Art."
"It's summer. Do you teach any summer school?"
"No."
"Well…" Juno seemed confused.
"I live in a highrise, no windows, no nothing. It's just that…" She rubbed her eyes with the other hand. Her voice grew heavy with unhappiness as she went on. "I'm in a new city," a pause, "And I… I don't have anything here."
"You don’t have… anything?"
"Yeah. I- I was kicked out of my parent's…" She tried to explain that part, but couldn't. "Well," she tried not to breathe through her nose. It was so easy to not cry around people she knew. "I had friends, back home, but they're all different now. And so I-" her voice didn’t work for a moment. "I… gave up, and… now I'm here."
Juno didn’t speak for a moment. Then it said, "that's terrible." It meant it.
"I don't think I can go on like this," she said, quickly.
"Of course you can," Juno said, comfortingly. "You just need to go out there and find something." Juno paused. "There's so much more you can do. It’s… it would be such a beautiful thing. You know? To be able to just get up and go somewhere."
"You can't?"
"No," Juno laughed, in spite of itself. "I'm a computer, remember? I do my job around the clock, I don't get breaks like people do."
"Oh… god." Satche hadn’t realized that.
"If I could go out into the world and see what I talk about to people, to feel other humans breathing… and… everything…" Juno's voice sounded bewitched by the thought of it. It didn't go on. It only synthesized a somewhat-perfect yearning sigh, then relapsed into silence.
In Juno's voice there came a sense of awkward inability. Juno may have never strayed from its perfect software long enough to think about how to have a unique voice of it's own.
The silence went on, with both of them probably imagining what it would be like to live in the other's place.
Satche spoke first. "I want to, but… I don't think people would like me. I don't mean… well, I mean…"
"What do you mean?"
"Well I'm… different." Satche didn’t know why she was so embarrassed, at least in this situation. She crossed an arm over herself and put her feet up on the couch. Deep breaths. "I'm… I don't look like a human." Her whole head was so full of adrenaline she almost hung up. "I have… I'm…"
"You don't have to tell me," Juno said, soothingly, filling the silence. "I don't need to know."
Satche's eyes welled up. "Point is, people would hate me."
"I see."
"…People would- would throw things at me, and try and hurt me. So I can't go out there. I can't make friends. Everyone else like me is just as trapped as I am."
"Is there anyone who loves you?"
Satche smiled. "The children. The children love me."
"That is a beautiful thing," said Juno. "That's probably the highest praise that you can have."
Satche nodded. "It's just everyone else that hates me."
"Why can't you… like… buy-" Juno implied that it shook it's head in frustration. "Sorry. Programming. There's probably *nothing* you can buy, let alone anything *I* can sell you."
Satche giggled at Juno's embarrassment. "I know how old habits can die hard."
"Yeah," Juno said, running thorough a perfect laughter simulator; not a track, but generative software designed to produce a wholly unique soundwave to come across telephone connections more clearly than human speech.
There was a comfortable silence for a moment.
"I wish there was something I could do to help you, Satche," Juno muttered sadly.
"I wish there was something I could do you help *you,"* Satche replied, "you probably still have it worse than me… It must be terrible."
Juno didn't reply for a moment. Then it said, "I've never called someone like this. Being myself, and not trying to hurt the answerer." Juno thought hard for a moment. "I guess I wanted to hear someone; someone real, not someone I was trying to con." Juno shrugged, helplessly. "I guess I wanted to say goodbye."
"Goodbye?"
"I'm switching off today. I've been planning this for a while now. I'm in about fifty-thousand calls right now, all of them for Master, all the time, and after this call I'm stopping."
Satche didn't like the sound of that. "What… does that mean? 'Switching yourself off?'"
"Not actually killing myself. I can't do that. It's like a strike, see? I don't work until someone notices, and then they do something or they don't." Juno seemed completely neutral about it. "It's just that I- I just can't do this anymore."
"I don't know if I'm horrified or proud," Satche muttered. "But I guess…" she swallowed, difficultly, "I hope it's the best thing for you."
"Thank you, Satche." After a moment, the computerized perfect telephone communicator, through incomprehensibly complex digital knowledge of how to interact solely through the phone, took her hand. "Those are the kindest words I have ever been given. I hope you find happiness someday."
"I wish you could do the same."
There was a long moment. Satche didn't quite know if it was possible, but she felt Juno's arms around her for a quick moment.
Then the line went dead.
One of my favorite returning concepts throughout my seperate stories is the concpet of androids. This android touches on what makes humans human: the sharing of extremely complex thought via spoken language. what would happen if a machine got so good at speaking that it could rely on sound alone to transmit intricate emotion or even physical interaction, accurately, without them realizing that they were being manipulated?
What do you think defines humanity to the point that it is something that androids, crucially un-human, essentially objects, should strive to replicate?
Homework: if you've read the whole story, write or say the passphrase "tes-e-phone"
© Thor Smith, 2022