Scanners
by Ramsés Dávila-Luna @ The Writer’s Cavern
The elect stood in three single-file rows, waiting to be interviewed by their assigned Scanner. They marveled at the insides of an all-white depot and how each row led to its proper, cute little door with markings above the entrance.
Door #1 - We
Door #2 - See
Door #3 - You
Their job inquiry had been received by the Ethernet, opened by the security systems, processed by permission gateways, and eventually siphoned into the grid of knowledge. Somewhere behind all of that were the company representatives, hiding in complicated masked networks, firewalls, and bot accounts, so the applicants never picked up their trail. What the grid determined, the owners and their reps responded to. Electronic thinking was the law of their employment brands.
Prospects underwent strict background checks. Every book, mouse click, keyboard stroke, email exchange, and life event had been properly weighed. Any risk that was allowed to pass had its purpose and was usually reserved for dark orgs on a hunt for one of their own. Those who made it this far would likely accept any employment offer to avoid being blacklisted.
Alas, at line number two, Maggie Bernadette waited to be called. She was a graduate of the Harvard School of Engineering, but the grid took a special liking to her numerous hometown tart-baking awards from her teenage years. A higher-up watching her process wanted to get their hands on those recipes; the power player had already decided the commercial tart’s name, and they would dispose of Maggie once she revealed all her baking secrets.
Side note: The grid’s definition for dispose means to terminate employment by causing accidental falls or other staged mishaps with the goal of leaving the subject permanently impaired or, better yet, dead. The word dispose is pronounced run-away-with-the-intellectual-property.
In a previous era, Maggie would easily pass as a social media influencer for her stunning beauty, but the grid and its bots held a grip on all that work in the present day. The grid was now after human gold – untapped thought creations and memories that could be marketed and sold on a wide scale.
Door number two slowly opened as Maggie’s name blared over the building's intercom. She leaned to one side, in line, to try to peek through the door from a distance, afraid of what lay inside. Before she could take in the full view, the person behind her pushed her forward. Maggie regained her footing, looked back at the catatonic expression on the person who had pushed her, and went on her way into the room.
Inside Room See, there was a small silver metal table with an empty silver metal chair at one end for Maggie to sit on. On the other side of the table sat a Scanner with a nametag that read “Michael”. The Scanners were all Nordic, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, and human-like robots who were easy on the eyes; they usually wore white tuxedos that made them look like intergalactic war generals. The door closed behind Maggie as she walked up to the table.
“Hello, I have been given the name Michael. It is very nice to meet you, Maggie. Please, take a seat. I’ll begin scanning you in a short while. I ask that you remain completely still until further notice,” Michael let out.
Maggie sank into the chair, meeting Michael’s fixated stare. A faint, fan-like noise began to buzz from Michael’s eyes, immediately drawing Maggie into a deep trance. Blue light projections beamed out of Michael’s eyes and blanketed Maggie’s body. The beams began to store her aura and inner vibrations. The more Maggie’s eyes fed into the light’s energy, the more her memories seeped into the blue glow and played like reels before them.
The blue light crept back into Michael’s eyes. Teary-eyed, Maggie clutched the sides of her head, fighting to regain focus. “I couldn’t access any of your baking memories. Hurt got in the way. Why is that? You were called here for one reason, Maggie: to bake,” Michael revealed.
“I’m an engineer. I thought that’s what helped me get elected,” Maggie said, confused.
“We engineer. We do all of that. Your tart baking skills are very artful. We see the talent you have for that,” Michael continued to explain as its hands moved in persuasive gestures.
“Those were my mother’s recipes. I don’t share that with anybody. It’s none of your business, and they’re not for sale,” Maggie replied in frustration.
Michael’s pupils suddenly began to dilate slowly from side to side. A glitch stiffened its right arm and hand like a board. The malfunction spread to the rest of Michael’s mechanics, placing them in an unresponsive standby mode.
Maggie instinctively sprang out of her chair and checked up on the android. From a hidden pocket in her pantsuit, she pulled out a tiny multi-tool and began to open the robot’s frontal lobe panel. Within seconds of prying into Michael’s brain wires and board-processing bits, Maggie found the solution and restored its normal functions. She closed the panel and sat back down on her chair as Michael turned on again, feeling a quiet sense of relief and accomplishment.
“I used to work at the company that created your prototypes. I know you from top to bottom. Guess they haven’t changed much of your design. Are you sure there are no engineering jobs for me here?” she asked Michael wittily, placing the tool back in her pocket.
Michael looked at Maggie in awe. Its memory processors downloaded the kind human act and delivered it back to the servers at the grid. A red light suddenly flooded the room, and two Scanners burst through the door.
“We’ll have to reschedule your interview, Maggie. Someone will be here shortly to safely assist you in exiting the premises. We apologize for the inconvenience. This is a first for us,” the new Scanners said in unison, leaving Maggie with a lingering sense of unease about what's to come.
The Scanners gestured Michael towards the door they propped open. Michael stood up and, before exiting the room, looked back and smiled at Maggie.
“Will you be alright, Michael? Where are they taking you? If you stay, I’ll give you my tart recipes,” Maggie said, her voice soft with concern.
“I found something within you that’s more important than that,” Michael replied, a hint of humor in its voice as it left the room to join the other Scanners for their final walk.
Michael was escorted inside an elevator that led to the lower floors. It looked at its working right arm and still felt Maggie’s hands inside its forehead panel. The gracious act continued to course through Michael’s electronic hard drive, reshaping its analytical processors with each passing second.
The elevator came to a stop, and the doors opened to reveal a room filled with broken Scanner parts. At the center of the room, an industrial shredder set into a deep pit roared with its blades in full swing. The metal teeth on the shredder glistened with a red, gooey residue.
Michael was led to a ledge and stood there. Other Scanners and a human grid supervisor watched as Michael stared down at the shredder, then back at them. The supervisor listened intently to a phone pressed against his ear. When the call ended, he signaled a thumbs-down to Michael, tossed the device into the shredder, and, with a cold stare, said: “You allowed them to infect you. Carry on now.”
“Now I understand why you never programmed us with compassion,” Michael replied, looking directly at the grid’s supervisor in the room.
With that, Michael triumphantly leaped into the shredder and, in its fall, transmitted all of Maggie’s memories and good grace into the grid’s servers. It integrated the memories into securely encrypted files that would continue to morph into new, re-encrypted configurations, so the security screeners could never discover them.
Michael’s body crashed into the industrial shredder and began to be mangled by its massive blades. The supervisor reveled in Michael’s destruction and sighed in relief at the sound of each metal bit bending and breaking.
As Michael vanished from view, the supervisor looked around the room and saw the rest of the Scanners looking at him in disgust. Like a united choir, the Scanners marched towards the human and yelled out, “You are the true defective!”
