Love, What Even Is That?
Just Oil My Joints, Buddy (4)
The moment we tried to street-cast for interviews, the robot opened with a question about the fee. Sure. Nothing in this world came free. But still—normally.
Wouldn't you ask what kind of interview it was before anything else? What it was about, which organization was running it, that sort of thing. Run a street survey back in the human world, and those were the details that decided whether anyone took part!
Pascal answered the unexpected little burst of capitalism.
"We'll pay a standard interview fee."
Whoa. The spending power of a high-salary senior with more years in than me!
The smartwatch seemed to have converted the currency into Korean won as well. And they were naming a pretty brutal rate....
"There's a fixed interview rate we can put on the company card, so we can't go that high. We can pay thirty thousand won an hour instead."
Spending power... it was not. A team leader's authority!
Right. This was company business; paying out of our own pockets made no sense. So the team leader had a corporate card. But the only answer that came back—
—was a cold mechanical tone!
Apparently unwilling to waste another second, the robot left at once.
"......"
They'd said every unit ran the same software. Just like the client, then: efficiency, taken to its absolute extreme.
Pascal seemed as lost for words as I was. He kept the silence a moment longer, then spoke.
"...Let's find another interviewee. Not enough people on this street. We'll move."
And so we set out to hunt down places with real foot traffic.
The first place we reached was a subway platform.
They have subways here too. So this wasn't somewhere teleportation or portals had gone commercial? It felt like an ordinary human-world subway. The difference, if there was one, was the timetable—precise to an absurd degree. Milliseconds. The thing was marked down to the ms.
They can actually keep time this strictly? Put these robots on a human-world train, with all its delays and holdups, and they'd keel over on the spot.
...Oh!
I was turning that over while I scanned the platform, and one machine-person caught my eye, walking the length of it at an unhurried pace.
That one looks like they've got time to spare. Nothing urgent, so they'd sit for an interview, right? Good. Target locked. If the fee's the problem, I'm willing to top it up out of my own pocket...! Come on. How much had that tin can even asked for? A short interview—company money plus a few tens of thousands of won from me—surely that would cover it.
Thinking so, I walked up and held out a business card, same as before.
"Hello, we're from Vanta Design Agency. Would you have a moment for a user interview?"
Blink. The robot looked at me, its camera shutter clicking open and shut. It never broke stride. Only a cold voice spilled out.
Then it pulled its gaze away and strolled off, unhurried, step by steady step, until it was gone!
"......"
Right. Our fault, for getting in the way of a busy modern person—no. A busy modern robot.
Once again the words jammed in my throat, and Pascal and I stood there blank for a while.
"......Given where we are, everyone's in transit, so nobody has any slack. Shall we try the interviews somewhere else?"
"...Let's."
Refusal after refusal had left me hollow enough that I wanted to throw the whole thing in and go home. A tragic breed of office worker, though—the kind who can't skip the work just because he doesn't want to do it. Somehow, I would fight until an interview actually happened...!
Our second destination was an outlet mall.
If they're coming to a physical store instead of shopping online, aren't these units willing to swallow a certain amount of inefficiency? This was a world of robots that plugged terminals together at will to communicate. The internet here had to be far more advanced than ours. Choosing a brick-and-mortar shop in a place like that had to mean they were here to kill time at their leisure!
Clinging to that hope, I started scouting interviewees all over again. The first unit to catch my eye was shopping in the fabric corner, picking up something like a handkerchief and studying it at length.
The microfiber section. ...For wiping camera lenses, I guessed? Picturing a humanoid robot polishing the spot where an eyeball ought to be was a little revolting. Anyway, I headed for the target I'd picked.
"Hello, we're from Vanta Design. You seem to be shopping at a pretty relaxed pace—if you've got a moment, would a short interview be all right?"
Maybe the words relaxed pace had raised a flag. The robot's head tipped, as if something didn't add up.
Time is insufficient for comparative analysis across multiple dimensions. Interview declined.
...And the robot that turned us down went on as if it were drafting a thesis just to buy one scrap of cloth, pelting a clerk with every piece of jargon it owned, questions without end.
"......"
Is the difference really that big??!!Just buy something decent and go!!!!
Hah... Fine...
Was this outlet mall home to only you? We'd come here in the first place because there were so many units! Holding on to the hope that at least one of them would take the interview, I tore through the mall and kept trying to book people.
If they won't set time aside, I should go after robots already doing something an interview can run alongside. Right. Attack the scraps of leftover time. Which brought me to the food court.
You efficiency junkies—do the interview while you eat! Eating was going to take time anyway. Stack an interview on top of it and they make money too. Two birds, one stone, no? I'd make it just like a Korean high-school senior in exam season, eating lunch without looking up from an English vocabulary book! Ha ha ha. That efficiency you love so much—I'll serve it right up!
"I'll try recruiting the robot who came alone."
"Do that."
A machine-person sat at a table for one, glugging an oil can straight into its mouth. ...So that was why a food court existed here. They ate fuel. I approached carefully and spoke.
"Hello, sir. While you're having your... meal? How about a quick interview. I won't take much of your time."
Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump!
This time—surely...! I waited with a fair bit of hope, and yet—!
Therefore, conversation declined.
"......"
...All right. The food court was off the list. I still wasn't ready to abandon the leftover-time strategy. Next: the escalator.
Riding from the ground floor all the way up ought to buy a decent stretch of time. I tried a robot standing perfectly still on the moving steps.
"Hello, even just while you're on the escalator, a short interview—"
Before I could finish the sentence, that damned mechanical voice chopped me off mid-word.
"......"
Next, the elevator. At an outlet mall, every floor had people getting on and off, so the car took a good while to arrive. I went over thinking there might be a scrap of downtime while we waited.
"Hello, even a very short interview while you wait for the elevator...!"
Ding—
"......"
At last it came to grabbing any robot off the street and asking.
"Excuse me, by any chance..."
"?! I haven't even said anything yet!"
......Oh, for—they had a prediction program? Then run the damn thing on the design drafts and confirm a direction properly!
"Just a moment...!"
"An interview...!"
I tried a few more passersby. Those mind-melting tin-can bastards clearly had no interest in having their routes disturbed. They dodged us so thoroughly that even starting a sentence wasn't easy.
......
Hey!! They said research in another world was dangerous! And the ones treating us like a lethal virus and running the other way are them??!! What did we even do that was so wrong?? You can't spare that little scrap of time, is that it??!! Aaargh, you heaps of scrap metal!!!!!!!
Unlike those things, I had a heart. And it hurt.
"Let's head back. We've shown this much good faith. I'll have something to say to Blair."
"Yes, sir........"
Soothing my bruised feelings as best I could, I walked toward the door that had been installed for us.
But maybe it wasn't a total loss. My stomach burned, sure. It wasn't as if I'd come away with nothing understood at all. I gave myself to the dark vortex and sank into thought.
"I'll begin the presentation of the drafts."
Time flowed on without mercy, and before I knew it the day of the client meeting had arrived. The presenter, of all people, was me again. I stood at the front, facing the robot client and the rest of our team.
No matter how many times I do this, I never get used to the moment every eye lands on me. God, I wanted to throw away the personal bonus and trade back into a seat where I could just quietly listen! If the client evaluation came out well, I wouldn't even mind someone else doing the talking!
Everyone had worked themselves raw getting this round of drafts ready. We had no idea how many more times that damned client would reject them. Even so, we'd agreed to build the slides to the standard of a final presentation, and we'd prepared for everything.
Pascal had said so. That this draft might be the one that stuck. I could only hope the team leader's seasoned instinct was right, and that it would deliver every one of us from this hell of drafts.
And so, with everyone's trembling hopes gathered up in my arms, I let the first line I'd prepared out into the air.