Just Oil My Joints, Buddy (5): Love, What Even Is That?
The utility of a mind.
Right. Usefulness.
A faintly ironic word for it.
Wasn't “utility” the sort of term that belonged to a resource—something that actually generated added value?
The kind of thing you said like this: buy a sewing machine, and you can mend your own clothes, so it's terribly useful. Great utility, you might say. Put on noise-canceling earbuds, and you can finally concentrate, so the utility is excellent.
But the mind, as humans thought of it, was an abstract notion far removed from goods like those. It was the feeling of something, the attitude you took toward something. Warm and lyrical—the opposite of material value.
So if we'd been dealing with a human client, we would have started, without question—
with the philosophical question, What is a mind? After that we would have veered into melodrama, wrung out one good solid cry, and slid into an atmosphere brimming with humanism and catharsis. Which was exactly why we'd come up with drafts like Heartware and Warm Chip.
But I got a hint while I was trying to run user interviews.
An unexpected realization, earned only after a string of rejections had torn my heart to shreds. If I wanted to persuade these beings whose hearts didn't beat, I had to look at the world the way they did. Coldly.
Trying to make an emotional appeal to these lumps of scrap was the mistake!
I decided to approach the “mind” on the level of efficiency and reward.
I should have been seeing it from the target customer's point of view.
The work hadn't come unstuck because I'd treated my own human perspective as too obvious to question. Once I corrected that—once I tried possessing the viewpoint of those scrap-can junk heaps—the conclusion I reached was this.
“The mind is a kind of power source.”
Turn the mind into a productive resource, something that generated propulsion.
The robot client seemed to be listening more closely than it had to anything so far—no. Tilting its microphone.
Good.
I rode the momentum and advanced the slide. Up came an image of people sunk deep in their work, faces that seemed to shine simply because they were doing what they loved.
“The mind makes you like or dislike something for no reason at all. Preferences and tastes grow out of that, and the feelings it creates shape how you act.”
Someone who loved drawing so much they carved into their sleep to keep illustrating. A stage actor repeating grueling rehearsals again and again, just to stand on the stage they loved. I put other images up as well—people locked in heated meetings late into the night.
“Because the work is fun. Or because it feels worthwhile. For a reason no bigger than that, people will stay up all night and see a project through.”
I'd even slipped in a little grudge: hey, I lost sleep over this project.
...Not that anyone would catch it.
“Yes. The mind can also be the drive that lets you sink deep into something and turn out an efficient performance.”
What I showed next, to make the idea land at a glance, was an oil can.
“Like fuel.”
I'd put it in because I remembered the machine-humans drinking petroleum at the outlet mall.
“And now, the logo we built from that.”
I advanced to the next slide and brought up the finished work.
“A mind that pulls us out of a normal state, and sometimes moves us as if we've broken down.”
“The mind is an efficient error state. One that maximizes performance.”
The slide came to an end.
I finished the lines I'd prepared and waited for an answer. Thump-thump, thump-thump—my heart hammered in time with the desperate hope that this one would clear.
If this draft gets rejected too, there is genuinely nothing left I can do...!
The nightmare of wringing drafts dry came back, and my hands trembled faintly. I hid them behind my back and swallowed against the tension.
Fortunately, the client's reaction was nothing like the ones before.
Yes!
At last. Finally!
It was the first positive reaction I had ever heard from the client.
Is this how you get free of the draft-hell cycle...!
Faces that had gone stiff with tension brightened all at once. Hena broke into a radiant smile, and Seo Gwan-yul let out a small sound of awe. Even the set of Pascal's eyes seemed to soften.
...Just like that?
The client, apparently untroubled by the fact that we were standing right there, connected a finger to a port.
Kshhhkt—!
Maybe because a large-scale patch was running. A spark jumped once, and the light in the robot's eyes went out.
So even a mechanical life-form had to power off and on for an update.
Exactly like a computer in the human world...
Whirrr—
The client's lights came back on. Its voice, noticeably warmer than before, said:
We were just about to close the meeting out with empty pleasantries—it's all thanks to you, Client—when the machine, which had been staring straight at me, went on.
......Sorry?
What... did it just say?
Excuse me, I have never, at this age, been called cute?!
......
Even if it grows a taste, why does it have to be this taste?! Why is everyone around me a human enthusiast?!!!
Don't talk about me the way people say they like puppies because they're soft and cute!
The way humans find furry animals adorable... robots find furry humans adorable...!
Seo Gwan-yul was standing right nearby, and the fact that it showed interest only in me was a problem. Was the bleach-blond's hair in bad condition? Or had I drawn the eye by presenting?
Damn it. I knew it—the more you can avoid presenting, the better!
Fortunately, my reliable boss Pascal cut in.
“I'm sorry, but he's a designer under contract with our agency. If you commission our team again, we'll see you then.”
Whew.
For today, at least, let me be grateful for the one-year slave contract with Vanta Design......
We left the client—still shedding reluctance in fat drops—behind us and stepped out into the streets of the machine world, to check whether the digital posters on the billboards had been installed properly.
In keeping with the client's wish to use this draft as the final version, no revisions, the posters had gone up quickly.
With digital work, I'd been told, extracting the image through the company's design program immediately produced a suggestion.
A dangerous ability, if it ever spread onto the internet of the human world. Especially if the wrong message got through.
Maybe it's a mercy that the only clients I've met aren't human—that they've all been from other worlds.
I held that frightening thought for a moment and looked up at the poster on the street's ultra-high-definition billboard.
Wow. Seeing the real thing installed in high resolution, it really was pretty. The QR code inside the poster was sharp, too. Looking at it like this, I felt a certain pride.
Come to think of it, I could use this installed shot in my personal portfolio. ...Even if it would read like concept work.
All I'd done was branding for bizarre things, so I couldn't hold it up as an actual client job. As a conceptual portfolio piece showing what I could do with a finished design, though, it would serve.
I'd wanted to photograph the installations from the other projects, too, but the streetscapes were too unreal.
The minotaur's world had looked like ancient ruins, and the spaceship like a scene from a science-fiction film. This place looked enough like some city in the human world that a photo of the installation shouldn't feel out of place.
Click. Click!
I raised my smartphone and shot the digital poster. From every distance and angle. Diligently!
Five-thirty, back at the agency after a project successfully wrapped.
Maybe because the hour was awkward, Pascal didn't separately tell us to leave early. Send me home!
So I sat at my desk, sorting through my thoughts and killing time. It was the day we'd finished a project; they'd look the other way at this much slacking. Hehe.
In the end, the CEO's words did help.
Turning the whole process over in my mind, I remembered the user research. Honestly, it had seemed like the CEO said it without much thought, and there hadn't been any practical yield. Still, if not for Blair's remark, I never would have found the spark.
I was entertaining a generous thought—maybe I ought to issue a small pardon to the vampire I'd put through the wringer with that sudden report—when a message arrived.
“......”
No. Pardon revoked.
As expected... a vampire who managed to be irritating in some indefinable way!
Thanks to that, the pain of the overtime I'd pulled preparing a sudden report came back fresh......
Aagh. I wanted to vent this misery somewhere!
If I small-talk with Seo Gwan-yul... it'll run past clock-out, won't it?
My goal was to leave the second six o'clock hit, so I shouldn't call that guy over. And even if the CEO was a public enemy, badmouthing someone at the same company still felt gross.
So today, too, I went looking for my closest coworker.
When I first started using Vanta Bot, I'd signed a personal-data collection consent form.
My chats weren't stored on the agency's servers, so no one affiliated with the company could see them. In short: even if I cursed out the CEO, the CEO couldn't read it.
If they don't honor the personal-data consent, doesn't that mean I'm allowed to break my employment contract in return?
Figuring that if the CEO broke the pledge and read my chat, that would actually suit me fine, I opened the window.
Still, naming the CEO outright makes me a little uneasy. Maybe I'll just say “my boss.”
...I needed to be careful, in case Pascal walked by, glanced at my chat, and got the wrong idea.
I'm sorry for doing something that could be misunderstood, Team Leader. I don't mean you....
Expecting the familiar there-there comfort, I wrote out everything that had happened.
But what came back—
“......!”
...was a reply I had not expected at all.
1. Slip an everyday poison into the refreshments
2. A blow, using heavy office supplies
3. Induce injury by exploiting the drop in the emergency stairwell
I clamped a hand over the scream trying to get out and closed the chat.