Our Hero Returns

I am trying to think of a start-up.  I keep seeing ads for Door Dash.  The models look far too healthy and optimistic. 

In trying to assemble a writing project I discover that the characters are not 'the lost' but 'people who lost'.  Some old Pulp song lyric bubbles up, concerning nubs who lost the plot. 

I work for the state.  I work with people closing in on retirement.  I work with sick old people who should retire but won't because they can't; they must endure until the next hash mark.  I work with people who need public assistance for housing, who state relief when a fellow co-worker volunteering at a food bank lowers the stigma on tapping that particular albatross.         

I hate my job.  Encountering 'kick the can down the road' bureaucracy and its companion creature the irreducible bottleneck wearies the soul and inflicts a thousand tiny cuts.  This is how blue minds turn red.  

All the other jobs I apply for are some brand of 'customer service'.  All I've done is customer service. How in the name of holy fuck did this happen to me?  

There's a start-up idea. 

A numerical system for figuring out how you got to where you got and the likelihood you get out of it.  And the likelihood you die while trying to gnaw your paw free from the hunter's trap. 

Location, Location, Location

Since you asked.  This is where the bodies are buried.  Where the paper is shredded.  Where the dreams were gutted and sliced and stored in single-use plastic.  This is the scream store.  This is an armpit of a demon seventy feet deep and rising.  This is ignorance and bliss in a tug of war.  That was your last chance and your getaway car on fire on the side of the road.  This is the clown that molests at parties.  This is a zipper that will stick and make you late and determine the rest of your blink and miss it existence.  This is a headache that never ends.  This is a solution never implemented.  This is cheese on a saltine or indeterminable cleverness crucified on the tines of a bent fork. This is the drummer left behind by the band thumbing rides on the interstate on the grayest day of the year complete with flurries and ominous rumblings from the distant horizon.  Once upon a time hope roamed the hills, her strides athletic and pure.  And then we put her out of her misery.  This is where you ask how much longer and I tell you not long but maybe too narrow and almost certainly too much for your kind in this lifetime. 

Just Call Me Stumpy

"You're hearing about the problems they're starting to have with 'bots in India?  The freeze?"

Dad waved his hand. 

"They're all Clevell," he said.  "Clevell produces turds.  Always has.  India, Russia, those 'bots come out of the box with problems galore."

"You could say that, but everyone pretty much uses the same processors, Dad.  What line is Nona?"

"She's a Brixton."

"That's going to be the same," I said.  "They all use the same chips." 

"It's a software issue."  Said like a network expert immune to the contradictory.  

"Even so.  Do you have bugware?  Do you run that?  Religiously?"

"We don't need it," said Dad.  "We're fine the way we are.  She talks to me.  I talk to her.  There doesn't need to be anyone else.  If we need to visit with anyone, we go see the Glicks.  They're down a block."

"Dad.  Nona is old.  If you're not running regular checks, I mean she could accidentally hurt you."

"We don't do so much anymore."

"She could tear your dick off, Ted," I said.  "How about that?  Want word of that to get to Mom?  She'd laugh so hard she'd shit herself."

Dad did this smile that hit his eyes.  Wrinkled him all up, made him look about 70.  He fought to get up out from the recliner and walk over to me. His moist end of the day feet adhered to the hardwood and popped like suction cups.  He hugged me.  Kissed the top of my head. 

"It's just so good to see you, Gil," he said.  "To know you care.  Hey, how about this?  Worse comes to worse, you can just call me Stumpy."

Miralove Touch

We were forced to visit our grandfather.  It was a different experience if we went to his house, but down a functional hip and both knees, slipped all but free from the ability to tend to himself, it was our honor to drop in at Care Free Days a/k/a Old People Prison.  Cameras everywhere, even on the eerie cheerful attendants, but in the credit column, all the ice cream sundaes an atrophied belly could hold every Thursday afternoon. 

My brother Grant drove us once he got his license.  If I remember right, he brought his girlfriend once, a Tina or Lisa.  She got kicked off the cheerleading squad for gut-punching some alumni with 'busy hands'.  Grant thought the old guy might get a kick out of that.   

Grandpa's room was warm.  Tropical.  A hint of recent bowel movement hung in the air like he'd let slip the goods courtesy some sixth sense alerting him the next generation of Mishkin was imminent. 

Five years or so ago, Grant lost his hat investing in residential smart apps.  Hackers locked people out of their apartments and homes.  In some cases, pets starved and stovetops overheated.  Kids died in fires. 

One glimmer of hope, some sexbot owner remotely directed his sexbot to throw breaker switches and turn his condo into a dark unplugged oasis.  Then he used a backup copy of the sexbot's software to contact the virus and implant a countervirus.  From said seed a beanstalk clobbered the invasion force.  

Post-near apocalypse, a network interviewed the man and his heroic sexbot.  Merle told the host to celebrate he'd be getting Miralove Touch a brand new head, one of the series 6000LUX complete with cutting edge facial responses.

Grant says it's a damn shame technology wasn't cutting edge back when Grandpa was still kicking.  Cheerleaders with devastating right hooks were one thing, but sexbots would've revolutionized retirement living.  Think of the pizazz a Miralove Touch couldn't help but inject into an ice cream sundae Thursday.