Below the API (#1)
MONDAY
Below the API is a short story published as part of the 2024 Summer of Protocols “Protocol Incepting Lore & Literacy” program. You can find an abstract for the project, as well as an index to each chapter on the project’s landing page.
MONDAY
Marcie reached into the bucket of wet clay and grabbed a handful with both fists. Her hands glistened, oils coating her fingers, squeezing under her nails. She loved that feeling, of finger digging through matter, displacing the surplus as she clenched her hands.
She slammed the ball down onto the potting wheel with a satisfying splat, earth turning to artifact. Marcie had struggled through a messy divorce and a dead-end job in recent years, but in this studio, she was in control. She was a visionary, a shaper, an artist, a creator.
She pressed her foot down, and the wheel spun to life. The mechanical hum urged her to act: spin, press, shape, rise. She loved this part, the beginning when the future lay open. It was only mind, substance, and the points where they meet: the sliding of fingertips across the smooth clay, like hands down a lover’s back.
Like hands down Barry’s back. Barry from pickleball. Barry the kind. Barry the attainable. This week, Marcie told herself, she would ask him out.
She could offer him a pot, of course. But which one?
There were so many options: all of history at this point. Something from the fertile crescent was the obvious choice, but perhaps too forward. The Santorini-style white and blues were catchy and beautiful but also gaudy in the wrong environment. Who knows where he lives, she thought. She shouldn’t assume it could handle pottery from that crystal isle. Few places could. Maybe terra-cotta, something in the Cheyenne style. Something local.
Yes, that was it. He would pepper her with questions about the Cheyenne, the pot’s historical uses, and how they could make such fine earthenware. She’d impress him with her answers; he’d ask how she knew so much; she’d drop her nano PhD —“It’s Dr. Marcie, technically.” He would call her Dr. Marcie…
She slid her thumb into the top of the bowl, widening the base so that it bowed out. He’d respect her drive and creativity, her acquaintance with creators past. He’d invite her to dinner, and she’d say—
“SERIOUSLY, MARCIE?!”
Marcie’s jumped in her seat, her hands stretching the pot’s mouth. It sagged back into formless earth on the wheel. The studio door stood open. Filling its frame was her brother. His augmented reality jutted out from his head like a tumor. He peered down at her with a frown, his gaze filtered through tempered glass. His unkempt hair was parted in two by the overhead strap that kept his headset in place.
“Scott, jeez! You scared the hell out of me.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Ten thirty?”
“No, Marcie. It’s eleven.” Scott stepped down into the studio. “ELEVEN O’ CLOCK in the morning. On a MONDAY.”
“What do you want, Scott?”
“You woke me up.”
“Sorry, Scott.” Marcie turned away and began to reconstitute her stillborn pot. She needed him to leave. The studio was her refuge from her little brother. “I’ll try to be quieter.”
“I’ve heard that before, sis. But when I woke up today, I asked myself: is this okay? Is this worth damaging my health?” He opened his arms and spun dramatically, claiming the studio: the racks of pots leaning on each other, the kiln in the corner, the table with her tools, even the square windows that were the one source of natural light. “I can’t keep living like this. I run a business. I’m a provider. I give you the whole garage, a roof over your head, food on the table. And what do I get in return? Noise! Pots! Sass! At ELEVEN in the morning.”
“It was dad’s house.”
“My name’s on it.”
“And you do not work!”
“Do too!”
“You sit on the couch and play games in your head all day. It’s not work!”
“Yes, it is!” Scott’s voice echoed off the studio walls. It reminded Marcie of arguments long past, from childhood. “I am never not working. I’m always decisioning. I make money. You make… trash?”
“It’s art, Scott. And it’s actual work, not just moving inheritance money around. Actual, real, physical work.” They were both standing now. “I could make money with this if I tried. I just haven’t. Yet.”
“Yet. Right.”
Scott turned toward the wall and walked down the shelf, sliding his hand across the stacked pots. Marcie sat back down, dunked her clay in the water, and threw it back on the wheel. She started the wheel again, its humming filling the room, before Scott unplugged it from the wall.
“How many have you sold?”
“Leave me alone, Scott.”
“How many?”
“I’m not trying to sell them right now.”
“You haven’t sold any.”
“I’ve sold some!”
“Marcie, the raw clay there is more valuable than all your ‘art’ combined. You are eliminating value.” Scott picked a pot and examined the careful handwriting. “That money could — no, should — be invested. It’d be doing work in the markets instead of littering the garage.”
“Life isn’t only about money.” Marcie clenched the clay in her hands. It was heavy. She thought it could break his headset, at least if she could get a good shot at it.
“It’s also about winning.”
“Oh, right. You’re a real champion, Scott.” Marcie didn’t know exactly what Scott did, but she had gathered it was something in finance and computers. She assumed it was ignoble, if not criminal.
“Creating value is not stealing.”
“Go away.”
“Fine. But this isn’t working for me,” Scott had returned to the entryway. “I can tolerate noise. I can’t tolerate pathetic. I want my garage back. Or I want this”— he motioned to the pots, the kiln, the wheel, Marcie—“to mean something. It’s depressing.”
Marcie stared at her brother. He was sweating from his short time in the studio. The gall of him to call her depressing. She tightened her grip on the ball of clay.
“I mean it, Marcie. Sell something, or I’m taking the space.”
“Easy.”
“I’d start with the oven and your, whatever it’s called. The spinny thing.”
“I don’t need your advice.”
“You need someone’s.”
“Go away!”
Marcie threw the clay she had been holding towards the doorway. It went wide and hit the wall. Scott cackled and closed the door, receding into the house.
Marcie sighed. She thought about following Scott down that hallway, spitting back at him. She had ammo: he was an ingrate, lazy, fat, unhappy, and cruel. He had no friends, not in real life, at least. He was greasy and filthy. But she’d said it all before. Yesterday. He didn’t care. Not about her. Not about anything.
If he was serious, though, she was in a bind. Despite what she’d said, she had been trying to sell the pots. No one wanted them. She had tried craft fairs and online marketplaces. She had stopped checking her online store long ago.
She got up to plug in the wheel when a jingle sounded from the doorway. It came from the spot on the wall she’d hit with the clay—the home assistant. It was a mounted box was smooth glass, a discreet six-inch-wide square that blended perfectly with the garage door opener
“A firmware update is required. Do you accept the terms and conditions?”
Marcie walked over and cleared off the residue. It was glowing, its edges bright and pulsing. A cluster of black ink dots swirled in the middle. The voice, a woman’s, came again with a flourish of dots: “A firmware update is required. Do you accept the terms and conditions?”
Marcie had forgotten about this device, one of the first waves of autonomous agents that hit the market. It was high-end at the time, “Promethean-grade,” Scott had bragged. She had used it for a while, mainly as a timer, but it had since become a piece of wall furniture to be avoided.
Marcie bent to look at it eye-level. She vaguely remembered telling it to turn itself off years ago… or had there been a switch? She nodded up and down, looking for it.
“Thank you for accepting.” A celebratory tinkling played. “Preparing your agent for the update now.”
“Wait, I didn’t…”
“Estimated update time is 92 minutes. While you wait, listen to these exciting new features,” the voice continued. Background music began to play. The ink blobs twirled on the screen. Despite herself, Marcie was sucked into their dance. “aOS 22 brings an amazing new set of tools to make your world safer and more empowering than ever.”
“No…” Marcie groaned.
“…PEERNet is the safest place in the entire digital world. All executive agents connected to the PEERNet comply with US NSA standard ISO-8320. Let’s discuss what the four PEER pillars — privacy, exclusivity, embedding, and registration — mean for you and your dreams…”
“I don’t have time for this.” Marcie stepped back, throwing the clay back into the water bucket. She needed to get back to her day job—she wouldn’t get any pots thrown today.
“…unable to propagate personal information across devices, even to you. Your private information never gets shared on the PEERNet or across devices. Exclusivity means your agent’s only objective is to serve your needs. aOS includes patented Adversarial Influence Monitoring to ensure it’s only acting in your best interests. For example…”
Marcie washed her hands in the sink and turned off the kiln, which had not even reached temperature. She wet a towel to clean the wheel. She enjoyed the process of cleaning, of getting to mise en place.
“Agents are fully embedded on your aFrame device, so no data is shared on external servers. If you, for any reason, choose to reset your device, all memories, history, relationships, and AI agent identity are purged. Clients are in control…”
Tossing the towel in the trash, Marcie glared at the droning device. Technology had ruined the world, and now it had ruined her morning. No, Scott had done that, she corrected. It was fine. Today would be a research day. She’d revisit her store, remind herself how to buy ads, see if there were any new events coming up in the local Amateur Historians Guild.
“…are registered with the US government. All PEERNet agents are associated with verified U.S. citizens or legal entities. aOS keeps the lights on to ensure your ambitions are safe from malicious actors.”
The background music reached a patriotic crescendo as Marcie turned off the light. As she stood in the doorway, Marcie said to it, “I’ll take care of you tomorrow.”
”Estimated update time is 84 minutes. Next, learn about the exciting new aSocial experience…”