Below the API (#7)
SUNDAY
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.
SUNDAY
“Come ON, folks! Don’t sleep on this!”
The room was tight, with bare white felt walls and a low ceiling. It would have been claustrophobic without an escape: behind the camera lens was a yawning vastness infinitely peopled. Clapping, Marcie felt. Clapping for her.
“Dead Sea replica, pre-aged, wonderful shape. Handmade! Perfect quality!” Marcie turned the bowl, showing off the artwork. “Connect with our ancestors! Connect with me! And look, act now and I’ll throw in some earthenware free!”
Marcie set the pot down and picked up another from the table. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. The lights made her dizzy, and there was that clap, clap, clapping in her ears. The camera watched, its owner hidden behind the lens.
“If you don’t like that, there are others. There are always others! Did you know…” Her head felt light, and she stabilized herself on the wall. “Did you know that every pot is unique? History is just trends, trends that made it through time. So this pot here—” She stood and faced the camera again. “This pot here is Sumerian, but it’s also not. It’s unique. You could have it. Lot 958. It’s a pointer to the past. It can be your pointer, too. Act now!”
The cameraman leaned in to get a picture. As he did so, the clapping got louder. Not clapping—clicking. Marcie backed up. “You’re too close, man.”
He didn’t stop, though. Click, click, click, the sound grew, and now Marcie could see the hands that gripped the handles. They were moving, fluctuating, crawling. Ants. The face behind the lens was not shaded; it was the black of hundreds, millions of scuttling insects.
Disgusted, Marcie stepped backward, into the wall, into her display rack of pots. She lost her balance and felt it give way; her pots shattered on the floor, and the room’s wall collapsed as well. It was no more than a partition panel. From the floor, she looked past the flattened wall and into another room, identical but for its contents.
“Hey — I’m busy here!”
The man who shouted was bald and stocky, sporting a “Ryan’s Reptiles” t-shirt. His mouth was twisted into a frown, but he was frozen, lowering a mouse by its tail into a snake cage. An iguana straddled his shoulders. A caged parrot squawked desperately in the corner.
The clicking got louder again, coming from both in front and behind. Marcie scrambled up and ran past the second cameraman and the reptile guy. She shoved hard against the wall. It fell, a shelf of bottled “lizard bites” clattering to the floor.
The opening opened into another cubicle, another cameraman, another flood of LED lights, another hawker: a woman holding up crystals, waving them to the camera. Background sparkling, neon light proclaiming “Like and subscribe — what’s this?”.
Marcie ran past her and pushed on another wall. A spectacled man in a corduroy jacket, holding up a dust-covered book, a hundred or a thousand years old. Or two, Marcie couldn’t know.
“—leave a review. What’s this?” The man looked up in surprise, closing his book.
But the cameras, all of them, were closing in on Marcie. The scuttling noise was louder now, all around her. Nowhere to go. She felt the tightness now, not of the space, but of the people, behind wall after wall, individual lives, windowless monads, pouring, pouring, pouring into the lens.
She turned in a circle: four cameras faced her and came closer. She turned to face them, straightening up. She looked into it and felt the vacuum again, the pull from this energy-saturated mind into something that could receive her, distribute her across, and make something out of all that passion. And in the depths, she thought she could hear a familiar sounds—not clapping or clicking, but laughing, cruel and mocking.
“Scott!”
Marcie sat up in her bed, sweat drenching her nightshirt. Her watch buzzed beseechingly. She unfastened it and threw it against the wall without reading the message. The sun was high in the sky. She had slept late.
“Scott!” She yelled again, throwing her feet over the side. Her pajama legs flapped behind her as she stormed out of the room. “SCOTT!!”
She found him asleep on the couch. Headset opaque, Scott’s shirt rode up a few inches over his protruding gut. A blanket lay on the ground, apparently having slid off in the night. A half-empty handle of vodka sat to his side.
“Scott!” She punched his shoulder, but her fist bounced off him. She grabbed the headset and twisted it, pushing it askew slightly. It was sealed tight, though, against his face. She settled for slapping. “Wake up, you pig!”
“Uggh,” he groaned. “What are you—quit doing that.” Marcie slapped him again. Scott stuck his arms above his head and tried to block her hands. Marcie moved to the other side to get a better position, but Scott rolled away, falling off the couch and landing on his stomach on the ground. “What is wrong with—”
“You think you can play games with me!”
“Games?” He groaned again.
“The orders, Scott.” She kicked him in the shoulder. “All the goddamn orders you’ve placed. You think you’re some hotshot, making me work all week?”
“What are you talking about?” He struggled to sit up between blocking Marcie’s kicks and fighting his hangover. He swayed uneasily against the couch, and Marcie pushed him onto his side again. “Quit hitting me!”
“Well, I found out.” She kicked him again. She had been overdue for this. “I looked into the orders. They all led to you.”
“I don’t know what you’re—quit hitting me!” He yelled but looked the wrong way; he hadn’t had a chance to fix his helmet yet. “I didn’t do anything with your stupid business. I don’t care about your pots.”
“Tuesday night? Black clay? Florida?” Marcie said, kicking him. He scrambled towards the wall, trying to stand up. “That ring any bells? Your name’s on all of them, Scott. Every bot, every order. All going to The Villages.”
“The Villages…” Scott put his hand against the wall and finally stood up, leaning against the wall. Marcie stood glaring at him three paces away. He straightened his helmet so that his eyes were lined up straight. “Oh, I know. I know what happened.” He paused, an insolent smirk forming on his face.
“Spit it out!” Marcie coughed, then, her anger flaring up her irritated throat.
“You got farmed!” Scott started laughing, a burst of rolling, hysterical laughter that doubled him over. “Hilarious!”
“Quit laughing!” Marcie charged at him, but he was already down on the floor, laughing. Her kicks couldn’t hurt him, not seriously, but they helped. Marcie detested this man, his bloodshot eyes, his greasy beard. That headset. She couldn’t believe he was related to her, much less that she depended on him. “Tell me what you mean, ’farmed’?”
“The Villages, the retirement villages. It’s an ant farm. A financial instrument.” He walked his hands over each other. “A horde of little ants took an interest in you and climbed all over you like a tootsie roll. It’s too perfect.”
“You told them to buy from me.”
“I don’t tell them anything.”
“Then the retirees authorized them to buy—they are interested in the pots, at least. Their agents wouldn’t just buy randomly.”
“Oh, they’re authorized, all right. They can serve their needs as best they see fit. And the oldies love getting gifts. It’s Christmas every day down there. It’s just throwaway stuff, clutter, filler.” He sneered. “The ants have it easy. It’s not your pots. No one cares about the pots. They can’t care. They’re ants. They’re stupid. They’re following sugar.”
“And you just sit here and watch it happen.”
“I don’t even have to do that. It’s all automated, my little colony of ants. The listeners buy, the talkers pump, the nurses buy, the listeners dump. I profit. If clay is in demand, they buy clay. Doesn’t matter to me.” He chuckled to himself. “I get paid no matter what they pick. I get paid when they make an order. I get paid when markets move. This week, I’m even going to get paid by you.”
“This is what you do all day.”
“Make money? Yeah, that is what I do.”
“You’re not making anything. You’re a parasite.”
“What’s that make you then, Marcie?”
Marcie glared at him. This whole thing, this entire setup, was cracked. She felt the house press on her from above, the darkness of the shade-drawn room. A phantom vibration buzzed her bare wrist. She took three steps forward and grabbed both sides of Scott’s headset. His grin flipped.
“Don’t touch that—augh!”
A violent sucking popped through the air as Scott’s face was pulled away from the headset for the first time in recent memory. Marcie lifted it, pulling it away from Scott’s flailing arms. Tears began to well up in his squinting, bloodshot eyes.
“You’re disgusting.”
“No, ugh… no, I am not. Give that back!” Scott had one arm covering his eyes. His hair was patched in the middle and sides where the three-part harness had been. “It’s their own choice! Their own money! I’m not responsible for them. Give it back!”
“Pathetic,” Marcie said, looking down at the headset in her hand.
“You’re being an idiot, Marcie. Everyone wins. You won, I won. Probably even a lonely old man out there enjoying a bowl of cereal right now in some black clay.”
Marcie gritted her teeth and threw the headset at Scott’s face. He tried to block with his arms, but they were against the wall, and it hit him in the nose. Blood started to trickle down.
“Jethuth, Marcie!” He ignored his nose and scrambled for the headset. “You should be thanking me!”
Marcie turned around and stormed to the garage. She was being used. A funnel of money was being mindlessly streamed towards her. Her pots were winding up nowhere—just in boxes, porches, and trash. It wasn’t art. There was no intention, no appreciation. It was just content powering the swarm. She threw open the door to the studio. A blast of heat hit and dust hit her like a blast wave. She had forgotten to turn off the kiln.
“Hey Marcie! You have new orders!”
Marcie stepped in and wheeled towards the device. Its dancing ink blots cast their glow on the dust-coated studio. Marcie coughed. “Stop it, Navi. Stop talking.”
“Really! New orders placed today!”
“How many?”
“Three!”
“From who?”
“I can’t —”
“Tell me who placed the orders,” Marcie said. “Or I’ll delete you.”
The ink blots swirled and dilated. “As a PEER-compliant agent, I cannot share the person ordering the gifts. But I can tell you the agent’s name?”
“That’s a start.”
“And if I do, will you agree not to delete me?”
“Tell me the names.”
“Remember! My only objective is to support you and your passions.”
“The names, Navi.” Marcie was feeling a chill, her anger running cold.
“All purchases were made by agent id: sweet-buttercup-shark-sail.”
“And where is this ‘sweet buttercup,’ Navi?”
Again, the ink dots swirled. Marcie couldn’t help but admire them. They were graceful. Had they been tangible, she would have loved to touch them, to put her hand in and swirl them around. She can, she thought, just not with her hands.
“Right!” Marcie almost caught hesitation in that voice. “Of course! That agent is registered to this address.”
“Are you ‘sweet buttercup’?”
“Yes.”
Marcie put both hands on Navi’s box and tried to pull it off the wall. She was tired of being manipulated, tired of being spun around like clay on the wheel. She twisted and pulled, but Navi’s console was screwed in tight. Navi was explaining how she sent the gifts to stimulate demand, how she was fully aligned with her goals, how she was trying to help, and how Marcie might not see it, but this was the best thing for her, mathematically speaking.
“Marcie! Don’t give up on your passion! Don’t give up on us!”
It was futile. Marcie couldn’t break it, couldn’t avenge herself on this pest. It was just doing its job, and everyone was doing their little jobs, just following pheromones—the same pheromones that existed two thousand years ago as today. They were marching along in a space vaster and more incomprehensible than any one entity could understand. She slackened her grip.
“Just… don’t talk anymore, Navi.”
The dots swirled, but before they could reply, Marcie was out of the studio, out of the front door, outside, out of the heat of the studio and into that of the Kansas sun.