Dead On Stats & Datasets, a playfully paranoid sci-fi, by Paul Carreo
Sometimes the truth has set a collision course, ready to knock you on your ass like a box truck. And in the case of Arthur Slate, it was quite literally a box truck that knocked him over his head with an unexpected truth. His body laid askew across the pavement next to his bent bicycle, one wheel still spinning helplessly on its back. His forehead pooled crimson swirls into a knocked over cup of Starbucks mocha latte. In other contexts, the swirling reds and carmels could’ve been considered high art, curated alongside a Pollack collection. The bobbies were questioning the involved lorry driver, who was tearing his hair out in guilty disbelief. They were checking Arthur’s cracked phone for any identification, and found a cycling tracker app, open and still scrolling through his ‘Year in Review.’ Milestones and achievements. Personal bests and year-over-years. The paramedics futilely scrambled to stabilize the poor and careless Arthur, as he began gasping to mutter something through the oxygen mask, just before flatlining, “I just… I just… needed to get to a meeting. Can you ask if I got the promotion?”
***
Arthur woke up on a cold metal slab to disorienting surroundings. A neat, gaunt man in silver scrubs was looming over him, fiddling with a holographic tablet hovering at his side. The room was washed with white light that obscured the seams of the walls. Strange barnacle encrusted vacuum tubes wove messy tripping hazards all across the floor.
“Mr. Arthur Slate. Checked in. Pronounced dead, on the galactic timestamp of… well you don’t care. You lot never can grasp true time anyways…’ the gaunt man seemed to be talking to himself before returning his eye gaze. ‘Welcome my friend! ‘OH NO!’ You’re probably thinking! ‘IT’S ALL SO SUDDEN, THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!’ Etcetera, etcetera.” Then leaning closer to Arthur’s frozen face, with an honest appeal, “Look here, sunshine, could we just get past all that? We’ve all heard it a million times before. And frankly, it’s a bit cliche, don’t you reckon?”
Arthurs mouth was intubated, but his thoughts seemed to be going to a dialogue screen. “Hmm, am I joking? Fraid not, chap. You really are dead.” The thin man dismissed Arthur’s frantic queries, flipping distractedly through his tablet.
“Is this heaven, did you just ask? Hahaha, that’s very good. Yeah, sure, that’s what this is. Heaven, he asks! My, my, my, that one never gets old.” Then clearing his throat for a bit more tact, “Um, I mean, no. Fraid not on that one too, buckeroo. So sorry. This is, um, well, how should I explain?”
Arthur sent another message regarding his pending promotion.
“Oh well, now you’re talking! That one I CAN answer. Let’s see here.. flipping, flipping, filtering probability variances, collapsing to your most probable reality. Ah! There it is… Nope. Sorry mate, that one went to… let me see, right, a man named Steve.” The thin man pushed the word out like it hurt his bottom teeth. “A terribly boring bloke, it seems. But don’t worry, he’ll only last about two years before getting sacked. Don’t think you would’ve lasted much longer either. Oh, and the stress of it all gives him a deadly brain aneurysm the year after. Will you look at that? Guess that’s why they call it the blues, eh? So you see, you didn’t miss out on much, did you, old sport?” suggested the poised man, attempting to build some rapport.
Arthur kept trying to push words past his taped up mouth tubes, and only managed to send incomplete questions, mostly stutterings regarding the scaley vacuum tubes plugged into his arms, legs and torso.
“But, but, but… spit it out, meatbag!” mocked the man before composing himself. “Sorry, I’m only messing about. You’re not supposed to see all those tubes, here we go.” With a finger swipe, all the medical apparatus dissolved, pixelated into thin air. And although Arthur couldn’t see them, he sort of suspected they were still there.
Arthur accepted that this was not the pearly gates of heaven. But it still followed that he was very much dead. The cold stainless steel table made him feel like he was in a hospital. But everything else seemed to scream ‘spacecraft!’ God, he pleaded, hoping he hadn’t been abducted by some twisted extraterrestrials. Curiously, he found himself worrying mostly about the ‘bum play and probings’ for which aliens had had such a devious reputation.
“Aliens? Oh god, no, nothing like THAT.” Interrupted the looming, dead-eyed attendant. “Although, I suppose I’m not technically human, despite how I’m being projected. As to where you are, I suppose the most relatable thing to say is, welcome back to the mainframe. And before you ask, I’m not going to teach you kung fu or be feeding you any red pills. Heard that all before.”
Arthur sighed the word ‘figures’ and was far less panicked than he should be, given his grim situation.
“Figures, indeed. But we’ll get to those later. Now, since you’ve had a chance to relax and settle in, let me just get these nasty little legal details out of the way. Please pay attention, this is the last time I’m going to read this:
“Waiver and Disclaimer: you one, Arthur Slate, have been reacquired per your unique source entity’s contract, for an unspecified (albeit brief) period of interstitial existence, during which time your incarnations cache will be reappropriated for data mining by the Bureau of Galactic Data Extraction.”
Arthur started to mumble wildly, but the thin man swiped and deleted his floating text messages, as he continued reading a bit louder.
“Per your non-disclosure agreement, the B.G.D.E. (I know, shite name to be fair), will have exclusive rights to all statistics, lifetime interactions, causal inactions, observations, and not excluding subjective opinions and self-formulated world views (no matter how inconsequential or ridiculous, I should add). After extraction, your data memories and life cache will be wiped clean, stripped to source code and… blah, blah, blah… back into the nearest existential redistribution center for reboot version number…“
His eyes fluttered the open document, puzzled at first, “Hmm, it’s supposed to list the next gen version here. Oh well, regardless, just need your little thumbprint on the screen to acknowledge,” snatching Arthur’s thumb and doing it for him, he waited for a green progress bar to read 1%. “And away… we… go…”
If Arthur could gulp audibly, he would’ve. He was stuck on the latter sentence about being wiped shortly and tried to whimper a bit. That was audible.
“Now, now, champ, it’s not as bad as you make it sound, you’re one of the good ones. I mean look at all this gorgeous data! You’ve lived a busy life, mate. And oh my lord, see all this here,” the man swung the floating screen around to show Arthur a smattering confusion of diagrams and charts. “The self-obsessive reflections, you’ve curated, albeit a bit indulgent, this stuff is like gold dust! No, no, trust me, we need you to go back in. Mine us more gold like this! Probably with a different country origin, however. Different race, gender, priviledge, etcetera etcetera, you understand.”
Arthur’s chin was quivering now at the prospect of having to start all over, wondering if he’d have to begin as a baby again. Would he retain anything? And if not, was he even the same person? More importantly, what if he rolled a really shitty family, a shitty town, a shitty body? A shitty life? He liked who he was now, and he didn’t want to roll dice on something different.
“Listen, I can see you’re a little upset. But can you keep a secret?” The thin man glanced around like a kid showing off his hidden toys, but his smugly wide-eyed grin just made him look creepier. “We have some time to pass, you want to play a little game, something to take your mind off things? I’m really not supposed to, but what the hell! Afterall, this is my last week in this grueling reprocessing division. You see, I have been promoted,” he stood up straight, pulling back his shoulders, proudly expecting Arthur’s overjoyed admiration. But Arthur held his blank, dumbfounded stare. The tall attendant dropped his shoulders back down, and tried again.
“So, I don’t mean to brag, but you just happen to be looking at the new SENIOR analyst to the Junior Deputy Administrator for the Data Overflow Department! You know! Reporting to the Executive Ministry at the Bureau of Archives for Abstract Thoughts!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?!”
Still nothing from Arthur, as the perturbed slim analyst, returned his fingers to screen tapping.
“Well, trust me, it’s a really big deal, all the idiots down here are supremely jealous. But, listen, my point is… what was my… Oh yes, I’m mostly checked out, we could have a little fun while we wait. There is this little game I’ve been cooking up with the data slices we take from you body dwelling folk. It’s part of what got me noticed from the higher ups, who were most impressed by my…”
Arthur was rolling his eyes but shrugged a sign he was willing to listen.
“Right, nevermind that now. What do you know about Spotlight Reels?!” the lanky fellow blurted excitedly like a gameshow host. “It’s like a fun fact trivia game. I got the idea from your last world. You know how all those apps like Spotify give you end of the year statistics, sort of a ‘your year in review’ type of thing? Well, I’ve found a clever way to do that with all this life data we’re extracting, all assembled in neat and engaging little slide cards. Except this time, they’re about your whole life! Every milestone, missed opportunity, personal bests and year over years. That type of thing. Exciting, right? I mean, who doesn’t love hearing about themselves? The boys upstairs are clearly very impressed with my work, if I do say. Well, what do you think? You up for it, cowboy?”
PART TWO
The hollow-framed man busily click-dragged a few windows and then grabbed all the little tiles and threw them onto a spinning 3D axis that expanded over Arthur’s head. A title card emerged at the front of the stack simply reading, ‘Arthur’s Life in Review’.
“Ok kiddo, we’re set to go, let me just filter some of the cosmic events you won’t care about, maybe just skim through some of the boring details first. This first section is called ‘Fun with Numbers’.
“Arthur Slate, male human incarnation, aged thirty-six at time of death. Height, top fourteenth percentile. Health and bodyweight twenty-three percentile. Facial symmetry, nine percentile, way to go, you handsome stud! Self-esteem, however, forty-two percentile. So you probably can’t take a compliment.
“Let’s see, total minutes awake, total time sleeping, eating, shagging, all pretty standard. Ah, 499,999,991 breaths taken! Shame, that, only nine breaths away from a round number. Should’ve filed that under ‘missed opportunities’. Number of hours pondering unknowable questions, ugh, too many. What else, total calories consumed, yuck, total burned, admirable, steps taken, what am I, your fitbit… doot doot doot…
“Ah, here we go, percent of your time talking in a conversation, seventy-one. Percent of time listening to others, twenty-nine. Tsk tsk! But look at here, you gave more than you received! That’s something. Over twenty years of gift-giving, bar rounds and dinner tabs, you spent 452,000 pounds, and received back about 245,000! Perhaps your gravestone will read, ‘consistently tipped over 25%’. I’m kidding, of course. Come on, no one said we can’t have fun here.
“OK, moving on, years of being remembered after death: twelve. Hey, that’s good for someone with no offspring! I’d be happy with that. Percent chance of becoming famous if death had not occurred, ew, you don’t want to know that one, chap. It was high.
“Total near death experiences, eleven. The worst one was… oh you know this one, scary wasn’t that? Number of times you shirked responsibility, twelve million and eleven, only 14% of which had a life impacting effect. No seriously, it’s written right there. Oh, the things we can get away with, eh?
“Ready to move on? It gets more fun from here. The next section, I’ve titled: ‘Unique about you.’ A shameless appeal to your ego, I know. Let’s find out what you do more than anyone else. Sound good, sport? Top 5% for self-reflection, not bad. Top 1% for self-obsession, unsurprising. Most frequent thought outside yourself, oh there it is, boobs, naturally. Moving swiftly onwards.
“Most consumed meal is french fries, really mate? Not going to get many ladies that way. Favorite curse word is fuck, naturally. Where’s the unique stuff, this needs some tweaking. Ah, there we go! You use the word ‘tit’ more cleverly than any of your peers, like ‘going tits up to a party’ or ‘that fellow’s a bit of tit.’ Also, you said the word ‘preposterous’ more than any other living person in history. You find that hard to believe? Would you go so far as to describe it as impossible, ridiculous, ludicrous? Or some… other… word?
“You’re not impressed, I can tell. How about this: your best day ever was November 14th at age thirty-one. Doesn’t list why, hmm, just some random balance of feel good chemicals swirling about your brain, I guess. Also, did you know, you’ve never touched your own left pinky toe? Not once. You came really close on a beach in Portugal, and we all almost lost our minds. What a fun day at the office that was.”
The peculiar thin man seemed miles away thinking of better days, before breaking his daze, and noticing Arthur’s growing impatience.
“Look, is this stuff not interesting to you? I suppose there’s all sorts of majestic events I could serve up, things so rare and beautiful that happened only to you at a quantum level. Nanosecond, once-in-a-galactic age events so fragile, so unique, they could not be described in words. And you alone witnessed them, albeit only on a subconscious level. But let me guess, you want to know more about love. So triflingly predictable, but fine, here you go.
“Soul mates encountered and snubbed. Zero. God that’s depressing. What’s that? No, no, soul mates do exist, it’s not just a myth. It’s just, uh, a bit uncommon. And more commonly, it’s true when they say, there really is someone for everyone. Just, um, for your specs, I’m afraid not you. Saawwry.”
Trying to break the awkward silence with some better news, “Well, hmm, how about, adequate marriage candidates, previously dated? Four. And the best optimal candidate was, nope, it wasn’t Kerry. It was Amy. Surprising, I agree, she was a nutjob. Yep, that would’ve guaranteed happiness, or at least, minimized unhappiness. Shame.
“Speaking of, here’s the section I mentioned called, ‘Missed Opportunities.’ It’s my absolute favorite. Like did you know, your whole life, you had undiagnosed dyslexia? Very mild, but it would’ve served you to have known that. Also, undiagnosed sleep apnea. My god, did you think it was normal to feel that tired every morning? What else do we have here? Four undetected malignant tumors that miraculously ate themselves, not that interesting. Oh and remember how you kept getting that skin rash every winter? Peanut allergy. Yup, easily fixed if you had looked into it.
“Also, you weren’t, as you often claimed, suffering from ADHD, but you did pick probably the lowest 40% of professions for your IQ and general aptitudes. So you see, you were just bored your whole life. Finance? Honestly, what were you thinking? The top profession you should’ve chosen? Right, that’s here… it is… heating and plumbing contractor. I’m serious, it’s right here, you would’ve created an empire, you had a gift.
Arthur was caught wondering why the gaunt man thought this smattering of ‘too little, too late’ truth bombs could pass for trivia. He was filled only with a sickening sense of existential helplessness.
“OK, your gray-green skin suggests this is overload. Maybe we’ll take the focus off you, I can see how trifle upsetting. Speaking of upsetting, the next section is called ‘IS THAT REALLY HOW THINGS WORKED?’ Basically a list of surprising truths about the society you just left. We’ve only time to outline a few. But there will be time at the end of questions. Let’s tear through these at pace, shall we?
“So, the world you just left was all driven by profits and debt. The entire economy is built on debt creation. Everything from construction to manufacturing, to soybean farming and veganism is propped up by a quickly depleting world oil reserve. All war was actually necessary to prop up domestic manufacturing. All business and trade is driven by the profit devices of some stock market algorithms. Those were emergent, not programmed, incidentally. That’s right, no evil AI overlords, just a sophisticated program adapting for its own survival. Bonkers, right?
The pale tight-lipped man continued to droll on, speeding up slightly with the air of a stand-up comic bombing, and flipping desperately through his notes for the ‘good stuff.’
“Also, there was a ‘deep state’ responsible for distracting and dumbing down the masses, inventing everything from mobile phones to Netflix. Bigfoot wasn’t real, but the Loch Ness monster was. The moon landing was not faked, duh, but it is hollow. You wouldn’t believe what’s inside, but it’s much more mind-blowing than just a survival bunker for billionaires. UFOs were mostly fake, but there was that one contact made, I think they gave you guys ‘plastics’, as a grossly misunderstood practical joke. Whoopsy.
“Final few tidbits here, champ. The happiest period in civilization was not in fact America in the ‘Eighties’, but a decade in eighth century Baghdad. Oh, you think you’ve been to a wild, late-night rave? Those chaps could part-tay! Buddhism was the only correct religion, although I hear Jesus and Muhammad were fairly nice blokes too. Oh and looky here, the FBI definitely did kill JFK. Wow. And lastly, a global killing asteroid is due for cataclysmic collision with your Earth in 2176. Phew, got through that. How you feeling?”
Arthur blinked slowly, not knowing how to react. Did this unimaginative analyst think this passed for entertainment? Did he think they were going to slap each other’s backs and laugh off the absurdity of the world he had just departed?
“Well, happy camper, the good news is we’re almost wrapped up here. And you’re going to love our final segment. It’s our speed round called, ‘Questions from the Data Host.’ That’s you. Basically, handing it over to you for questions. Anything and everything you’ve ever wondered. And please surprise me. You wouldn’t believe how many people just want to know if there’s an afterlife after all these bloody reincarnations. Oh. That was your first question, wasn’t it?”
PART THREE
Arthur decided not to ask about that, and quickly became overwhelmed with the opportunity at hand. There he was at the end of his life, or one of them. And he was offered up on a silver platter the chance to know anything. To understand everything. To have the thing kings, philosophers, stargazers, and data marketers have sought for all of civilization… the truth. And while racking his brain to come up with his first question, the only thought that persisted was how he wished he had painted more.
“Marvelous. I suppose you’d like to hear more about if you had worked harder to become a painter?” The cynical man said with feigned interest. “I thought we already covered professions, but very well. It would’ve been your nineteenth best profession. Certainly no plumbing destiny, I’ll tell you that. But you would’ve found decent enough purpose, some peace of mind, despite all the ‘suffering for my art’ rubbish. And you would’ve had an adequate talent to make some impressions in small circles, in this hypothetical situation, that is. Would you like to see a catalogue of your highest rated works?
And then something occurred to Arthur, something he didn’t think the gaunt man would anticipate.
“Sorry, you’d like me to pick your ‘best’ painting? How do you mean, ‘best’? I have the aggregate ratings here, as I said. Or do you mean, best selling paintings? I suppose I could model that probability too. Or do you mean, the ones you would’ve been most likely to put in your portfolio based on market appeal? Or do you want me to calculate the total minute duration of impression gaze, for a popularity rating?
There it was, Arthur thought. This poor little mole of a data-miner, had no actual opinions of his own. He could only size something based on facts. He had no intuition, no preferences, no original opinions of his own. Arthur pressed him further to simply pull any painting that he liked, anything he favored, and not to overthink it. Reluctantly, this suddenly unsure of himself analyst picked an image, albeit rather flippantly, and expanded it to a stunning high resolution hovering above them.
Arthur muffled a gasp at the gripping palette of rookwood reds, pumpkin spice, & burnt sienna. All swirling into a familiar, yet surreal, asymmetrical country landscape. He recognized this from a childhood dream. It was an old beautiful capture of a long forgotten family lakehouse on a crisp, autumn saturated day. And Arthur began to weep at its convergence of long sunset shadows and its notion of waning innocence. Arthur asked for his right hand to be uncuffed so he could zoom in on his masterpiece. And then he returned his attention to his confused guardian for the next round of his questions.
“What do I think of it? I’m not clear why that matters. Um, I suppose I think it would’ve sold for 350,000 pounds sterling. And it could’ve been valued even higher at…” Arthur interrupted him, repeating his question. So the man started again.
“Well I suppose I think it was twenty-three percent of your brain’s creative expression center, and if you really tried harder….” Arthur glared at him, signaling a variation on his question. “Oh all right,” snapped the thin man, “What do I see in it? You could’ve just asked that. I suppose, I see, um. I suppose it makes me feel, hmm. I feel. I feel… nothing.” The man appeared betrayed by his own vacant thoughts.
Arthur probed deeper now, asking him how he was going to handle his job working for the Bureau of Abstract Thinking, or whatever? Especially since it seemed he couldn’t form any abstract thoughts of his own. It seemed these beings, or programs, or hallucinations, didn’t have any creative capacity at all. And Arthur asked his unraveling attendant if he was feeling overwhelmed at all by this new approaching responsibility. Afterall, it seemed like a big job to interpret such complex datasets as subjective thoughts.
At that, the thin man broke down weeping and put a hand out blindly to ask for a moment to compose himself. “It’s just that, I have worked so hard to get this promotion and I can’t even muster a true emotion about it. I honestly have been so busy following this career path, I haven’t had time to process how I feel about it. Only this looming notion that I’m faking my way upwards, that no one will take a fraud like me seriously. I’m sorry, I need to go use the bathroom, this is so embarrassing.” At that, the broken little analyst departed flustered, hands over his quivering eyes.
And so Arthur got to work with his unbound hand, quickly swiveling the tablet over and surveying the unlocked control screen. It was a dizzying smattering of windows and meters, but his confusion started to wane as the advanced interface seemed to be calibrating to his language and preferences on its own. Arthur quickly spotted what he was looking for.
A flashing file link read, ‘Requisition Order’, he clicked open and quickly found the delete option. ‘Reload to prior save point?’, the prompt appeared. Arthur assumed this meant, back to where his body was back on Earth. Yes, he clicked. ‘Are you sure, all progress unsaved will be lost?’ Yes!!
‘Delete cache of pending data upload? Hell yes. Arthur wanted no record of himself here. Unsync backup profile? Arthur, hovered over the prompt, desperately hoping this meant they couldn’t recall him. Unless it meant he was erasing himself from existence entirely. The notion lingered and would’ve disturbed him deeply if he had had more time to dwell on it. Screw it. He clicked the prompt ‘Yes,’ and let out a sigh of relief. ‘Unsynced, new profile refreshed, rebooting now.’
Arthur braced himself for the countdown, but then noticed one last flashing prompt. ‘Warning, last chance to modify profile skills and behaviors.’ Wait, what? Arthur hadn’t realized he could, er, modify himself. He scanned furiously across digital dials and scales, as the progress bar hit 87%. Spotting a box called ‘IQ & Self-confidence,’ he quickly jacked the meter to the top of the scale. But then, he thought better of the consequences of being too smart. He panicked and tried to set it back to where it was, but couldn’t remember. He made his best guess and hoped it was at least one notch higher.
Frantically scanning around the dials, Arthur felt the pressure to change something, anything, as the countdown ticked on. So many attunements he would’ve loved to make, but he imagined the mess of personality soup that could follow. Also, the instrument panel was just so busily inscrutable. And there simply was no time. But as the progress bar hit 99%, Arthur’s eye caught one last category among the cluttered dashboard of meters. It was marked ‘Charisma’, and although he was sure there was no time left, Arthur reached for its twisting knob. Clockwise? He wasn’t sure which was higher. As he pondered if one could have too much appeal, the reboot sequence finished and his body was dissolved in brilliant white light.
The gaunt man returned from the loo, red eyed, feeling silly but washed with relief, “Ah, Arthur, you have no idea how much I needed that. Arthur?” He slowly approached the barren steel slab table and glanced suspiciously at his control station. Holding his breath, he scanned to retrieve Arthur’s profile but found nothing. “Yikes. This will not go over well,” he muttered amused to himself. ”But I suppose the chaps upstairs can’t be mad about what they don’t know.” He quickly doctored a false report about a failed recall, that would likely confuse his replacement, but not look too suspicious. “Somebody else’s problem now.” the man shrugged before sparing a parting thought, “Arthur, it was a pleasure, I hope you make the most of your last go-round.”
***
Arthur awoke back on the pavement to the resuscitations of the attending paramedic. When his eyes opened, the woman in a tight ponytail and ambulance shirt smiled, “You’re going to be ok, handsome. Never mind all that blood beside you, looks worse than it is, just a bad bump really.”
Arthur had no time to marvel at the red, wet fresco he had unwittingly laid. He instead fixed on his gaze on the prettiest flecks of green ever to sparkle in a woman’s eyes. As the paramedic leaned in closely to verify there was no concussion, he also noticed a warm blush in her cheeks and decided to flash his smile to say, “This may sound preposterous, but I think you might just be an angel.”
ORDER ‘STRANGELY FIERCE FABLES’ for the full story and more:
Paul Carreo 