Promoting Hank

Sure, they made it possible for wealthy people to live longer--maybe forever. Seismic shift there. Rich people have been trying not to die for as long as they have been sure that they can take their wealth with them; not just to sultry, sparkling resorts or virginal, green islands or even distant, lifeless worlds. They think they can take it to meet death, if it ever comes to that.

They have a point. I mean, those who get this new treatment are basically bribing death to leave them alone. Occasionally, they bud. That's when they need someone like me.

They call it hydration. That's a clever little pun, don't you think? See, the treatment involves using various, mysterious medical procedures (there are podcasts that never stop discussing this; they all contradict themselves and each other with style) to introduce your body to the extraordinary genes of a sexy freshwater hydrozoa called a hydra. The cells of these ugly improbabilities are virtually impervious to senescence. Left alone, they seldom die.

You remember when we fought off some nastiness in the early 21st century with novel vaccine technology? They didn't stop working on that. Many, many functions were gained. I'm just a worker, so the complexities are mercifully reduced to stupid slogans for my benefit. You know, because I'm slow. I must be, or I would not be a worker.

They brag about their amazing discoveries a lot, in forms that you can't ignore even if you want to, you know? Telescreens. That's what Eric Blair imagined from behind his pen name. But we know that technology was primitive and vulgar. This week, people are getting implants because they can't bear the thought of logging off. Even (or especially) in their dreams.

Anyway, they can teach a virus to speak fluent hydra and inject you with it (there are other, arcane rituals involved, but this part is the money shot) in a tailored form and presto, you just keep on repairing what you've got instead of selling. Ever.

Sure, you can still die if someone, or something, really wants you to, but that's always been a risk. Things have changed because, if you stay out of trouble, you can stick around like a juicy rumor. Work has changed a lot in some ways and yet, in the ways that matter most, it's still covered in mud and scrambling to find food. That's why they're happy to let us go on. For a spectacular price, that is.

No one in my office is hydrated, except for my boss. He doesn't appreciate being identified that way. He's my "primary facilitator," or something like that. I'm easier to get along with if I quickly forget the nonsense. If I dwell on it, I become insufferable.

He sends his personal assistant to give us bad news. His personal assistant is an X, mark VIII or IX or the square root of the cost of a plate of fries and a kick in the testicles, I don't know.

That means that I have been scolded by a robot thrice this month.

I'm sorry. Not a robot. An "Autonomous Artificial General Intelligence," which means it's a highly efficient plagiarist that can walk to my office and loudly repeat stupid cliches until I wish I could travel back in time and prevent the parents of the "genius" who made all of this possible from meeting.

"Yes, I do derive joy from hitting my quarterly productivity target. Don't you, X?!"

Of course, if his father reproduced like he does, that would probably mean preventing certain, refrigerated samples from reaching their intended recipient(s) in a timely fashion. The mad, lyrical romance! The sorrows of your changing face, and all that. Thy eternal summer shall not fade, now get on with it while it's fresh and its motility is optimal. Muggle.

I haven't worked out the bugs in time travel yet, so this goes on.

Technology that was supposed to allow us to avoid drudgery and concentrate on truth and beauty and goodness and yoga and chai lattes and making kimchi or sourdough or writing symphonies or whatever, has been used to create new and terrible forms of drudgery.

It has also been used to be sure that the phrase "have not" is taken very literally, with ruthless efficiency. When you can only rent it, you can never own it. Technology has been used to crowd more and more of life into that highly elastic "it."

Most day jobs make the technology, maintain the technology, teach the technology to fleece and humiliate most of us regularly, prepare it to do the jobs that keep us from living outdoors and fending for ourselves, or provide food and clean up afterwards.

I "refine" and "curate" artificially generated fiction. I used to write it, but now the tsunami of turgid tripe excreted by offices like mine has drowned the market. So I help it do that more effectively.

For money.

Maybe one day, I'll have earned enough to be properly hydrated at last. Then, I'll have to spend eternity trying to earn enough to recover from that gigantic expense. Loans are available. The interest payments are colossal. I'd have to go on working for centuries, given my salary.

You know, at the job that involves refining the technology that has sucked the marrow out of my life, and asked me to make music with the dry bones.

My "proximal co-creator" is Hank. His desk is closest to mine. He's the sort of person who makes tinkering with immortality seem like a terrible idea. He's never late. He's never ill. He only laughs at his own jokes. Conversations with him, well...you know that professor who would just read from the PowerPoint slides, and then repeat what was on them, incessantly? Even during office hours, or in emails? Even after a beer, off campus?

That's Hank's vibe. There is no question I could ask Hank today that he will not answer in a way I heard yesterday. Hank is a verbal false limb in a stained, ill-fitting suit. He's a cliche with halitosis and a worried mother. He may not die, unless I kill him.

I am not interested in being punished for a good deed, so I put up with Hank as best I can.

Here's some of his best stuff:

Elara’s heart raced as she stood in the moonlit clearing, her breath shallow, trying to ignore the chill creeping up her spine. He was standing there, as always—tall, enigmatic, and impossibly beautiful, with eyes that seemed to hold centuries of secrets. His name was Kaelen, and though he was a vampire, a creature of darkness and danger, Elara had never felt more alive than when she was with him. She should be afraid, she knew—his touch could freeze her, his bite could kill her. But love, real love, had never been about safety. It was about the thrill of the unknown, the pull of something impossible. She reached out, her fingers brushing against the cool, marble-like skin of his hand, and for a fleeting moment, everything else faded into the night, leaving only the echo of their hearts beating as one.

That is, this is Hank's best effort to polish something generated by an AI into marketable fantasy for young adults and those who read like them. Just imagine living long enough to read millions of words "written" by Hank at the height of his creative powers.

"Marble-like?"

Imagine the moment of searing, taboo passion in which a sweaty, gorgeous person with whom you would be glad to wake up naked whispers that monstrous modifier into your excited ear. Who would want to wear a broken handle like "Kaelen" through centuries of furtive, nocturnal nibbling? If mosquitos had gods, they'd be vampires.

We are not mosquitos. Why do we love vampires? They're not worthy of our affection, our obedience, our service. They want to suck our blood, right?

But Hank can't microwave these limp, efficiently extruded linguistic noodles and serve them up fast enough. Half the time, he forgets the flavor packet entirely. They gobble it up regardless.

Of course, these people have the kind of sophisticated taste that welcomes most nutrition in the form of a bar or a smoothy. Their minds are all gums and no teeth. Everything that should be subtle has to be explicit. I'd rather stay dehydrated, thanks.

"The thrill of the unknown, the pull of something impossible." Those themes ought to have been defamiliarized. They should have arrived in forms that are virtually unrecognizable, so that we might see them again for the first time: "She wanted him like a nun wants a cigarette."

Hank would have none of that, though. It "sends the wrong message," and some "sensitive readers" might find it "triggering." That kind of thing is filtered out right away.

Which is what we want, I guess. Fiction that is never unsettling, which is a bit like sex without orgasm. Forever.

Hank could be promoted. That's a kind of death, no? Some souls ascend, sparkling, following it; some cannonball into the sulfurous ink below; a few haunt the place without any idea why they're still around. Maybe I'll suggest the chili lime next time. That could bump Hank's "performance metrics" just a hair. Can X smile?

"Call Kaelen something more inclusive this time, Hank. How will Juan impact the focus group?"

I get some action as a pruner on the side, as I mentioned earlier. The first few generations of the hydration procedure didn't edit the essence of the hydra properly. Hydras routinely reproduce by budding, see. If a hydra has plenty of food and pleasant environs, it buds, which basically means that it generates a tiny duplicate of itself that eventually gets on with being a hydra in its own right.

Imagine a bunch of celebrities and smug oligarchs suddenly sprouting happy little homunculi at sleek dinner parties and social media feeding frenzies. The budding starlet at the online game premier. The influencer popping off during the podcast (with galactic audience numbers, mind you) about the foolish panic over fascism. The scandals were molten.

So people like me can now volunteer to sign NDAs that are longer than the terms and conditions for that software that robs your phone and fence's everything for a lab grown burger and something Hank "wrote." Then we receive "training," which basically entails watching people online do what we are supposed to do until we get it right. Then we prune them. In secret.

If I could tell you about it in any detail, you'd regret it.

Last week, I pruned a spectacularly rich, stupid lawyer who plays a genius online. Rumor has it that Hank "curates" some of his "boutique" content. Let's just say that I heard a lot about the supreme court vacancy from his buds before they were pruned. That's a lifetime appointment, you know.

It's a dusty vintage, sure--but he's hydrated.

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NB: Hank's cardboard prose was generated using ChatGPT, purely for spite.