A garden of my own
I worry too much.
But it’s not everyday that your best friend from high school gets sentenced to 15 years in jail for getting supposedly carrying prohibited goods.
And I take this out on the truck as I slam the buttons for the gears to get it up to the loading dock.
My friend says he didn’t know the goods were stolen. The robot judge says, “the law is the law and justice must be served.”
I slam the gear buttons again. The truck just won’t line up right, even when I punch the code for computer guidance, warm air swirling beneath the frame, making the metal shake.
I keep expecting to hear the squeal of the warehouse robot, scolding me for not performing right – they check, double and triple check, convincing us how unreliable we are.
One wrong move and I might find myself sharing a cell with my friend.
They do this in the name of safety; we being raised from birth to prevent us any possibility of danger, robot risk managers telling us risk is bad.
And god help us if we hurt a machine.
Humans still pushed buttons, but always with the all-knowing robot eyes to guide us.
We can’t even take out the trash without machines watching over us, as if we might dent the trash receptacle – a fourth degree felony, still just punishable with a fine.
I make the mistake of complaining about it to my boss.
“What are you bitching about?” he asks me. “Life is good, isn’t it? A man used to have to break his back to make his living. Now we pushed buttons.”
Good? Not to me.
I remember my grandfather talking about how life used to feel, how good it felt to walk outside without a mask, or without worrying over a carbon-footprint monitor telling him how much air he could breathe without tipping the scale.
Back then, people didn’t think anything of warmer winters, just were grateful for the lack of snow – before that time when we had robots shoveling it for us.
These days if it snows too much or too little, there is an investigation as to whose carbon footprint is to blame.
When I said as much to my boss, he tells me I’m crazy.
“You don’t know when you have it good,” he says. “What exactly do you want?”
“I want something that is real,” I say. “I want to work with my hands the way my grandfather did.”
My boss groans, staring over at the 3-D hologram of the latest Disney version of Star Wars.
“Didn’t you learn anything about history,” he mumbles, “how miserable
School taught us how terrible it was to get our hands dirty, and how we all needed to aspire to something better, button-pushing managers overseeing by helpful robots.
My wife thinks I’m crazy because I insist on starting my own garden behind the house. She is convinced it violate some carbon footprint law we know nothing about but will get us thrown in the slammer anyway.
She is convinced our neighbors are laughing at us, at least those who aren’t trying to turn us into the authorities.
“But growing plants can’t be a bad thing,” I tell her.
“We have a robot to do that,” she says, “a robot who knows what plants we ought to plant, and which plants are forbidden. And besides, you digging in the dirt makes us look cheap, like hobos.”
I tell her there are no more bums, no more homeless, no more people sleeping in the streets or digging dirt in the parks to grow corn or pot. The robots swept them up long ago, put them in institutions for treatment so they want to be button-pushing managers, too.
She won’t eat any of the vegetables I grow, convinced that they will turn us into something unnatural.
“The robots know what’s good for us and what we should eat,” she says.
She threatens to tear up the garden while I’m at work, but somehow senses how important that patch of dirt is to me, and how destroying it would destroy our marriage as well, so she leaves it alone.
So, each morning before I go to work, I putter outside, carefully using my allotment of water to feed the garden – having already learned to collect rainwater illegally in a barrel on the side of the house to dedicate to my plants. Then, after work, I harvest what there is to harvest, and add it to my meal at night – along side the prescribed meals the robots tell us we need to ingest.
All during the workday, I think about the garden, pushing the buttons on my rig that takes me and my load from Houston to the Cape each day, a job no robot would spare another robot to due, if only out of the tedium of the long road.
Eventually, they will figure out how to run long haul via internet or satellite; until then, I have peace.
When I reach my destination, I always call my wife, and the line is always busy, me assuming each time she is complaining about me to her mother, who thinks I’m a radical and my wife ought to divorce me or turn me in, something her mother wants to do but won’t as long as we’re married.
Or maybe my wife recognizes my number and just doesn’t have the patients to talk to me, and I am so caught up in thinking about her and my plants, I do not immediately notice the blue light flashing on my dashboard and the robot vehicle pulling up next to my cab, the almost-human-like voice of the robot police telling me I’ve forgotten to adjust my electrical system, a misdemeanor of the carbon-footprint code punishable with a fine and possible 30 days in jail for second offense.
They let me off with a warning; the process takes several hours to accomplish and I’m in a panic to get home to water my plants, and I’m tempted to call my wife to ask her to do it, knowing she won’t, and will hold it against me for asking.
I rush home, overriding the robot controls, and because I’m moving in excess of the carbon-foot print recommended speed, red light blinks like a failing heart on my dashboard, and this time, the robot highway patrol is next to my car, ordering me to pull over, and then when I do, two robots come to each side of my car, telling me that I am under arrest.
“I know I was speeding but that’s not a criminal offense,” I say.
They read off some charge that I know is not from speeding, and then I understand why my wife won’t answer my calls and can imagine her pointing my garden out to the robots, who tear it up as the robot judge pronounces my sentence.
“Fifteen years for growing prohibited foods,” the judge says, adding a few more years for the water I’ve been hording and another year or two for violating the carbon footprint code by speeding.
I wonder if I’ll get the same cell as my friend.
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email to Al Sullivan
But it’s not everyday that your best friend from high school gets sentenced to 15 years in jail for getting supposedly carrying prohibited goods.
And I take this out on the truck as I slam the buttons for the gears to get it up to the loading dock.
My friend says he didn’t know the goods were stolen. The robot judge says, “the law is the law and justice must be served.”
I slam the gear buttons again. The truck just won’t line up right, even when I punch the code for computer guidance, warm air swirling beneath the frame, making the metal shake.
I keep expecting to hear the squeal of the warehouse robot, scolding me for not performing right – they check, double and triple check, convincing us how unreliable we are.
One wrong move and I might find myself sharing a cell with my friend.
They do this in the name of safety; we being raised from birth to prevent us any possibility of danger, robot risk managers telling us risk is bad.
And god help us if we hurt a machine.
Humans still pushed buttons, but always with the all-knowing robot eyes to guide us.
We can’t even take out the trash without machines watching over us, as if we might dent the trash receptacle – a fourth degree felony, still just punishable with a fine.
I make the mistake of complaining about it to my boss.
“What are you bitching about?” he asks me. “Life is good, isn’t it? A man used to have to break his back to make his living. Now we pushed buttons.”
Good? Not to me.
I remember my grandfather talking about how life used to feel, how good it felt to walk outside without a mask, or without worrying over a carbon-footprint monitor telling him how much air he could breathe without tipping the scale.
Back then, people didn’t think anything of warmer winters, just were grateful for the lack of snow – before that time when we had robots shoveling it for us.
These days if it snows too much or too little, there is an investigation as to whose carbon footprint is to blame.
When I said as much to my boss, he tells me I’m crazy.
“You don’t know when you have it good,” he says. “What exactly do you want?”
“I want something that is real,” I say. “I want to work with my hands the way my grandfather did.”
My boss groans, staring over at the 3-D hologram of the latest Disney version of Star Wars.
“Didn’t you learn anything about history,” he mumbles, “how miserable
School taught us how terrible it was to get our hands dirty, and how we all needed to aspire to something better, button-pushing managers overseeing by helpful robots.
My wife thinks I’m crazy because I insist on starting my own garden behind the house. She is convinced it violate some carbon footprint law we know nothing about but will get us thrown in the slammer anyway.
She is convinced our neighbors are laughing at us, at least those who aren’t trying to turn us into the authorities.
“But growing plants can’t be a bad thing,” I tell her.
“We have a robot to do that,” she says, “a robot who knows what plants we ought to plant, and which plants are forbidden. And besides, you digging in the dirt makes us look cheap, like hobos.”
I tell her there are no more bums, no more homeless, no more people sleeping in the streets or digging dirt in the parks to grow corn or pot. The robots swept them up long ago, put them in institutions for treatment so they want to be button-pushing managers, too.
She won’t eat any of the vegetables I grow, convinced that they will turn us into something unnatural.
“The robots know what’s good for us and what we should eat,” she says.
She threatens to tear up the garden while I’m at work, but somehow senses how important that patch of dirt is to me, and how destroying it would destroy our marriage as well, so she leaves it alone.
So, each morning before I go to work, I putter outside, carefully using my allotment of water to feed the garden – having already learned to collect rainwater illegally in a barrel on the side of the house to dedicate to my plants. Then, after work, I harvest what there is to harvest, and add it to my meal at night – along side the prescribed meals the robots tell us we need to ingest.
All during the workday, I think about the garden, pushing the buttons on my rig that takes me and my load from Houston to the Cape each day, a job no robot would spare another robot to due, if only out of the tedium of the long road.
Eventually, they will figure out how to run long haul via internet or satellite; until then, I have peace.
When I reach my destination, I always call my wife, and the line is always busy, me assuming each time she is complaining about me to her mother, who thinks I’m a radical and my wife ought to divorce me or turn me in, something her mother wants to do but won’t as long as we’re married.
Or maybe my wife recognizes my number and just doesn’t have the patients to talk to me, and I am so caught up in thinking about her and my plants, I do not immediately notice the blue light flashing on my dashboard and the robot vehicle pulling up next to my cab, the almost-human-like voice of the robot police telling me I’ve forgotten to adjust my electrical system, a misdemeanor of the carbon-footprint code punishable with a fine and possible 30 days in jail for second offense.
They let me off with a warning; the process takes several hours to accomplish and I’m in a panic to get home to water my plants, and I’m tempted to call my wife to ask her to do it, knowing she won’t, and will hold it against me for asking.
I rush home, overriding the robot controls, and because I’m moving in excess of the carbon-foot print recommended speed, red light blinks like a failing heart on my dashboard, and this time, the robot highway patrol is next to my car, ordering me to pull over, and then when I do, two robots come to each side of my car, telling me that I am under arrest.
“I know I was speeding but that’s not a criminal offense,” I say.
They read off some charge that I know is not from speeding, and then I understand why my wife won’t answer my calls and can imagine her pointing my garden out to the robots, who tear it up as the robot judge pronounces my sentence.
“Fifteen years for growing prohibited foods,” the judge says, adding a few more years for the water I’ve been hording and another year or two for violating the carbon footprint code by speeding.
I wonder if I’ll get the same cell as my friend.
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