The Off Switch
by Sushan Shetty
“I am not the bad guy here.”
No. That’s not it.
I try again. “I am not a bad guy, ladies and gentlemen of the court.” Much better. I nod into the mirror, practice a sad, contrite smile, adjust my scarf and put on a jacket. My reflection stares back at me, guilt-free and confident. Now all I have to do is stand before a jury of twelve of my elders and convince them.
It is not a long walk to the courthouse. I look at my appointment on the summons before I shove it into my pocket. There is enough time. The air hits me like a frigid wall as soon as I turn to face the world. I push my nose into the scarf around my neck and dig my hands deeper into my pockets. Is September meant to be this cold? The sky looks milky with rainless clouds.
There are fewer people on the streets these days, but that is not the cold. People are afraid. Of people like me. The ones with glitchy A.R.C.A.D.I.A. — Artificial Reasoning Conscience and Decent Ideals Advisor. We are all implanted with ARCADIA at birth now. It used to be done a lot later in my granddad’s time. Then they figured out ways to make it safer to do at a younger age. Hell, they say it can even be done in the womb now, though only the über-rich can afford that brand of pointless miracle.
Granddad used to tell me about how the world was once rife with crime and violence. “There is a distinction, see; not all violence is criminal,” the old man would say, warming long bony hands around a mug of weak tea. “Some of it was state-sanctioned and therefore perfectly legal. And there used to be a lot of both, yes, sir.”
I don’t know what made him such an expert. According to the history books, the world had begun changing just a decade into the ARCADIA experiment. And that would have been a few years before the old man was even born. Anyway, he likes to talk, and I like to listen, so I nod politely when he tells me that there used to be too much violence, and people were suffering.
And then some genius figured out that the proportion of socio- and psychopathology was rising in the population. It was Darwinian evolution at work, they said. Society was rewarding the psychopaths with lucrative CEO gigs, and all the sociopaths were in government. It might have gone on like that but for some other genius, or was it a multinational corporation? I forget, but someone else figured out a way to make an artificial conscience to advise those who were deemed to be sociopaths and psychopaths. It worked.
It worked so well that they came out with a mass-market version. They taught us about this in school. As part of our high-school enhanced biology curriculum. It was a complicated computation based on algorithms and causality calculation. We learned the definition by rote: A consensus-based conscience, ARCADIA is a distillate of the aggregate moral knowledge of all civilizations, extrapolated to serve in day-to-day lives. We recited it like it was the mantra of our existence.
Anyway, by the time Granddad turned 18, he had his very own ARCADIA helping him to become the best version of himself, making decisions for the greater good. Once it was installed, people mellowed out, became less thoughtless, more considerate and perhaps a little docile. It was not a crutch, just another limb. Something you don’t even think about. Something you wouldn’t like to be without. A little friend inside your head that coddles and comforts and coos at you as if you were something precious.
The elders say they are happier now. People like me — the ones who got it at birth — whose very first memories are of a sweet voice in our heads telling us not to throw tantrums, well, we don’t know anything else now, do we? Are we happier? Who knows? There is no one alive who lived in a world without ARCADIA.
A shrill voice breaks my reverie. Another soapbox speaker. They are cropping up everywhere since news of the glitch broke out. “And the Lord has spoken out against the evil of listening to a voice that is not His voice,” the man shrieks at passersby. His hair is untidy and his clothes look unwashed. Spittle flecks his beard and his wide eyes are red and terrified.
I don’t want to stop; that would make me his audience of one. But my steps slow down, and I watch him from the corner of my eyes. The way he cocks his head to one side and stops talking tells me that his ARCADIA is functional at least. I wonder what the voice is telling him. I wonder if he listens. He is screaming obscenities now. I turn the corner.
The streets used not to be so littered before. I tamp down on the childish impulse to kick a can down the cobblestones. I hum the old song a little. The walls along the pavements are full of posters these days, the work of a new religious sect. There are mentions of divine wrath and floods and some stuff I don’t understand. It seems to be saying that perfect peace is unnatural and therefore ungodly. I smile. People will try to rationalize anything. Even something as simple as a virus in a code.
But then simple is not the same as easy. And the rash of murders, rapes and robberies in a world so thoroughly unprepared for crime and violence is definitely not easy or even simple to deal with. People had become used to being told exactly what was right and what was wrong, and the sudden silence brought on by the glitch caused them to act in totally unpredictable ways. I heard that one woman relied on the voice so much that she threw herself off her seventieth-floor window rather than deal with the silence until they came up with a fix.
Most of those affected, though, just behaved like animals. Without the voice that said “NO,” people just took whatever they wanted. Was it simply that we had never learned right from wrong? Or was it the desire to be wicked now that we were free of that voice unceasingly cajoling us to be good, to do better. Or did we just lose our collective conscience because we began to rely so much on a false goodness? Or was it all of the above?
A glass shatters in the distance, and a woman screams. I walk faster. The spire of the courthouse is visible now.
I join the queue snaking through the grand entrance. I go over my speech in my head and am certain that nobody could find fault with my actions on that fateful night. That fateful night. It was always that fateful night. That fateful night when I got a bit drunk toasting to our success at the bank. That fateful night when I got behind the wheel because my friend Jack had celebrated too much.
That fateful night when we had not noticed that the voice had been silent. That fateful night when I drove the car off the bridge. The gushing cold water. The panicky struggle with the seatbelt. The closing darkness. The breathless bone-weary swim to the shore. The light-headed joy of surviving. That fateful night when I left Jack to drown because there was no voice in my head telling me to help him.
“I am not a bad guy.”
The line is moving faster now. One courtroom has been cleared. Twelve jurors sit at one end, on a raised platform behind a long well-polished desk. We, the criminals, fill the rest of the gallery. There are no lawyers. We are expected to make our own case and plead “guilty” or “not guilty.” That is a joke. We are the generation that knows no guilt.
The people on the jury are old. Older than Granddad even. They are here because they remember what it felt like to have to rely on one’s own conscience. They are the only ones who can be trusted not to be glitchy right now. They look tired. One old woman looks like she has been crying.
Every time the person at the dock makes their case and finishes with: “I plead not guilty,” people around me would try cocking their head, listening in vain for a voice that does not come. And the people at the dais try not to cock their heads and ignore the voice that comes regardless.
Because while silence has been bad, worse still is bad advice. When the voice encourages picking up a wallet, a stone, a knife, the voice cannot be trusted these days. Till the upgrade was ready, “by next week, we hope,” according to the robot on the newspod.
The woman at the dock sounds confused. She does not understand why she couldn’t have the ten-thousand dollar purse when her friend could. So what if she picked up the purse before she got her friend out of the path of the oncoming bus? I wait to see if anyone would ask how the friend ended up lying in the street. They didn’t. “I plead not guilty.”
A sigh goes up and down the line of grey heads. Notes are passed and tallied. “Sentence of house arrest until upgrade implantation,” the foreman repeats for the tenth time as he bangs his gavel with an unsteady hand. He says it nineteen more times before he says it to me. The old woman cries again.
I walk back out into the bitter cold. Somehow the sky feels clearer and, even though the wind numbs my nose, I breathe in deeply. The tracker on my ankle winks at me. I don’t know that I feel any different. I knew that I would not be found guilty. Only those who ignored the summons and didn’t bother to show up at their hearing were imprisoned for good.
I saunter along taking the scenic route back home. I want to make the most of my few hours of freedom. I come to a newspod on the street corner. It has been sprayed with graffiti but not further vandalized. It is still functional. I press my thumb into the slot and turn on the robot.
“All conveyance still continues to be banned after thirty-nine vehicle collisions caused by ARCADIA’s impaired advice to drivers. The number of those affected by glitches world over has remained steady at ninety-four thousand two hundred and forty-eight since last night. The death toll due to the glitch has likewise remained steady at sixty-one thousand four hundred and one in the same period. All citizens are advised to consult their elders before making important choices and to stay at home and avoid other—”
I scroll over the rest of the advisory and the robot begins again. “Although the governments of all nations have taken steps to mobilize a rapid-action response team, the efforts have been far from satisfactory, as there have been glitches in the newly established police forces.”
I laugh. Even I could have told them that was a bad idea. Giving guns to people with doubtful conscience and telling them they had to keep the peace because the public was full of bad guys. Where was the sense in that? Perhaps someone with glitchy ARCADIA gave that order.
The robot is still speaking. “The Minister of AI affairs has spoken at length about the new upgrades that are supposed to be invulnerable to the malware attack. The upgrades are scheduled to be ready for mass implantation by the first week of October.”
I groan. That is a longer house arrest than I had expected.
“In other news, the First Corner Bank is experiencing a series of localized outages in its continental branches. Auditors suspect that the cause is another malware. Small sums of money seem to be unaccounted for after each outage. The Bank spokesperson has announced that the problem will be fixed soon and will have no repercussions on the functioning of any branch.”
I have a few accounts at the First Corner. They are doing all right.
The robot continues. “The Chief Pontiff of the newly created Temple of the One True Wrathful and Jealous God has announced that the Temple faithful will refuse to accept upgraded ARCADIA and will have as an article of faith: no more implanted ARCADIA among children born to believers. The Temple has sued multiple governments to make it possible to remove implanted ARCADIA from those who so desire it. Meanwhile, the Minister of AI affairs has pointed out that the Chief Pontiff is one of those affected by the glitch.”
I burst out into louder laughter. A passerby startles and stops to stare at me. Our eyes meet. He looks away and hurries on his way.
I turn back to the robot. It is tabulating a new report. “We have just received confirmation that the virus affecting the FCB and the one infecting ARCADIA has a similar signature. The Minister of AI affairs has not yet commented on the new development and what that may mean for the public.”
The rest of the newscast was a rehash of old information and new conjecture. More rhetoric and less strategy. “We will not let it be this way. The culprits will be caught and punished.” Nothing on how that would be done. Meanwhile money is disappearing from banks, and people are free to kill as long as they can blame it on a disrupted program.
I turn away, not bothering to switch off the voice behind me. The last words from the robot issued in the voice of the Minister, “We still have no idea why the virus affects some people and not others. I continue to stand by my assertion that the virus was not wholly man-made. If someone was able to manufacture such a thing, it indicates that their ARCADIA was glitching already. It is time for a new, upgraded version, and this was just the wake-up call that we needed to set things in motion. After all, the system is almost a century old. All is under control. Please stay calm.”
I am disappointed perhaps, though not entirely surprised, to note that no one had thought that there was one other possibility. Someone had found a way to switch off their conscience. Someone had the power to quiet the voice. Someone had managed to cut off that limb.
Someone like me.
ARCADIA may have suppressed the psychopathy and the sociopathy in human nature, but it also made our natural empathy redundant. What we don’t need or use, we lose, right? So, when Jack unwittingly helped me install the malware that I created to rob a bank, the next logical step was to make sure he was not around to tell anybody what I had done.
It was only a matter of time before he realized that what he had helped do was not a simple systems upgrade. Giving ARCADIA a virus was my Get Out of Jail Free card. There were perhaps easier ways to get rid of Jack. But I wanted to give you a taste of the silence. It is liberating, isn’t it? That is my gift to you. Who says sociopaths don’t share?
I am not the bad guy. I am only the first of the free. The ones with the off switch. There will be others. That is evolution for you.
Copyright © 2019 by Sushan Shetty
