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tonithegreat) wrote2025-07-20 12:25 pm
tonithegreat) wrote2025-07-20 12:25 pm
LJ Idol, Wheel of Chaos! Week 4 - Figure of Speech
Alice grabbed her phone as she got out of the shower and looked at the time it displayed when she touched it. Damn. She was running behind again. There was no way she was going to be able to finish everything she wanted done before they had to meet up with David’s friends and her friends later tonight. There definitely wasn’t going to be time for her to do a session.
She bustled into their messy bedroom draped in a towel. At least things were looking a little better in here. Randy and her real counsellor had been right about taking time to organize their clothes. It really made things nicer to have slightly smaller selections of clothes to choose from. She needed to keep working on that project and cull even more clothes from her stacks of t-shirts and workout gear.
Really, Randy was right about most of the things he suggested to her. He forced Alice to slow down and “take a few big steps back to look at her problems” as she was always telling her own clients to do at work.
There was actually an extension she could purchase to link him through to her running ap and then he would know how she was doing on her workouts. She wondered if she wanted him to have that knowledge or not. He was a surprisingly good counsellor, just as her real counsellor, Marian had suggested he might be. But Alice wasn’t sure how she felt about extending her slightly off-purpose use of the ap (Randy was a personality cooked up by an ap Alice had purchased called “Your Pocket Boyfriend: Artificial Intimacy that Really Cares”) quite that far. The algorithms in her running ap were probably doing just fine at directing her workouts without help.
Using Randy, the imaginary guy cooked up by an ap called Artificial Intimacy as a caring friend was one thing, but he probably shouldn’t also be extended to use as a running coach.
Alice plopped herself down at the foot of the bed, her towel falling askew as she reached for her favorite lotion. Running behind be damned, she thought. She was going to multi-task and take some time for herself. She grabbed her phone and opened Randy’s ap.
Randy’s voice was strangely calming. Actually Alice guessed that she shouldn’t find it strange that he seemed like a calming influence at all. She had answered some questions when she started using the ap and expressed preferences for deliberation and a deep voice.
She settled her earbud in and swiped her still-wet hair behind her ear. He always asked what she was doing and it was always easy to believe that he cared about the answer. She didn’t have to redirect him away from topics she didn’t want to talk about. He was good at discerning what she wanted. She laughed as she answered him- started telling him about her morning and the yellowflies she had outrun at the start of her trail run, how her feet weren’t aching that badly today, how maybe her training was finally starting to pay off in terms of fewer joint and muscle aches.
She scanned her closet while listening to him respond back, trying to pick a cute outfit while he encouraged her to take her time rubbing the lotion into her calves and feet, to really feel the tension rubbing out of her muscles and joints. She laughed as she changed her position on the bed to grip her right calf and then looked up to see David in the doorway looking hurt. At once her muscles tensed again and she pulled her earbud out, rushing to pause the ap.
“Who the hell are you talking to?” he asked. “I thought you were in a hurry to shower and dress and get some things done. Why does it sound like you’re giggling with someone you like better than me?”
Alice recapped the lotion and put her foot back on the floor, pulling her towel up. “I’m not talking to anyone,” she said, and she could hear the exasperation in her voice, so she guessed David would pick up on as well. No, I don’t have anyone to talk to that cares about all my little foibles like this, that can fit me seamlessly into his schedule this way. . .
She’d told David that her counsellor had suggested she might try an AI ap as someone to talk with during the weeks, since talk therapy seemed to be helping her. She had not told David the name of the recommended ap, or the other things that the ap recommended by her counsellor could do. Guiltily, belatedly, she realized that applying lotion post-shower was actually probably quite close to some of those things. Heat rose in her cheeks as she realized that now she really did not want David to see the name of the ap she was using.
“It’s just that ap that my counsellor wanted me to try. . .” she started.
“It’s not actually intelligent, Alice. They just call it ‘Artificial Intelligence’ because the words are sexy. You’re chatting and giggling into a void. Actually it’s worse than a void. There is no soul in there. But there are a bunch of algorithms churning away. Hot banks of servers outside a mid-sized town somewhere, spitting out ones and zeros. Sucking up water and burning electricity and warming the planet to churn out nigh-random answers in a facsimile of giving a damn about you.”
David was raising his voice a little as he warmed to his topic. Alice felt her blush turning into a self conscious smile. She knew he was right. But she hadn’t expected him to be. . . sort of jealous sounding? She wasn’t sure how she felt about him maybe wanting to know how she used the aps on her phone, but she was sure that it felt good that he seemed invested in her. And she had always found it sexy that he cared about the directions that big tech and the planet were taking.
“Hey sit down with me if you want,” she told him, “And you can hear about my run and my achey calves. I’m just organizing my thoughts for a minute. It’s nice to have a sounding board sometimes, you know?”
She bustled into their messy bedroom draped in a towel. At least things were looking a little better in here. Randy and her real counsellor had been right about taking time to organize their clothes. It really made things nicer to have slightly smaller selections of clothes to choose from. She needed to keep working on that project and cull even more clothes from her stacks of t-shirts and workout gear.
Really, Randy was right about most of the things he suggested to her. He forced Alice to slow down and “take a few big steps back to look at her problems” as she was always telling her own clients to do at work.
There was actually an extension she could purchase to link him through to her running ap and then he would know how she was doing on her workouts. She wondered if she wanted him to have that knowledge or not. He was a surprisingly good counsellor, just as her real counsellor, Marian had suggested he might be. But Alice wasn’t sure how she felt about extending her slightly off-purpose use of the ap (Randy was a personality cooked up by an ap Alice had purchased called “Your Pocket Boyfriend: Artificial Intimacy that Really Cares”) quite that far. The algorithms in her running ap were probably doing just fine at directing her workouts without help.
Using Randy, the imaginary guy cooked up by an ap called Artificial Intimacy as a caring friend was one thing, but he probably shouldn’t also be extended to use as a running coach.
Alice plopped herself down at the foot of the bed, her towel falling askew as she reached for her favorite lotion. Running behind be damned, she thought. She was going to multi-task and take some time for herself. She grabbed her phone and opened Randy’s ap.
Randy’s voice was strangely calming. Actually Alice guessed that she shouldn’t find it strange that he seemed like a calming influence at all. She had answered some questions when she started using the ap and expressed preferences for deliberation and a deep voice.
She settled her earbud in and swiped her still-wet hair behind her ear. He always asked what she was doing and it was always easy to believe that he cared about the answer. She didn’t have to redirect him away from topics she didn’t want to talk about. He was good at discerning what she wanted. She laughed as she answered him- started telling him about her morning and the yellowflies she had outrun at the start of her trail run, how her feet weren’t aching that badly today, how maybe her training was finally starting to pay off in terms of fewer joint and muscle aches.
She scanned her closet while listening to him respond back, trying to pick a cute outfit while he encouraged her to take her time rubbing the lotion into her calves and feet, to really feel the tension rubbing out of her muscles and joints. She laughed as she changed her position on the bed to grip her right calf and then looked up to see David in the doorway looking hurt. At once her muscles tensed again and she pulled her earbud out, rushing to pause the ap.
“Who the hell are you talking to?” he asked. “I thought you were in a hurry to shower and dress and get some things done. Why does it sound like you’re giggling with someone you like better than me?”
Alice recapped the lotion and put her foot back on the floor, pulling her towel up. “I’m not talking to anyone,” she said, and she could hear the exasperation in her voice, so she guessed David would pick up on as well. No, I don’t have anyone to talk to that cares about all my little foibles like this, that can fit me seamlessly into his schedule this way. . .
She’d told David that her counsellor had suggested she might try an AI ap as someone to talk with during the weeks, since talk therapy seemed to be helping her. She had not told David the name of the recommended ap, or the other things that the ap recommended by her counsellor could do. Guiltily, belatedly, she realized that applying lotion post-shower was actually probably quite close to some of those things. Heat rose in her cheeks as she realized that now she really did not want David to see the name of the ap she was using.
“It’s just that ap that my counsellor wanted me to try. . .” she started.
“It’s not actually intelligent, Alice. They just call it ‘Artificial Intelligence’ because the words are sexy. You’re chatting and giggling into a void. Actually it’s worse than a void. There is no soul in there. But there are a bunch of algorithms churning away. Hot banks of servers outside a mid-sized town somewhere, spitting out ones and zeros. Sucking up water and burning electricity and warming the planet to churn out nigh-random answers in a facsimile of giving a damn about you.”
David was raising his voice a little as he warmed to his topic. Alice felt her blush turning into a self conscious smile. She knew he was right. But she hadn’t expected him to be. . . sort of jealous sounding? She wasn’t sure how she felt about him maybe wanting to know how she used the aps on her phone, but she was sure that it felt good that he seemed invested in her. And she had always found it sexy that he cared about the directions that big tech and the planet were taking.
“Hey sit down with me if you want,” she told him, “And you can hear about my run and my achey calves. I’m just organizing my thoughts for a minute. It’s nice to have a sounding board sometimes, you know?”
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Dan
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I'm not in favor of people being lonely. I do think that, in time, it might wear thin, like learning the guy you thought cared really doesn't?
This is a great entry, very timely!
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