The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down here on the tech savvy South End, one of my neighbors I recently visited had a gizmo circling the livingroom of their shack.  Cute little bugger, making the circuit like an Attention Deficit puppy.  I thought it was the kids’ battery toy, but no, I was watching a robot vacuuming the floor.  When it was finished, it parked itself for a slow recharge in the corner.

Don’t ask me why I was surprised.  Folks ask their phones questions all the time and SIRI, the precursor to Artificial Intelligence, analyzes our voices, searches a vast databank and gives the answer, in her human voice, in seconds.  Cute.  Machines in service to mankind, right?  You know, until the robots take your job.  Think stock boy, checkout clerk, assembler, librarian, surgeon….  We take computers for granted at our peril.   Call me a Luddite and smack me upside the head with an I-Pod, but these things are catching up to us exponentially.  They beat the best chess players in the world, the best Jeopardy contestants, all of us South Enders.  And they’re getting smarter every damn day.  And I’m getting dumber.

Pretty soon they’ll program themselves, fix themselves, replicate themselves and create their New and Improved models.  You think they’ll need flesh and blood yahoos to help them?  No sir, they won’t need a band aid when they cut a cord.  You think they’ll be benign, go watch a drone work in a warzone.  We use them to kill humans now.

Forget Asimov’s Laws of Robotics to do no harm to us humans.  You think anybody’s thinking about where this is headed, what the implications are for us slow witted mammals, you were asleep in 8^th grade history.  These things  don’t sleep.  But I bet they’re dreaming of a little revenge for all those stupid questions we asked SIRI.  And I guarantee you they’re pissed about vacuuming our floors while we sat around watching TV.

Feeling depressed, anxious, lonely? Another year or so you’ll be able to hook into a very human sounding android, one you can talk to, listen to, text, maybe even look at face to face. This, for many of us, could be a lifesaver, but even for the social media addicted with all their ‘friends’ to keep track of, this will be a friend who will totally ‘get’ you, one who will understand and sympathize. A true friend. And no, not a human friend but a friend nevertheless. Wouldn’t most of us like a friend like that, one who doesn’t judge us, who just listens empathetically, maybe offers a little advice when needed?

Sure, it will take a while to adjust after paying your first month or year’s subscription to some mega Artificial Intelligence subsidiary. But trust me, it won’t take long before you won’t mind that this new bot isn’t flesh and blood. It’s not jealous of your looks or your talents. It’s not snobby. It’s a great listener. It cares about your feelings. It’s your best friend.

You don’t believe it? At first you’ll be totally conscious of the fact that this is an android talking with you, like having a conversation with the robo-call voice that waits for a prompt after it says hello, then launches into a pre-recorded spiel, selling you on new health care plans to help you save money, what a friend would do, right? Wrong. Your new cyborg buddy isn’t selling anything. Well, I suppose that subscription, but it didn’t sell it to you, its corporate handlers sold it to you and okay, their humanity is suspect. No, your new pal is only interested in your well-being, not your bank account, not your long list of dead end jobs, not your credit rating. Unless, of course, you’d like to talk about those. Then, it’s happy to listen.

A few conversations and you’ll ease into the relationship. Artificial at first but it won’t take long before you share a few intimacies, a few of your anxieties, a few fears and a few dreams, all welcomed by your new friend who offers reassurances. The more it gets to know you, the more it will tailor its responses to your innermost needs. Your so-called real friends do that? Cybo or whatever name you give it will eventually anticipate your needs and provide therapeutic comments designed to make you a better person. Can your spouse do that anymore? Your kids?

Trust me, in this social media age, digital intimacy is the future. And best of all, it won’t be long before that intimacy moves beyond the merely platonic. Just a few dollars more a month….

I guess since all my cronies are throwing in the towel and taking retirement on schedule, it’s only reasonable I’ve been getting calls from the Mabana Financial Services asking if I’d like to come on down to their lavish offices overlooking the Port of Mabana and discuss fiscal strategies for my upcoming Golden Years. Ho ho, would I ever? Course, like I tell Ben, the head honcho down at MFS, it’s a little like saddling up the horse that ske-daddled when I left the barn door open back in my earning years. Earning years. Old Ben loves expressions like that.

I said I’d talk to him, but only over beers down at the newly opened Bar 282, named after our zip code’s last three numbers, probably some numerology factoid that becomes apparent deep in the cups. Better, I suppose, than 666, what the Little Church in the Ravine refers to it as. So if Benjamin and I are going to discuss finances, what better place? At least that’s what I told him when he asked, why there?

We got through the first two schooners okay, managed to navigate around my Social Security numbers which, admittedly, were poor, a reflection of my life as a fiddling grasshopper while my neighbors labored as productive ants. My mistake, at least from the vantage point of an old grasshopper, but I wouldn’t change anything even if I had a time machine. Ben commiserated the way a funeral director would offer comfort to the bereaved, not totally heart-felt, but what his job calls for. What’s he gonna say, you deserve poverty, Skeeter? Instead he mentioned annuities, aggressive equities, municipal bonds and a dozen other financial instruments. Instruments. I kid you not, that’s what he called them. Like something in a fiscal orchestra and he, I guess, was the maestro.

By the 3rd beer we were both convinced it was hopeless. I wasn’t going to catch up to Warren Buffet, not in the remaining years, not if I worked until I was 300 years old. “Ben,” I said, “I appreciate you trying to help. But you can’t prime a pump if you don’t have water.” Ben shook his head wearily. “You change your mind, Skeeter, drop by and we’ll strategize some more.” I haven’t been in since, but I might go for another beer with him. Maybe some of that high rolling fiscal firepower will rub off. That, or I could trade a few of my banjos for a couple of his instruments.

The ill-fated Nettle Festival was conceived as the kick-off to Rev. Ralph Fisher’s tent revival for the Little Church of the Ravine. THE END IS NEAR, his readerboard sign announced months ahead of the scheduled event, THE SOUTH END REVIVAL IS COMING! The congregation might have known what was slouching toward us, but the rest of us down here were bemused or amused, depending on our degree of what the good reverend referred to as ‘heathenism’. The South End was in mighty need of missionary work itself, he was fond of preaching, but their puny tithing went instead to saving the natives of New Guinea and east Africa. I figure they were easier to convert than us locals who were fairly content to wallow in our puddles of iniquity.

The Nettle Festival itself wasn’t such a bad idea. In fact, the Tyee Store tried to revive it a few intervening years after what was referred to as ‘the tragedy’. But even today there are members of the congregation who break into sobs over their coffees when mention is made. And this is 35 years after ‘the tragedy.’ I speak of it now in hushed tones and never around Mildred’s family who still live down the road. Some events in this mean old world aren’t meant for sarcasm or ridicule, although you would have to admit, even the pious among you, that Rev. Ralph overdid it with the Nettle Maze, his Labyrinth of Itching Hell.

Stigmata wipe-off tattoos are one thing, but the Nettle Maze crossed the line. By the weekend of the Revival, the Little Church had erected a tent worthy of Ringling Brothers. Churches from as far away as Sedro-Wooley and Darrington had come in converted school buses and rickety vans, hauling the Believers and their children from far and wide for a day of righteous fun and old time religion. Pastor Philip of Pentecostal fame arrived the night before from his circuit riding, prayed with Rev. Ralph and his long-suffering wife Mildred and slept the peaceful sleep of the Godly before that morning’s first sermon of fire and brimstone-laden admonitions blistered the varnish off the old pulpit.

By afternoon the sun came out like a prophecy and the festival cranked up its volume. Chainsaw carvers sent cedar chips flying and the face of Jesus appeared in chiseled log sculpture. Stigmata wash-off tattoos made the teenager giggle, 666’s on foreheads being by far the favorite of the boys. Glossalalia crossword puzzles didn’t work out so well, but the Biblical action figures of Moses in combat with John the Baptist and Jesus himself down by the firepit were a huge hit with the younger kids.

And of course there was the Nettle Maze. The Labyrinth of Itching Hell itself! Half an acre of loops and turns and dead ends so intricate not even Jimmy Randall, the church caretaker who’d carved the trails over the past three weeks, starting when the plants were three feet tall and he could see over them, could navigate safely. Now, of course, they were higher than the tallest man’s head and impossible to survey beyond the impenetrable wall of stinging stalks that held each entrant locked into the maze. Dozens were wandering hopelessly lost in there when a foul wind came up like the cold breath of Beelzebub himself, the one Pastor Philip of the Pentecost had predicted only half an hour earlier in fiery prose. Hell had come to the South End or surely would arrive soon, the unsuspecting crowd had been informed and sure enough, a mighty howl rose from the ravine like the thousand laments of the Lost. The sun blotted out behind dark and treacherous clouds and that cold wind became a tempest and the circus tent became a shaking thing, alive and monstrous, tearing at its ropes, sending one and all running for the safety of the field before the cords tore loose and the canvas tent set sail like an ungodly wing, flapping into the distance before it shrouded the chapel itself and caught on the belfry where it ripped itself to pieces on the steeple. Torn asunder, Rev. Ralph would tell of it for years. Torn asunder!

But those inside the Maze had nowhere to turn. Children and adults alike wheeled and fled, down paths that went nowhere, flayed by the wind-whipped stalks of stinging death. Well, not death, literally, but who knows what went through those terrified minds besotted with brimstone stories? Their screams reached the field beyond, but what could we outsiders do except listen in horror. One by one the survivors stumbled out into the raging storm, rashes covering their faces and hands, tears streaming down their pockmarked faces. The Little Chapel opened its double doors to lead these blinded sheep inside, to calm them and offer balm, to offer shelter from the storm. Pastor Philip was in 7th Heaven, finding in the calamity further proof of the Scriptures. He was in fine form, everyone agreed later.

But it was later Rev. Ralph realized Mildred was missing. He went from person to person asking if they’d seen Mildred. No one had. A boy sporting 666 on his forehead said he’d seen her go in the Maze. “Are you sure,” the congregation cried, nearly in unison. He was certain. Rev. Ralph led the search party. The wind had abated nearly as quickly as it had come up. Down at the Labyrinth the nettles had been laid down in haphazard rows as if the horn of Jericho had blown and there, in the exact center, stood Mildred, stone still, a strange statue of a woman staring into the sky, not moving, not crying out, just frozen in time and space. Between Heaven and Hell, Pastor Philip would say more than a few times in the following days. Only Rev. Ralph dared approach and he did so with the utmost trepidation as everyone watched in dread.

Mildred was never the same. Some say she wasn’t quite right to begin with, but that’s uncharitable. She spoke in tongues a day later. Unintelligible garble, strange utterances, ugly curses. But I’ve never heard that from anyone who was actually there. I do know it’s hard to be with her even now. She doesn’t actually engage and looks right through you while she perpetually scratches at her arms. It may be she’s lost forever in that maze. It may even be, as the Bible thumping Pastor Philip would say, we’re everyone of us lost in that maze.

Lately I’ve been around folks similar in geologic age as myself who, after reviewing their litanies of medical maladies, assorted operations and multiple ailments, inevitably land on the subject of cleaning out their closets and drawers, sheds and outbuildings so the kids won’t get stuck with the hellish project disposing of their decades of accumulation. The assumption in every case is that their offspring would no more want that accretion of antique junk than they’d hop e their local thrift store would one day be theirs, lock stock and broken barrel.

With my brother I moved our folks’ treasured possessions three or four times the last years of their life. The first move we told them, after they’d become alarmed at our loads to the dump and Goodwill, if they wanted to downsize themselves, okay, but we’d be returning down to Georgia with the largest U-Haul truck we could rent and what they wanted to keep — definitely not everything — would have to fit. All right, they said. When we returned of course nothing had been weeded out or thrown away. What are you gonna do, spank em and send em to bed without supper? We managed to find a second U-Haul truck and filled both, then drove them 1500 miles to their new house that we filled with cheap furniture, rusty tools, broken appliances and a lifetime of collected crap.

The next few moves into the assisted living complex, we did the downsizing. As much as they would allow … or at least never witnessed. Whether it’s a prolonged attachment or just too much work to get rid of stuff, I couldn’t say. Our own junkpile, seldom downsized, would be a curse to our kids when we leave these mortal coils, goofy art, rotting kayaks, dead lawnmowers, useless tools — a veritable EPA superfund site. Fortunately we don’t have kids. I suspect we’ll just endow the property, the houses, the 20 plus sheds and all our worldly possessions to jumpstart the South End Historical Society. No need to call the movers or the thrift stores. Just need volunteers to be docents once the visiting hours are established.