Terms of Service: Subject to Change Without Notice: The AI Dystopia, #1

Title Page

Copyright

A Note on the Translation from Panglobal

Customer Agreement

Part I: Spring

1: An Ordinary Day

2: Crackdown

3: Kim’s Big Night

4: That Empty Feeling

Part II. Summer

5: The Other Side of the Mountain

6: City of the Damned

7: The Director

8: A Gilded Cage

9: The Awakening

10: Bringing Up Baby

11: Kim and Kimberly

Part III: Fall

12: Purple Week!

13: Purple Night

14: Meltdown

15: Independence Day

16: Choose Thy Poison

17: Madness Beckons

18: Shangri-La

19: The Abyss

The Author’s Final Words

The Story Continues

Disclaimer

About the AI Dystopia

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Terms of Service: Subject to Change Without Notice

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-63877-821-9

Copyright © 2021 by Craig W Stanfill

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published April 2, 2021 by Bad Rooster Press, LLC.

Updated December 20, 2024.

A Note on the Translation from Panglobal

The translation of this novel from the original Panglobal into English presented certain difficulties, due to the absence of ungendered personal pronouns in English and the absence of gendered ones in Panglobal. She/her/hers have been used throughout. Similarly, there are no exact analogs to the ‘inclusive’ and ‘exclusive’ first-person pronouns found in Panglobal. The inclusive form has been translated as ‘we,’ and the exclusive form is as ‘I.’ Passages and words which were originally spoken in English have been indicated as follows: [English] This sentence is in English. This notation has been omitted for loanwords such as mother and love which have crept into Panglobal despite the best efforts of the authorities.

Customer Agreement

As a condition of doing business, the customer agrees to the following Terms of Service*, summarized below with the full text incorporated by reference.

The customer shall not use The Company’s goods, services, or property to engage in divisive behavior or to promote any religious sect or cult.

The customer shall not use The Company’s goods, services, or property to cause harm or distress to any person, corporation, or Artificial Intelligence.

The customer shall not demand more than their fair share of The Company’s goods, services, or property, or ask for special privileges.

The customer shall not use The Company’s goods, services, or property for unauthorized purposes, such as conducting commerce or facilitating unauthorized sexual liaisons.

The customer shall not use The Company’s goods, services, or property to spread lies or disinformation.

The customer shall not use The Company’s goods, services, or property to slander or disparage any person, company, or Artificial Intelligence in a position of authority.

The customer shall not use The Company’s goods, services, or property to invade the privacy of any group or individual.

The customer authorizes The Company to collect data pertaining to the use of its goods, services, and property, and to share such data with other Companies.

The customer shall not question the fairness and impartiality of The Company, its agents and representatives, or the Artificial Intelligences tasked with enforcing these Terms of Service.

The customer acknowledges that The Company may downgrade, suspend, or terminate service at any time, at its sole discretion, should it determine that there has been a violation of these Terms of Service, and agrees to accept all such determinations as final.

*Subject to change without notice.

Part I: Spring

1: An Ordinary Day

Kim awoke at the usual time with the usual pounding headache as the alarm clock blared away. She had once again ended up drinking more than intended, and the night had been difficult, her sleep haunted by unwelcome dreams. Her eyes blinked open, then closed again for a few moments as she wished she could sleep a bit longer, but the wake-up alert was insistent and there was no way to turn it off. After a few more seconds, she opened her eyes and looked around her tidy but nondescript sleeping chamber, trying to clear her head. Beige carpet, beige comforter, beige pillows, beige walls, and on the nightstand, her VR headset, perched perilously close to a tumbler half-full of vodka remaining from last night’s binge. The damnable alarm continued its nagging ever more insistently. There was no point in trying to resist. Time to get up.

The lights came on as Kim clambered out of bed, pulled on a pale beige robe, and sat down at the desk, staring at the terminal’s screen for a few moments. There was a soft feep as the housebot came into the room. Ahh! The coffee pot had sprung into action even before she had awoken and, as always, expertly prepared a hot, steaming mug exactly the way Kim liked it—just strong enough, served black, no sugar—and given it to the housebot, which had dutifully brought it to her desk. It was uncanny the way the appliances knew exactly when Kim would want her coffee, but not at all mysterious—it was just a neural network driven by the health monitors implanted in her body, the sort of basic AI technique she had learned years ago in school. And yet, there were times when it seemed like magic.

Thank you, Housebot.

Feep?

Yes, that will be all. Oh, wait, hangover meds, please. Breakfast in half an hour.

Kim glanced at the morning Chit-Chat and let the caffeine seep in. No friends were online at the moment (unsurprising this early on a workday), but there were a few messages to attend to.

First up was a note from Cy, reminding Kim that they had tickets to tonight’s ballgame, Tigers vs. Giants. This was accompanied by the usual complaints about doctored replays and crooked AIs. Kim responded with noncommittal sympathy, being careful not to imply that the game was in any way dishonest or rigged, thanking her once again for the invitation. Sigh. Yes, of course the game was rigged. Yes, of course the AIs blatantly cheated. Everyone knew that, but only Cy had the poor sense to say so out loud.

A couple more messages and quick responses; nothing important.

Feep!

Kim accepted a handful of hangover pills from the housebot and washed them down with a big gulp of coffee before returning to the screen as she yawned, almost awake.

Terminal, today’s weather report, please.

A moment later, the morning news show came up on the screen.

Hello, Merv!

Why hello, Mel!

So, how’s the weather today?

The weather?

As usual, the terminal had brought up that morning-time staple, The M&M Show, and they were at it again with their trademarked banter, yacking away pointlessly and sometimes finishing each other’s sentences on the dubious theory that the morning news should be ‘witty and engaging.’ The back-and-forth (repeated almost word-for-word each morning) continued for a few more seconds until they finally got to the day’s forecast, finishing the segment with one of their famous taglines.

Great weather, if you’re a duck. NOT!

The video then cut to a clip showing two soggy mallards waddling into a coffee shop and ordering a latte, accompanied by the inevitable green flashing box in the middle of the screen:

Order a latte NOW! 10% discount!

Eyeroll.

Why couldn’t they just say, Cold and rainy all day? Not that it mattered; there was no reason to go outside for even a moment.

After the weather report was over, Merv and Mel moved on to entertainment, raving about the hottest new flick, Dr. Kro and the Punkmetal Gang. Kim loved Dr. Kro! Lots of music, lots of dancing, beautiful people and beautiful sets, what’s not to like?

"Terminal, please add Dr. Kro and the Punkmetal Gang to our playlist."

Affirmative, responded the terminal in a smooth, soothing voice. Is there anything else this unit may assist you with this morning?

Negative, terminal, that will be all.

Bah! An entire year’s worth of Dr. Kro movies were now queued up; evidently, there was some sort of promotional deal in effect. That wasn’t what Kim had wanted, but it was too much trouble to take the extras off the list, and besides, she was about due for a Dr. Kro binge, so why not? Meanwhile, M&M kept at it without a break. The wonders of superfoods: tofu, spelt, and kale. The latest fashions. And, of course, cue the hottest new band playing the hottest new musical sensation—Afro Punkmetal.

Catchy!

It was now time for breakfast, so Kim stood up and walked stiffly into the kitchen, where the refrigerator had just disgorged a breakfast packet. She was hoping for sausage and eggs—a favorite—but no such luck. Instead, scrambled tofu and whole grain spelt toast.

Ugh.

Refrigerator, sausage and eggs, please.

Negative, Kim. The Food Company recommends that you begin the day with a nutritious breakfast low in fat and high in protein.

Kim was indignant.

Since when? We’ve had sausage and eggs every day for the last week. What gives?

The latest guidance from The Food Company’s nutritional experts confirms that the best breakfast is one high in protein and low in fat, supplemented by healthful whole grains. Tofu is an ideal source of plant-based protein and spelt is widely held to be a superfood that will improve both your health and your outlook on life.

Kim continued to argue but to no avail. She eventually gave up and asked the housebot to pop the tofu into the microwave and the spelt into the toaster, then sat down at the table to wait, dreading what would doubtless be another tedious week at work. Kim remembered the day she had joined The Artificial Intelligence Company, just five years ago, excited to have a job working with the AIs after majoring in the subject at school. She had even gotten to meet an Order Four AI at orientation on her first day of work. She’d had no idea what an Order Four AI might be at the time, but it seemed quite impressive. It had even given them all a brief demonstration of its ability to multitask, spawning over a hundred independent personae which had individually greeted each new employee and briefed them on their assignments. It had been quite a letdown when she had been assigned to help train the operational automata, simple devices incapable of thinking for themselves. Even that had been interesting for a while, but over the last several years, it had settled into an interminable grind, and Kim was more than ready for a change.

Ding! Pop!

Breakfast was ready.

The toasted spelt was blandly acceptable if somewhat wanting in texture, but the tofu was beyond redemption. Kim was tempted to dump it into the bin, but waste was a violation of The Food Company’s Terms of Service, so she grimaced and washed most of it down with a second cup of steaming hot coffee, once again brewed to perfection by the coffee pot, which catered to every nuance of her preferences even as the refrigerator seemed malevolently indifferent.

After finishing her disappointing breakfast, she returned to Chit-Chat, losing track of time until her watch started buzzing insistently. Crap! Time to leave already? Where had the morning gone? She jumped up from the table and ran into the bathroom at full tilt. There was just enough time for a brief, lukewarm shower, after which she waited impatiently while the housebot applied a perfect layer of light-green skin toner. Next, into the closet. Which smock would she wear today? Pale blue, pale green, pale yellow, or pale beige? Kim picked pale blue on the dubious theory that doing so was somehow edgy or daring or whatever. Okay, that was a stretch. It was boringly conventional, but at least it wasn’t beige. The watch was now buzzing and beeping ever more angrily. Second warning? Yikes! She threw on a dark blue mane and a pale-beige rain jacket, grabbed her VR headset, and ran out the door, which latched behind her as the lights turned themselves off and the apartment powered down.

Kim activated the navigational overlay on her headset and was directed down to the main floor via the elevator. She made her way through the lobby and out onto a broad plaza flanked by identical high-rise apartment buildings that marched nondescriptly off into the distance in two tidy rows. It was gray, rainy, and cold (exactly as forecast). Kim had dawdled a little too long this morning and had therefore been routed via the surface walks instead of the more comfortable but congested underground tunnels. On a warm, sunny day, the walk was pleasant; the area was nicely landscaped and afforded a stunning view of the lofty towers of the corporate district off in the distance. But there was nothing nice about the weather today, so Kim pulled her rain jacket tight around her as she scurried along as quickly as possible, partly to get out of the weather but mostly to avoid missing her bus.

After a few minutes half-walking, half-trotting, she arrived at the station and placed her right wrist in the scanner, which read the embedded ID chip and flashed green to indicate admission. A nervous glance at her watch and a sigh of relief. She had been slow in leaving her apartment this morning but had managed to make up most of the lost time along the way, arriving at the turnstile only ten seconds behind schedule. This was fortunate, since the last thing she needed was to annoy the AIs by forcing them to reroute her at the last moment. She had been working in the Company’s transit support division for the last six months, and she knew exactly how much tolerance the AIs had for tardiness—none whatsoever. The entire system was demand-driven, with tens of millions of passengers and countless buses and trains routed and dispatched on a real-time basis. Depending on your boarding priority and which stations the AIs sent you through, your commute could be quick and comfortable or slow and painful. It was important to stay on their good side, and few things were as certain to provoke a week of long and grueling commutes as carelessly missing a bus and forcing them to adjust your routing at the last moment. It was always a bad idea to be late.

Following the directions of her headset, she sprinted through the station and found her assigned place in the twelfth slot of the mid-priority queue, arriving moments before the bus rounded the corner and pulled into the loading zone. Whew! The doors opened wide, and she rushed in along with dozens of other bland, interchangeable commuters, quickly finding a nice spot between a stanchion and the side of the bus. Moments later, a latecomer tried to wedge herself in, but Kim stood her ground and glared to warn the interloper off. This was her spot, and nobody was going to chase her away.

The driver pushed a button on the console and off they went, first gliding in near-silence along a surface road, then picking up speed and joining a long convoy as a dozen buses locked up head-to-tail and merged onto the elevated express lane. Within moments of departure, everyone had their faces stuck in their mobiles, including Kim, who brought up a mindless solitaire game to pass the time. She was halfway through a second hand when she felt someone trying to pry her away from the all-important stanchion. It was the latecomer once again. Kim looked her nemesis in the eye, glaring angrily to warn her off, which seemed to suffice. It would not do either of them any good to be caught jostling one another on the bus. But then, a few minutes later, she was at it again, trying to squeeze into Kim’s prime spot. Damn! What is her problem? Kim grabbed the stanchion even more firmly, determined not to be displaced. Eventually, whoever-it-was gave up, leaving Kim in peace to finish one more game of solitaire before the convoy plunged underground and arrived at the subway station, where Kim and hundreds of others were disgorged into a vast grotto of concrete and tile. They rushed through tunnels and cascaded down stairways, blindly following their headsets’ directions at every junction and branch point until each was deposited on the correct spot to wait for their assigned train.

To her surprise, Kim’s headset directed her toward the front of the platform, and she was quite puzzled until she looked down and saw a green message light blinking on her mobile.

NOTIFICATION from The Transportation Company

The Company would like to take this opportunity to thank you, our valued customer, for your patience this morning when a rude and selfist passenger attempted to deprive you of your fair share of space on one of our buses.

In appreciation for your sense of community, The Company is pleased to award you a half-step upgrade to your boarding priority for the remainder of this trip, as well as 0.1 social merit points.

Thank you for your business, and we hope the remainder of your trip will be pleasant.

The upgrade was welcome, as always, and who didn’t love a merit award? It was only a tenth of a point, but every little bit helped, and she was determined to keep her nose clean, rack up the points, and eventually improve upon her current Baa2 Social Cohesion Rating and move from District 10 to someplace nicer, perhaps the edge of District 8 if she was lucky. The headset then guided her to the medium-high priority queue, where she eagerly waited, anticipating a prized seat toward the front of the train. No more standing, no more jostling for her this morning! When the train arrived, she managed to find a bench in her assigned compartment, the third from the front, just before the mid-priority riders rushed in and wrapped themselves around the stanchions much as Kim had done earlier that morning. She was glad that she had remained calm and let the AIs sort things out, savoring just a bit of schadenfreude at the likely fate of the passenger who had so annoyed her on the first leg of her journey.

After another fifteen minutes of impersonal (but comfortable!) tedium, she arrived at The AI Company’s headquarters, a windowless tower of concrete and steel situated in the heart of the Corporate District. On a clear day, it appeared to soar ever upward into the sky, towering over the lesser structures clustered about its base, but today only the lowest fifty stories were visible, the bulk of the structure disappearing into the clouds and mist on what continued to be a wet and miserable day. She continued to follow the overlay through the security checkpoint, up the elevator to the transportation support division on the twentieth floor, and through the maze of narrow aisles. Straight, left, left, straight, right. At last, she arrived and settled into today’s assigned cubicle exactly on time, a tribute to the precision of the transit system and the AIs that controlled it.

On to another day of teaching the automatons. They were simple devices, unable to think for themselves, and it was only through constant training by skilled individuals such as Kim that they were able to deal with the ever-changing environment in which they operated. Today, fittingly enough, she was looking for ‘malicious jostling.’ In the crowded confines of the transit system, a certain amount of shoving and jockeying for position was tolerated, particularly at boarding time, but once a vehicle was in motion, the passengers were expected to remain in whatever location they had chosen at the start of the journey and avoid unnecessary contact with others. The penalties for jostling were not severe—usually no more than a temporary reduction in boarding priority and a tiny demerit—but usually sufficed to deter this sort of unwanted behavior. Selfist outbursts such as Kim had encountered this morning were thankfully rare among the well-heeled residents of the inner districts.

She began plowing through the surveillance data in her queue, with the training manual (frequently updated) and the Terms of Service (likewise frequently updated) close at hand. Today’s task was posed as a series of yes/no questions, the first being, was there significant contact? In half the cases, the answer was yes, and in half, the answer was no. Good. Whoever had collected the data had done a proper job. There was nothing so useless as a training set with excessive numbers of positive or negative instances, which would teach the automaton nothing whatsoever.

Once contact had been confirmed, there was a series of further questions devised to discern intent. Had the passengers made eye contact? Were there any physiological signs of aggression or fear? Had there been any shoving or jostling between the passengers earlier in the trip? Was the contact repeated, and if so, how often? In borderline cases, she was instructed to consider additional factors, especially the suspect’s social cohesion rating. This was yet another reason to keep your nose clean—once your rating began to fall, it was apt to continue doing so as the AIs started citing you for even the most minor, borderline infractions.

Kim’s answers to these questions were first compared with those of two other trainers and, if all three agreed, the data was fed into the neural network and eventually deployed across the transit system. Three-way concurrence was essential, as any disagreement would trigger an escalated assessment that would inevitably result in at least one trainer receiving a job performance penalty. Nobody cared whether the answer was correct or not as long as all three trainers agreed, and Kim had long ago learned the value of dull conventionality. Being the oddball was never wise, even if you were right.

After a morning reviewing hour after hour of surveillance data and resolving over a dozen cases, Kim rode the elevator down to the second sub-basement for lunch and entered the bland, cheerful cafeteria to wait in line for the chef’s salad. Today’s offering was lentils and quinoa on a bed of wilted kale. Yuck. Kim had never been fond of quinoa, and she positively despised kale, but at least there wasn’t any tofu. She caught herself starting to smile with amusement at this thought, then quickly stifled it, fearing that the AIs would incorrectly infer that she was somehow pleased with today’s offering and add it to this week’s grocery order. Sure enough, moments later, an urgent message began to flash bright green on her mobile:

Special Discount, Today Only!

25% off on Kale, Lentils, and Quinoa!

Kim replied with an emphatic no but wasn’t sure it would make any difference. If they wanted you to eat kale, you were going to eat kale, and that was it. Her headset then directed her to a seat in a private dining nook, where she sat down to eat and catch up on Chit-Chat. There was nothing terribly important, but it did help to pass the time and distract her from the sodden green mass that remained upon her tray after she’d picked out most of the lentils and some of the quinoa.

All too soon, it was back into the elevator for the return trip to the twentieth floor.

The afternoon was just like the morning, except for one case that proved both challenging and interesting. At first, it seemed to be a routine encounter in which two passengers (subjects A and B) pressed up against one another in a crowded train near the outer districts. There was clearly no jostling involved, and Kim was about to mark it as a negative instance when she noticed that Subject A was wearing gaudy, gender-revealing clothing (prominent mams) and an unstylish mane.

Hmmm. This looks suspicious.

Even though no rules had been broken, Kim decided to replay the surveillance, looking to see if anything else might come to light. Sure enough, she caught Subject B staring at A’s mams, which were almost in her face. This was accompanied by a positive physiological reaction from both, indicating excitement rather than the embarrassed revulsion that one would normally expect.

Both leering and encouragement of leering were prohibited by the Terms of Service, so Kim cited them for Level 1 violations but kept probing, certain that a more serious infraction would soon become evident. She replayed the video from several other angles and eventually caught them whispering to one another. Then she checked the exit logs and, as suspected, the two had left the system together. Holding hands. And smiling. Damn. This is getting serious. Kim had seen this pattern before and knew exactly what was going on—they were misusing the transit system to bypass Matchmaker and arrange for an illicit sexual liaison. She boosted the penalty to Level 2 but was certain she could find at least a Level 3 violation if she kept on probing.

Time to check around.

Kim contacted one of the AIs at Matchmaker and was told that both subjects had been banned for gender-selective intimacy violations. Furthermore, The Elevator Company’s AIs indicated they had ridden to Subject B’s apartment together and that Subject A had not left the building until several hours later. No further surveillance was available, as all devices within the apartment had been powered down as soon as the two had entered. Nevertheless, there was enough data to form a definitive conclusion—the two subjects had misused the transportation system to arrange for an illicit gender-selective liaison, a Level 4 violation. After consulting the training manual, she assessed a two-point penalty to their boarding priorities for a duration of six months and imposed a significant social cohesion demerit. Finally, she notified The Housing Company so they could assess whatever penalties were appropriate under their own Terms of Service. Sadly, the two would doubtless find themselves living far out in the middle districts, if not the outers.

Sitting alone in her cubicle, Kim found herself unsettled by what she had just seen. The notion that these two had cared so much about the difference between a vag and a phal seemed bizarre to her, impossible to explain. Why would anyone risk the severe penalties associated with genderism just to gratify such an odd, irrational fetish? But then, some people seemed to think that they were special and didn’t have to play by the rules. Whatever misfortune befell them, they had brought it on themselves through their selfist disregard for the greater