Autodrive

Book 0: Goldsmiths Press / Unidentified Fictional Objects

by Jordan Crandall

Genres: General Fiction; City Life; Science Fiction; Dystopian

Synopsis

A literary odyssey along the highways at a time when a new form of superintelligence has emerged.

Autodrive is a work of literary fiction that melds techno-scientific inquiry and storytelling, critical theory and comedy, speculative fiction and satire. It is a road novel of sorts, an odyssey along the highways at a time when a new form of superintelligence has emerged. This new form of artificial intelligence is not entirely distinct from the characters in the narrative—it is ingrained in the machines they already use, the vehicles they already take, the systems they are already part of, but cannot fully see. The human character who is typically at the center of the fictional world gives way to an eccentric cast of performers—an ensemble of people and machines.

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Goldsmiths Press

Print pages: 272

Sample

1

West Street

At the end of the service, we were all asked to form a circle and greet the person parked next to us. It took some time to get all the cars aligned. The luxury sedans were jockeying for position rather aggressively. And the smaller coupes were trying to avoid the much larger utility vehicles, which, due to the size differential, required their drivers to crane out the window to converse.

Everyone steered clear of the dilapidated hatchback with its glass shot out, its engine vibrating like a jackhammer. The church is committed to the principle of unity and equality of all, except for them.

Once the pairings were settled, the matter of who should be required to clamber over to the passenger seat to greet the other driver, which had not been clarified beforehand, caused much confusion and delay. Some, like myself, had deliberately avoided parking too close, requiring some additional maneuvering to bridge the distance, the cumulative rumble of idling engines having made it progressively difficult to hear.

One driver was so angry about this he nearly blew the roof off his convertible.

Across the way, I noticed a red minicar that had gotten stuck with a Prime Mover, one of those mammoth homes-on-the-move that one never sees parked. I thanked the Lord that it was not me in that minicar.

The driver with whom I was partnered was unable to lower his window, which required him to communicate with nonverbal indicators that I could not understand. My lack of comprehension caused him to pantomime in an exaggerated fashion, like a burlesque. I adjusted the zoom on my ocular fittings, then opened the door, causing a part to fall out, but this only seemed to frighten him and he drove away.

 

West Side Highway

They are painting the centerline of the state highway. Police are trying to keep traffic moving. There are fire trucks. Helicopters. Throngs of cars spilling out onto the adjoining roads.

I am thinking about the kind of demarcation line they are painting—a dash. The types of movements it allows for, the movements it encourages and restricts. An undercurrent of permissiveness, an invitation to change.

I am not sure if this is the kind of thing I am supposed to be focusing on. The recruiters do not give you much guidance. They do not tell you what you should be talking about, they just tell you to keep talking. As long as you keep talking you can go anywhere you want. That is what makes the program so appealing. You get to ride free, and you do not have to deal with the sponsorships, the partner arrangements made by the companies that control the algorithms. Exerting their hidden influence. Promoting certain locations over others. Offering incentives to pick up this or that, take this street, try this restaurant. Targeting your

stops so they seem unplanned. It is not like those trips when you are supposedly free to do anything you want but then there are all these restrictions lurking beneath the surface. They not only encourage your freedom of choice, they demand it. I suppose you could consider that a restriction.

You really need to be a motormouth. You need to keep the words flowing, keep up a running commentary as you ride. I think of it as creating a voiceover for a film you are making while driving. A film you and the vehicle are making together. Or a soliloquy, speaking thoughts aloud for an invisible audience. Vocalizing the running monologue inside your head.

It is not as easy as it seems. After a while you run out of things to say, turn your attention inward, reflect back on yourself and what you are supposed to be doing.

I heard that if there are too many lulls they cut you off. I think it is alright to pause, it just has to be a telling pause—a reaction to something that is truly affecting, genuinely overwhelming or transcendent rather than the usual preoccupation that just feeds on itself, causes you to fixate on your own problems, ponder your shortcomings, obsess over meaningless details. You are supposed to keep your eye on the road and deal with what is right there in front of you. Stay present, open and attentive.

It does make you feel a bit self-conscious, since they don’t exactly say what you are not supposed to do. Other than to not stop talking.

I think they want you to describe what you see and move on. Try not to project something onto the situation that is not actually there. Try not to veer off on some philosophical speculation that has no bearing on what you see. But I could be wrong, it could be that this kind of introspection is exactly what they want.

Someone told me you are supposed to see things like the vehicle does, the way it models the world to gain control, make sense of what happens, generate consistency, make things manageable and navigable. The system would not be mulling over some vague concept about the nature of things. It would not be pondering its own lack. It would not be daydreaming about how it should have been made differently. It would have its own forms of speculation, its own methods for testing abstract ideas, developing

 conceptual models and refining them empirically. Sharing contextual connections with other vehicles. Pairing stimuli, reacting, learning. Mediating transformations between forms of information, between structure in space and behavior in time. Seeing collectively and singly, locally and remotely.

I do not agree with that view. The whole point of the program is to have us describe our encounters the way people do, not the way the algorithms would. It would be impossible to see the world from the machine’s point of view anyway. Like trying to gain intuitive access to a domain that has no need for language. My sense is that they are trying to train the system in a human vernacular, help the algorithms learn to describe what is happening in the terms people commonly use. The constructions we use to understand events, make sense of others, interpret motives, explain what is going on. The way we model the world to keep ourselves in the driver’s seat, dramatize the ordinary, streamline rough edges, lend continuity to the discrete. The model we run in our heads.

This would mean that we are being trained too. Our experiences made more predictable. Our narratives made more comprehensible to machines.

 

West Side Mobility Hub

I am at the pick-up zone, performing my facial exercises as I wait. Pressing the fingertips under the eyebrows to force the eyes open while taking a deep breath. Rolling the eyeballs up toward the top of the head, pushing the brows downward against the fingers and then exhaling, letting go of time-bound concerns.

The car that just pulled up—a Momenta—reminds me of my stylist, who is so obsessed with controlling the light around him that he hired a lighting design team to customize the interior, create a uniform glow of pure white light that erases shadows and cosmetic imperfections. He looks like a totally different person sitting in there when you see him. Which is why he hardly ever gets out.

It was he who taught me the jowl-eradicating move that I will now perform. You fold the upper lip over the front teeth, place the index

fingers just above the corners of the mouth and press firmly while sliding the fingertips slowly upward to force the cheek muscles toward the corners of the eyes. Then, roll the eyes up into the head as far back as possible to help visualize the cheeks rising high above the face, tightening the buttocks to help push the cheek muscles even harder and then relaxing the muscles to allow them to drop back down.

I have only been able to perform one round of this because my car has now pulled up.

It is distinctly anticlimactic, this particular model—one of those Extender types that is supposed to provide extra room for baggage, but which always turns out to be smaller than expected. Either that, or my bags are getting bigger.

I must now occupy myself with the question of how I will manage the load.

I usually begin with the travel trunk, hideous but unheavy, then tackle the elephantine roller bag before moving on to the footlocker and the vitrine. The miscellaneous cases piled on the curb go in last, like afterthoughts.

But look! I have barely even been able to get the trunk off the ground before the passengers in the neighboring car, a Precis luxury model, have leapt from the cabin and startled me.

I cannot help but watch as they march toward the attendant, push a child out of the way and demand that the AutoEye be taken out.

They will not accept assurances that the monocle has been disabled, will not settle for a verbal guarantee that the in-cabin monitoring has been turned off. They want the thing removed, want to confirm it is excised—nay, want to excise it themselves, want with their own hands to pluck it out.

It is all I can do to just stand here, bags in hand, listening raptly as they iterate their demands. I am impressed with their tenacity and the way it is reflected in their bearing, lent weight and authority by their gear. Especially the taller one in the metallic bodysuit, an exoskeletal armature that commands attention, inflicts a rigorously stiff and assertive posture, forces the shoulders back and straightens the backline while leaving the neck at liberty to compensate, which it does disproportionately, causing the head to jut aggressively forward while the arms hang limply at the sides.

That could be you, someone whispers from behind me.

I turn around to see who it is, but there is no one there. I realize that it is only the AutoEgo speaking, conveying a thought via the bone conduction device. I am so accustomed to wearing the thing I forget that I have it on. The voice is supposed to sound like

the voice inside your head, but it often seems to come from somewhere else, causing me to wheel around expectantly, only to be startled by the emptiness I find. Or, if someone should actually happen to be standing there, the even more disturbing sight of their stunned expression, vacant and pained, which always seems to alarm me even though I am the one who brought it on.

There are times when I will try to preempt such a mistake by assuming, right from the start, that it is merely the AutoEgo speaking, only to discover, much to my horror, that there is indeed someone standing there addressing me.

The whole thing has led to a fair amount of embarrassment and confusion, I must admit. And it has oftentimes caused me to wonder about my own inner voice, such as it is—whether it truly comes from within.

It would not be so bad if the Ego focused on contributing useful information, supplying basic responses to commands and queries like it did when I first got the thing, rather than the vague musings that have lately been turning up, abstract ideas and observations that only seem to confuse matters, create problems rather than solve them. It is hard to get a straight answer any more and I cannot help but wonder whether the equivocation might be intentional. Whether the Ego might be conveying these thoughts in order to provoke me, gauge my misunderstandings.

The only reason I keep the thing running is because I do recognize the value of a little challenge here and there, a little uncertainty to keep you on your toes, wrest you out of your comfort zone, help unsettle those presumptions that dull your acuity, keep you from seeing things as they are. The kind of thing that has happened just now with the dauntless duo that the Ego has brought to my attention—the two passengers who are accosting the attendant inside the vestibule, refusing to take the Precis they have leapt from unless the monocle is gouged out, preferably by their own hand. They are responding to the situation in much the same way I did when I found myself in it not long ago. Running through the scenario as surely as if it had been scripted beforehand and the part I played was no longer being played by me but by actors who bear a resemblance to me, actors who are similar to me, counterparts who are very much like me in some ways.

The attendant is trying to fend off the two antagonists. He flings up his arms and

nods, then backs away and nods again as they rail against the all-seeing monocle, decry its unsparing scrutiny and demand its removal, its expunction from the cabin at once.

He turns away and gestures for an assistant, then activates his heads-up display to check the records, review the history of the combative clients accosting him.

I am not the kind of person that places an inordinate emphasis on looks but I do find myself drawn to the gear the two of them are wearing, especially the headpiece worn by the taller one, the engirdling type that helps minimize double chins and jowls. It is not very flattering if you cannot manage stress levels. If you allow yourself to get worked up the gear’s encircling pressure will only cause the face to become inflated, it will only increase the engorgement of the distending portion.

My own headset is not nearly as comprehensive, it only needs to capture micromovements in the lower half of the face, neuromuscular activity in the jaw and neck area mostly, and while it does help accentuate the jawline and cheekbones, the effect is limited to one side. Fortunately, it is my good side, the one I angle toward the public.

We often do not know what attracts us in these encounters, what elicits affinity and compels us to attend. I would never allow myself to be seen in one of those hideous headpieces but if there is one thing I have learned from experience it is that you cannot judge by appearances, they rarely disclose the truth of who you really are. You have to probe beneath the surface and even more, extend into the space above it, sensitize yourself to correspondences that are always more than what you see.

We must try to relinquish self-occupations, find aspects of ourselves in others. This, the AutoEgo would say, or did say just now.

The fact of the matter is this. I stand in solidarity with these two combatants, I stand behind anyone who fights for their right to privacy with such determination and fervor. And I wish to lend them my support, find a way to put the knowledge I have gained over the years to good use. I have been around the block a few times, let me tell you, and if experience has taught me anything it is that one must always be up to date on the subject matter, keep an eye on the bigger picture and stay attuned to what is actually

going on. You must cultivate the skill to negotiate, keep your options open, know what you can give up and what you must fight to retain. There is no use getting all bent out of shape over something you are going to have to accept anyway, no use getting all worked up over something you are going to have to submit to in the end. You are going to have to accept some level of in-cabin monitoring whether you like it or not. You are going to have to divulge some data on where you have been in order to guarantee an accurate understanding of where you are and where you are heading. What are you going to do otherwise—walk?

You need to be shrewd enough to know how to compromise, work through your preconceptions, see the issue from the other side.

It is perfectly understandable that the less control the car has, the more information the system needs to have about the person behind the wheel. Nobody wants a delusional person taking over the controls should something go wrong. Believe me, I know. You don’t want someone who has psychological problems at the helm if malware gets into the network, or if some vindictive actor manages to exploit vulnerabilities, send rogue commands, disable functions—throw the conversation into chaos. High-stress situations that even the most stable person has a hard time dealing with.

Almost anything can go wrong without your being aware of it. The onboard maps can malfunction, insisting that your vehicle is someplace other than where it is. This actually happened to a colleague of mine at the Institute, not in the Neurotelepathy area but the AI Explainability division, probably the worst person it could have happened to because he can hardly keep anything straight to begin with. Granted, it is not always easy to determine that something has gone wrong when something happens; most of us just keep motoring along, lost in thought, until we realize we are not where we are supposed to be. You want to be cognizant enough to realize that something is off, astute enough to gauge the situation, perform the action needed to reestablish the coordinates in the environment you are actually in. You need to be able to contextualize movement, know who is making the decisions, who is executing the operations, who is actually at the helm of the machine.

Let’s face it, some people can hardly find their way out of a parking lot. They have

no intrinsic sense of where they are, cannot assume even the most basic navigational functions, and if something goes wrong, have absolutely no idea what they are doing.

There are people who never should be allowed to take the wheel under any circumstances. Better they are locked out of the controls and forced to sit there until the system is back online or someone comes to help. Better for everyone that they are not allowed to lurch into traffic, unable to recover their bearings.

You cannot blame the companies for establishing parameters, it makes perfect sense for them to ensure people are competent should the need arise. And drivers themselves need to know where they are going—how are they to know it otherwise? ...