Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [36]
'You've had a listen, what do you reckon? The prototype isn't functioning 100%, but you can see the way it's structured is there's one big tactile button for baby right where he can get at it, and here, on the pushbar, full audio controls and screen for mommy…'
'I'm just the programmer,' I snarl, cutting him off. 'I'm only interested in the internal processes.'
'Whooo! Someone is grumpy this morning.'
'I was up most of the night,' I snip, too defensive. He's caught me off guard, and I've slipped up, which is a good indication that I haven't in fact had enough rest, but please let him not try and get into the why. Fortunately, his brain defaults automatically to the same strand of primitive code every time.
'You should have called me,' he leers. 'I could have come over. Helped you sleep.'
'The job?' I point at the screen, impatient.
'You didn't even say anything about the flowers.'
'They're stunning. Amazing. How did you ever think of such a meaningful and original gesture?'
'Wow. You are vicious.' He seems hurt, and because I need him to hurry up and get this out of the way, I kiss and make up.
'I'm sorry, Mpho. I'm ratty when I'm sleepdeprived. You should tell the product designers it should be a hanging mobile rather than a button. You want something the little shit will want to play with, something sparkly or dangly that he'll reach for anyway, and then it just happens to make a cute sound or play a lullaby or whatever.'
'Rockabye.'
'Yeah, okay. That too.'
'That's actually brilliant, Lerato.'
'I know.'
'You should be in design. You should be heading up design!'
'Oh, I know.'
It takes twenty minutes to work out the details of how the interface needs to work, and then I chase Mpho off so I can focus on the programming. I have an idea I can patch in a fair amount of the code I used in a previous job (the PlayPlay Pterodactyl Robot Friend), but it's still going to take me most of the morning, and I run into trouble with a finicky bit with the voice recognition, getting it to filter out baby's babblings. Of course, the real solution here would be to program it to recognise the different gooing and gurgling and translate it into English for mama. Didn't I read some pushmag thing on the theory of baby communications? If I could figure out baby's language code, that would be a product feature. Let's call it Radio Gaga.
Toby calls, just as I'm about to crack it. Okay, so I'm nowhere near cracking it, but I tell him it's his fault anyway. He's not sympathetic. 'Don't dump me with your dilemmas. I need serious work-related tech support.'
'Uh-huh?' I say, carefully neutral, surreptitiously activating privacy on my cubicle so the audio dampeners kick in, just in case he's stupid enough to make any passing reference to the adboard. There still hasn't been an official report. Not that I don't know that invoking privacy means that Seed automatically tags my conversation, all phone calls will be recorded for quality assurance purposes blah blah blah, but I've got misdirects in place. I have a mix of prerecorded conversations, from the polite and cursory catch-ups with my sisters (when Zama can be bothered to call), to a variety of hot and heavy that gives the spyware controllers upstairs something to do with their hands. The only hassle is constantly updating them, so the monitoring boys don't get suspicious. I needn't have bothered on this one. Toby's 'dilemma' is almost a legitimate request. Easy enough. And fucking hilarious.
'Whenever you're ready, sweetness,' Toby says, put out, which only makes me laugh harder.
'That's a new record in lame, Toby.'
'Yeah, let's see how you handle getting cut off from your trustfundable by your motherbitch.'
'Oh nice, Toby. Real nice.' The only thing I ever got from my parents was a kickstart into corporate life.
'You know what I fucking mean. Don't get touchy.'