Two people who I will never know and who do not exist

I recently watched a youtube video by the tech professional Benn Jordan, where he investigates the security vulnerabilities in a specific brand of robot dog currently deployed across the United States. The most obviously striking part of this video is that Jordan, seemingly without much difficulty, was able to develop an exploit that he claims would allow him to take over every robot dog in a nearby area and have them under his complete control.

That is clearly not ideal. I, however, am not afraid of robot dogs or what China might do with the data from them.

Rather, what struck me was a specific use of these quadrupedal robots (a more accurate term, for they look no more like dogs than cats). They have been bought as replacements for security guards in places like parking garages and and housing developments. Since their AI is rudimental at best, they are controlled remotely by workers in some foreign country, Jordan presumes this country to be India. He notes how this is probably actually cheaper that hiring a security guard. In some pitiful way, perhaps, this process helps redistribute America’s wealth across the globe.

So, here we get to the titular, and fictional, premise. My mind immediately jumped to the possibility of knowing what is like to be one of these remote workers. I imagined the possible news reports documenting their labor, just as journalists have documented so much of the varied hidden labor required to make our world appear more robotic. More metal, more stilted, more waves carrying through the air the binary that decides if we live or die.

What could it really mean though.

I imagine telling a grand story, something like Let the Great World Spin, of a remote worker in India laboring away in the day at his wretchedly boring and easy task and then recounting the hilarious instances of culture struck and misbehaving American citizens who harass his assigned quadruped. Perhaps he would name it. Something obnoxiously American, like Max. All this would be taken from careful interpretation of on the ground research. Then, I’d turn to lower-income minority communities currently being gerry-mandered out of their vote who have to come home every night to a robot pacing behind their every step. Maybe on the weekends the controller is racist and only harasses the people of color. But, on the weekdays its a sweet young man who pleads with the residents, their guests, and the trespassers to behave themselves. Who begs, in a high pitched and warbled voice for them to stop going through the trash so that he doesn’t have to call the police. For, even in India, he has seen the videos. Perhaps, before he came to know these people through Max’s camera, he even thought they deserved it. And then, from afar, a resident, a young woman or man, watching the confrontation, hears the humanity in his voice, and also the youth.

Out of curiosity, boredom, likely a pinch of problematic exoticism aligned with a sense of feeling out of place, they will try to spark up a conversation with Max. Company protocol prevents this type of communication, so the American must get themselves in little bits of trouble to force the remote worker to speak to them.

“If you don’t tell me your name,” they say, dangling a glass bottle loosely between two fingers, “I’ll smash this glass all over the asphalt and then you’ll have to call the cops for my erratic behavior.” They both smile.

This is how they’ll come to know each other. They’ll become best of friends, fall in love, who knows what else. It will end when one gets fired, the other moves. They’ll connect online, but it’ll fade, the premise no longer there. It reminds me of “The Temptation of Adam” by Josh Ritter. 

But these are two people who I do not know and who do not exist.

I wish I could, I wish they did.