Sci-fi Novel Workshop
Novel in progress: SHURPA, about love in the time of artificial intelligence
The year: 2050
The place: A high-tech office in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (see the Daily life in 2050)
The characters: Office mates and their robotic stand-ins. (see the Characters page and SHURPA Owner's Manual)
The subplots: (see the Subplots page)
- Lyre & Eager: office romance
- Sarba & Walf: office romance
- Lyre's mother Pool: coping with modern technology
- Forge & Lincoln: ambition, ethics and fear in the modern office
- Zero's shurpa hack: goes viral
The theme: This is about the importance of humans, even as people turn over more of the practicalities of daily life to computers. The robots may take over eventually, but they won't be able to get rid of us. This is not a dystopian story, neither does it have a happy ending, but it's reassuring to know we will still understand how things work.
- Initial team meeting at XYCorp; characters introduced.
- Lyre & Eager notice each other, strong mutual attraction.
- Walf & Sarba are visibly lovy dovy in the meeting, which invites suspicion.
- Eager visits Zero. They concoct a shurpa hack for fun.
- Lyre visits Pool, discovers her shurpa running amok.
Wedged into the TransPod car against a window facing a bare concrete wall, Lyre refocused thas eyes and became aware of a man's face, somehow magnified to billboard size in the glass. Tha was apparently a fellow commuter still standing on the platform, though Lyre had no idea where.
Lyre crossed from the dirty concrete of the TransPod station onto the polished faux marble floors of the shopping area concourse on the main level of thas downtown office building. Tha kept pace with the other pedestrians around her, though declined assistance from the FLO traffic control system. Tha planned instead to exit the stream shortly at a Starbux coffee shop.
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EagerShine.shurpa took the seat directly across the board room table from Lyre and flashed a familiar smile. This was the same man from the TransPod window, tha realized with sudden alarm. Lyre's heart started beating loudly and tha's impulse was to run, leaving everything behind.
Instead, Lyre clenched thas fist under the table to control thamself. Tha fumbled in thas purse to stall for
... read more
"Welcome everyone," said Forge. "For those who don't know me, I'm the prime on this project. I have been with BigCorp for eight years in various technical and cooperative settings. My specialty is Value Discovery with a focus on TransGeneration.
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"Hey, that's Lyre," said Sarba looking out the window. "Maybe she'll come in for a drink."
"Welcome home," said Charlotte.shurpa as Lyre stepped through the doorway of her West End apartment. "Let me take your briefcase. Here is a hot towel for your face and I'll put this martini on the credenza for you."
"Thank you Charlotte. You're an angel. The traffic downtown is horrendous. Some stupid shurpa walked into a transformer or something and shorted out the FLO system for four ci
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"Hey, The Hero Returns!" shouted Eager as EagerShine.shurpa stepped through the front door of thas West End apartment.
EagerShine.shurpa smiled broadly around the tiny studio kitchenette and saluted Eager, sitting on the couch with a beer can. EagerOrga, Eager's shurpa office manager, perched on a stool by the stove top, waved back. EagerOrga's hologenic display was obviously
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"Eager," said EagerOrga.shurpa, "You have a new invitation for a virtual venue chat in 5 minutes. This looks relevant and you have no conflicts."
"Hmm, specs?" asked Eager.
Forge sat in his private office looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows over the city. Lights in buildings blinked on sporadically in the gathering dusk. Moonlight on the snowy peaks of the Lions made them look like giant canine teeth gripping the mountain ridge above the city.
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EagerDog.shurpa pushed thas damp nose into Eager's hand and gently licked thas palm. Eager removed thas VR workstation headset and saw that tha was wagging thas tail. "Thanks Dog," he said. "Time for a break? How long have I been under? Four hours? Got to get some fresh air." Tha put thas hands behind thas head and stretched back in thas chair, exhaling "Ahhhhh".
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- Lyre & Eager dare and tease each other into a date.
- Walf & Sarba are caught in a compromising position at the office.
- Lincoln & Forge change the project objective, which creates quesitons and doubt on the team.
- Pool in more trouble with her shurpa.
- Zero & Eager devise a customer intelligence pumping scheme.
As the office building elevator slid closed Eager saw someone outside in the hallway running towards the door. Tha reached through the gap to hold the door open and Lyre stepped through, clutching thas briefcase with one hand, pushing thas hair back with the other.
"Thanks so much!" Lyre gasped, backing into an empty space and rearranging thas trench coat. Then tha looked up again a
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At 11:45 Eager knocked softly on the moulding of Lyre's cube, an exact copy of thas, except with the furniture reversed. Lyre was lying back in thas chair gazing up at four large holoscreens which occupied almost the whole space above the cube in thas field of view. Tha was murmuring voice instructions and issuing display commands with hand gestures.
"Oh, hi," Lyre said, startled. "
... read more
The Jolly Robot was filling up quickly with decompressing office workers,
but Walf and Sarba had acquired a booth near the back. They waved as Eager and
Lyre came through the front door. "Quick! Vultures are circling over the
empty seats," shouted Sarba.
"So, Eager, how was your first unvirtual day on the job?" asked
Walf.
"Quite different, I have to say," said
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The noise level in the Jolly Robot cranked up another notch. Someone in the
crowd turned sharply and hit Eager's head with a loose elbow. Which reminded tham
to go to the washroom and splash some cold water on tham face. When tha got
back Lyre was sitting on the other side of the booth. Walf and Sarba were gone.
"They left?"
"They said something about an ol
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“Ok, what about this trip to Mexico? What’s happening there?” asked Eager.
“We’re flying to Mexico. I’ve never been, so you’re going to show me around.
Oh look, now we’ve landed at the airport. Where are we?” asked Lyre.
"Puerto Vallarta."
"Ok, we're at the Puerto Vallarta airport. It’s beautiful. I can see palm trees. Where
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"At the hotel there is an archway over the entrance so taxis can park in the shade. There are palm trees in big pots and huge pink gardenias in bloom. The air smells like adobe baking in the sun, also flower scent and ocean breeze. We're high on the hillside, so we can see out over the other red tile roofs to the blue water in the bay. Manuel, the owner, greets us like old friends. Thas kids ca
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The subplots: advance incrementally and converge on the crisis. I hope they accumulate a lot of gags and cheap laughs along the way.
- Lyre & Eager discover they are not each other's prince & princess, in spite of strong love mental disorder.
- Walf and Sarba are discovered, found in violation of the anti-frat rules and punished by Mother.
- Eager questions whether the project objective is ethical, or even achievable. Showdown with Forge & Lincoln
- Zero & Eager launch their customer intelligence hack.
- Lyre & Eager have tearful breakup, recriminations, but acknowlege they still have to work together at XYCorp.
- Pool recognizes the stage of negotiation in Lyre & Eager's relationship, missed by Lyre's shurpa.
- Lincoln wants team members to join the shurpa decryption lobby group and create embarrassing social media posts.
- Lincoln discovers his customer intelligence program has been hacked.
- Mother interrogates Lyre & Eager on suspicion.
- Lincoln freaks out on Forge over hacks and project delays.
- The team makes plans behind Forge's back to propose a new project objective and realistic shedule.
- Lyre & Eager support each other at work and discover they like this arrangement. Great sex that night.
The trajectory: When the chips from all the subplots fall into place you can finally see how they were all connected from the beginning. Everything that happened was inevitable. Now it all makes sense; it couldn't have turned out any other way.
The Villain: was foiled this time, but learned something by the experience. Next time perhaps they'll have given up their evil ways. Or maybe their evil skills will be that much sharper.
The Managers: have not succeeded in their fevered plans. It turns out that an iron will won't make things happen without a certain amount of underlying willingness from the minions. Bribes and threats go only so far as a management strategy. Next time they'll have to try something else to get what they want.
The Lovers: got what they asked for, but maybe not what they wanted. We hope they'll keep loving and asking.
The Avatars: have gotten even better at analysing human emotions. That's a good thing because it makes them even more useful to us humans. They help us understand other people, cooperate on common purposes and negotiate for what we want.
- Forge calls a special team meeting and delivers his ultimatim.
- The team threatens to quit en masse unless project objective changed and sanctions rolled back.
- Forge escorted out by security. Lincoln appoints Lyre as new team lead.
- Lyre & Eager more great sex that night.
- Eager invited to supper at Pool's place.
- Walf & Sarba get married.
- Pool figures out basic shurpa programming.
- Zero gets what he wanted.
- Forge working as barrista.
- Lincoln unchanged, without a clue.