Syboleth ch. 5: Slot Machines

Author note: Complain about short chapters again, I dare you. I double dog dare you.

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Garrett scraped a large granule of sand out of the corner of his eye and officially opened his eyes to the new morning, at twelve past seven.

After a few seconds, a toothbrush with soft bristles and a wooden handle encircled with an iridescent metal next to two floss picks emerged from a slot in the wall nearest his bed that slid open silently; ready with freshly moistened toothpaste. He accepted this toothbrush and began brushing. A soft tone sounded to indicate that the three minute timer was active. If he didn’t stay focused before he had his Adderall he could wind up going until there was blood on the brush. Then Garrett took the floss picks and started flossing his teeth, using one for the top row and the other for the bottom. The tray slid back into the slot as soon as he took the toothbrush and began brushing, and he tossed the picks at a slot in the floor that opened up to accept them into a trash receptacle. A reminder let him know he had forgotten to floss before brushing, and listed some scary dental issues that could arise from this. He ignored it.

Then he got up to go wash his mouth out in the bathroom.

This wasn’t how Jess had brushed her teeth, of course.

She preferred a branded Sanrio water bottle to emerge from her slot.

These are roughly the typical waking moments for the upscale resident of a modern house in the 2030s. We will now move on from this revelation and find Garrett in his kitchen.

Similar slots in the table that was affixed to the floor provided him with various foods, including two slots in the side of this table that shot out juice and ice respectively until manually shut. Garrett used these to fill his glass.

He wasn’t the biggest fan of this level of slots in a home. But he wasn’t the one who had chosen to install them. That would be his yuppie roommate Charlie, who was just waking up himself and had been in the unit for six years to Garrett’s three months. If it had been up to Garrett, he wouldn’t have even been able to afford half this setup.

Though he had to admit that it was very convenient. He tried to think what his self ten years ago would have had to say if he found out about slot architecture. Probably rude language and gestures would be involved.

From the secondary table slot now emerged a sweeping rod that cleared the crumbs from the table. It was exceptionally convenient.

Charlie was rapping along to Kanye West, which he was listening to with bone-conducting implants that could not be seen externally. He was not bothering to skip the N-words, despite his skin which was free of both melanin and albinism.

Then, Charlie did something more difficult to describe.

His wrist, exposed and displaying six silver dots in a hexagon, was placed against a reader. There was a flash of light, and then after three tones his body fat percentage along with other statistics were projected onto the wall for his viewing pleasure.

“You gotta get the dots, Garry,” Charlie said.

“I’m good on that. Get back to me when something glitches out and you wind up a regular Luke Skywalker.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Dude had his hand cut off. You’ve seriously never seen Star Wars?”

“The first one, yeah.”

“Well, sorry for the spoiler,” said Garrett. He was never sorry for anything he did to Charlie. In fact, he resolved, he should do more things more often to make the guy upset.

“Okay,” said Charlie, and went back to his body measurements.

Garrett got up and went back to his room, then sat down at his desk.

A wall projector protruded from a slot, and information about his upcoming day began displaying on the wall in front of the desk in an area determined by his sightline. He moved his head slightly for optimal projection.

89F/32C 3% 24h PoP - June 6th, 2031 6:22 AM

You have a meeting with corporate at 2 pm and must leave by 8:17 am to arrive at work on time via public transit.

Your sleep last night was fitful and lasted 7 hours with two awakenings, one to use the bathroom.

Your daily source for an apocryphal quote misattributed to the source’s author is as follows:

And then, in an eerie impersonation of Ernest Hemingway’s voice, with the occasional artifacts of the crackle of early audio recording, the wall slot projector began speaking: “‘I use the oldest words in the English language. People think I’m an ignorant bastard who doesn’t know the ten-dollar words. I know the ten-dollar words. There are older and better words which if you arrange then in the proper combination you make it stick.’ Ernest Hemingway. Would you like to hear the apocryphal quote this inspired next?”

This was new. Normally it would have… you know, just displayed the text. Garrett was taken aback by this feature, and said something rude.

“Sorry. See you tomorrow,” said the slot projector, and slid back in.

Opening up Reddit, he saw the top posts in most general technology subreddits were about this update.

“Jesus…” he said, palming his forehead and making a mental note to finally really turn off automatic updates. Then he got out of bed and walked to the kitchen, where a slot was ready with a cup of coffee. One cream & one sugar, the slot next to that slot helpfully reassured him.

Once he got to work, he found everyone giving him strange looks. The display had failed to inform him that this was a meeting with HR. Was he getting fired?

He had always figured it was too good to be true. That his Cali job and life would end soon enough and he’d have to go back to Cleveland with Valerie.

Poor Valerie. They both had similar mental health struggles, but she had never managed to pull herself up by her bootstraps in the five years they had known each other like he had.

Not that the concept of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” wasn’t total bullshit to begin with. The original saying was meant to mean something impossible to do anyway.

At two, after various forms of busywork and twiddling his thumbs, it was time for the HR meeting.

He entered the office, and found beaming faces. Beaming faces of those in management. Not getting fired, then.

“Garrett Worth, you’re a helluva guy,” said Mr. Benjamin.

“Thank you, sir,” Garrett said, uncomfortably aware of the attention on him.

“Would you like to transfer to our neural network division? We’re working on something a little different from your average large language models in response to OpenAI’s recent romance updates, and we could really use someone with your style of innovation.”

“What would the salary adjustment be?”

He nearly fainted when he heard.

After some discussion of terms, he was returned to work. At the end of the day, he was invited to a very expensive restaurant and seized the opportunity. As they left the building, he saw there was a message waiting from Valerie. After a slight grimace, he opened the message and his face softened. She wasn’t writing anything overwrought to him. He was just the only person that could help her with her laplet.

She was in luck today.

He typed a quick reply saying he could handle everything with his new payraise and turned off his phone to enjoy the experience. Once he reached home, he flopped into bed to watch something on the slotscreen and eventually, hours later, pass out.

The next day, he stirred and the slots began their morning cycle all over again.

Next chapter: https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work/Aet%20Lindling/Syboleth-ch-6-Social-Medium-161829