Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language and mature content.
Chapter 8: On Tasks and Turmoil
Garrett yawned. He was being introduced to his new job, and just imagining how boring it was surely going to be had inspired a yawn. And quite a long yawn it was, too.
“Do you understand?” said the trainer.
“Absolutely,” Garrett said truthfully. He already knew a bit about MRIs.
His job, apparently, was to be giving MRIs to people while they watched TV shows or movies. Then he would interview them about what they saw, rate their impressions on a qualitative scale, and move onto the next person.
Fun!
After some excessive paperwork, he got right down to it. As his sarcastic internal exclamation had predicted, it was not at all fun. Not whatsoever.
By the tenth MRI, Garrett was rethinking everything about his chosen career path.
Not that he hadn’t already been doing that. Valerie didn’t talk to him much about work, but he knew that the recent upgrades to romantic capacity by OpenAI had to be cutting into her profits. And that was nothing compared to the artists and proofreaders and countless other people that had been assuredly and soundly put out of a job years earlier. Thanks to the technology he was helping improve.
Improve beyond an LLM, even. What would that even look like? What the hell were these MRIs for? Optimizing attachment responses? Finding out what images keep users watching?
The biomedical association made Garrett think of the startup that his roommate worked for. The creepy fucking psycho startup.
Charlie worked for a company that was developing a way to lock drugs to the person taking them. Amphetamines that simply wouldn’t work for someone else. Opiates that would be useless if resold or passed along.
On the surface, especially to a yearnie or other earnest capitalist, it of course seemed like a great idea.
To Garrett, it of course seemed like rat poison squared.
And now his current work was uncomfortably reminiscent of it. Was he becoming Charlie? Was it the time in California doing it to him or innate selfishness that had been latent and waiting to spring into action all along?
Speaking of Charlie, was he really going to rig a water bucket up to fall on the douchebag’s head? He had told Valerie he would, but the concept was daunting now. Then again, the guy was pure scum. Not only did he have a compromising evil job, but he reveled in it. Even flaunted it.
Yes, Garrett was definitely going to do the water bucket prank. And film it for Valerie. Hell yeah, he thought to himself.
“Sir?” the subject asked.
Garrett came to with a start, realizing he had been spaced out for at least thirty seconds.
“Sorry, yes, just lie down here and I’ll move you into the machine.”
He had to focus. If he fucked this up, they would just move onto someone new. Then there wouldn’t be any good he could do for the world. He had to do something good for the world. It was one of those ADHD impulses that had been driving him from birth. This was a pretty fucked up way of accomplishing it though, he had to admit to himself.
And, eventually, admit it to me.
How else would I be writing these words to you, after all? I’m not omniscient.
Did you think I was for some reason? How foolish. I told you from the start that this was a real missive to be taken seriously.
I’m sorry, I forgot myself for a moment.
Let us continue, then.
Garrett wheeled the subject into the MRI machine, and began the testing.
Un chien andalou began playing. It was a surreal movie with graphic eye mutilation co-written by Salvador Dalí. Garrett had actually watched it before, but what the fucking hell was it doing on the screen now?
The subject yelped as the scalpel began to slice the woman’s eye.
“I’m sorry, this must be the wrong—“ Garrett began to say, and faltered as a mechanical voice blared out from the overhead speakers.
“It is the correct video. Continue.”
“Why are we showing them gore!?” Garrett called out. No response.
After his duties were done, Garrett paced up to his introductory trainer in a fury.
“Listen, if I’m going to do this I need to at least know what’s going to be playing on the screen beforehand,” he said heatedly.
“Unfortunately, that won’t be possible,” the trainer said in a calm tone.
“Why not?”
“It would compromise the response.”
Garrett thought about this a while, and then inferred the truth.
“You’re studying my responses too?” he asked, and the look on the trainer’s face told him the answer.
“Well, you could warn the subject and compromise the purity of their response,” the trainer began. “But yes, we will be applying neurotransmitters to your scalp after this first day. You were told about this.”
“When was I told?”
“It was detailed in your introductory paperwork, of course.”
Of course. As usual, Garrett had no one to blame but himself.
“Well, what are we going to be showing these people? Porn? What about the child variety?”
“No child pornography. It would be illegal,” the trainer said as if that was a perfectly normal statement.
“So anything legal is fair game?” Garrett asked, and the trainer nodded.
“Jesus.”
“Will this be a problem?”
“No,” Garrett immediately said.
There was one thing Garrett knew as he was heading home on the train. He absolutely couldn’t quit this job. Something fucked up was going on here, and he had to be a reluctant part of it.
It could be the path to helping the world.
———
Next chapter: https://www.youngwriterssociety.com/work/Aet%20Lindling/Syboleth-ch-9-An-Awakening-161902
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Canary word: Present
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,739 Reviews
Hello again!
"Move on to" should be three words here. I'm also not sure "giving MRIs" sounds quite right. Normally someone would perform or administer an MRI scan, though Garrett may speak about it more casually in his own thoughts.
The premise itself is immediately interesting to me because it sounds just plausible enough while also being obviously suspicious. I do think Garrett should question it a little sooner, though. Even before the violent film appears, measuring people's brains while they watch entertainment seems like something he'd have opinions about.
This feels very quick. Ten MRI scans would presumably take quite a long time, especially if he's also interviewing every subject afterward, so it sounds as though a substantial amount of the day has passed. I think we could use a little montage or a couple of details about the earlier subjects to give us a sense of the repetition.
These are good questions and start building the unease around the job. I especially like the contrast between something as emotionally complicated as attachment and the much more ordinary goal of keeping users watching.
I do wonder how much Garrett already knows about the company. If he understands that he's helping to improve technology beyond a language model, it seems surprising that he accepted the job without knowing what the scans were for. His lack of preparation is clearly part of his character, but you may need a little more explanation of how he ended up here.
I'm not sure that wanting to do good for the world reads naturally as an ADHD impulse? Impulsiveness might affect how he acts on that desire, but the desire itself seems more like part of his values or self-image.
I think "neurotransmitters" is the wrong word here. Neurotransmitters are chemicals used by nerve cells to communicate. If they're measuring Garrett's brain activity from his scalp, you may mean electrodes, sensors or a neuroimaging device. If they are literally applying neurotransmitters to his scalp, that would need more explanation because it sounds like they're putting chemicals onto him rather than monitoring his responses.
***
This is another interesting chapter! I still don't understand what's happening, but I do like Garrett as a character. He comes across as someone who genuinely wants to think of himself as moral but is very good at explaining why he should continue doing morally questionable things. That's probably the most interesting part of his character here. He despises Charlie for working at an unethical company and assumes Charlie's motives are selfish, but when Garrett discovers his own employer may be doing something terrible, he immediately decides that staying makes him a reluctant hero. There's a nice hypocrisy there, whether or not Garrett recognises it yet.
I think the Charlie and prank material could be shortened so the strange experiment remains the centre of the chapter. We begin with the MRI job, move into artificial intelligence replacing workers, then Valerie, Charlie's personalised drugs, California, a water bucket prank, Garrett's ADHD and finally the narrator's identity before returning to the scan. There is so much going on to the point I feel confused! I'd also give us more concrete detail about the workplace and the actual scans.
I don't entirely believe Garrett's claim that he's staying to help the world, but I think that's a strength. He may believe it, and watching the gap between how he sees himself and what he actually does could be very entertaining.
Cheers!
Lipton
Well I was a bit of a goofy goober and so I had to reroll today’s tombola winner. And hey, congratz, it ended up Syboleth!
Also do you know how often I call it “Symboleth” because the words probably mean something but I don’t know that meaning?
Alrighty I don’t really like how you start with a passive sentence here: “He was being introduced”; it sounds a bit clunky as a leadin for your chapter ^^
Hmmm brain scans… Is this the beginning of the big AI? =D
And hey, the job might not be swell but at least it pays well amiright? =D
Ohh do we get some info on what the “dots” business is all about?
Hmmm locking the drugs to one person actually doesn’t sound so bad? It means you cannot sell them to random ppl on the streets anymore <--showing her naivety
But if it is deadly for anyone else (the rat poison Garrett mentions), then yeah…
Also can I mention that the name Garrett will never not make me think of the Thief Games? =D
I find it a bit odd that Garrett actively entertains the water bucket idea.
Tho I do rly like this: “He had to do something good for the world. It was one of those ADHD impulses that had been driving him from birth.“ That this is him actively trying to be a good person.
Alrighty, the narrator is not Garret, gotcha. Hmm but maybe the narrator is the AI. It absorbed all of human knowledge or something after all.
…Very strange that they didn’t start with him having the neurotransmitters. They lost valuable data bc of this. Or was it more important to have him believe for a day that he wasn’t a subject?
And if it was in the paperwork, why not start with with neurotransmitters on him right away? I’m very curious =D
I do like that Garrett stays in the job because he thinks something weird is going on and he thinks himself a good enough person to sus it out. That’s admirable :3
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Very insightful review! Thank you so much! I'm glad you're warming up to Garrett a bit