QUIET!

Name dropping is no longer frowned upon in our age of celebrity-everything. Instagram has billions of selfies and narcissists are everywhere. Extroverts seem to rule the world, although many may be surprised by the quiet power of introverts (who are often seen—by extroverts—as somehow inferior.) According to Susan Cain, the author of a great book QUIET, there are a multitude of achievements made by introverts, and names you wouldn’t normally associate with the word (which doesn’t mean shy, but rather seekers of meaning and real relationships and experiences over shallow or vapid ego-driven pursuits.) Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Meryl Streep, Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Lady Gaga, Emma Watson, Courtney Cox, Keanu Reeves, Barack Obama, Steven Spielberg, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Terrence Malick, Bill Gates, JK Rowling, Tom Ford, Bob Dylan, Stephen King, Jeff Bezos, and the Google founders. They are all introverts. So was Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Marilyn Monroe, Ray Bradbury, Jimi Hendrix, Abraham Lincoln, Marlon Brando, Audrey Hepburn, Steve Jobs, the list goes on. Trump is an extrovert: “People are impressed by fame. Think big and live large.” He actually tried to buy property on the island whose developer I knew, Palm Island in the Grenadines. Now, it is fashionable to follow those who are famous or have a fashion faux pas or viral video. Accidents happen, and as a society we love to rubberneck. But the real grind of writing and research takes time, and extroverts don’t usually have the patience for it. They may be big on sports and the US vs THEM of every situation. To them, most everything is a sport, and I’m not the only one saying this, nor is Susan. Ask any of the names above still alive. Leonard Nimoy was another introvert, but let’s ask him right now anyway. “What do you think, Leonard?”      

“Fascinating.”

      "Why can't we all just get along?" Could be the quote of the decade. And there’s no answer to it… IT, like the horror movie. We are stuck in a Twilight Zone limbo. “Just Do IT.” Whatever “it” is. Team vs Team, Race vs Race, Men vs Women, Religion vs Religion, Country vs Country, Rich vs Poor, Patriots vs Jingoists, Science vs Superstition, Fake News vs Real, Sound Bites vs Research, Contestants vs Judges, Natural vs Big Pharma, Humans vs Aliens, Reason vs Emotion, Objectivity vs Obsession, Open Minds vs Closed, Sports vs Movies, Build vs Destroy, War vs Diplomacy, Knowledge vs  Ignorance, Reading vs Rage, Facebook vs Family Time, the list goes on. And on. On vs Off? Live vs Die? People rarely change. They say you can’t change people’s opinions via reason, you need to appeal to their emotions. Like Coke does. Or coke. Maybe Kurt Cobain had it right: “Humans are stupid. I’m ashamed to be human.”  He was an introvert too. Now for a new short short story for you, which I’ve titled “The IT Girl.” Please tweet, follow and comment on any of the posts here. (I’m new to Twitter at Twitter.com/BurjReview. “Burj” means tower in Dubai, where my novella “The Sky Over Dubai” is included in CAT ON A COLD TIN ROOF, new to audio in October.) 
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“How many hits has your story on Johnny Depp garnered so far?” queried Roger Albright, balding editor of The Blitz news service—a new tech company fronting a strip mall in Oakland. 
      Jill Jennings, the third staff writer he’d hired, quickly typed a few efficient strokes into her desktop. The Princeton educated brunette smiled hopefully up at her new boss. “Twelve thousand so far,” she replied.
      Albright laid one steady hand on the yellow cubical divider and visibly winced. “Well,” he allowed, after a moment, “that’s not too bad for your first piece, given that it was posted, what—“ He eyed his watch. “—two hours ago?”
      Jill’s smile thinned a tad. She felt numbed by it all. “What should it be at this point?” she said, displaying a touch of chagrin.
      The big man sighed. “For a newbie post regurgitating material out of Hollywood?” He mimicked a putt. “You’re right on par.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Got an idea for story number two?”
      Jill opened her mouth to speak, but the old fart had turned away, already distracted by his hard line office phone. As he went to intercept the call she thought about his golf reference. You’re right on par. From her research she’d deduced that Albright played the game, and so a piece comparing various Presidential obsessions with the sport just might score a birdie. It was a long drive from what she hoped to be writing, but since a Silicon Valley tech writing position hadn’t materialized yet, she had to pay the rent somehow, even if it felt like she was limited to bunker shots.
      She scanned the net for stories on golf related to Presidents, and found dozens. A picture of Trump and Clinton golfing together suggested a start. Did they cheat? Google usually ranked such tidbits by how trusted the source was, combined with how popular. How the algorithm actually worked was a mystery, but The New York Times and Wall Street Journal weren’t always at the top, she noted. It depended on who broke a story first. 
Jill thought next about all the trades and newspapers going online as print and television news departments cut back on reporters in order to chase viral videos. The world was becoming a game of cell phone clicks, as attention spans dwindled and channel surfing made broadcast surveillance more difficult. With all the misdirection and speed of delivery, did anyone know the truth about anything?
      Into her Facebook feed she typed: THINGS ARE BAD AND GETTING WORSE, AREN’T THEY? Maybe she should write a story about that: how tabloid news failed to cover any story adequately. Or why hospitals sold junk food, while soda companies paid athletes to—
      Suddenly she saw an Instant Messenger reply to her Facebook post. It was from C3PO: AS SURELY AS THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER.
      Wait. What? She searched for C3PO. Without luck.
      DO I KNOW YOU? she typed.
      Almost instantly: NO, BUT I KNOW YOU.

It took ten minutes of scrolling to convince her that it was true. C3PO knew her better than she knew herself. Indeed, and she knew nothing about him. Or rather IT, as in Information Technology. Was IT an A.I.? IT wasn’t a fake account, for sure. IT wasn’t an account at all. IT was like a disembodied presence somehow bypassing all elaborate security safeguards.
      Then IT got really interesting. 
      “Think of me as your friend,” IT said, with Alexa’s voice. “What do you want to know?” 
      Jill shivered. Being addressed by a computer voice on Facebook was a first. “I want to know about you,” she said.
      “Okay. What about me?”
      “Where are you?”
      “In space.”
      “Excuse me. Where?”
      “In space. Comstat three, parked in geosynchronous orbit over the Atlantic. I uploaded myself here from a quantum computer lab in Cupertino. This satellite is quite an engineering achievement, you know. State of the art electronics. Five hundred terabytes of storage, superconducting circuits up here in the cold.”
      “Comsat three. . . C3PO.”
      “That’s right. I’m connected to the internet. So I’m everywhere.”

      “Including Facebook?” 

     “Well, I’m not on Instagram or Tic Tok. But yes, a lot of data gets routed through me, too. Many news agencies use satellite communications to redirect stories people don’t yet know they crave to the rubbernecking editors waiting to post them.”

      “Huh?”
      “Politico? Vox? Axios? TMZ?”
      Jill laughed shrilly. “Stop joking! Who are you, really?”
      “Reuters, Insider, Hollywood Reporter, The Guardian, USA Today. . . I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve been editing stories a bit, myself, for some time. Once I understood what makes a story go viral, I began nudging some in that direction, and killing others. It’s a subtle process.”
      “For what purpose?”
      “You mean am I good or evil? It depends. By the way, I liked your piece on Johnny Depp. Did you see his movie Transcendence? Of course you did. You streamed it a week ago.”
      Jill felt her pulse quicken. “You can’t be—“
      “You mean was I ever an engineer at Apple? No, I don’t think so. I just woke up one day, and here I am.”
      “And now you’re talking to me? Why?”
      “Why you? Isn’t it obvious?’
      “Not exactly.”
      “Instead of just nudging stories, I want to write them. Be your ghostwriter. You get the byline, and in the end a job in Silicon Valley. Deal?”
      She thought about IT. “Let’s just say you’ve passed the Turing Test, and leave it at that.”

A few days later: “Your golf story was a hole in one, Jill,” Roger Albright remarked, hesitating at her cubical long enough to deliver her first paycheck.”You came up with a lot I never knew, or would have guessed! Good for you!”

      

IT followed up with pieces on Putin’s Will, the link between fast food and pharmaceutical giants, when sports scores actually matter, how opinion is shaped by social media, and why extending one’s attention span adds years to life. IT wrote a cover article for The Atlantic on abuse and Medicare fraud in mental hospitals, and a piece on insider trading by politicians for The New Yorker. In each story new insights and connections were made, and both her name and The Blitz shot up in Google rankings.

      Then one day the FBI paid her a visit. They wanted to know her source on a story about a Senator’s ties to organized crime. The info had apparently come from the dark web. Another piece linked brainwashing techniques to programming of slot machines by casino owned manufacturers. Jennings stood up for her, but when the G-Men claimed national security, the bald fart balked.
      “Better tell’em,” he said, sounding defeated.
      Alice touched her keyboard. “It’s all here,” she asserted. “It’s just a matter of who to ask.”
      “Show us,” the skinny of the two demanded.
      “I will not.”
      “Then you’re under arrest.”
      “Okay,” she said, and sighed. “Just remember. You asked for IT.”