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Yudhanjaya Wijeratne's The Future of Work:' Work Ethics,'

"So you are telling me that we will be automated out of existence," said Romesh. "I'm telling you that what you're doing is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and you would shoot yourself if you had any morals."

By this time, the complaint was made in a bar that was mostly cigarette smoke, and to a circle of friends who had found each other just as tiresome as before, having gathered for their quarterly let's-meet-up-and-catch-up stuff. Outside, as curfew laws loomed, the city of Colombo came to a crawl of traffic lights and halogens, the shops winking out, one by one. Thus, Romesh Algama's drunken ruminations started to seem fundamentally less important.

Apart from one. Kumar, who frequented more than most of this particular bar, bore the wrath of Romesh with the kind of brilliant composure one acquires after half a bottle of rum. "Man, you don't understand," said Kumar. Whether you want it to or not, it's coming. Did you see this photo of a man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square? What do you want to be, a guy or a tank? ”

"That is a terrible comparison. And they stopped the tanks.

'Hey, well, you are the blogger,' Kumar said. "Me, I'm just checking this code. We're out of rum." He waived his arms at a fleeing waiter. Machang! Machang! Two Cokes! Another half! ”

All this is talking about AI and intellect, and, and, and," Romesh continued, as the waiter emerged from the smoke fog, less a logistics creature and more a midnight commando waiting to happen to ease drinks through barfights." And neuroscience and, honestly, do you know what all of you people do? You're really making more ways to make more money for wealthy people, and so what do we do? Huh? Eh? Kumar, eh? ”

"And to people who don't need them, you sell fucking celebrity skin creams and shitty shoes and bank loans," Kumar said. To reveal the teeth of the mind underneath, the lake of drunken genius parted momentarily. "You should know more about making more money for rich people. Just shut up and drink.

They shut up, they drank.

"We'll be okay, don't worry," Kumar said. Even if we're all replaced over the next 10 years, and I mean, big if we're all replaced over the next 10 years, there'll be a lot more work, trust me. It's how whatever is technical really works. New topics, new occupations.

"We're not going to be all right," said Romesh, who fantasized that he knew a thing or two about automation. He came from generations of tea-estate owners in Sri Lanka who had replaced the Tamil laborers who worked for them with shiny new machines from China over time.

He was patted on the back by Kumar. Motor coordination had jumped out the window by now and fallen three floors to his death, so his happy expression was more like a rugby scrum half slamming Romesh to the locker on the way. "Cheer the hell up, man," Kumar said. "And it's like going out with my fucking grandfather to stop being such a bloody killjoy. The bottom of a bottle makes life easier. Here, have a cigarette, I got the good shit. Out of Nepal. Test it out.'

It was tried by Romesh. Like a proverbial velvet glove with an iron fist inside, the Kush struck him. He had vague memories of stumbling to the bar, and then the toilet, where Kumar was preparing an elaborate repartee who could not possibly understand how his dumb economic disruption shtick was capitalist nonsense from people who had nothing to lose once the cheap labor of countries like Sri Lanka had shriveled up. He and his lit cigarette, poised against the looming infinity, not out of option, but by pure fucking ignorance and stupidity, the belief that they will all land on their feet no matter what happened.

"They're laying people off," he said, after he'd worn out the high.

In the agency? "Kumar asked.

"All ancient hands. You know, we're too slow, too? Too scorched down. The money now goes to the fucking Facebook shitposters that we picked up for cheap dirt. The kids, the bloody kids, they're quicker and hungrier, and I'm sitting here with a cotton wool-filled brain.

"Don't be dumb."

"Serious, I am. I will not last, man.

He could see Kumar frowning, he could see the old wheel in the cage struggling to spin. How much of it is an, uh, accident, uh? "Kumar said.

Both were staring down at Romesh's left knee. Not that under the jeans, or steel pegs under the surface, you will see the scars.

"The painkillers."

“Huh.”

"I'm slowed down by them."

"Figured by."

Romesh said, "Henry Ford used to say that if he asked people what they wanted, they would say fucking horses faster," and he was shocked to find himself slurring as well as sad. Right there, that's the problem, isn't it? Issue with this planet. All is... pace, speed, speed. Eighteen-hour days, and they're showing us this. Quicker, quicker! "A whip mimicked him. Quicker, or die! ”

After that, the moments blurred. He recalled Kumar, shaking his head; more drinks; then the sudden awareness that he was intoxicated, and the ride-hailing app's unavoidable battle. Then the world turned into a heavy, cold car seat and a window that was open. The dust of construction and upward mobility mixed beyond the cold metal with the smell of a dark, polluted sea, and the neon lights that shouted SPA OPEN 24 HOURS and PILAWOOS RESTAURANT LATE NIGHT FRIED RICE and BUBA'S BEACH BAR, and the police, stopping and searching for cars, shining a flashlight in his face, and Kumar, speaking out of a curfew stamp.

"I won't last," he recalled, telling Kumar.

And there was silence then.

Romesh was not that inept. When advertising in Sri Lanka was in its cut-rate Crazy Men era, untrained at first, perhaps, and a little bit ignored back when he began. He had shadowed enough individuals over the years, first the copywriters, then the art directors, then different artistic heads, until he became a very near approximation, if not naturally talented. In an industry that was mainly made up of dissatisfied authors, he also had a touch of the author about him, a well-heeled collection of just the right eccentricities so admired. Every so often, Romesh went off over the slightest errors like a budget Hiroshima; drove graphic designers to tears; walked into meetings late, unkempt, and told customers that they didn't know what they wanted, and utterly refused to suck up the right kinds of people; and delivered, above all. Over the years, the facts accrued in the awards and the Christmas hampers from thankful customers. He had received the rare and elusive appreciation of those

The issue was the toll it was taking. No one thought about how much harm it did, churning out a great copy by the hour, by the hour, watching consumers with the aesthetic sense of a colony of bacteria on the Red Sea reject your best work: constantly trying to reskill, remain relevant, and suck up the sheer grind of it all, and the next day coming back to work with a smile. He was sharp and fast for the first five years, saying yes to anything. The next five are sharper, but a lot more picky. The next three were spent hiding exhaustion under the cloak of his right to choose what he worked on, and when; the next two were twilight years, as everyone he knew, having realized what the industry did to them, moved on to happier pursuits, until he was left behind like a king on his lonely hill, and the crew were younger, sharper, looking up at the old man in both awe and envy.

The accident had only made things worse; occasionally, people murmured about how Romesh was barely a face on the computer anymore, never really went out to the office to hang out and brainstorm, but delivered judgment in emails that began with LISTEN HERE and ended in cussing.

"Like working with a ghost," said his newest art director, before leaving. "Or a damn AI." The term behind his back was that his contact was being lost to Romesh Algama.

As a robber with golden fingers, morning crept up on him.

And the ringing of the phone with it.

'New idea, Monday,' the boss said. "You are the good gods, man, hungover."

'I got it,' Romesh whispered, trying to find a cigarette. A part of him screamed that he was meant to be in a shirt and tie and shoes, not lying miserably on the dining table in front of his laptop. He was busy looking for painkillers for the other half. It was the world after the Epidemic, dammit, no one had to go to the workplace anymore.

The chief gave him a questioning look. "They said, "This whole email-only thing of yours. "If you can't do it—"

"I said I was fine," Romesh said.

"The new girl needs an account," the boss said. "Give Dulac to her."

“But—”

Offer. Give. It. It. To. To. The. The. Fresh. New. Girl. Girl. Let her speak in person with them. She's going to do what it takes.'

Dulac was a maker of soaps, shampoos, toothpaste, a slight corporate-Zen-minimalist Japanese vibe that persisted. It was one of the rare prime accounts that didn't need too much effort: $1.3 million a year, the agency's simple cash, just for the price of a little copy and some artful image work and some social media responses. It was one of the few stable foundations he had at the moment; his numbers remained competent. Why her? Why her? ”

"Orders from above," the boss said. "Supervising you."

What, did you get her out of Ogilvy cheap? From Leo Burnett? What were her past experiences? ”

Trialed at a tiny San Francisco start-up. Apps, software for productivity.'

"No wonder her copy is shit," said Romesh. In the ad world, software companies were looked down; anybody working for them gradually picked up the strange blend of meaningless jargon and middle-grade writing that passed for tech evangelism, and it never wore off entirely.

The boss sounded amused, though the WhatsApp call was still hard to say. "Look, I want no trouble at the end of the year, and decent numbers," they said. "Children are young and hungry. "And you, all right, "

You're no longer in the best condition. Among them, it went unsaid.

"You know what you were supposed to do was retire and go, consultant," said the manager. "Working twice a year, a nice money pot, investing in a beach bar, getting a therapist, doing some yoga..."

Yeah, just how many of those workers are there that you have lying around? "Said he. You can go live out your dream with James Bond. The rest of us have to pay our rent and eat.

That gesture was made by The Boss and rung off. Comme ci, comme ça, comme ça . Obsolescence was envisaged. Death by 1000 wounds.

"For the review meeting, don't be late."

That's on my calendar, I assure you," Romesh lied, and cut out the call."

So. So. So. Dulac. Dulac. The branding guide, the reference artworks, the more creative stuff he had done for them, general ties to their whole "clean body, clean mind" stuff, the web of influencers and contacts and audience data he had painstakingly gathered over the years went into it. He left only enough data out to make the internal stumble, but scribbled down enough thoughts that he couldn't really be suspected of sabotage. And he reserved the right to make one last ad, a final sendoff. Before the new girl took over, the client deserved a nice rolling hit.

Either he was still drunk, or everyone in the world was a heck of a lot smarter than he was, because "Sure enough" was the only response the intern provided. The answer was immediate. "Absolutely, sir. Absolutely. Only right away. Let me know what I am capable of doing...

What he would give again for that energy, thought Romesh. Being young, not hungover. Sitting there, he let the exhaustion slip into his bones, drinking in the quietness of his dining room, and almost jumped when the phone rang again. They were Kumar.

"Busy," Romesh said.

"You're not, not for this," Kumar said. "I just sent something to you. Get your inbox reviewed. This is similar to what we spoke about last night.

"Look, I know I said some shit I'm not supposed to have..."

"Romesh. Romesh. Only for once. Avoid talking. Uh. Email. See the link? ”

Romesh looked up at the phone. Tachikoma? Tachikoma. ”

"That is the server. Using your email to sign up. I have provided you with login credentials.

Clicked by Romesh. A white screen appeared, edged with what looked like a cloud motif, and a cursor in the centre, blinking serenely. SCANNING EMAIL, the typed cursor.

Kumar said, "The way this works is that it will collect a bit of data about you." "You might be prompted to have access to the phone."

SCANNING SOCIAL MEDIA, the white screen said, and then it vibrated on his phone. The message said that TACHIKOMA WANTS TO GET TO KNOW YOU. SAY YES PLEASE.

"Kumar, this sounds super shady. Is that a joke of some kind? ”

"Just......trust me, all right. It's an alpha version, it's not yet open to the public. And don't worry, I'm not looking into your past of sexting here.

He was typing YES and pressing send.

"You tell him what you're thinking about after he does his thing," Kumar said. "You already remember. Working on a campaign, you would need ideas, maybe. At the moment, type in whatever is floating around in your head.

“And?”

"Maybe you'll get some answers."

'Back up, back up,' Romesh said, feeling a headache coming from him. How exactly does this work? ”

You know what an awareness graph of self-directing is? Generative networks of transformers? ”

"About no idea."

"Universal thesauri? ”

"When you pay me for it, I can sell it."

"Well, there's no point telling you that I'm there," Kumar said.

You use me as a guinea pig, don't you? ”

"Try it out," Kumar said. "When you start, it might be a little dumb, but give it a few days. Next time I have drinks on me if you actually use the thing. Keep in mind, tank, student, student, tank, your choice. He hung up.

So it was with some unease that Romesh went back to the kitchen, brewing the last Dulac ad with both coffee and ideas. Swordplay, pre-battle cleaning of a perfect sword, link to-teeth? Hey, body? Item, then. He came back, typed those words into the prompt of the Tachikoma, which ate them and returned to his blinking self.

As was his habit, after another late night out, Romesh idled, watching the neighbor's SUV lurch in, watching the solar panels on the rooftop gardens track the sun as it rose into the sky. The movement seemed to wake up the town of Colombo, which stretched arms made of school vans and managers and street cleaners as it watched, and went on with its day. The dusty whisper of the bustle of traffic began.

To his surprise, when he got back, there was a message waiting for him. It said Sunshine. FIRE CLEANSING.

Just sunshine.

He scrolled down the post, where those words were moved around by a complex iconography. Sentences and faces that he'd used before. Feelings.

He’d never thought of using Just sunshine. Swordplay, samurai cleaning a perfect sword before battle, sword glinting in the sun, outshining everything else—

Romesh's jagged face crept up with a grin. He put down his steaming coffee, feeling the old, familiar lightning flickering through his fingertips, through his mind, and set to work.

The boss said, "Dulac called," at the end of the week. "All that Cleansing Fire campaign we've been doing."

Bad? Bad? 'Said Romesh, who had come to expect nothing positive from these talks.

"It depends," the boss said. "The profits multiplied. They insist that you remain in charge of that account.

Romesh played a little with his mug.

"That was a little underhanded," the boss said. "Good stuff, but just showing off so you could make the kid one-up."

"Perks of being old," Romesh said. "We're not playing fair, we're playing smart."

"Well," the boss said. If I had known the results were pissing you off, I would have done it years ago. Up for an account with another? ”

Thus, six months later, Kumar found himself sitting in front of a Romesh who, for the first time in his generation, was very...

"Happy," Kumar attempted. "No, no, that is not the word." Half a beer was added. Aha. Aha. Uh. Mellow. You look like you've just gotten laid back. Or simply laid off.

Romesh rolled his eyes, but kept the sting out of his reply for once. "A big campaign has just wrapped up," he said. Do you know Spearman, do you? Edtech Corporation? In the US and Europe, we just ran a $13 million campaign. The client has got the money back from just... schools signing up already. You want to see universities' profit margins.

"So what you are saying in the vernacular is that you are paying for this round of beer."

"Fine, whatever," Romesh said.

The glasses clinked. "A well-done job," Kumar said.

"Romesh said without prompting, "Tachikoma's not bad. His hands moved on the table in that dynamic comme ci, comme ça that Kumar had seen grudgingly bestowed over the years, and even then only on works of spectacular genius. Anyway, what the hell is it? ”

"We originally built it to help patients with Alzheimer's," Kumar said. "Memory AI-assisted, you know. Then, when we knew students were using it to help them learn, we kind of made it more difficult. You keep feeding it whatever is on the top of your head, it goes out on the internet, consumes and remaps information, attempts to propose ideas that, considering your life experiences, you might have, you know, normally tended to think of. Not seamless, of course. But there's a whole new information structure, a very counterintuitive derivation, and that's the real magic.

That gesture again. "I still do most of the work," Romesh said. Design, execution, that's critical. I don't give that to anyone else. Only that it's got, er, decent... ideas.

Like Just sunshine. Or the trolley problem meme, in the next contract, an ad by a lobby against self-driving cars. Or the 16 pages of raw material he’d been given, before he’d had his first coffee, the day they officially started work on the Spearman contract that, even now, was confirming his status over and over again as a legend within this tiny fiefdom. The ideas, that was what really mattered, at the end of the day, coming out through that screen, smashing into the ones in his own mind, turning it into magic from the raw ether. It had been a very long time since he had felt this good, this prepared, this ready.

As a matter of fact, there was evidence: two of the juniors who had sat at table three, the little one, walked over and asked him to shake his hand in hushed tones, attempting to make it less uncomfortable by inviting him over for a bottle of whiskey. He did decline. A team, all from a rival organization, was at table seven; one or two of them pointed at Romesh and lifted their glasses in respect.

He repeated, "He has decent ideas."

"Well, we are getting old," Kumar said. “We need all the help we can get. Thank you for being a good guinea pig." Romesh was nudged." Too much fear over your 'AI is going to kill us all,' eh? ”

"I was mistaken," Romesh said. "I mean, self-driving AI wipes out valuable jobs at the bottom of the pyramid, at least with regard to us, anyway."

"Stop campaigning already, dear Lord."

"Business of yours. Is this thing going to sell? ”

"We're open-sourcing most of it, believe it or not," Kumar said. "But yeah, there will be a paying tier. Like, you can get suggestions on images, videos, essentially, the more complicated the decryption of the symbol required, the more computation it needs, because that's where the sales will be.

Can you get a few more accounts for me? Romesh said, still looking at the other agency's party, the way they laughed together, and obviously had a good time. "Actually. Actually. Only forget it. Want to get in on an idea? ”

Shifted Kumar. You could see the old wheels turning inside the town. He said, "Color me curious."

The next day, Romesh limped over to the little-used wardrobe where his formal wear hid from the Just sunshine. On went the jeans, the black shirt, buttoned very carefully at the throat. It felt baggy; he caught sight of himself in the mirror, a gaunt shadow with a heavy aluminum cane, and spent a few minutes patting down his shirt. Then the shoes, one higher than the other, and slightly curved, to make up for damage. The car that showed up was one of the Chinese Tesla rip-off types, precisely the kind of budget self-driving crap they’d campaigned against; he reflected on the irony as it took him, enclosed in its metal womb, out into the heat and the dust of Colombo.

The streets felt barren, the skylines higher than he had been used to. The office, a converted postcolonial mansion that once had pretensions to be Art Nouveau, hid behind high walls and that beautiful curled font that in the first place made him hand in his resume there. The security gate was dithering over his keycard a bit.

This place I know, he thought. This world of smooth wooden walls, where he sat waiting to be interviewed in line. There were fewer people than he planned, and he didn't remember anyone. The old crew were all dead. Like him, burnt out. Young faces gave him blank frowns, indifference; they stared at him, down at his broken leg, away from him.

There was a supervisor at a meeting of some kind. "He could hear them say through the frosted glass, "It is not even about sales anymore. Bobble-heads were nodding. Our sales were exactly on board with the forecasts. Gentlemen, the problem is retention. Any time we lose an asset to churn, it's preparation, it's imagination leaving the construction.

Romesh was waiting. Behind the frosted glass, a small crowd of suits got up and marched out, buzzing amongst themselves. Oddly, he nodded to one or two of them.

"They haven't seen you in a while," the supervisor said. They looked much bigger in person than they did on the laptop screen, much more optimistic.

Romesh said, without preamble, "I'm quitting." "You can give this new girl all of my accounts, unless they want to keep working with me, of course."

The chief gave him his blankest look. Who gives, and what do they promise you? ”

"Indeed, nobody is. I am forming a business of my own. Bringing back together the old batch. Navin, Thilani, Mandy, CJ, Harean, Maliek, and so on. That, I don't know, would have been five, seven years before your time? ”

That burned a lot," the boss said." "Those names, I remember. None of them were willing to cut it anymore.

"That lot was burned-out."

"Now, don't be stupid," the boss said, and grinned. It was the grin of a shark, bloodthirsty and triumphal. Romesh, just because you got your lucky streak back doesn't mean that your little crusty band is close to competitive anywhere. Those kids, you see? "They were pointing down the corridor. Thirty-six hour hackathon, straight going. Over there, the other lot? They have just returned from ten hours of customer interaction.

Romesh let them ramble on, and then he stood up when they ran out of steam, a shadow leaning against a large metal cane.

"You're older," the boss said. "Slower you are."

"Game on," Romesh Algama said, and for the first time in years, he smiled.

  • The Beguiling, Disturbing Future of Work Introduction, by Diana M. Pho:

  • Ethics of Work by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

  • By Lexi Pandell Remembrance (out Nov. 20)

  • Aliette de Bodard'sThe Long Tail (out Nov. 27)

  • And more from Usman Malik, Lettie Prell, and Thompson's Tade

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