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Episode transcript:

Sometimes you didn’t get what you want or what you need, so the Rolling Stones could eat it, as far as Linda was concerned.

She had looked up Viva Coco, and it was a series of Trance Dance Parties that stopped 12 years ago at a club that had moved 3 times since than, and recently closed down. Linda wasn’t big into clubbing anyway.

After a pep talk from Brian — “A regular schedule keeps you honest, babe” — Linda decided that she was going to open the pizza place every day this week.  And that she was going to stop participating is Weather Choose forever.

Brian said he’d help her unsubscribe from the app, but after following the help pages around in a circle for an hour, he declared it “dark patterns” and told Linda to email the help desk. “Or you could just … you know, do the choose.”

Linda sighed and said she would email, and then just hid the app on the last screen of her watch face so she wouldn’t have to see the growing red notification number.

Business was going well, though. Linda didn’t really have any regulars anymore, because even at her best, she had been opening pretty erratically. Other people are lothe to plan around “open when I feel like it.”

But her storefront was well-placed to catch a lot of walk-in traffic. Unfortunately, one of those walk-ins was Button.

 “Listen. I’ll call the cops if you’re stalking me,” Linda said the first day he came in. She snapped an unflattering picture of him on her watch. “There’s a record!”

It’s not stalking, he told her. If she checked the terms and conditions of the Weather Aboveground app, she’d know that she was entitled to a Special Customer Liaison should she run into difficulty participating in the daily Weather Choose. “It’s free of charge!”

“My difficulty,” said Linda, “is that I just don’t want to. Please don’t say that you’re here to help me want to.”

She tried to remember some of the moves Miriam had showed her from a Women’s defense course that Miriam had taken a few years earlier. Linda was unnerved by the fact that everything about the idea of this encounter felt threatening, but Button himself turned every interaction into a helpful sales call. As outlined by the EULA, section 12-B, desire was, in fact, an area Button could offer to help in, but enthusiastic consent on Linda’s behalf would be required to proceed.

“I have a boyfriend,” said Linda, feeling incredibly lost.

And this was how it went: The world’s most boring stalemate. Button would come in, order a slice, and Linda would slightly burn it out of passive aggression. He’d then say, “It’s the conversation we’re all having,” but then not much else until close. If Linda asked him to leave, he’d leave. But he’d be back again the next day.

After a few days of mostly ignoring him, Linda finally asked, “Why is this so important to you? The weather used to just happen.”

Button snapped to attention. “I’m so glad you asked. It’s not just important to me. A lot of effort and man-hours and, let’s say it, money went into creating and implementing this technology, for all of us! Now it’s something that really brings us together. Weather Aboveground is so proud of its 100% participation rate, and we’re proud of the joy and ease that we bring into the lives of our members. It means we had a vision of the future, and it came true!”

This speech enraged Linda. She didn’t need this. She didn’t ask for this. The future was a story rich people sold, and to pretend differently was just … insulting.

“I can’t vote,” she said. “I lost my watch.”

She unfastened her watch, threw it to the ground, and stamped on it hard. That didn’t quite do it. At least she knew she had done some sound research into which models were the most durable, but that wasn’t helping make her point. So she scooped it off the floor and chucked it into the pizza oven.

“Stop coming to my store!” she yelled in Button’s face.

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Episode transcript:

Linda hated chatters at the coffee shop. Not people who talked to each other; that’s fine. She’s not some kind of monster who insists on silence in public places.  But strangers who took your silence as an invitation.

This guy’s name was Button. Linda would have asked him why, but she didn’t want to do anything to encourage the conversation. Also, he seemed strangely interested in Linda’s watch habits.

“I don’t know,” sighed Linda. “I don’t make it my personality or anything.”

He asked what she had picked in that day’s Weather Choose. Linda lied and said Partly Cloudy. It’s how I feel on the inside, she joked.

But he wouldn’t let it drop: “Weather Choose is the conversation we’re all having,” and “Isn’t it amazing that we managed to develop this technology to customize the weather within a local area,” and “The future is here. Get on board.”

He offered to help her open the app and make tomorrow’s choice. “I can sign you in from my watch,” he helped helpfully.

Linda wasn’t sure what this was. She excused herself to go talk with Miriam. But Button happily joined them.

“Why is there an anti-technology protest sticker on the front door of your business,” Button asked Linda.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it’s time to go,” said Linda, a little bolder now that she was standing next to a friend.

Button said something again about “the conversation we’re all having” and “100% participation rate,” and Miriam offered to call the cops.

This got Button to move on, although not before offering Linda his card: Customer Satisfaction Liaison, Weather Aboveground. Linda put it in her mouth and chewed. Button walked out the door.

“You’re getting stalkers now?” asked Miriam.

Linda spit out the card, “He was like, obsessed, with Weather Choose,” she said. “I didn’t choose today. But I don’t know how he knew that.”

“It’s the conversation we’re all having,” Miriam imitated Button’s rallying cry.

“What if I don’t want to have a conversation?” said Linda. “Why can’t we go back to letting the weather be spontaneous.” Linda was never spontaneous, but she was frequently apathetic.

Miriam laughed. She and her husband had debated one night letting the kids download the app, and then picking, say, sleet in the middle of summer. Get them started in some baby culture jamming. But they had forgotten about it by the morning on their family outing to the “Real Paper Books Store.”

It was creepy that they had sent someone around to talk to Linda in person about her lack of a vote, though. Miriam said Linda should call customer service to complain. “You’ve got a contact number right here.”

She prodded the chewed up business card with the end of a pencil.

Linda said she would. “Can you throw that out for me,” she asked Miriam.

“Ew. No! I’m not touching that.” Miriam flicked the chewed up wad off of the counter with her pencil.

Later that night, Linda tried to look up how to uninstall or unsubscribe or un-anything. That proved tricky. It didn’t just delete like her other apps. So she turned her energies to researching that dastardly “protest sticker,” Viva Coco.

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Episode transcript:

That boy was back, on the skateboard, and Linda heard him clamber up the steps.

There was a silent pause … not again.

Linda was up and over the counter, but it was too late. She watched the boy slap the sticker on the glass of her front door and then skid down the steps on his board.

Some places were sticker places, but not Linda’s pizza place. She prefered a clean look. No decoration, in a minimalist celebration. Linda opened a door to inspect the damage. That damn “Viva Coco” sticker. What did that even mean?

She scrabbled at the sticker with her fingers, hoping she caught it before it was really stuck, but that’s not how stickers work. She’d need to get the scraper. That could be a problem for later, she decided.

“Viva Coco” could live on for a little while longer. Instead, Linda gave up on the business day and went for a walk.

Ads assaulted her on the sidewalk, but because she didn’t have her watch with her, they were addressed to an impersonal, “Hey, friend … couldn’t you go for a dog massage, bite of Yunnan food, afternoon dose of Botox?”

It was weird, she noticed, how little she had noticed how well tailored to her demographic the ads usually were. No one even complained anymore that the watches were probably listening to your private conversations, but now Linda had to wonder … were they?

How else would they know that Linda was the target market for earrings shaped like allergy medication but not the one for baby onsies proclaiming a fandom for the band Beach House.

Passing by her friend Miriam’s coffee shop, Linda left the public sphere where she was fair game for the entire world’s commercial ambitions.

More importantly, Miriam would let Linda get a cup of coffee without her watch.

“Not doing lunch today,” Miriam commented.

“No. No one comes around, so it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Linda, in a statement that in that moment felt true enough.

“‘More trouble than it’s worth’ is the entire beingness of a small business,” said Miriam.

She plunked a latte on the table for Linda.

To be honest, Linda didn’t really like coffee. She played with the foam, and watched the other customers take photos of themselves around the shop. Miriam’s shop was a perennial hot spot for the snapsters. She had impeccable design sense, and switched up the art on the walls often enough that your pictures were recognizably in a spot everyone wanted to get in their photo, but you could maybe be the first to claim your unique angle.

There was a girl with the tags still on her trendy, boutique dress. The store would absolutely know that she had worn it around. Brian had mentioned it once, when they saw someone else doing the same thing. His company had something to do with AI merch tracking for retail. The program would have followed both the girl’s face and the RFID chip in the shopping bag as she passed the various city surveillance cameras and could easily match her to the resulting posted Instagram photos.

But if she had enough followers, they might not care that she had worn it outside. Their AI would make that calculation for them at the point of return. It’d be embarrassing for the girl to get rejected, Linda imagined. But maybe it wouldn’t. Different people had different levels.

A young man sat down at the table across from Linda.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

There were pleanty of open tables, but was Linda actually going to say no? The young man scanned his watch feed for a few minutes and then looked back at Linda.

“I don’t know what I’d do without this thing,” he said.

He was too young to be hitting on Linda, in her opinion. She nodded and looked over at Miriam who was busy actually working.

“Where’s your watch today,” the young man asked, not quite casually.

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Episode transcript:

Linda had a pizza shop and a boyfriend who was an idiot. Neither one was helping her get out of bed.

She could hear Brian getting ready, and the metabolism reader mounted on her ceiling said she was 45 minutes past opitmal morning nutrion intake time.

Linda didn’t know how it knew that — some device Brian had installed in their mattress huffed their farts while they slept, or something, to craft the perfect “sleeping and waking experience.”

Linda was pretty sure it was bunk, but Brian said he had different readings from her, and he felt great.

“I found your watch,” Brian said, placing it on top of the dresser.

Linda thought she had wedged it good into the couch cushions. She’d have to do better next time.

She pulled the covers over hear head. Watches were too oppressive to think about, so she flomped her beloved old laptop onto the bed, put on a podcast and pretended she could sleep more.

The ceiling display subtly got brighter and brighter.

The watch started chirping at around 10 am, and then more urgently at 10:30. When you’re annoyed, it’s annoying.

Linda dragged herself out of bed, causing the ceiling to retreat to a more ambient light temperature. She slammed the watch in her sock drawer, but that only muffled the sound

She was going to have to go to work.

At the pizza place, Linda kept a normal key under a small statue of a frog by the door. She hated frogs, but it was a gift from Brian.

“You’re always losing stuff,” he said at the time, proud of himself for having fixed a problem.

Linda pushed the manual release button on the electronic entry pad — “Analog entry detected” it announced to no one — and it retracted to reveal the normal keyhole.

Inside, the kitchen wasn’t great. She hadn’t felt like cleaning last night, and she didn’t feel like cleaning now. Linda left the closed sign on the front door and laid down on the floor behind the counter.

Because she used the key lock, none of the normal systems powered on. A small voice asked at initial entry if she’d like to begin startup, but after lying motionless for a while, the whole aparatus decided that there wasn’t a person inside after all.

Sunlight streamed in through the front windows. Another gorgeous one. The tourists were happy and the people who made money off the tourists were happy. They’d probably have rain on a random Monday coming soon to keep the farmers happy. There’d be a campaign on socials to decide the best one.

You weren’t supposed to rally for your choice — your voice was your voice and everyone had an equal one after all — but the powers that be looked the other way, because it all seemed to be working OK enough.

Linda remembered that she used to like making those memes, but she could never get the timing right to be part of the conversation. One day, she was so off and got ratioed to hell, and it sucked all of the joy out of Photoshopping sunglasses onto a cloud or whatever absurdist imagery she was going for that day.

A couple of tourists pulled at the front door. Linda could hear them deliberating about whether the place was quiet, closed, or closed for good, and more discussion of running a small business in a tourist town. Everyone was an expert in everything.

“Who doesn’t like pizza,” said one of them. “This place must be pretty bad to fail.”

Linda disagreed. She made great pizza.