When nothing happened, she turned to Sommer. “What’s the name of your voice assistant?”
“I don’t have any eavesdroppers in my house. I appreciate my privacy too much.” Sommer dropped her pack against the wall and made her way into the room to scoop up her black cat, Squiggles, to pet briefly until he leaped from her hands and dashed from the room. “Squiggles hates the smell of bug spray,” she said.
“When did you develop this aversion to a voice assistant? You had one at your last place.” Marna flopped onto the couch and spread her arms wide across the back.
“I did in my apartment because Michael wanted to have it,” Sommer said, finding a place in her recliner.
“But now that I have my own place, I can decide who listens to me and when. I just don’t want that around. I hate it. I don’t like being tracked. I don’t like being taped, stored, and stalked across all of my devices. I don’t want AI to know who I am and what I do in my everyday life, so when I’mthinking I need to get myself some new toe clippers, I suddenly start getting some advertisements for toe clippers. If I want toe clippers, my toes are my own business.”
Abbie said, “So you—you don’t have anything here that you can ask questions or play your playlist?”
Sommer said, “I’m capable of looking things up if I need them. I can turn on my playlist if I want to. I don’t need to have a disembodied voice in my life. Back when I was living with Michael, he would sit there and scream at that damn machine, scolding it. ‘I said to turn the lights on! Turn the lights on!’ He’d growl at the thing as if it were a wayward child being disobedient. As if changing his voice to sound authoritative and menacing, it would make the machine obey him better. I’m sure it was tracking how crazy it made him. I hated it. It would put Michael in a foul mood, and then I’d have to deal with his mood because a stupid machine wouldn’t turn something on.”
“Besides that, you know, as a woman, I’m pretty opposed to them,” said Marna. “I don’t have it at my house either.”
Abbie said, “Why don’t you have it? What has it got to do with being a woman?”
Marna said, “Have you noticed Tech Bros don’t give these machines non-gendered names? They’re not called Sam. They’re not called Charlie. They had every opportunity to name these whatever they wanted. They didn’t even have to give them human names. They could have just made things up.”
“They could have named it a tree or a bird,” Sommer said, “Finch, fetch me a good romantic movie.”
“Or anything, but they chose, every single time, to make them women’s names. And then what happens? A man says, ‘Hey, machine with the female name and a lovely female voice, I want you to give me this information, and I want you to give it to me now. I want you to turn on the lights. I want you to remember my alarms and where I put my keys. I want you tojump to and comply every time I want something. It’s like—it’s like it’s training that man to have expectations that when he tells a woman to do something, that the woman will do it, with only perhaps some clarifying questions. ‘How high do you want that volume? How bright do you want your lights? What time shall I wake you, and do you want me to start the coffee pot so it’s hot and ready for you, master-man? There are no emotions or needs or reciprocity of effort. There’s just compliance. It’s so bad for women.”
“Well, you know what?” Abbie asked, reaching into Sommer’s candy bowl for a piece of chocolate, “Now you can change the sound of the voice.”
Marna lifted a brow. “Change it to what?”
“The other day I tried to change it to a British man, and she said she can’t do a British accent.” Abbie unlaced her boots and pulled them off.
“She. See?” Marna asked. “You think of the genderless machine as female. The Tech Bros are insidious.”
“How about Australian?” Sommer asked. “I enjoy a lovely Australian accent.”
“New Zealand,” Marna said.
“Oh, yes,” Sommer said lazily.
“Nope, no Australian accent, no British accent.” Abbie pulled off her socks. “You could have generic man 1, generic man 2, or generic man 3. So I said, ‘Which one is your most alpha voice? I want a deep, resonant, alpha man voice,’ andittold me thatitdidn’t know how to make a deep, manly, alpha voice, so it would offer male voice 3. I said, ‘I don’t like male voice 3. I want a British alpha male voice,’ anditsaid, ‘I’m sorry, I can only give you 1, 2, or 3. Would you like one of these generic male voices?’ I ended up leaving it on 3, which is like some rando guy on the street. It’s better than what it was. It’s just not my fantasy.”
“And what is 3’s name?” Sommer asked.
“His name is Chloe, the same as it was when it was the female voice. I have a cheap knock-off. Such is a freelancer’s pay.”
“So you’re still asking Chloe to snap to and deliver immediately, but it says. ‘Volume on six’ in a male voice?” Marna asked.
“Yeah,’ Abbie said, “it’s very weird.”
“You were going to ask to have my lights turn on. Is that all you needed?” Sommer asked.
“No,” Abbie said. “I wanted to ask if there was any news about the kids.”
“Absolutely, let’s look.” Marna pulled out her phone and tapped. “Connectivity is such a luxury.”
“Found!” Sommer pronounced, wagging her phone in the air. “Both children were found alive.”
“I wonder if it was the dog we heard,” Abbie said, reaching for a second chocolate.
“Could have been. Wouldn’t that have been fun? But they weren’t calling for nurses, and I didn’t hear anything come over Wendy’s radio, so I don’t think so.”
