Friday Fiction: SenSor OS
Or maybe this one isn't fiction ...
Here is this week’s Friday Fiction post. As the About page explains, these may be short stories or longer works broken up: just something fun to read over the weekend.
They’re usually for paid subscribers only but I’ve made this one available to everyone so you can see the kind of thing that would reach your inbox on a Friday if you threw in a few quid to support me.
This story is a bit lighter in tone than the one last week – and yet, written in anger, as the notes at the end will explain. It may be particularly resonant for my fellow authors. The tale comes from It Will Be Quick. Enjoy, and feel free to let me know what you think.
SenSor OS
Your operating system has been updated to SenSorSoft OpenDoors 11! Features:
No more low-quality free software! All software now has to be purchased and installed from the inbuilt AppStore, a selection of APProved quality tools, for your convenience!
No more version hassles! This software-as-a-service will receive automatic updates* without you needing to consent to them, for your convenience. The previous versions of your OS are no longer supported (for security reasons), and activation requests will be denied.
Your licences have been transferred and will be periodically verified: any software for which the licence is absent, void, expired, or deprecated, will be removed for your convenience. Software which is not available in the AppStore will be quarantined.
All your office software has been replaced with the FREE online 247FreedomSuite (ad-supported). This will enable you to remain compliant with all possible legislation: for your convenience!
The new software will personalise itself to you! Our Sensei tool genuine intelligence services will monitor all your actions and interests. Don’t worry, we guarantee your privacy!**
Please tick the box to show that you agree to all the legally binding TERMS & CONDITIONS*** (details available in the support section of our website, broken into 457 pages and sections for your convenience).
*You must be permanently online for full functionality. Services and software can be changed or removed at any time, without notification. Offline mode not guaranteed.
**Data may be shared with our trusted partners and advertisers, for your convenience.
***You grant to SenSorSoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content, for example, to make copies of, retain, transmit, reformat, display, monetise, and distribute via communication tools Your Content on the Services.
There was no option but to click “I agree”.
She’d known that the latest versions of the operating system were an enforced upgrade, and that previous versions would be deactivated, but it still smarted to see this message filling the screen when she plonked down her coffee cup and turned on the laptop today. She’d spent years setting it up the way she wanted. But you had to move with the times. The alternative commercial operating systems had switched to this same model a year ago. The only other option was Linux, but the new DeoldoCheck DRM methods big companies now used meant all the games and software she’d bought would fail to run on any open system. She’d complained online about the forced changes but the heads of global software companies paid no attention – she was just another angry amoeba caught in their ecosystem. It was no surprise when SenSorSoft didn’t even have a consistent naming policy. Their releases of OpenDoors had gone from version RC, to 2.1, to ME, to U, to 94, to 360, to One, to We, to 9, to 10.3. Best to make a brave face of it.
***
Five hours and a number of hot drinks later.
It seemed she’d “activated successfully” (which involved rebooting the router and entering all her personal details into a profile screen and accepting further terms and conditions). She wasn’t allowed to use her old username so created a new one. She still didn’t know how to find or browse the hard drive, which had been “virtualised for convenience”. It seemed that the only way to find things was to type them into a search box that appeared if you moved the mouse pointer to the top left, then the bottom right of the screen. You could also say the name of the program you wanted, but the operating system AI, Susie, had a problem with Scottish accents. Its only voice options were a variety of US dialects. She’d tried saying “Open word processor,” “I want to type a letter,” and “Just give me something to fuckin write with!” but it simply kept loading a calculator, and closing it down took three clicks and a weird swipe. She stuck to typing, and closed the window that popped up every ten minutes reminding her that the computer now had voice control. She clicked more angrily each time. The left mouse button had started to make a spronging noise.
Still: the grey void of a blank page faced her, with its blinking cursor of optimism. She had so many ideas for this new novel. There had been little success with her books so far, but this one could be it. She felt it in her bones. The one that would get her noticed. Reviews, adoring fans, maybe even royalties. Oh, she needed the money. It was make-or-break, and she’d break hard.
The door opened with a creak. McWerter held his breath, afraid that the man he’d come to kill would hear the betraying noise, would draw his gun and fire first … but no. Silence. He slipped into the bookshop with the ease of a professional killer. The place was an Aladdin’s cave of
One of the words faded from the screen and a message popped up.
“Rights database checked: [Aladdin] is a trademark of the Disney Corporation.”
It now read “an cave of”.
What the fuck?
She typed “Aladdin” again, but the word was erased immediately as soon as she pressed the final letter. Same popup, though it had a note that she’d received a second copyright warning. Whatever. Fix it for now, try to disable the options later. (It had to be an option, right?)
Okay. A what cave? She leaned back, trying to think of an alternative.
A few minutes on and she gave up. The flow was broken. Pish.
Three windows had piled up reminding her about new features. She closed them all.
Move ahead. Think about the next scene. Get back into the mood. All she had to do was start. Once she imagined it, she’d fall into the page, and the words would come. She sipped more black coffee. The bitterly energising smell of it permeated her office like a noir detective’s cigarette smoke. Okay, it needed some interpersonal tension. Dialogue to spark conflict.
“Is that a pistol in yer pocket or are ye just pleased ta see me?” Betty asked. McWerter had expected an exotic femme fatale dressed in red, but coffee-shop Betty looked nothing like how she’d sounded on the phone. A 60-year-old Glaswegian fishwife whose tights bagged around the ankles. When no reply came to his dry mouth she held up her cigarette. “Well, at least stop glowerin and light a lady’s fag.” McWerter reached
Another word faded: this time the message that popped up said:
“[Fag] removed: offensive.”
This was ridiculous. She angrily bashed out “FUCK YOU YOU FANNY DICK SHIT COMPUTER!!!!!!”
As expected, words faded. Though not all of them. She was left with:
“YOU YOU FANNY COMPUTER!!!!!!”
Och, must be an American database.
***
She set aside the novel. She would come back to it when her hand stopped clenching into a fist. Maybe she just needed to get into the flow via another project.
Her desk did not face the window, since a view would be too distracting when she had to get four thousand words down a day. Instead she let her gaze wander. Overlapping rings of coffee stains where her spillages marked daily progress in a pattern of Os. A fireplace that she couldn’t use even on shivery days because it would smoke her out (note to self, must get that chimney swept). Framed photos of family and friends, the alive and the dead.
Her life diary! Perhaps one day she’d be famous enough to repurpose it as an autobiography, but for now it was just something to keep her sane. So much of our past is lost, left to the soft mercies of decaying synapses. Pictures miss out more than they capture. But words … ah. That can be the whole picture. The smells, the sounds, the thoughts, the feelings. This was why writing was so important. It captures and encodes experience and emotion, enables it to live on beyond the person; inefficient organic storage and retrieval replaced with perfect silicon. Life was nothing without memories. The beautiful, the ugly; the soothing, the painful. It is what we are. What we pass on to the world. They should be saved, and deserved the time to do it, to find the perfect words and the perfect order so that we do not go gently into that black hole.
I remember my first dog. The boys wouldn’t let me play football, but I didn’t need them. I needed the puppy sat in the pet shop window, as unloved as I was. And I’d go in and stroke her, and keep asking the shop keeper how much she cost. She was a healthy
“[Bitch] removed: offensive.”
The other girl knew I was watching. It must have been a game to her. She was beautiful. I was a scrawny teenager with glasses and no friends, who sat on her window ledge playing Fighting Fantasy books. Until the day when things changed. When I saw her saunter past the house, provokingly slow; the way she avoided looking up at my window; I snapped. I ran out of the house, grabbing something on the way, and I followed her. And she was surprised as she turned to find me holding out a juicy
“Rights database checked: [apple] is a trademark of Apple Computers.”
A year later. My heart races as I hand her the letter. But I will not run. Not this time. She takes it from my hand without smiling. I knew I was a fool. Because all it said was: and your fruit
“[P.S. I love you] removed: copyrighted song lyrics.”
This was ridiculous. Maybe if she was really careful about what she typed, tried to second-guess problem words for now, think of ways to work around it, to –
Awa an shite, what was she thinking! She was the one in charge. She wouldn’t be outwitted by a corporate bawbag. What would she end up with? The blandest focus-grouped prose that was so safe it would send any reader to sleep; an arse wiped clean “for her convenience”.
First she tried to find a setting to turn off the Wi-Fi on the laptop. Down nine layers of nested menus that circled back to the start, but no disable option. Right. The sleekit bastard. She stomped downstairs and turned off the router at the plug socket.
“Take that and bile yer heed, ya fuckin walloper!”
Back upstairs to be greeted with:
“Error. Internet connectivity is missing or slow. Cloud functionality impaired.”
She clicked okay, but the message reappeared seconds later. Click click click, it was like whack-a-mole at the funfair, a new one blinked into existence as fast as she could crack their skulls. For fuck’s sake, how long would this take?
Back downstairs, router back on. It was only a temporary retreat. She wouldn’t be beat by this pissfartin machine.
“Internet connectivity restored. Personal files transferred to your free Skycloud Service and converted to a new format. Would you like to access your new .wpdx documents?”
“Aye, ah would!” she shouted.
“Sorry, I don’t understand, please repeat that,” said the nasal voice from her speakers.
She clicked “Okay”. It was important to at least make sure she had backups of her novels. They were backups, right? That’s what it meant? Just because she couldn’t find her files on the hard drive, they must be there somewhere. Maybe this was only her old notes that had been uploaded.
A list of her previous works appeared. Each one had a mysterious exclamation mark in a triangle. She clicked on the exclamation mark next to the document at the top of the list – her first book, a collection of short stories that she hoped to update later in the year. Various messages scrolled down the screen.
Mr , the quiet man missed her.
“[Adcock] removed: contains offensive word.”
So the secret was hidden behind the statue of !
“[Isis] removed: unsanctioned name for terrorist organisation.”
Ah loved it when ma mam read Winnie The h to me.
“[Poo] removed: offensive.”
Ancient Greek wrestlers would enter naked and oiled, but were only held every four years.
“Unlicensed use of [the Olympics]: not allowed within a radius of fifty miles of the games.”
The list went on: removed as possible plagiarism; removed as dangerous advice according to health and safety guidelines; removed as illegal advice that might facilitate circumventing DRM under the updated US DMCA Act.
“But ah live in Dundee, ya radge wee shite!” she yelled at the screen.
“Sorry, I don’t understand you, please repeat yourself,” it replied.
A whole scene set in a supermarket had been deleted for being “potentially negative” concerning a SenSorSoft trade partner; another was disallowed because it went against the Terms and Conditions she’d apparently agreed to once while doing an online order for a new phone.
She turned the computer off at the plug before putting her fist through the screen. “Get tae fuck, arsepiece!” So much for fuckin convenience.
***
She took a deep breath and rebooted. She’d spent the last hour cursing and hitting the Laphroaig bottle that had been intended as a treat for Christmas, wrapping her computer-monitor-sliced knuckles in a bandage, and opening the window to waft away the smell of singed electronics. Then she dug out her old external monitor and a backup drive. Whatever was happening to the files on the laptop, and wherever they really were, she had further copies here. She’d been careful about backups after reading I.T. horror stories.
It took over ten minutes to get back to a logon screen, following a variety of warnings about unexpected errors, potentially corrupted files, and always leaving the computer turned on by following correct standby procedures rather than ever turning it off fully “and missing vital updates”. The delay and messages seemed to be a punishment, and she was suitably chastised by the time she was allowed access to the desktop again.
The external drive was connected. A list of files and folders magically appeared as expected. She double-clicked on the first backup file.
“Permission denied. Security settings restrict access to user sodoff and Administrator PC Workgroup231. Please contact your administrator if you require assistance.”
And the next file. And the next.
You had to move with the times.
She didn’t stop kicking until the sparking plastic pieces were crushed and scattered all across the office.
Notes
I have an intense dislike of EULAs (End-User License Agreements), these things people are forced to agree to and be bound by even though they haven’t been read or agreed to. I once did an experiment and copied and pasted into a document a selection of the EULAs that were mashed into my face over a five-month period in 2010. It certainly wasn’t every relevant agreement/T&C/licence, and nor was it from some specialist sphere like work. This was just from being a normal person using my PC and installing a few games and bits of software and using some online services. The agreements over that period amounted to 331,993 words, or 1,385 A5 pages of dense single-spaced legalese. No one can realistically be agreeing to all that; if I’d included licences I had to deal with from my work in libraries it would probably have tripled that figure or more.
So we are bound by things we never see, forced to receive updates we may not want, and prevented from doing things that might be benign. That was my mindset when I wrote this in NaNoWriMo 2016, further fuelled by Microsoft failing to activate my reinstallation of Windows. The original title was less subtle: censrOS.
Shortly after I wrote this, I deleted Windows and switched to Linux (Mint Cinnamon). I now love using my PC again. Linux Mint has been my only operating system for almost two years and it just works. No forced updates! Freedom to change settings! The look and feel of Windows from before Microsoft ruined it!
DeoldoCheck DRM is Denuvo. OpenDoors is Windows. Microsoft truly are idiots when it comes to numbering things. The first Xbox wasn’t followed by Xbox 2, but Xbox 360. Then the third was Xbox One. Hmmm. Windows would shift between numbered versions, named versions and years, making it almost impossible to perceive a logical order. Here’s a selection. Windows 3.1 > Windows 95 > Windows 98 > Windows ME > Windows XP > Windows Vista > Windows 7 > Windows 8 > Windows 10 (where was 9?)
I also want to mention an interesting language issue. I love languages. I used to translate Ancient Greek every day, and when I moved to Wales I learnt to speak the lovely Welsh language to a basic conversational level. Since this story is told from the perspective of a Scot, I adopted a light form of Scots language for the protagonist. Scots language (which isn’t the same as Scottish Gaelic) is recognised as an indigenous language of Scotland. It has its own vocabulary and rules.
In the 18th century some people tried to Anglicise the language. One of their attempts at this was to add apostrophes wherever letters would exist in English – even though they’d never existed there in Scots. In English the present participle usually ends with “ing”, but in Scots it ends with “in”, so these people added apostrophes to the end of Scottish words in the mistaken belief that they were English words missing a “g”.
This is an example of what is known as the “apologetic apostrophe”, and was seen by many as implying Scots was not a separate language, but just a subsidiary form of English. Needless to say, that assumption was offensive to many people in Scotland. The movement to Anglicise Scots language faded away, and apologetic apostrophes are now considered unacceptable. That’s why there are no apostrophes in this story at the end of words like glowerin, fuckin etc.