Neal Stephenson - Interface

"Shit," Floyd said, "what the hell is it?"

"Most of the time it's a digital watch. Part of the time, it's a television set, complete with a little speaker for sound."

"Can I get Whiplash games on it?"

"I'm afraid not. The TV will only show one type of program and one type only, and that is political programming having to do with the election."

"Shit, I knew there was a catch."

"That's why we're offering you the money. Because this is not all fun and games. Some responsibility falls on your shoulders as part of this deal."

Floyd Wayne Vishniak thought that if Aaron Green were not trying to pay him ten thousand dollars, he might throw him down the stairs and jump on him out in the yard and mess him up a little bit. He did not appreciate the fact that this little man, who was about the same age as him, and maybe a bit younger, was lecturing him about responsibility. It was the kind of thing his dad used to say to him.

But for now he was going to be cool. He put his feet up on the table next to the briefcase, sat back, raised his eyebrows, peered at Aaron Green through the smoke of his cigarette. "Well, for ten thousand bucks I guess I could be responsible."

"Think of it as a part-time job. It'll take maybe ten minutes of your time every day. It doesn't prevent you from having other jobs. And it pays very, very well."

"What do I got to do in this job?"

"Watch TV."

Floyd laughed. "Watch TV? On this little wristwatch thing?"

"Exactly. Now, most of the time, it'll just act like a digital watch." Green pressed a button on the face of the wristwatch and the screen began to show black numerals on a gray background, giving the current time and date. "This is just a convenience for you," he explained. "But from time to time, something like this will happen."

The watch emitted a piercing beep. The numerals on the tiny screen disappeared and were replaced by a color-bar test pattern.

"Whoa, it's in color!" Floyd said.

"Yeah. Of course, you can't see any color when it's pretending to be a wristwatch. But in TV mode, it's just like a small color television set."

After a couple of seconds, the test pattern was replaced by a videotape of John F. Kennedy giving his "Ask not what your country can do for you" speech.

"This is just a little canned demonstration. Once the program gets underway, it'll show you coverage of campaign events. Debates, new conferences, and so on."

"Why don't I just watch 'em on my own TV set?"

"Because we're going to pipe our own coverage directly to you, through this watch. We might want you to see some events that the networks wouldn't cover, so we have to generate the programming ourselves. Besides, we think we'll get better compliance this way."

"Compliance?"

"Suppose you're out of the house. Like maybe going to a Whiplash game. You wouldn't be able to watch normal TV. But with this PIPER watch, you can watch it wherever you are."

"PIPER?"

"That's the name of this program."

"How much of this stuff do I have to watch?"

"Many days there won't be anything at all. We might show you fifteen minutes or half an hour of programming a few times a week. Sometimes it'll be a little more intense. The only time when we'll really give you a lot of stuff to watch will be during the conventions in July and August."

"What else do I gotta do? You call me up and ask me questions about this stuff, or what?"

"That's it. Just watch the TV programs."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

"Then how do you know what my opinion is? I thought the whole idea was to get my opinion."

"It is. But we can do that electronically."

"How?"

"Through the PIPER watch." Green reached into his briefcase and pulled out a videotape. "I see you have a VCR in here. You should watch this tape. It'll explain how everything works."

"I don't get it."

"The PIPER watch does more than just show you campaign events. It also monitors your reactions. You ever go to a mall or an amusement park and see one of those machines where you drop in a quarter and it gives you your biorhythms, or your emotional state, or something like that?"

"There's one down at Duke's Tavern that gives you your sex rating."

"Oh." Green seemed embarrassed. "How does that work?"

"You grab this big rod sticking out of the top and it measures your sex quotient and flashes it up on the screen. I always get a real high score."

"Okay, it's probably a galvanic skin response device."

"Say what?"

"This PIPER watch has the same kind of thing built into it as your sex quotient machine. So it could provide a twenty-four hour a day readout of your sex quotient, if that was what we wanted."

"Why would you want my sex quotient?"

"We probably wouldn't to tell you the truth - no offense!" Green laughed nervously. "But by using the same type of detectors, we can get a sense of how you are reacting to the programming shown on the TV screen. That information is piped directly back to us over the radio."

"So, it gives you my emotions. Tells you what my body's thinking."

Green smiled. "That's a good way to describe it. What your body is thinking. I like that."

"What about my opinions, though?"

Green shook his head and frowned. "I'm not sure quite what you mean."

"Well, this tells you how my emotions respond, right?"

"Yes."

"But that's not the same as an opinion, is it?"

Green seemed to be baffled, lost. "It's not? I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Well, maybe I watch some guy giving a speech. Maybe he's real good at giving speeches and so my emotions are good. Then, I'm lying awake in bed in the middle of the night, thinking about what he said, and suddenly it doesn't seem so logical any more, and I can see all kind of holes in his argument and I change my mind and decide he's just another pencil-neck, media-slick son of a bitch out to take my money and send the jobs to Borneo. So my final opinion of the guy is that he's a bastard. But all you know is that I had a good emotional response to his speech."

Floyd knew that he had Green now. Clearly Green, the big-city, high-paid intellectual, had never thought about this. He had never anticipated that someone might make this objection. He did not know what to say. "We don't have the technology to read that sort of thing," he finally said, speaking very slowly and carefully. "We don't have any way to read your mind in the middle of the night and find out that you think Senator So-an-so is going to send your job to Borneo."

"Humph," Floyd said, shaking his head.

"But PIPER is just one way we have of getting information," Green said, picking up momentum now. Floyd had the distinct impression that he was just trying to talk his way out of the tight corner that Floyd had backed him into. "Needless to say, we are receptive to any kind of input that you might want to give us. So if you have these thoughts in the middle of the night-"

"I do," Floyd affirmed, "all the time. They come to me like a thief in the night."

"-in that case, you would be more than welcome to provide those to us."

"My phone service got cut off," Floyd said. "But I could write you letters.

"That would be absolutely fine," Green said. "Our address is printed right there on the videotape. You go ahead and send us as many letters as you like. We'd like to hear your opinions on any subject."

"So I gotta wear this thing twenty-four hours a day?"

Green shrugged. "Just when you're awake."

"And what else do I gotta do to get this ten thousand bucks?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Absolutely nothing?"

"Just get up in the morning and put it on, every day from now until Election Day. If you agree to this, I give you a thousand dollars right here and now. We'll be able to tell, by monitoring the signals from the watch, whether you're wearing it or not. As long as you keep it on during all of the programming segments that we broadcast, we will continue to send you a thousand dollars a month. On Election Day, we send you the remainder of the ten thousand."