#hannah and turing are coming back

[gfl-neural-cloud]

Dear Professor,

The new event [Critical Cascade] is coming soon! Return to Rossum, where a cataclysmic crisis is raging.

—Stay tuned!​

[andromedahawking]

NaNoWriMo Day 4

6667 words! Apologies in advance, I wrote this in a sleep-deprived haze when nothing was real, so this probably makes absolutely no sense, but hey, it’s 1667 words. Enjoy!

It made Maria feel a lot better seeing how smoothly this meeting went. Nothing like the previous group projects she’d been a part of. Everybody contributed, everybody had something to pitch in.

“…but the deal with New York was, even though Mazer was really popular, they weren’t totally wooed, right? A bunch of people still refused to vote red…”

“…and in Arizona, it was pretty much guaranteed they’d swing towards the more liberal candidates, so Hanover was going to win no matter what, since she was the most liberal Progressive…”

“…the 29th Amendment only went into effect for this election, it was ratified back in 2046, so there was a 10-year delay before the changes went into effect…”

It was great to see everybody so involved, but as with any assignment, Maria left that day feeling mentally exhuasted. Her head was swirling with all sorts of maps and quotes, blurring together into a big mess of… bleh. She needed to spend a few hours without any heavy thinking and go to bed early.

She ended up doing exactly that when she got home. She went straight to her room, and took a nap for four hours before waking up and doing her homework for the next day. Then she ate dinner, and went back to bed again, not waking up until the next morning.

—

This time, the windows shone brightly with streaming sunlight when she woke up, unhidden by the fog that had conjured up yesterday. She tried to convince herself to get out of bed immediately, but the covers were so warm, and the sun was lighting her room just so… it was a little too intoxicating to let go of just yet. So she made sure her second alarm was set, and drifted off back to sleep again.

This time, when her second alarm went off, she was able to extricate herself from her bed and make her way downstairs. She was still awake before Thalia, although at this point, that was saying more about Thalia than herself. It was 8 already! Shouldn’t she be up too?

“Hey, Thalia, it’s already 8 in the morning! You have one hour to get ready for school, okay?”

“Mmmrrrmmm, school’s not ’til 10!”

“And it’ll take you another half an hour to get your lazy ass out of bed and start getting ready before your ride comes, I know you! If you don’t get up soon you’re going to be late!”

“I knooow!”

Maria sighed angrily. “I’ll be back around 18, don’t do anything too stupid while I’m gone!”

Today was Thursday, so that meant two things: she had both English and History today, and she had work in the afternoon. She tried not to let the familiar sensation of dread hit her too hard as she realised that, but it was… difficult. Work was always a bit of a grating time, but lately, it just seemed like everybody was being just a little bit more insufferable than usual, and it was getting hard to hold her tongue when they were being insufferable to her face. Nathan was her only saving grace at this point. How that man managed to deal with so many people who didn’t know the first thing about social etiquette was beyond her.

She walked into History class with just a few minutes to go before half past. “Mornin’, Professor.”

“Mornin’,” Monaca said back. “Have a good Wednesday?”

“Yeah. Got a good start on the project.”

“Good! I hope you’re ready to work on it today, too?”

Maria rubbed her eyes tiredly. “I hope so. I slept like the dead last night, so I would like to think that maybe I’ll be more awake today.”

“If only it were that easy,” Monaca sighed. “Find a menthol stick, that’ll wake you right up if you start nodding off. Those things are strong as all get-out.”

“Menthol sticks?” Adrien said. “That sounds like some sort of torture method the government would come up with.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised, Adrien, ‘cause I also hate menthol with a passion,” Monaca said. “I’ve tried them once, and let me tell you, it woke me right up. Strongest taste out there next to black coffee.”

“That’s honestly frightening.”

—

“Okay, so, 2051!” Monaca said. “I know you guys were al saying that 2050 sounded like a very dull year, but 2051 has some stuff that should actually interest you.”

“Hurrah!”

“Quiet, Hank!”

Monaca laughed. “I’m glad you’re so enthusiastic. Now, in 2051, the groundwork for one of the biggest landmarks in today’s America got laid down: Teller City came onto the map.

“Teller City wasn’t exactly anything special before 2051. It was found in 2033, in the middle of Montana, and got started as a manufacturing city. It wasn’t very big, and it really didn’t have a reputation to speak. But that all changed in 2051. In February that year, a bidding process began for one city to become host to the second headquarters of a fledgling artificial intelligence company that some of you may or may not have heard of: Hawking/Turing Laboratories.”

The class laughed at that line. “Yeah, I don’t think many people really know about HT, Professor,” Hannah called out.

“I didn’t think so either,” Monaca tossed back. “The bidding process took only a couple months, and Teller City was chosen on July 28th. At the time, HT was starting to really get a name for itself, but it hadn’t gotten the reputation it has today just yet. Artificial intelligence was still far from perfected in 2051 and a lot of their resources were being allocated towards energy production to make a profit while their research and development department worked on the androids they’d become known for in the 60s. That meant whichever city won the auction for the second headquarters could count on a pretty healthy influx of jobs and population growth. Teller City had already gone through a pretty amazing growth spurt in the late 40s, but they were confident enough in their infrastructure handling that they were willing to take on another wave of workers coming in to work for Hawking/Turing Labs. They won the auction, and as predicted, there was a big uptick in job growth and population growth in Teller City over the next couple of years as a result of that win. But, that’s only one part of the reason this was such an important year for Teller City.

“Since they won the auction, that meant that this city, in the middle of Montana, which hadn’t really been paid too much attention in the past few decades, got put in the spotlight when President Plenard signed the Energy Restoration Act of 2051.”

“Wait, that sounds familiar,” Tatie said from the back. “Wasn’t the Energy Restoration Act the one that started the energy grid?”

“Exactly!” Monaca said. “The Energy Restoration Act gave a huge burst of government funding to a few energy companies based in the United States as a way to combat the growing energy crisis that was starting to cause major problems for electricity as a result of the oil shortage of the late 40s going into the 50s. And one of those companies was Hawking/Turing Labs, which meant that two cities were given a huge boost of productivity and publicity: namely, Columbia, South Carolina, and Teller City. They started mass-producing cutting-edge solar grids that were to be used to replace the power plants running on fossil fuels, and eventually became the two major hubs of today’s solar grid. In 2051, this was a huge deal, because something on this scale hadn’t been done since the middle of the 1900s, when the interstate highways were built. Teller City got most of the attention, because it produced by and large the biggest amount of panels, gridding, and infrastructure out of any of the other major manufacturing cities in the United States. They sort of had to, since Montana and the West in general is very sparsely populated, so to create a national grid meant they would have to reach all the way out to Washington, Wyoming, Utah, all the small states that have more land than anybody really knows what to do with.”

“Wait, so was this mainly a Hawking/Turing project that was funded by the government, or was this more decentralised?” Maria asked.

“Good question! Hawking/Turing was the main benefactor of the Energy Department’s funding, but a couple of th eother energy juggernauts like PG&E got some pretty substantial extra cash to work on this projet. It took until about 2056 for them to complete the grid, but when they did, it worked pretty damn well. Of course, anything on this level is gonna be rife with lots of little problems, but they did a pretty good job of making it work. Teller City has sort of been given a paragraph to itself in the history textbooks for being at the center of the whole thing. So, if you ever wondered what was so special about Teller City, now you know: they won the second headquarters for HT Labs, and they built a metric shitton of stuff for the solar grid as part of the Eneergy Restoration Act of 2051.”

—

“Okay, it’s official, this class is gonna murder my hands with all the stuff I have to take down,” Adrien said to Maria as they left. “Like, it's interesting and all, and I love it, but Jesus Christ she talks at the speed of sound sometimes.”

“She’s very easy to get excited,” Maria agreed. “Sometimes I wonder if we’d be better off if we put half a sleeping pill in that Snapple bottle of hers before class so we could maybe hear more than just every other word.”

“Ha! Yeah, that probably would help out at least a little.” He checked his watch. “Oop! Sorry, gotta jet, I’ve got Astronomy in five minutes.”

“What?! Dude, run! Run, run! Get going!” Maria exclaimed. “You’re not gonna make it if you don’t book it!”

“I know that already!” he said, already breaking into a jog. He sprinted across the courtyard, then vanished into the sprawl of buildings.

[touristguidebuzz]

Distribution Upheaval Comes Slowly — Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report

Travel distribution is changing, though still relies on decades-old systems. Some in the industry, including American Airlines, are trying new approaches. In this photo, an American Airlines plane is shown at Miami International Airport. Miami-Dade Aviation Department

Skift Take: The global travel marketplace is ripe for evolution; we're still only at the early stages.

— Hannah Sampson

The Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report is our weekly newsletter focused on the future of corporate travel, the big fault lines of disruption for travel managers and buyers, the innovations emerging from the sector, and the changing business traveler habits that are upending how corporate travel is packaged, bought, and sold.

This week, we took an in-depth (like almost 9,000 words in-depth) look at the way travel is distributed, the giant global distribution systems that dominate, and the disruptors that are trying to bring about change — albeit at a snail’s pace.

Senior writer Andrew Sheivachman points out that the topic is highly relevant to corporate travel. Travel management companies are invested in the status quo, but any changes could have a big impact on how business travel is booked.

As one source in the story said: “We need to radically change and rethink how we innovate. We need to decrease the feedback time between what customers, travelers, or businesses around the world actually need, and what anyone who can produce good software can deliver.”

Speaking of trying to change things up, this week we have even more reaction to the efforts American Airlines is making to incentivize agents to book through a direct connection. Travelport CEO Gordon Wilson described his take as “super skeptical.”

Whether you fall on the side of skeptical, intrigued, or fully on board, keep watching this space. We’ll be following developments closely.

— Hannah Sampson, News Editor 

Business of Buying

Marriott Partners With Alibaba to Court the Chinese Travel Market Even More:  Smart move, Marriott. Given the growth of the middle class worldwide will be led by China, it’s incredibly insightful on Marriott’s part to be doing all it can to establish loyalty and brand recognition with this crucial market sooner than later.  Read more at Skift

Premier Credit Cards for Travel Are Now Requiring a Much Higher Spend: Banks compete for customers by issuing credit cards with lavish perks but there has to be a balance so they can make money. The balance is now swinging back toward the making money part. Read more at Skift

Hyatt Makes Nice With Expedia But Still Talks Up Direct Booking: Hyatt wants to keep important relationships with online travel agencies but emphasize its own channels to foster direct relationships with guests. Read more at Skift 

Airline Bumping of Overbooked Passengers Reaches 22-Year Low: Some airlines had defended overbooking as a must-have tool in their revenue management arsenals but the social media backlash forced them to modify their ways. Read more at Skift

Marriott Unseats Wyndham as Best Hotel Loyalty Program in New Ranking: Alaska Airlines continued to scoop up awards for its distance-based loyalty program while Marriott took advantage of its recent merger in this year’s U.S. News and World Report’s loyalty program rankings. Read more at Skift

Disruption + Innovation

Channel Shock: The Future of Travel Distribution: The global distribution systems aren’t going anywhere. Innovation, however, is happening in the margins of the travel distribution marketplace, with airlines seeking to regain control of their destiny. Read more at Skift

Travelport CEO Is ‘Super Skeptical’ About American Airlines Strategy: American is creating a new distribution path that might tweak the role companies like Travelport play in distribution. Travelport boss Gordon Wilson tells us he’s skeptical. We remain undecided. Read more at Skift

TripAdvisor’s Global Food Delivery Expansion Pressures Hotels to Adapt: TripAdvisor has expanded its food delivery service outside the U.S. and Canada, part of its strategy to grow non-hotel revenues. More travelers can chow on crisp-fried shrimp paste chicken comfortably in their rooms. Hotels have no choice but to say bon appetite. Read more at Skift

Turing Smartphone Lux Concierge Can Book Charter Flights: Appassionato has had production glitches and the $1,000 subscription service is a tad pricy. But the idea of a concierge service on smartphones or other voice-enabled devices is already happening. Read more at Skift 

JetBlue Switches to Customer Service Tool Built by Startup it Funded: JetBlue will be one of the first airlines to build unified records of all the interactions that each customer has with it via phone, text, and so forth. We hope other airlines copy the move to improve their service. Read more at Skift 

COMMENTS

Skift editors Hannah Sampson [hs@skift.com] and Andrew Sheivachman [as@skift.com] curate the Skift Corporate Travel Innovation Report. Skift emails the newsletter every Thursday.

Subscribe to Skift’s Free Corporate Travel Innovation Report

[dimenovelsfromoblivion]

The Preferred Term Is “Limited Existence”

Human mortality is a harsh reality that causes sentient life considerable discomfort. Since death is inevitable life can only be procrastination. Everyone does their best to drag their feet and push off the big day just a little bit longer. It is especially jarring to have to explain death to children. Many children learn about death through incremental experience.

The first time is when they are the most detached most likely it was a pet, beloved but with minimum emotional investment, It's this first encounter that shows them what it means to die but no effort will be made to explain to the child that they share the same unalterable fate. A few years later it will probably be an elderly relative, a grandparent and that’s when the inevitability of death will be addressed, and the developing child or adolescent will have either have to accept that truth or drive themselves to madness trying to deny it.

By the age of thirteen, this was the extent of Christopher’s experience with confronting mortality. His youthfully resilient psyche was perfectly able to reassure itself even if it would happen to him some day it was such a long way off why worry? In the minds of the young nothing is more abstract as the future.

That morning over breakfast Christopher’s mom noticed an obituary the text of which was accompanied by the thumbnail portrait of a cute teenage girl. The name seemed familiar, so her curiosity was peaked.

“Kelly Anne Schroeder,” she read the name in a ponderous tone. “Chris, isn’t that your friend Kyle’s sister?” She asked in a horrified tone.

Kyle had only been a Friend of Chris’s by proxy, a mutual friend if you will. He thought about it for a second. “Yeah I think so,” Chris acknowledged. “But how? she’s only like three years older than we are.”

“It doesn’t say,” replied his mother relieved she wouldn’t have to explain any one of the ways she assumed the teenage girl most likely died.

"Wow, that's crazy," said Chris unable to come with a more insightful response because he had never had the experience of losing a sibling.

“Didn’t Kyle say anything to you about it?” Asked his mother.

“We’re not really close friends or anything. I just know him through Josh,” replied.

“But doesn’t he live just three blocks over?” His mother asked as if this would somehow contradict the information he had just give.

“Yeah, something that like,” nodded Chris.

“Well, why aren’t you better friends with him then?!” Demanded his mother.

“I don’t know,” said Chris now visibly annoyed by the line of questioning.

“You know what I think since he lives so close it would be nice if you brought his homework to him until he’s ready to go back to school. Maybe then you guys can become better friends,” his mother gleefully suggested.

Chris wasn’t thrilled about going out of his way every day to carry textbooks to a household full of people in mourning. Every interaction was sure to be painfully awkward, but all the same, he figured it was a worthwhile gesture maybe not for the reasons his mother was considering but because it seemed like the decent thing to do.

It was 7 minutes before the bell and Chris was burning the last few minutes of the morning scrolling through his various social media feeds. He heard the desk next to him skid as someone settled into it.

It was Kyle. Chris hadn't expected to see him today. He discretely sized Kyle up to see what kind of engagement he might expect to have. Kyle didn’t appear saddened, despondent, or even shaken in any way. As usual, he took his binder and his book out of his backpack placed them on his desk and rested his elbows on them while he used his phone.

“Hey Kyle, what’s going on man?” Chris greeted him warmly.

“Kyle turned and glanced at Chris. “Not much, how’s your morning going?” He asked before turning his attention back to his phone.

“Good, good,” said Chris “Well except for what happened to you obviously,” he blurted out. Chris cringed when he realized how that had come out.

“What do you mean?” Kyle asked somewhat suspiciously.

Chris felt his heart cease to beat while his face contorted into a clenched-toothed squinty eyed recoil.

“About Kelly,” stammered Chris now suspecting he may have somehow managed to make an idiot out of himself.

“You think my sister is ‘dead” Chris?” Kyle asked putting up air quotes on the word dead.

“Didn’ she die yesterday?” Chris asked now feeling a peculiar mixture of embarrassment and confusion

“She didn’t “die”! She’s not “dead”!” Kyle said putting an emphasis on the words as if they were terms of degradation only someone would use only out malice or sheer ignorance.

“I, I’m sorry man I thought you knew,” pleaded Chris. “Belive me, man; I would never have said anything if I didn’t know…

“Look she just posted on my timeline,” Kyle said shoving his phone directly in Chris’s face. There was a new post on his timeline from his sister with a picture of them as small children playing tee ball.

“Hey, lil bro hope you have an awesome day! Go Willaims kids!” Was the first comment and it was posted by Kelly as well. It had garnered six more likes in the few seconds Chris was looking at it.

“But her obituary was in the paper,” said Chris.

“That’s not because she’s “dead,""  he huffed. “She’s gone A.D,” declared Kyle.

“A.D.?” repeated kyle

“All digital!” Kyle said visibly agitated.

“I’m sorry Kyle I don’t know what that is,” Chris apologized.

Kyle threw up his arms and rolled his eyes. “How ignorant are you?!” He demanded.

Chris was at a loss for words. “A.D. or all digital means she has decided to give up her physical body and just live through her online persona,” A classmate named Hannah explained as part of her sudden intervention into the conversation.

“What does that mean?” Chris asked

Hannah groaned “Ok, so this may not be something you can understand, but some people are born with extra sensitivity to pain. Rather than having to suffer every day they decide to live safely through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or tinder.”

“But she is dead through right?” Chris asked reluctantly.

“I’m not going to let say that about my sister!” Kyle said clenching his fist.

“Wow,” said Hannah leaving her mouth open to portray the apparent shock she had just experienced.

“The funeral is Saturday right?” Chris asked with his hands up to show he hadn’ intended any harm.

“I’m not letting you get away this. I’m going to tell Mr. Bilmer, and you’re gonna get suspended!” Kyle declared as he stormed off.

“Why do you think you get to decide what being “alive” means?” Hannah asked acidly.

Chris was pleading for understanding. “I’m sorry I thought she died. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just going to ask if he was ok!”

“Typical,” replied Hannah in disgust.

Kyle had returned with the teacher and was pointing out Chris to the authority figure.  Mr. Bilmer or Greg as he encouraged his students to call them was barely 15 years senior to the children he taught and was convinced that put him in a unique position to make them feel like they had real agency and independence while he still guided them developmentally.

“Chris Kyle says you said something insensitive about his sister’s less orthodox life choice?” The teacher asked in the manner of an investigator at a crime scene.

“I said I thought she was dead,” Chris explained

“He doesn’t even think anything's wrong with it either,” Hannah said condemningly.

“Look just because Kelly’s body no longer performs all the functions our society typically associates with “life” or being “a-live” doesn’ mean you can just invalidate her as a person,” Mr. Bilmer said sternly. “She is living the life she wants to lead through pre-written messages and Turing tested algorithms because that is better for someone with her condition!”  the usually soft-spoken Mr. Bilmer thundered like a judge about to announce the most draconian sentence he could think of.

“That’s what I told him,” cried Hannah.

“I just thought if somebody died that meant they were dead!” Chris said hoping to finally put this to rest.

“You’re coming with me. I don’t tolerate hate speech in my class!” hissed Greg as he grabbed his pupil by the arm and lead him ou of the classroom.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that Kyle,” Hannah said regretfully.

Kyle sighed “I knew life would be different, but I didn’t know how difficult everything would really be.”

“Don’t worry Kyle you have your sister to look up to she knows what it means to be brave,” Hannah assured him.

“You’re right I’m going to make sure nobody every has to go what I went through,” Kyle triumphantly declared.

Such was the beginning of a campaign to ignore death out of existence. Just because someone had died didn't mean they weren't still living and to suggest otherwise was rude and oppressive.

Death became a lifestyle choice.  People weren't gone they simply occupied a more limited existence. Who's to say life can't be just as much the aggregate of online interaction as it could be the sum of biological senses? The binary code could be manipulated to create files with visual and audio representations of a life being lived, and that worked for people who wanted nothing more than to forget one day they too would die.