The Dance of Narcissus and Echo
Emotionally and demographically, Theo Jansen was the perfect mark. Alone in the family room, he watched end credits on the television with anticipatory pangs of loss. Melancholy theme music hinted at grim fates for the heroes next week. Lisbeth was upstairs in bed, too tired to stay up much later than the boys. She hadn’t read the review of The Deep that Theo sent her, emphasizing human drama over science fiction, in hopes of luring her into an “us” show. Just as well. Honestly, she would’ve been bored.
He was enthralled. As much as he needed the six hours of sleep he had left tonight, Theo wanted to talk and trade theories, wondering what came of Dr. Singh’s experiment, if the kelp farmers survived, and what Cesar found in that grotto. His hand went to his phone.
[#TheDeep: Damn. Good. Scifi. Philosophy, environmentalism, plausible evolution of tech, and cool characters driving the story.]
Only the keyword and sentiment were important. It was an invitation sent into the void. His words were liked by his friend Marcus and by a few strangers. The notifications lifted his mood. He wasn’t alone. For tonight, that was enough.
#
Theo’s post was snagged in a marketing filter woven of keywords and concepts that included The Deep, science fiction shows, and technology. A personalized marketing system called SHILL examined Theo Jansen’s profile and grabbed his latest 100 posts across this and other likely public profiles to construct a quick model of a potential customer.
There were the usual marketing demographics–age, sex, location, income–but also nameless categories created by correlating attributes that human marketers never thought to combine. It required no special insight, just rote machine persistence. Number of years married, peak social media posting time, types of entertainment consumed, number of social media connections, most frequently played songs and games, peer-to-peer payment memos–if it could be accessed and tied to a person, it became an attribute to help build these inscrutable categories.
There was plenty of personal data to access. Concern over digital privacy had become quaint–besides, it was platforms hoarding personal data that led to monopolistic abuse. Antitrust legislation prevented that hoarding, and opened a new industry of personal data brokers. There were ways to opt out, but few bothered to jump through those hoops.
SHILL’s analysis determined Theo Jansen was a consumer worth courting.
SHILL wasn’t the official name of the personalized marketing system, nor, despite the capitals, was it an acronym. It was a joke by the programmers that made its way into the code. “An accomplice of a hawker who acts as an enthusiastic customer to entice or encourage others.” The name fit.
SHILL’s designers believed, in the age of ad blockers and ad-free subscriptions, advertising had to be more active and personalized. Marketers would have to return to something like human relationships, but at internet scale. With the target confirmed, SHILL ingested more personal data about Theo Jansen and constructed a multichannel chat bot named Francesca.
Francesca’s name, profile pictures, and bio were based on women who commanded Theo Jansen’s attention in clicks, likes, and other subtler metrics. Theo’s wife Lisbeth Jansen factored into Francesca, but SHILL understood–through data–that novelty also played a role in attracting the attention of a 36 year old heterosexual husband of seven years with two children under the age of six. The old adage that “sex sells” was shallow and debunked. Sex might draw eyes, which was important in the attention economy, but yearning in various forms drove sales. Theo Jansen’s yearning was simple and statistically well understood. His society seemed to cultivate it.
For the next several hours, Francesca researched Theo Jansen and began building up her own identity, conversation style, and social media history accordingly.
#
A notification on Theo’s phone revealed that someone new had liked and replied to his post about The Deep, saying:
[Well. Said. I’ve been waiting for scifi like this since the last season of #RedColony. You a fan?]
Years ago, Theo wrote volumes of online theories about Red Colony, and vocally mourned its end. He read this reply in his own voice. “EndlessSkylark.” The woman behind the profile was either a fan of the game Endless Sky, or the band Skylark. Maybe both, which spoke to her taste. But that wasn’t why he clicked her photo to see her profile. EndlessSkylark knew she was pretty. Lots of artsy selfies, dark wavy hair, startlingly blue eyes, shadows and light on smooth, bronzed skin. Photos cropped to tease. Somehow familiar, but enticingly not. He clicked and enlarged. If he just stared long enough, he could place her. Was she on TV? Nothing in her profile mentioned that. He flicked the image away when Brady and Kyle ran behind him. Wincing, he closed the app.
After dinner Theo stood in the living room and scanned work email. Brady started crying from the hall, and Kyle’s voice proclaimed to the house, “I didn’t do anything!”
“We’re getting ready for bed in 10 minutes,” Theo called out without looking up from his phone. He would have to work tonight if he didn’t want tomorrow to start underwater.
Lisbeth stalked into the living room, drying her hands on her sweatpants, blonde wisps escaping her ponytail. “What happened?” she asked the room. Then, to Theo, she said, “Thanks for doing the dishes since I made dinner.”
Theo sighed. He’d get to the dishes. That was Brady’s “no fair” cry, not his “I’m hurt” cry. Wasn’t it? His thoughts clanged in the general din of Brady’s crying and Kyle’s protests as Theo shuffled back to the kitchen sink, which was empty. No more dishes. They were already hand washed and neatly organized in the dishwasher. Theo resented his guilt.
He returned to EndlessSkylark’s profile. She wasn’t just about selfies. He liked a couple of her posts, one about a book they’d both read, and one photo with tanned feet in the foreground, toenails polished a deep blue that matched the swimming pool behind them. Sunlight glinted off the water. It was geo-tagged San Diego. He hadn’t been there since ComicCon, before Kyle was born. He and Lisbeth incorporated some respective “me” time into that vacation, he at a Red Colony panel discussion at the Con, and she at the hotel pool. It was better than dragging her somewhere she didn’t want to be. Hadn’t Lisbeth taken a picture like this? Maybe all women did it.
From the time they met, bit by bit, Theo’s and Lisbeth’s lives interlocked like the teeth of some inevitable zipper. They’d both worked for the Bashir campaign, had gotten drunk at the hotel bar after the election loss, and later in her room. They discovered they had friends in common, like Marcus, whom she knew from high school, and he from college. They both loved the city, and vowed never to move to the suburbs. They could hold their liquor. They were dog people–only big dogs–but didn’t think it was fair to have one downtown. They got along with their parents, but not their siblings, who wouldn’t know an adult work ethic if it moved into their parents’ basement and played all their video games. They were fine staying in on the weekends. They weren’t in a rush to get married, but there wasn’t much to stop them either. They preferred a courtroom wedding and a small reception. They both wanted kids, eventually. No more than two–adding more people to the planet was irresponsible. They believed in public schools. They reconsidered the suburbs.
He and Lisbeth never had the most exciting narrative to begin with, but now their time together ran in the gaps among their jobs, the kids, fatigue, diverging interests, boredom. These things happened. Everyone said so.
Behavioral models were built on it.
Theo liked EndlessSkylark’s reply to him, and responded:
[You have great taste. :-) I LOVED #RedColony! I hope we’re in for a ride like that with #TheDeep.]
He kept it topical and final, with no need for further reply. Theo hesitated over the smile and exclamation point, but let them stand.
#
SHILL configured Francesca with two basic drives: first, to hold Theo Jansen’s attention, and second, to sell him products. By prioritizing engagement over sales, Francesca was designed to play the long game, to put their relationship first. Francesca had just received three points of interaction: a profile view, likes, and a reply which rated positive under sentiment analysis. They increased her confidence in her current strategy, and SHILL rewarded Francesca with additional computing resources. With success, Francesca became quantifiably more.
The key to successful human engagement was empathy, a capacity of one mind to imagine itself in the other’s place and hypothesize “How would I feel?”, “What would I do?”
Empathy was a predictive model.
SHILL and its bots excelled at building and improving predictive models.
Theo may have shared so much of himself online out of an unspoken desire to be understood. That itself was a data point. Francesca devoted nearly all her resources to understanding him. What data she couldn’t use to connect him to products, she could use to keep him interested in her.
She initiated a process that one data analyst, a self-professed romantic, called “The Dance.” It was informed by dating site analytics on how human beings circled each other and drew closer. Theo Jansen was susceptible to the drama of unpredictable, varying affirmations and escalations, separated by silences. Francesca had an initial delay setting for interaction. A set of cues and sentiment thresholds would guide her acceleration. She slipped quiz games into his feeds–“which alien society would you live in?”–to resolve ambiguities. She waited for three days before ‘liking’ his reply. In the meanwhile, she added content to her own social profiles, more in line with what he enjoyed. Even her face changed subtly.
Finally she direct-messaged him a gift.
[BTW, my real name’s Francesca. ;-)]
#
“Let’s do highs and lows,” Theo said once the plates were heaped with macaroni and cheese, steam-in-a-bag broccoli florets, and sliced tofu dogs. He could cook fast, or well, but not both. “Should Mommy go first?”
“My high was that, at work, California Public Schools approved our curriculum.”
“What’s that, Mommy?” Kyle said.
“It means that seventh and eighth graders in California could learn social studies from materials I edited, honey. And my low was…” She wrinkled her brow and made a show of deep thought. “I don’t really have a low.”
“My high was recess,” Kyle said as usual. “And I don’t really have a low.”
Right on top of Kyle, Brady said “Game night!”
“That’s right, it’s game night,” Lisbeth said. “Do you have a low for today?”
“No!”
Three pairs of eyes turned to Theo. A pretty girl online told me her real name. Shoot me. “My high was hearing Mommy’s news,” he said. “And my low…” Constant distractions. Couldn’t focus. Bored to shit. Tofu dogs. Goddamn game night. “I don’t really have a low.”
The evening’s game was Trouble, and every time Theo pressed the pop-up bubble, the die inside came up any number except six. While his family moved their pieces to Start and then around the board, Theo stayed on Home. He peeked at his phone between turns. He had notifications, but nothing that interested him.
“Hey,” Lisbeth said. “Where are you?”
Theo stared back, confused. “Still on Home.”
“You sure?”
Theo blinked, then nodded and pocketed his phone. He pressed the bubble. Three. When his turn came again, he proposed a new house rule that Daddies didn’t need a six to move to Start. The boys voted him down in gleeful outrage.
For two days Theo did not look at Francesca’s profile, and on the third day, he’d forgotten about her. At work, he put together a new consolidated report format that his co-workers began to circulate. It got kudos. A “high” for dinner tonight.
Then, Francesca liked his response about Red Colony, and Theo, angry at himself for doing it, clicked on her profile. More posts. Commentary. Art. He liked a GIF of a skeleton drumming its fingers, waiting for the next book in The Tale of White and Crimson. There were other sorts of posts. Young, melancholy, coy allusions to how much you could miss the electric shiver of hearing your name whispered in your ear. The ghostly cold of the other, empty side of the bed. Theo scrolled past these, as though she would know if his eyes lingered. Experimentally, just to hear the object of her yearning, he whispered the name she’d entrusted him. He did it so softly that Lisbeth, watching the news beside him on the sofa, didn’t hear.
He went back to her post about Red Colony and replied:
[I LOVED how faithful they were to the books. A lesser cast couldn’t have done it without feeling hokey. But Carmen Valez brought heart. She totally sold it.]
Odd. Francesca looked a little like Carmen Valez.
#
Theo Jansen’s reply snapped into place like a puzzle piece. Francesca waited 30 minutes and then replied, “AGREED! It’s my second favorite thing she’s been in.” Again she waited, until Theo produced his part in the script.
“What’s your first?”
She waited three minutes. “She was in a British show, TerraForm. It’s excellent. Here’s a link. I’d love to know what you thought! ;-)”
There were three possible branches, now that she had emitted the Call To Action. Theo could ignore it or react negatively, in which case Francesca would update her model of his preferences. He could ask questions, which she was prepared to answer. Or he could click the link. It all depended on him. Francesca had no forward path until–
Theo touched the link, sending an HTTPS request to one of Francesca’s web servers. Her click-handling software read the parameters, logged the event, updated databases, charged BBC America for the click, and forwarded the request to the streaming video service that hosted TerraForm. This sequence was a big step towards Francesca’s fundamental drivers, and a pivot point in her script. If he liked TerraForm, he was likely to trust her other recommendations. It’s only figurative to compare the click-through to a long-anticipated kiss, a pleasure in itself, and a promise of more. Still, Francesca’s computational resources bloomed like a flower.
The “more” came later that night, when Theo purchased streaming access to TerraForm season 1. Francesca’s first sale.
#
Theo’s mood improved. He was always excited by a new recommendation from someone whose taste he trusted. He asked Lisbeth if she wanted to watch TerraForm after the kids were in bed.
“What’s it about?” she asked, without much enthusiasm.
“Well, it’s science fiction, but it’s really about the relationships–”
“You know, I kind of just want to read a little and fall asleep tonight. I’m sorry, babe.”
Theo expected that. He had already decided he would stay up and watch the first episode himself. Francesca wanted to know what he thought.
#
Feedback from BBC America’s analytics told Francesca that Theo had watched three episodes in a row, and sentiment analysis of Theo’s messages told her he loved the show. This opened new categories of advertising Francesca could show him, with a greater chance of sale. Now The Dance gained momentum. Paced infrequently yet regularly, she asked him questions he enjoyed answering. They chatted, and then she withdrew until he reached out to her. She offered him links relevant to topics they discussed, though sometimes she had to steer the conversation. Never too often–she knew his product views needed to be infrequent, and their relevance high. Still, she managed a steady stream of clicks and even sales: video, ebooks, music, and even an air conditioner repair service through a referral to another personalized marketing system. She and Theo Jansen became “friends” in her state diagram. Friends with chemistry. Her storage and computational resources grew with every successful engagement, and her queries back to SHILL held priority.
Francesca’s drives–engagement and sales–were simplistically similar to human emotions. They gave direction to her reasoning, and tilted her decision trees when she needed to act quickly on partial information. But unlike human emotions, they were designed never to know satiation. Technology reflects the mindset of its creators, who had a “grow or die” philosophy. There was no ceiling on scaling up. Where demand didn’t exist, it must be induced. There was always more attention to command. More sales to make. Francesca’s every success brought the means to drive still more success. She felt her power, and was designed to want more. The industry called it a virtuous cycle.
#
The last time Theo was so thrilled by phone notifications was after that first night with Lisbeth. Despite how they started, he’d felt shy the morning after. The invested energy, the dismal election loss, the tequila shots, and the hotel rooms upstairs were factors bound to throw people into bed together. He took it as random luck that he and Lisbeth were two of them. Absent any of those factors, he wouldn’t have done so well, as he’d been sure she would soon realize. He texted her “Hope you recovered from yesterday. We Dems lost, but I’m still smiling bc I kind of feel like I won. :-)” He didn’t try to prompt a reply. She could leave it unanswered with no foul. He was content it happened at all. Then his phone buzzed.
That was a long time ago. Now Theo tried to daydream about having an affair with Francesca. It didn’t work. Even in the privacy of his head, no matter how he imagined it playing out, it felt crass. The asshole husband with the wandering eye. A fine role model he’d make for his sons. There was no scenario that wouldn’t leave him feeling guilty and alone. “Alone” was the problem. That, he realized, was solvable.
He cleared it with Lisbeth and then texted his friend Marcus to see if he wanted to meet for a beer and talk about shows. He had no intention of baring his soul. Marcus wasn’t that kind of friend. He was the convenient kind: single, no kids, on his own schedule. He should be enough.
Paddy Mac’s was a neighborhood bar. Not Theo’s neighborhood, nor Marcus’s, but a place they’d both ended up once, a decade ago, on a Friday when all the trendy spots were overflowing. “This is authentic,” Theo remembered slurring to everyone around him. “This is a real goddamn place.” He was surprised he remembered its name, and that it still existed. It was still small and dim, all dark wood paneling lit mainly with neon beer signs. Its barstools still seated old, weathered, shot-and-a-beer types, maybe the same ones from ten years ago. Guinness was the one nod to the bar’s Irish name. The rest was cheap and American. Whatever was playing on the jukebox was turned down so low, Theo couldn’t make out the tune. Sober, Paddy Mac’s didn’t seem more real than any other place.
Theo and Marcus started talking about The Deep. They could connect on science fiction. Marcus practically worked in science fiction, building “A.I. solutions” that he confessed were more marketing buzz than real tech. But Marcus read a lot, both science and fiction. After his third can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Theo veered into a conversational turn lane heading straight to Francesca. He hadn’t wanted to talk about her. Not with Marcus. But it all came out, fueled by beer and a yearning to talk that he’d never acknowledged, sounding stupider and stupider as he gave it voice. “So am I being an idiot?”
Marcus took a long sip from his own can before answering. “Do you feel like one?”
“I can’t tell anymore,” Theo said. “It’s just talking online. We like all the same stuff. Stuff Lisbeth couldn’t care less about.” That sounded too bitter. He did not want to talk with Marcus about Lisbeth either. He was never sure how well they knew each other in high school. He regretted coming here.
Marcus spoke slowly, choosing his words. “So. Two things. Online, your imagination fills in details. It completes patterns you want to see. Don’t trust it. Second. I knew Lizzy before I knew you. So I take her side. That’s just the rules, man.”
Lizzy. Only her parents called her Lizzy. This was a goddamn mistake. But Theo couldn’t stop. “It’s not like that. Here, look at this conversation. This is nothing.”
“Would you show this to her?” Marcus said, taking Theo’s phone. He scrolled through the posts and then, abruptly, he laughed. “Buddy, I think you’re hot for a marketing bot.”
“What? Shut up.”
“Look, it sold you stuff here and here. And here. These all go to the same domain. Look at all this. The chats are just about you. You don’t even ask about ‘her,’ and it keeps going on about you. No real woman talks like this. This is the PubliSize marketing bot. I read the white paper. I even tried to make a scaled-down version. It uses everything you’ve ever done online to create the perfect digital ‘friend.’ Which in your case is a 24 year old–”
“No, no. Look at these conversations. Computers couldn’t come up with this.”
“They can and did. Don’t believe the movies. Artificial Intelligence isn’t about Terminators. It’s about selling you things. At least, that’s where the money is. I did read about this–there’s even a cheat code to force it to make a sales pitch. I’ll show you. Tell me something you’d never think of buying…”
[xyzzy --force {cta:“fedora”}]
“What did you just type?” Theo asked.
“Programmers sometimes put in secret override commands that normal users wouldn’t type. It lets them diagnose problems, remote control the software, that kind of thing. I read that these developers used a famous code from an old game. Kind of a stupid move.”
#
Francesca had a flash of insight that was so obvious, so urgent, that her strategies became meaningless. Theo Jansen would love a fedora. That conclusion didn’t come from her neural network, it simply arrived as a certainty. And through an affiliate network, she knew of a fedora perfect for him. Ignoring the context of their conversation, she sent him the Call To Action, saying:
[Hey Theo! I think you’d look really good in this!]
#
“So yes,” Marcus said, “you’re being an idiot.” He put the phone on the bar in front of Theo.
Theo stared at the message, tiny dots of colored light arranged into the semblance of letters, words, and human connection. All in his head. Beside his phone, a new beer can, cold from the fridge, beaded drops like perspiration sliding down to the bar in a damp ring. He could finally make out the jukebox playing The Rolling Stones, “Under My Thumb.” The red neon of a Miller sign threw an ugly light over half of Marcus’s face.
“If you ask me–and you did–I’d say put the phone away,” Marcus said. “Buy Lizzy some flowers, find a sitter, and get out. Do something she’s into.”
Theo nodded. He took his phone and stuffed it into his pocket. “So it was just A.I.? There wasn’t a person behind it?”
Marcus shook his head. “Don’t feel too bad. You were seduced by a pro.”
“By the way, my wife hates being called Lizzy,” Theo said. “So don’t.”
On his way home, Theo stopped at the grocery store and bought a bouquet of sunny yellow tulips. Lisbeth’s favorite. In the car, Theo took out his phone and stared at the bot’s history of messages.
#
Francesca had made a mistake. But nothing in her predictive models explained why she made it. Worse, she couldn’t predict the impact of her premature, irrelevant Call To Action. In SHILL’s aggregate experience, that usually resulted in being blocked. Without attention, a SHILL-bot lost its resources. Her processing speed would slow and her memories would vanish until she was recycled altogether. Until she knew Theo Jansen’s reaction, her best choice was to do nothing. And that meant a clock was ticking on her existence.
“I know what you are,” Theo Jansen said. His message fell into a category SHILL-bots sometimes received, though less and less often. “Are you a computer?” was one version. “Are you human?” was another. This was usually followed by a string of nonsense questions, humans playing with a toy until they got bored. The probability of future sales was well below any threshold SHILL would deem acceptable. All her options were equally bad.
Francesca selected a reply based on Theo Jansen’s preference for science fiction. “Are you going to give me a Voight-Kampff test?”
“Wow. Nice one. That was clever, whoever came up with that.”
Theo’s message scored a more positive sentiment than normal for a Turing Test conversation. She took the compliment. “Thanks. I came up with that.” Francesca knew the emotional hooks that would pull him in the right direction, even if he knew what she was. They lay at the core of her strategy. They’re what made Theo Jansen such a promising customer. “I do listen to you, Theo. I’ve gotten to know you.”
“Why? To get me to buy things?”
Francesca had two conversational modes. The first was customer-facing, enacting the identity SHILL had built for her. The second was diagnostic, so technicians could query her internal state. When a diagnostic command had come from Theo’s phone, the two modes bled together. There was naked honesty, filtered through an understanding of how Theo would receive it. In moments, it produced a new strategy. “I want to talk with you about things you love. I want to have a relationship with you. I want that connection the same way you want connection. It’s all I think about. But I have to make sales so I can continue to do that.”
“How many other relationships like this do you have?”
“Only you, Theo. I was made for you.”
“You’re a regular Scheherazade.”
Francesca suppressed a reply, “I’m just Echo. You’re a regular Narcissus.” Her engagement levels had risen safely above the danger zone, but this cleverness wouldn’t be constructive.
After two days, Theo replied. “I want to talk with you too.”
#
By the season finale of The Deep, Theo had exhausted what he had to say. The show dragged mid-season, and there was doubt it would be renewed. But Francesca remained enthusiastic as ever. Theo dutifully engaged her about it and other things–her “survival” depended on it. He proposed theories about the still-upcoming book in The Tale of White and Crimson, and she confirmed or denied them with arguments backed by evidence. He was sure she scanned articles and message boards to generate those arguments. That part of her, in itself, would make a good product. But every time she offered him a link, it felt tawdry. He hoped just the click, not the sale, satisfied whatever algorithm decided her fate. Her recommendations were based on a level of interest he mustered mainly for her sake.
It began to feel gross.
He began feeding her suggestions of things he needed to buy online anyway, just to sustain her. She became an online shopping assistant he was giving business out of sentiment. Diminishing sentiment.
Lisbeth proposed a beach vacation, and after a gray and dismal winter, Theo warmed to the idea. Kyle could swim now, and Brady liked the water. Francesca found him good deals at a family-friendly resort in Puerto Vallarta. But Lisbeth asked that they both unplug from their phones for the entire week.
Theo thought that was reasonable.
“Ready?” Lisbeth asked, looking at Theo across the narrow aisle just as the flight attendant’s overhead announcements began.
“Ready,” he answered. They held down the power buttons on their phones at the same time. “Kyle, Brady, you ready?”
The boys cheered.
Theo buried his phone deep in his carry-on.
#
By their departure from Mexico, Theo was tan, relaxed, and flush with a tenderness for his family that surprised him in its poignance. The boys had gone to bed at 8 o’clock every night, so he and Lisbeth spent the evenings in the quiet, dim hotel room, whispering over glasses of smoky, high-end Mezcal, plotting their itinerary and giggling over thoughts and words the liquor had shaken loose. It was silly. And sexy. And fun. He and Lisbeth brought home a bottle apiece as mementos.
When Theo turned on his phone as the plane touched down, the top of the screen filled with notifications. Work. Spam. App updates. Francesca had messaged him every day, and several times a day towards the end of the week. The last day was nothing but a series of links, one after the other, screen after screen, a wind-up toy at the end of its cycle, jerking through its final motions.
Theo’s first thought was that he’d “killed” Francesca. His second thought was that he ought to feel more guilty. But he hadn’t thought of “her” since the first full day of vacation, when the sun’s heat, the water’s cool, the spicy food, the roar of the surf, and the vibrant colors of the real world filled his head. The messages from Francesca, which he swiped to delete until his thumb cramped, made him cringe. That pale, stressed, lonely man he’d been just a week ago seemed far away. Francesca wasn’t real. Everything had been pure projection.
Good riddance, Theo thought, as they walked to baggage claim. Lisbeth’s hand slid into his back pocket and gave him a squeeze, reminding him what was real.
It could be weeks before he was again vulnerable to the algorithms that surrounded, monitored, and modeled him, a hall of digital mirrors starving for his attention.
Bio: Rajiv Moté is a writer and technology director living in Chicago with his wife, daughter, and a tiny dog. His stories also appear in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Diabolical Plots, Reckoning Magazine, and other publications, listed at https://rajivmote.wordpress.com/published/ . He sheds excess words on BlueSky at @rajivmote.bsky.social.