ProtoTyke

Child sex crimes had decreased by 89% since the commercialisation of ProtoTyke. The new technology faced significant public backlash due to concerns about its ethical implications– ‘could we really say we were deterring sexual predators if they were taking part in their perversions, albeit synthetically?’ became the moral discourse of the time.

Shelby Lifton scrolled through the hate mail and death threats she received in her inbox daily. She did not foresee that her degree in Information Technology would lead her here, but she liked fixing bugs, resolving glitches and coding software. It had nothing to do with what she believed, or any mission to serve humanity– she was simply good at her job, and enjoyed it. In fact, if you were to ask her about her position at ProtoTyke, she would tell you that she had no moral stance on the issue one way or the other; she had an ethically neutral viewpoint of the subject. Of course, the fact that child sex abuse drastically decreased would be enough for her to consider it a net positive, but she rarely reflected on the implications of the technology or the company. To Shebly, her job was devoid of morality, not because she believed morality was absent in the philosophical sense, but simply because she had no opinion on the dilemma. She didn’t think about it. She sat blankly at her computer, moving her cursor around a 3D rendered image of two seven-year-old children on the screen as she punched in codes, troubleshooting. Wired to her computer sat a VR headset and a hand-sized tube with a small canal, both marked with the silver minimalist, yet bold ProtoTyke logo. A self-proclaimed “old-fashioned” individual, she used sticky notes to help her organise her tech support tickets. She penned TICKET #3907- SLEEVE NOT SYNCING on a yellow page and stuck it on the cylindrical tube.

Shelby clicked open an email which she manually sent to spam, “SEX with ROBOT CHILDREN is IMMORAL – PEDOS SHOULD BURN IN HELLLL”. The emails never bothered her; she was just annoyed that they clogged her inbox. The thing that did irk her was the frequency of the senders using the term “pedo” when what they really meant was “child sex predator”. A child sex predator was not necessarily a pedophile, and a pedophile was not necessarily a sexual predator. The term ‘pedophile’ denotes a sexual affection for children, but does not imply that the person has acted upon these desires. Even though a pedophile very well might have harmed a child, it is not innate in the word’s definition. The term ‘child sex predator’, on the other hand, directly signifies that this person has harmed a child. Furthermore, child sex predators were not necessarily pedophiles; harming children in this way did not mean they got the same gratification a pedophile would get. In fact, a sex predator might get none at all. In these latter scenarios, ProtoTyke would be of no use in curbing a predator’s urges and, in fact, might make the desires worse. The technology was effective in fulfilling two distinct purposes: preventing non-offending pedophiles from acting out their desires on live children, and limiting the number of reoffences of sexual predators who were pedophiles, or better yet, ceasing their recidivism completely.

Shelby never read or responded to the emails. The graphic designers had it worse; those who created the lines of the animated pre-pubescent children made their arms look more childlike, their skin appear more supple. Each ProtoTyke model was unique to the individual user, and if the software was court-ordered, the age, gender, and build of the model would often be made aesthetically similar to the criminal’s target victim profile. The technology became parallel to therapy intervention in helping people convicted of sex crimes reduce their sentences. Based on phallometrics tests, a conditional sentence with the use of ProtoTyke could likely reduce a prison sentence due to the reduced risk of reoffending, it offered.

Shipping was discreet and would always come with no identifications or markings. This came after multiple customer complaints from men who became pariahs because of neighbours recognising the logo and packaging.

Shelby’s nose started to bleed. She had recurring nosebleeds ever since she was a little girl because of her haemophilia. These bleeds would happen more frequently during stress, and consequently, at inconvenient times.

“My sister had nosebleeds all the time. Turns out she had a tumour,” the new intern said to Shelby in an attempt to engage with her as she watched Shelby dab at her nose as she coded. Shelby didn’t bother explaining her blood-clotting disorder because the intern seemed like the type who would take any response as fodder for continuous blabbing. Instead, Shelby just nodded and smiled, “Is that so?” as she continued to code without pause, hoping the intern would get the implication, which she did.

Her screen flashed: SYNC COMPLETE- DEVICE PAIRED. The cylinder tube lit up, and the 3D rendered children on the screen knelt and raised their arms up high. Shelby clicked: ticket resolved, crumpled up her sticky note and threw it in the trash.

Today was Shelby’s 34th birthday. She knew she was plain with nothing exciting about her face: her small brown eyes, adult acne, and puffy face, which her naturopath said was caused by inflammation and suggested she take fish oil and alkalize her body. Shelby yearned for excitement in life; that awestruck experience that she heard women talk about. She didn‘t know if it was a real feeling, or if it was only talked about by women in books and movies. She loved her partner, John. She felt safe with John, but he didn’t excite her in the way she heard about. When they first started dating, Shelby was hesitant to reveal where she worked as she was used to the shocked reactions of people, usually taking the moral high ground. Where you work is the least personal thing about you, and so it always came up at the beginning of conversations when she started dating new people. When she revealed to John where she worked, she braced for his reaction, but to her surprise, John wasn’t like the others. He just nodded, his eyes open wide in surprise. He occupied his mouth by bringing his beer to his lips so he could have more time to think about his reply. John was practical, like her, and he thought that if Shelby worked for a company that helped child sex crimes drop, then she was a force for good. Shelby hated it when he said this because she didn’t like it when anyone tried to associate morality to her position. She found it pedantic and a bit annoying. She felt people were trying to convince her that what she was doing was good, implying that they believed she was questioning the ethicalness of it, herself. But John never talked about this in detail, and he began to approach anything involving Shelby’s job the way she saw it– neutral. He asked about the technical problems she encountered in her tickets and asked how she approached glitches that challenged her or that she couldn’t fix. John seemed more interested in the technological side of her job; how much of this was intended for her benefit alone, she didn’t know, but she appreciated it regardless.

She liked telling John about the hate mail she got because she enjoyed it when he said he would punch the people out who threatened to kill her. It made her feel protected. Sometimes she would embellish what the emails actually said so that she could feel John get more protective and angry.

She knew he would propose. She saw an email from the ring jeweller three months ago, but she didn’t say anything. She knew he was making instalments to pay it off at 2% interest. She just didn’t know when, but every dinner she expected it. She thought that she wanted to marry John; it was the next step in their relationship after all. She didn’t care about marriage much, but John was a romantic, and she wanted to make him happy. So, she thought, “Why not?” since it made no difference to her.

And so that one night, he ordered lobster and spaghetti, and they sat across from one another at his apartment, and she knew it was coming. He had been with her a long time, was her forever partner, said all the things people say before engagements, and she felt adrenaline rising within her that she didn’t expect. When he pulled out the ring, she exalted immediately.

“You knew,” he said after seeing her reaction. They laughed together as she tried to convince him that she didn’t expect it, and he believed it.

They went to the bedroom and had sex while the lobster went cold in the kitchen. Then Shelby’s nose started to bleed, and she went to the bathroom. Shelby was more ecstatic about the proposal than she thought she would be. Perhaps, she thought, this might be one of those exciting feelings that she always yearned for, but then she realised he was out of toilet paper. It began to annoy her that he didn’t plan to have the toilet paper stocked on the night he was planning to propose to her at his apartment. Maybe he left some under the sink, she thought, so she opened it. One hand on her nose, she opened the cabinet, rummaging through his belongings

Then it all stopped. She froze as she pierced her eyes like those fast zooms you see in the old comedies from the 1990s: underneath the old items in the back of his cabinet, a black matte box. Shelby paused and pulled it closer to her. She only had to pull the box slightly to the side to see the P in the sleek ProtoTyke logo that was stamped on. She didn’t dare touch it. She wanted to be sure, so she pulled it forward, eyeing the whole logo. She tried to register it as something else, like when you’ve written a word so many times that you begin to doubt its spelling, and it starts to look like a completely different word. She searched her mind for reasons as to why the box would be there: when she started at the company, did she ever bring home a model for any reason? No. And it was so purposefully hidden. She tore open the box quietly; she couldn’t stop now, like Pandora unleashing the unstoppable flow. She took out the cylinder sleeve and saw on its home screen that it had already paired with a device, his laptop. The tube’s opening had a rounded edge on the outer socket for a smoother application, a feature of their newer model, which meant it must have been purchased within the last 4 months. She checked the machine’s usage update: 39 hours, 57 minutes – last used yesterday morning, 9:04 am. Her hands became numb. She felt a jerk in her chest. She put the device back into the box and slammed it to the back of the cabinet. In a moment of sickly panic, not knowing what to do, she caught a look at herself in the mirror, blood smearing down her face.

She confronted him that night. He tried to defend himself, saying when his brother stayed for a few days last summer, he might have brought it and left it at the apartment, being too embarrassed to ask if he left it there. She listened to him as he spoke fast, tripping over his words, just throwing things out at her. The quieter she was, the faster he spoke. She wasn’t even listening. She was simply thinking one thing: she could not marry him. She could not do anything but stand there, her nose bleeding onto his floor. When she realised how much her life would be affected by not having John in it, she offered him a way out. She asked to see his laptop so she could check for sure. She knew by his face, after she said this, that she didn’t need to check. It was the same face he gave her years ago after she confronted him when she found a restaurant delivery bag in the garbage. She had asked him to cook more often since she was concerned about the seed oil content of eating out too much. She’d come home impressed by a beautifully plated meal. John spoke of the recipe, how hard he had worked to learn it, and how he wanted to do this for her. When she saw a delivery bag, she asked if he had ordered the food from a restaurant, and it was plated. He gave her this same look before telling her that she was right: the look of a liar caught in a lie, thinking they could get away with it mixed with a hint of questioning the audacity that someone would challenge their lie. Now, John followed up this look with the plea that his computer wouldn’t turn on and he was getting it fixed. This made Shelby feel nauseated. She quietly left.

Three years after that night, Shelby married John. She forced herself to believe his story about his laptop not turning on. She never looked under the bathroom sink again. Twenty years after they married, she was still working at ProtoTyke. Now a multimillion-dollar company, the public criticism amplified each year as the business grew more successful. Shelby advanced within the company, eventually leading her to a promotion as the head of the IT Department. Her salary skyrocketed. She and John were able to purchase a mansion, one of those old colonial homes that Shelby only saw in historical films. The company looked very different now as the technology advanced, expanding services and products. Child sex crimes continued to drop even more dramatically.

Shelby worked on her computer, VR headset and cylindrical sleeve attached. The image of a 3D rendered 11-year-old girl, exponentially more lifelike and realistic, jumped up and down on her screen. Shelby felt that not much had changed. She flicked the sticky note on the cylinder tube device: TICKET #5849: AI NOT RESPONDING TO INPUT. She ran code as her nose began to bleed, dabbing at it as usual.

In the years that the company evolved, specialists created AI tools that would successfully send emails containing certain words and phrases directly to spam. But once in a while, Shelby would open her spam folder and read through each email in its entirety, sometimes reading them twice, or even three times. And during these moments, she would no longer dismiss them with apathetic scoffs; instead, they stirred a churning nausea deep beneath her ribs.

Tags: English Section, Kalpabiswa, Olivia Loccisano, দশম বর্ষ প্রথম সংখ্যা