(4 of 10)
``Good evening, sir. Good evening, ma'am. What were those numbers again?'' Raster asks. Same voice, but different inflections -- more human. I call out the numbers one more time and he comes back with 537,824,167,720.
``That sounds better,'' I mutter.
Anne is nonplussed. ``Now its voice recognition seems to be working fine.''
``I don't think so. I think my little math problem got forwarded to a real human being. When the conversation gets over the head of the built-in software, it calls for help, and a human steps in and takes over. He's watching us through the built-in videocam,'' I explain, pointing at the fish- eye lens built into the front panel of the set-top box, ``and listening through the built-in mike.''
Anne's getting that glazed look in her eyes; I grope for an analog analogy. ``Remember The Exorcist? Well, Raster has just been possessed, like the chick in the flick. Except it's not just Beelzebub. It's a customer-service rep.''
I've just walked blind into a trap that is yawningly obvious to Anne. ``Maybe that's a job you should apply for!'' she exclaims. The other jaw of the trap closes faster than my teeth chomping down on my tongue: ``I can take your application online right now!'' says Raster.
My sister-in-law is the embodiment of sugary triumph until the next evening, when I have a good news/bad news conversation with her. Good: I'm now a Metaverse customer-service rep. Bad: I don't have a cubicle in some Edge City office complex. I telecommute from home -- from her home, from her sofa. I sit there all day long, munching through my dwindling stash of tax-deductible jelly beans, wearing an operator's headset, gripping the control unit, using it like a puppeteer's rig to control other people's Rasters on other people's screens, all over the U.S. I can see them -- the wide-angle view from their set-top boxes is piped to a window on my screen. But they can't see me -- just Raster, my avatar, my body in the Metaverse.
Ghastly in the mottled, flattening light of the Tube, people ask me inane questions about arithmetic. If they're asking for help with recipes, airplane schedules, child-rearing or home improvement, they've already been turfed to someone else. My expertise is pure math only.
Which is pretty sleepy until the next week, when my brother's agency announces the big Simoleons Sweepstakes. They've hired a knot-kneed fullback as their spokesman. Within minutes, requests for help from contestants start flooding in. Every Bears fan in Greater Chicago is trying to calculate the volume of Soldier Field. They're all doing it wrong; and even the ones who are doing it right are probably using the faulty chip in their set-top box. I'm in deep conflict-of-interest territory here, wanting to reach out with Raster's stubby, white-gloved, three-fingered hand and slap some sense into these people.
But I'm sworn to secrecy. Joe has hired me to do the calculations for the Metrodome, Three Rivers Stadium, RFK Stadium and every other N.F.L. venue. There's going to be a Simoleons winner in every city.