Virtual grapevine – Sandra 48

 

[For back story go here: Story so far at 30 Nov 2020 and more recent Sandra episodes especially this one.]

[Other back story through in-links.]

“Well, look at us,” said Sandra. “Two people sitting outside having a coffee. Just like the olden days. And we’re allowed to do it too. Don’t even need to pretend it’s an accident.”

Trinny smiled. “It’s very good to see you,” she said. “In person. Not with glitches or headphones and a headset on.”

“Or Adrian telling us how great his architectural programming is.”

“Can’t drink coffee in VR,” observed Sandra.

“Well, actually I tried to once and spilled it in my lap,” confessed Trinny. “That pain was in no way virtual.”

The two were sat outside an old coffee shop they used to frequent. It was the place they’d come to in order to chew the fat, tell each other how stressed they were and generally moan about life, the universe, the price of coffee and how this place never managed to get a flat white quite right. Today, however, everything was perfect. The coffee could have tasted like Ribena for all they cared.

“How is Adrian?” asked Sandra.

“Busy,” said Trinny. “Seems to be enjoying a lucrative sideline in solving hacking issues for people. Someone locked out of a social media account, encrypted files, ransomeware that kind of thing.”

“Wow,” said Sandra. “He any good at it?”

“He solved our kitten crisis,” observed Trinny. “Now he’s charging an hourly rate. Other than that… He’s busy. So he must be quite good.”

“Unless he’s as much of a con artist as the people he’s up against?”

“I’m just glad he’s on my side,” said Trinny. “I hear you and Daniel are getting on OK?”

“What?” said Sandra. “I, I suppose so. How do you?”

“Adrian again,” said Trinny in an off-hand way. “Said you two met up.”

Gradually it emerged that Adrian had been taking his position as God of Together… Apart a little too far. As they continued to chat Sandra discovered Adrian had not just informed Trinny of her meet-up but had also given a reasonably fair account of the conversation between the two. 

“He shouldn’t be sharing this,” said Sandra. “That was a private conversation.”

“Yeah,” said Trinny. “But there’s a clause in the terms and conditions that no one ever reads.”

“A clause that says he can spy on us?”

“No, it says you agree that your conversation might be listened to or recorded for our training and development purposes.”

“Neither of which is the case here, right?”

“It develops the AI tech,” said Trinny.

“You’re being incredibly off-hand about this invasion of privacy,” said Sandra.

“We’re very clear about what we do,” said Trinny. “You helped us make it like this.”

Sandra felt the floor fall away. She had thought she knew what was going on with the app. The VR angle had been great for attracting and bringing in new customers and even talent. There were a couple of other programmers who wanted to join for the experience and opportunity to push back the boundaries of apps a bit further. But this was going further and faster than she wanted.

“We can’t keep on like this,” she said. “It’s not right – we’re taking advantage of…”

“Imagine the first wedding or baby created because of Together… Apart,” said Trinny. “We could run a competition.”

“We are not running a competition!” said Sandra firmly.

“Not officially,” said Trinny, “Just give whoever does it first something to recognise it when it does.”

“This is about two people meeting each other and having a personal relationship,” said Sandra. “It can’t be a free for all festival of sharing.”

“It’s just a bit of fun,” countered Trinny. “Do you think people really take this seriously?”

“Sometimes, yes,” said Sandra. “Very seriously.”

As she walked back home through the sunshine, dodging the crowds and crossing the road whenever someone was coming towards her on the pavement, Sandra thought again about where her app adventure was going. The world had changed, had become surreal and unreal and maybe some of the solutions to meet this had similarly lost track of where the proper boundaries were between people. Now things were – might be just – changing back would the world be left with areas that just didn’t make sense any more? Would everything revert back to where it was or were there areas that had been stretched too much so they wouldn’t return to the former status quo?

For the time being Sandra just wanted to get back to some typing and thinking of stories. To communicate with people by speech and phone and face-to-face. The age of the video meeting had arrived swiftly, but just maybe it would slowly be pushed back again. Certainly, she thought, Adrian needs to be pushed back again. Hopefully all the way back into the box from where he came.