AD BREAK

THIS IS A SHORT STORY

Scott wasn’t it.  Isaac looked a little creepy.  Daniel’s hobbies were boring.  Raymond’s mustache reminded McKenzie of the last date she went on–sushi with Thomas who mixed the soy sauce and wasabi together in a ramekin–yikes.  He asked about her career and she told him she was a digital marketing solutions manager with a marketing consulting firm and he asked her what that entailed and he seemed genuinely interested, which she liked. 

“I assess client needs and help develop the programming of consumer noospheric advertisement profiles primarily for subscription and merchandise sales based on correlating biometrics and metadata from proprietary marketing software.  I’m not a data scientist or a software engineer but I manage a team of them, and my role is crucial for continued revenue growth and the optimization of data-driven solutions to increase blink-through rates across the demographic landscape,” she explained.

“Sounds interesting,” Thomas lied, while soy sauce dripped from his California roll onto his plate. 

“It really is,” McKenzie smiled for the first time on the date and continued.  “The amount of data is staggering.  It’s nearly incomprehensible.  We consider pupil dilation, scroll speed, eye movement, past, present, and future GPS location, web searches, and other users in the vicinity–just to name a few data points.  Eventually we’ll be so good that we won’t even need to advertise!  The money will be deducted from your bank account and the product delivered before you even realize you were going to buy it!”

“But then won’t you be out of a job,” Thomas mused.  McKenzie stopped smiling.

…

No, Thomas was not what she was looking for.  Not what she needed.  He would be here on the MomMaker app!  A father and provider.  Mostly a provider.  A provider of sperm.  Nothing more.  Nothing more was really needed!  

Yes, queen, yes, you could have your cake and eat it too promised the MomMaker ads.  MomMaker revolutionized motherhood.  You could skip the small talk, the fake laughs, the preparatory grooming, the fear of rejection, the fear of commitment, the anxiety, all of it.  For a small fee, small for any professional non-virtual-birthing-customer, you could find the perfect match.  MomMaker profiles cascaded endlessly on screen through a simple glance.  All of the most genetically gifted men from all over the world collated in one place.  Motherhood was just a blink away!

…

“So there’s all this data.  An unfathomable amount.  The sort of shit no person or group of people could ever understand.  But you feed all of that into a computer, a neural network, whatever, and then something happens?”

“It depends on what the client wants.  It’s usually more sales.  But yes, basically that’s it.  Personalized ads target the customers in a way no person could reproduce.  It’s too much data for people to understand.  Imagine knowing everything a person watches on her phone. And not only that, but how this person is consciously and unconsciously responding to all these stimuli.  Not survey answer bullshit but realtime eyetracking data across not only advertisements, but every single thing you look at.  Everything!  Forever.  Compared to other people’s data profiles.  Updating constantly.  The amount of data only growing, and the connections multiplying.” McKenzie spoke looking through Thomas. “Strategies optimized by self-updating marketing programs with access to realtime biometric data. A-B testing with a billion people in the blink of an eye. A petri dish as big as the world.”

…

The urge to conceive was always buried inside McKenzie.  MomMaker marketers say it’s buried inside every non-virtual-birthing-customer.  (They have the data to back it up, cataloged by expert statisticians and contextualized by narrative architect managers (themselves the liaisons between an opaque large language model narrative generator and the marketing department.))  All that was required to complete the conversion was a little push.  A small nudge in the right direction.

For McKenzie, it was moms on Linkedin.  She had countless connections on Linkedin–most of whom she had never met or worked with.  This was standard operating procedure for any professional, especially if she was involved in marketing.  Your network is your net worth rang the refrain across Linkedin profiles regardless of industry.  Posting and engagement were not required for most jobs, but it was expected if one took her job seriously (and why wouldn’t one?).  Successful, career-focused moms posted pictures of their families in the same timeline where they posted about the latest management trends.  Many of them worked from home, attending virtual meetings while breastfeeding.  Innumerable moms boasted of their companies’ generous maternity leave, their work-life balance.  Having children while remaining a professional became a status symbol–Linkedin even offered virtual “mom” badges alongside whichever other credentials a professional might wish to display.

…

“What about the other stuff on the screens?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re a marketing consultant.  You make ads that appear on screens.  Almost everything has an advertising component now.  And you contribute to that flood of advertising.  But what about everything else on the screen?  Surely there’s similar data about that stuff.  So who decides how everything else on the screen looks?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

…

Everyone used an ovulation tracker, and why not? The app was free and it was fun to know. McKenzie understood better than most that she was swayed by unseen biological forces. The emotions she felt watching certain ads would change depending on where she was in her menstrual cycle; she was attracted to different men depending on the day of the week. Another data point. Still, the knowledge wasn’t power. Knowing didn’t stop her from feeling and there were deeper non biological forces at work which she accepted as fate. Who decides to show you a happy family right as you’re about to log off your work app? Did they know you would only catch the family peripherally, as you were closing the app, because your scroll speed was cataloged so extensively and your eye movement predicable and programmable through color and movement? Surely some things were beyond programming. Did someone know exactly when to show you something so that you would see it in a dream?

…

McKenzie was barely paying attention to all the sperm donors’ profiles she was rejecting until she saw Bennet Elstein.  Could it really be him?  Seeing his face snapped her out of her trance-like scroll state.  It was really Bennet, there could be no question—the streak of white hair, the perfect smile—they were his.  McKenzie’s heart soared.  No more swiping, no more wondering.  This was it.  Bennet’s profile read, “Digital marketing.  Pronatalist.  Doing more and doing better.”  McKenzie double-blinked for the first time, heartbeat racing.  She enabled notifications when prompted.

…

“So what else do the clients want?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said usually the clients use your services to get more sales.  What else?”

…

A manilla envelope sealed inside a small styrofoam cooler arrived on McKenzie’s doorstop the next day via carrier drone.  The MomMaker app emitted a bell-like sound to inform McKenzie of its delivery and glowed an ominous strobing yellow.  The screen read “URGENT.”  McKenzie opened the app and an animation began playing.  “Welcome, mom!” written in white, rounded sans serif font bounced in front of a background of red velvet curtain.  Cartoonish shadows of dancing figures fluttered across the screen, keeping time with the ukulele and finger snap soundtrack.  The curtain opened to unveil another curtain much further away but still taking up the entire screen, the shadows much smaller but as numerous.  The curtain slowly zoomed toward the screen, growing, as text faded in describing the corporate memphis animation accompaniment.  Rounded humanoid figures pantomimed the actions described onscreen to impregnate themselves with the proprietary MomMaker syringe provided in the styrofoam cooler.  The featureless, beige faces smiled as they rolled across the screen beneath text that read, “Congratulations, you’ve been made into a mom!” while the music played on a loop.

McKenzie returned to her home screen.  She opened Linkedin reflexively and unconsciously thumbed her rose quartz keychain, a gift from her father when she was a child.  Emily Rosenthal’s post celebrated her new pregnancy and her company’s generous maternal leave package.  Ashley McHorn boasted that she was already back to virtual consulting after giving birth to a beautiful baby girl (future consultant, Ashley said) only last week.  Bennet Elstein posted a video from his private jet, encouraging his followers to count their blessings through his affiliate link.  A MomMaker notification appeared on McKenzie’s screen.  “Your virtual mom badge is only nine months away!”  McKenzie finally approached the styrofoam cooler and followed the MomMaker instructions.  Before falling asleep she realized she had not spoken a word to anyone in over twenty-four hours.

…

McKenzie sat in a restaurant across the table from Bennet Elstein.  She felt serene.  The room was warm and dark, the air bathed in soft piano melody. Bennet’s smile radiated calm confidence and his gaze contained a secret understanding found only between lovers.  Couples chatted and laughed, illuminated by candlelight.  The music was pierced by Bennet’s question, “so Adaliah’s appointment is set for tomorrow?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Adaliah’s pediatrician appointment.  You said you took care of it.”

“Oh yeah.  Of course,” McKenzie lied.

“Great.”  Bennet appeared unfazed.  He leaned back in his seat, unblinking and beaming.

McKenzie took in more of her surroundings.  Something seemed off about the restaurant patrons.  The flickering candlelight obscured their features but McKenzie could see their movements were jerky, insect-like.  They all had poor posture, nearly hunched over the table.  McKenzie realized the quiet sound of jumbled conversations was something else, organic and droning.

The waiter appeared soundlessly.  After pouring two glasses of red wine he nodded and smiled at McKenzie–to her a pained grimace and convulsion.  McKenzie adjusted in her seat while Bennet picked up his wine glass to smell it before placing it back down without a sip.

“I think you’ve been worrying too much.  Adaliah is fine. Better than fine. Her teachers are overreacting. I think the pictures she’s been drawing actually show an impressive level of technical detail for someone her age. There’s some real depth there.”

McKenzie smiled at Bennet even though she had no idea what he was talking about. He looked just like all the pictures and videos she had seen of him across all her feeds. His confidence and demeanor were infectious and McKenzie couldn’t help feeling a growing sense of tranquility looking at him in spite of the pervasive susurration mingling with the soft piano tunes. McKenzie re-crossed her legs and some kind of liquid crept up from her heel onto her stocking. She looked down and realized a few inches of water covered the restaurant’s floor.

“What is this place?” McKenzie tittered.

Bennet turned back to look at the road and McKenzie followed his gaze to see a highway in front of them ascending toward the sky at a nearly ninety degree angle. There were no other cars on the road and McKenzie immediately felt a combination of extreme nausea and fear as she looked out the window to her side, clouds obscuring the ground. The road ahead stretched endlessly and Bennet smiled as he drove on.

McKenzie awoke wet face and gasping.

…

“Well a blink and an immediate purchase is one way to consider a sale. Someone sees an ad and they want the product so they buy it. But in our field we consider a longer timeline.”

“What does that mean?”

“Consider a timeline of kindness. If a kid doesn’t look both ways before crossing the street and almost gets hit by a car and her mom grabs her arm and yells at her and the kid cries and feels bad, is the mom unkind?”

…

“You’re doing great, McKenzie,” Dr. Batra said while presumably looking at McKenzie’s medical information, his eyes scanning the screen and the dull aluminum medical chart holder hiding his mouth. McKenzie’s second trimester virtual appointment projected onto her main home screen; the doctor was life-sized and when he sat at his desk he was surrounded by a halo of credentials on his wall.

“All the tests are looking good. Blood pressure is good; I can tell you’re eating well and taking your prenatals. We have the results of your ultrasonic scan, thank you for sending that to us. Your baby looks very healthy! Would you like to see him?”

McKenzie nodded. She sat in the same chair where she worked, the same chair where she watched videos, the same chair where she ordered food. Her hands caressed her growing belly, the love she already felt was immense, she could not believe these feelings lurked inside of her.

The screen changed and McKenzie saw the ultrasonic scan of her baby, larger than life, taking up the entire wall. Dr. Batra’s disembodied voice chimed in, “he looks great!” And he did. McKenzie nodded and smiled, eyes welling with tears.

…

“So you marketing guys are the parents and everyone else are your kids? Since everyone uses screens all the time? And you’re in charge of so much of what’s on the screen? And selling stuff involves more than just buying something?”

McKenzie laughed, “I never really thought about it like that.”

…

McKenzie was unfocused at work as her pregnancy progressed. She usually enjoyed discussing icon shape optimization and typographic contrast mood gradient stabilization with her high-paying clients but these days as she felt her boy moving inside her the work didn’t seem important and the joy it once brought her paled in comparison to the warmth of simply thinking of her child. Her responses lacked the professional grace her clients had grown accustomed to, she was more distant. The days melted into a corner.

MomMaker notifications appeared alongside new emails. The notifications always included a count-down timer to the estimated hour of birth. There were sometimes suggestions for McKenzie to reduce her stress levels based on the app’s conclusions drawn about McKenzie’s eye-time spent looking at certain letters, her palm temperature, the shape of the final image she saw the night before going to bed. The suggestions were spot-on, deep breathing exercises turned out to have legitimate calming effects, and McKenzie wondered if the app included subsonic ultra low frequency vibrational sequences to stimulate certain brainwave patterns. McKenzie knew better than anyone that it was trivial, after all.

…

“Maybe you’ve haven’t thought about it like that but you’re a lot of people’s mom!” Thomas laughed. “Shit, you’re a lot of people’s God! Think about how much more the screen can influence someone more than their parents. Shit, think about how much more it can influence you than God!”

…

The day of the birth was like every other day except McKenzie took off work. She opened the MomMaker app instead of the usual work camera and her main home screen showed MomMaker’s red curtain gently rustling. The countdown timer was gone. Text surfaced onto the screen as if hidden beneath unseen water. The words explained that McKenzie should take the pills delivered last week once her contractions were about ten minutes apart, she should relax and and assume a prostrated position before her main home camera, her virtual midwife would arrive momentarily to oversee everything and Dr. Batra was available should the need arise. Being made into a mom was much easier today than ever before, the app explained, the conversion was smooth and painless thanks to MomMaker’s proprietary pharmacological strategic programming.

McKenzie scrolled her feeds while she waited for the pace of her contractions to increase. She experienced a curious mixture of anxious excitement and placid expectation. She felt a little silly bent over as if in prayer, but the app explained this was a more natural birthing position and had the added benefit of allowing her main home camera an ideal view of the birthing process for McKenzie’s virtual midwife and Dr. Batra. She could see the camera feed herself through the MomMaker app on the phone she held and scanned.

…

“Do you believe in God?” McKenzie asking half-jokingly.

“I don’t know. Do you?”

McKenzie chewed on a sushi roll, thinking.

…

Time had a different quality after McKenzie took the pills provided by MomMaker. Her lower half was completely numb and her head floated like fruit in a warm bath. She watched the camera feed of the MomMaker app showing the crowning head of her boy. There was no pain. MomMaker assured McKenzie that she was amazing. Everything was going great. MomMaker was so proud of her.

McKenzie had never felt time like this. It was the most visceral sense of an event in her life, something beyond a clock, dream-like in its stunning clarity, but observed through a hand-held window. She was spying on herself or watching a candid nature documentary but she was there and it was occurring on some plane where finally something happened, finally there would be something to remember. McKenzie looked up at the chair where she sat for work and felt nothing.

McKenzie listened to her virtual midwife, she followed all the instructions, she felt no discomfort and after hours of timeless labor, she saw and heard her boy crying on the ground. She was exhausted but filled with joy. MomMaker faces rolled and bounced on screen.

Blood entered her peripheral vision and approached her hand still grasping her phone showing the MomMaker camera feed of her newborn baby. Her heart sank and McKenzie turned to look at her boy.

On the ground was something large, much too big to have come from McKenzie’s body, there’s no way it could have come from McKenzie, no way. It writhed, wet and bleeding. McKenzie didn’t have the energy to scream when it stood up and began to change shape.