Tank looked up from his screen and gave Len that same unwavering attention that had made him uneasy twenty minutes ago. “Because today I got to meet you without filters and distractions, Len, and it was a pleasant experience.” Len nodded as if this made sense. “I expect this will give me more free time,” he mused.
Tank broke out his wide smile, and the corners of Len’s mouth lifted as if they shared the same tendons. “Boy will it ever. You’re going to love it.”
Len touched the rough brick wall and asked, “What do you do with all that time?”
“I take care of my business. Feeding the AI, tweaking parameters when a customer complains their personality is off. Mostly, though, I read and I think. Original ideas have to come from somewhere, so I supply the AI with everything I can scour from books or think up myself. And before you think that’s selection bias and creates a monoculture of thought—” words Len didn’t even understand, much less think, “—I read things I love and things I hate. I think thoughts I agree with and thoughts I consider poisonous. It all goes into the AI and gets spewed out in one form or another onto the Internet, where people try to destroy each other’s opinions. Soon,” he shrugged, “it will just be AI’s duking it out.”
Tank’s eyes didn’t meet Len’s anymore, but stared off into space instead. After the time it takes for a dozen itinerant thoughts to float through a mind, hundreds of individual sensations to be collected, hundreds of thousands of synapses to fire, he looked at Len again with curiosity. “What will you do with your time?”
The world shimmered beyond the door. The sunlight caught particles of glass and quartz in the sidewalk and outshone Tank’s smile. Hints of pastimes and causes once heard tugged at Len’s recollection.
Len’s smart phone tinkled, and the world went dull again.
“I already have two new followers!” He swiped a couple of times, then muttered to himself, “But that’s the same guy. He’s just in drag for the second profile.” He waved a hand somewhere close to where Tank was seated. “Okay, well, bye,” he said and walked out the door, new shoe rubber squeaking one last time on the tile.