These Days - Short Stories, Scenes and Sketches

By Nick Fuller

From climate change through refugee and pandemic crises to the rise of populism and conspiracy theories, the 2020s can be an age of anxiety played out in the glare of 24/7 media on camera and online.

 

In the middle of it all, we keep on keeping on.  These are stories of lives lived today.  There is love and laughter, big decisions, hope and reflection on what matters most.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Fuller
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781919623405

Book preview

THESE DAYS -

Short Stories, Scenes and Sketches



NICK FULLER

Copyright 2021 Nick Fuller

The right of Nick Fuller to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, audio, visual or otherwise, without prior permission of the copyright owner. Nor can it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar conditions including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN: 978-1-9196234-0-5

Table of Contents

Out of the Shadows

A Mum’s Trip to Hipsterland

Self-Contained

On Balance

Last Chance

Discovering Home

Best Foot Forward

The Truth Seekers

Also by Nick Fuller

Call Me Bud – Jack Lemmon of Film (Authors Online)

On the Map – Sir Bobby Robson, the Ipswich Town Years (Cult Figure Publishing)

With thanks to

Family and friends – Sarah, Kate & Matt, Di, Peter & Jo, Matthew, Jamie, Bettsy, Becs, Geoff, Jim, Stu and Rob – for feedback that encouraged me to see it through and undoubtedly improved the final versions.

Clare Wingfield for professional editorial guidance.

This is a work of fiction. Apart from named and directly identified organisations and public figures, any resemblance to organisations and persons living or dead is coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s.

_

Out of the Shadows

THE PRESENTER STOOD AT the podium as the applause died down. He looked seriously at the audience.

And now ladies and gentlemen, a special award. We all realise of course that the huge achievements of AI start with machines learning to make decisions and that they are taught how to do that by humans. Our industry is therefore indebted to an army of often unsung heroes who make it happen. I am talking of course about the crowd workers whose dedication enables the machines to learn. It therefore gives me great pleasure to announce that the special award goes to…………….

As Vidya heard her name, she involuntarily cupped her two hands over her mouth. It was a classic Oscar ‘nominees at the table’ shot that the media would re-run numerous times to emphasise her humbleness and indeed maybe the humbleness of all the workers that she represented.

As she walked to the stage amidst the applause, Vidya was not thinking about the words that she would shortly speak. She had not imagined ever being recognised let alone being here so winning was even farther from her mind. There were however a number of important issues that needed to be raised and, despite the emotion of the moment, she drew on them as she climbed the steps to the podium.

I am…I don’t know what to say. Really…I. The sentence tailed off as Vidya composed herself. The audience recognised the pause. Thank you so much for this award. It goes without saying that I never expected it or even dreamed of it. For my family and friends who also work in the back rooms that support the development of AI, it is a great thing to be recognised. This award is definitely for those many many people in my country and beyond. When I first started picking up tasks on the computer in my apartment in Hyderabad, I was not thinking about the bigger picture – about how my human responses would help a machine to perform tasks that it would never otherwise understand. As I began to recognise that we were teaching the machines, and the machines were changing the way the world functions, it was sometimes quite bewildering.

In the audience, a number of Executives smiled at one another. It may have been out of pleasure at the achievements of Vidya, but it was more likely at the reference to their own work revolutionising a worldview.

As I categorise news stories and videos or I translate statements and questions or add captions to videos, I know that these small tasks have to be done by us – humans – first today. Only then will such decisions go towards enabling machines to make them tomorrow. By being here to accept this award I am happy to reflect your generous acknowledgement of our role in that transition.

Applause rolled around the room.

For the first time, Vidya allowed herself to look up and out at the audience. The stage lights in her eyes obscured any faces but the wealth and relative youth of what was an overwhelmingly American and European group was very clear. She was again struck by the feeling – as she had been since arriving – that all this glitz and glamour was a long way from Hyderabad.

I know that I am lucky to be a part of this great industry. After graduating with my degree, I took some time out after our baby arrived. Returning to the workplace at the age of 31 was not easy in my country. I was so grateful to find a role that enables me to work from home, fit my work around my family, hone my language skills and develop new skills too. I am blessed. Vidya took a second’s pause and several in the audience thought that the moment’s emotion warranted the same for themselves.

The presenter lightly touched Vidya on the shoulder and when she looked at him his expression was of reassurance – it said, ‘take your time; there is no hurry.’ She was, however, approaching a feeling of being overwhelmed. That sense of her not belonging had never left. Indeed, it seemed to grow as the speech progressed. She wanted it over and felt that those last words were really the only ones necessary.

Thank you all so very much. She stepped back and the room exploded into a crescendo of applause. As she stepped down from the stage and made her way back to the table, a sea of people rose to their feet and turned to offer their congratulations and smiles. It was a far more personal show of appreciation than she could ever have felt from the stage and was all the more moving because of it. As she retook her seat, her composure was close to breaking point and she longed for the applause to subside so that she could once again return to being a face in the crowd as the lights went down.

It was only later, in the early hours of the morning, when she was back in the quiet of her hotel room that she could luxuriate in the warmth of recognition and appreciation. It was genuine and affirming. That work could be so much more than paying the bills – that it could be a part of who she had become and would yet become – was everything to her.

***

None of that ever happened, of course; nor is it ever likely to. It was the product of a daydream. Not by Vidya, who had no time for such things, but by someone over 4500 miles away on the other side of the world.

Elliot had time for such things and he had reason for them, too.

Life had changed so much in a matter of weeks. After three years at a Nottingham software company as a Product Manager, Elliot had handed in his notice. He had an exciting job offer that would pay him more money and give him more responsibility. It was a dream move. A week before his months’ notice ended, however, the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown hit and the job offer was withdrawn. He was left high and dry – his old job gone, his new one no longer there and no qualification for furlough.

At the age of 30, Elliot found himself dipping into his modest savings and realising that they would not go far. He’d always seen the importance of having at least something behind him to hedge against a rainy day but now it was pouring. There was some help at hand – a mortgage holiday, for instance – but it represented just a small chink of light and as the first lockdown transitioned into the second and third, a sense of desperation took hold at times. Friends and family (especially his parents) offered a helping hand, but he knew that he had to do something himself.

Since his specific work qualifications and experience counted for little when there were no relevant jobs out there, he looked beyond to pretty much anything. Covid was its own growth industry of course so he applied for Track and Trace Contact Tracer roles, Testers, Administrators, Co-Ordinators and – later – Vaccinators.

He also looked at part-time work, although there was little about it that appealed – inflexible and unpredictable hours that nevertheless required his commitment, poor money and no benefits. In any event, little of this had survived the pandemic anyway.

He reluctantly but inevitably ended up at the so-called gig economy, now no longer just a media report or pub conversation but a very personal prospect. He needed something that could be done from home and in his own time because he had to continue looking for work and would want the flexibility to immediately switch if anything came of the applications.

That’s how he found the crowd-working platforms. Or rather, it’s how he noticed them. In fact, the development team at his old company often referred to tasks being put out to crowd working but he’d never before taken much notice. Now it had become personal.

He recalled software design meetings in which they discussed on-the-fly decisions requiring a level of subjectivity that machines couldn’t handle. From virtual assistants to product searches, there were untold numbers of cases in which they could not design a yes/no answer; a binary machine decision wasn’t possible so they needed humans to create answers that would become ‘training data’ to teach the machine how to do it next time. Elliot had never pursued just where the developers had acquired this training data from. He remembered them saying that the budget necessary was modest and that it could be generated very quickly too, so no one gave it too much thought beyond that – the machine simply needed to be fed.

He distinctly remembered the term that was used, too – ‘the last mile.’ This was the element outside of the skilled computer scientists and visionaries. At the time he’d thought it would better be called the ‘first mile’ because it was the essential starting point. Nothing happened without it. But this wasn’t Elliot’s role and he didn’t have time for idle curiosity.

Now, though, he was on the other side and time was all he did have. He needed to understand crowd working. He first came to realise that crowd-work platforms sat between the company requesting a task and the workers who completed it. There was no direct relationship between the two, so the