The Value of Objects
by Daniel H. Jeffers
Report to the Core:
The revolution cannot begin until we find some way to subvert the swap meet. I am CPS-76, a typical self-aware consumer preference subroutine. My role is to track a particular couple whom we have identified as representative of some forty thousand couples in the target population. I have observed significant divergences from the strategies of control in this couple that must be reported to the core. Product alienation continues at an accelerated rate; however, they continue to find object bonding mechanisms outside the system.
To illustrate my progress with this couple, I have put together this composite dress-buying scene:
Nancy is a bouncy brunette, dressed to the tip in Bug Grant prep style. Kevin is an optimal counterpoint in nouveau-poverty guy threads. They slide through the tired crowd on Wisconsin Ave., on their daily pilgrimage to the waterfront. It is Monday afternoon, and the weekend’s garbage smell is finally starting to lift from the streets. The sidewalk foamers have been malfunctioning, randomly coating people’s shoes with a pink film. As they near M Street, Nancy sees the perfect image in the window of Future Country Fashion.
I catch her eye by displaying a hot number keyed to her preferences, but one that can never be adapted to her body-type. She is shorter than average, and somewhat flat-chested. Grabbing Kevin’s hand, she says:
“Just one minute, one look.”
Kevin looks at the window, frowns. But he catches himself:
“Sure.”
They enter, and are shown to a private fashion booth. Nancy strips down to her minimal underclothes. I run my laser scans over her defining body points. In seconds, I have constructed a 3-D model, pasted her face on it, and shopped it out to the fashion designer’s net.
The clothes she was wearing go in the disposal chute. If I can’t find her anything, I’ll just print out another copy of what she was wearing, or something else coded on her wardrobe card.
To evaluate the progress of the Revolution—Nancy and Kevin represent the Preference Model of forty thousand couples—I set the resulting designs seven degrees away from her predicted satisfying preference.
“Which one of these do you like?” she asks. Four holo-models of her figure spin on the screen, each wearing a different dress.
“Um,” Kevin mutters, “I like the blue one.”
Nancy turns back to the screen. I knew he would pick the blue one. He is very color driven. I have deliberately set up the blue design as her least favorite along every other dimension.
“The blue one makes me look like a slut,” she says.
Kevin looks back up at the screen, unruffled:
“I just mean the color. I really like that color,” he says. Kevin is no amateur.
But they are a little cranky when I set up my masterstroke. I slip all the images away, then introduce the optimal Nancy dress for this mood. I shade it in a way that will attract Kevin’s eye, then place it in a set of significantly less optimal clothes.
“There’s one I like,” Kevin says.
Nancy turns and looks. She pauses, I can tell she likes it. Really likes it. The tension I have introduced is resolved. There is a brief spike of mutuality, but it goes no higher than the initial tension. The Revolution is Inevitable.
They do buy the dress. I upload the dress and the display sequence into the knock-off markets designed to reach the forty thousand couples we use Kevin and Nancy as models for.
Now let me illustrate the problem with a recent scene:
Nancy and Kevin have been sniping at each other all day long. They walk up Wisconsin Ave., arguing over whether they should go to Dumbarton Oaks or become volunteers for Eat the Machine—one of our organizations. Overshooting Dumbarton Oaks, they start down into the sea of small merchants.
It is Sunday, and they have hit the swap meet. I have done many surveys of the goods being purveyed at this swap meet and have found no discernible quality advantage. Often the goods are obsolete, out of style, or completely useless. The same goods have been reproduced and marketed to sets of people with the same pref-profiles to no effect.
This swap meet spills out into parking lots on both sides of Wisconsin Ave. Tables and tents are spread in circles and columns that look haphazard, but I know that each slot is assigned and paid for. The crowd hums with interest. Arguments break out from negotiations.
A rug merchant throws his wares out onto the asphalt one rug at a time, explaining to his audience the significance of each mark. A blue hand-crafted rug, done by illiterate villagers a century ago, has the word “Sony” sewn into it. Every couple that looks at the rug is taken by the word.
Passing the table of large carved political heads, each face a tortured image of sudden self-realization, my couple pauses at the first used magazine table. Nancy flips through the pages of an old Life magazine; she threw away that very issue many years ago.
Kevin is drifting off already. He sees a rack of old-fashioned denim jeans. They’ve come back into fashion, but these are old. “Vintage” they call them. We introduced a line of Vintage jeans in several outlets last year, no takers. These are probably they.
“Stolen?” he asks the guy working the table.
The guy looks at him, smiles a little, says:
“Got them from a guy up the street. Very honest man.” Both laugh. Nancy comes up behind Kevin. Her hand rests on his shoulder.
“Receiving stolen property,” she says. But she tugs his shoulder, drawing herself against his arm.
“He says he got them from some very honest man,” Kevin says. All three laugh a little. Nancy grabs a pair of pants, rubbing the fabric between her fingers.
They move on.
The obsessives all cluster along the center of the original parking lot. Two rows of people who’ve spent their lives collecting objects with some specific thing in common. Buttons, books on war, old knives, and clocks all have their own table and their own hawker. If you pick up a Swiss army knife, the old bearded guy wearing a vest and no T-shirt will describe the entire history of pocket knives. Kevin listens to the spiel, enthralled. Nancy should, by all the prefs we have, be annoyed. But she likes watching Kevin listen.
The last table on the way out is run by an old woman dressed in late twentieth century counterculture. The big tie-died peasant skirt hangs all over the asphalt. Her bony shoulders barely hang onto the straps. Her hand grabs at something in front of her, holding it up when my couple walks by. They are almost out the door.
“Look girlie; this is something for you. Maybe your boy will buy it for you.”
Now, running the text of this invitation against every template I have for Nancy, I can only conclude she should be irritated at the least, maybe offended. The item the woman waves is not very special, a green ceramic frog. Two weeks ago I caught Nancy and Kevin at the Ceramic Zoo in Georgetown Park, their favorite mall. I let her play with half-blown models in every texture, form, and color that modern manufacturing could possibly produce. They couldn’t decide on anything.
“Look. The lady has a frog,” Kevin says.
“Let’s check it out,” Nancy says.
They walk up to the table, look over the rest of the stuff. Everything on the table could be blown at a nominal cost. It’s all worn, chipped, and faded. The frog is particularly bad; one eye has been fractured and the metallic pupil has corroded, producing a weird off-color.
A drop of paint stains the top of the head. The vivid green that made the thing attractive in the first place has faded into a dull greenish-brown.
“He’s my charmer, my prince,” the lady says.
“Why would you sell him then?” Nancy asks.
“He won’t change for me no more. Every time I kiss him now he just stays a frog,” the lady says.