Elena let out a big sigh of relief as she dropped her bags in front of her and slumped back in the chair at the airport lounge awaiting her flight to Hawaii. Elena was due for an 8-week work sabbatical, and boy, had she been anticipating it. Her eyes were red from her last few night shifts, which would be recoverable with some well deserved rest on the other side of the ocean. What would not be recoverable were the sunkenness of her look, the deep vertical grooves in the middle of her forehead, and the overstrained neck and upper back muscles from hunching over monitors, every knot first punctuated - and then calcified - by each emergency dealt with over the last few years. She was reminded of the red Tesla Semi 7 in the Himalayas two years ago by the pang she felt on the right of her spine whenever she bent down to pick something up, while the Interstate 5 collision with the Uber bus XR last October was the constant twitch in her left shoulder that no amount of physiotherapy and acupuncture could cure. “Ah, you must be a truck operator,” the physical specialists would say, “we see a lot of your folk here. Half your problem is in the head. Ain’t nothin we can do in this space.”
Elena’s work consisted of dealing with an average of twelve Class 1 and two to three Class 2 emergencies on a daily basis, as well as roughly one Class 3 emergency a week. Right before her sabbatical, Elena was offered a promotion to Level 6 Operator, which would drop the Class 1 emergencies off her plate, but load her with up to four Class 3 emergencies a week. Peers claimed shifts would be less regular, with more potential for downtime and recovery, but a call could come at any point and last any amount of time, and the chance of complete burnout in 1-2 years was high. Elena’s friend Jenn didn’t last 2 months before quitting entirely, and had yet to piece herself back together 6 months later to find a new job. And yet, the compensation was to be a handsome upgrade… Elena would take some time during her sabbatical to think.
Getting to sleep naturally was hard. Elena was prescribed a high dose of Benzodiazepines, covered by her work insurance, which came as perks of the job. Perks? Ha, hardly. Your brain is swimming in chemicals from the work situations all day, and you top it off with more artificial chemicals to force a restorative process at night. How long until the brain turns to mush under such circumstances? Oh yea, and there’s the regular Ketamine, Piracetam, or Ritalin in the morning on the particularly hard weeks when the Class 2 emergencies are already driving you over the edge, and then a Class 3 drops on your plate. They say the 8-week sabbatical every 2 years resets you. Sure hope so, thought Elena on the doorstep of her Airbnb in Maui.
Six screens. That’s the consensus a team of industrial psychologists had come to about how many situations a Level 5 Operator could be put in charge of monitoring. Well if the average human brain can handle four to seven items in active memory at once, “surely a trained operator on Piracetam and Ritalin can chunk the information effectively and handle six situations simultaneously”, or some bullshit argument like that. Remembering a 6-7 digit number is not equivalent to the information flows on Elena’s six dashboard screens by any stretch of imagination, years of training, or f-ing “chunking” for that matter. She hated her job on most days.
But it pays well and it’s prestigious. Getting to be a Truck Operator is a coveted profession. Remember when operating a truck required no degree and no clearance? Perhaps the only attributes that are still true today are the fast money and shift work. Even the views are staggeringly different. On each of Elena’s six screens are six different geographies, up to six different time zones, lighting and environmental conditions. That’s right, you try to cognitively process that, chunking my a**. Elena pops open a beer and stares out at the water.
Situations only become emergencies when the probability of a computational indecision rises above 10%. Up until that point, as the probability of indecision rises, each situation pops up on a screen one after the other, and disappears if an automatic resolution is available. Elena only needs to intervene when a screen is promoted to emergency status. At that point, any other emergencies get routed to other operators until Elena resolves the one in focus. Once Elena surpasses her daily or weekly limit of emergency resolutions, she can clock off for the day or week, respectively. Usually the shift ends before you can clock off early. If you have to clock off early because of a higher frequency of emergencies in a given time, your brain is beyond fried anyway. That’s when the extra dose of Ketamine is not only recommended, but required. Oh yeah, throw in some psilocybin mushrooms while you’re at it.
80 miles per hour on an “average road” (or that time at 50 miles/hr in the Himalayas…) is faster than the brain can usually process, but you can slow down the perception of time with the right combination of perceptual tricks and PEDs. The Perception Engineers of yesteryear are the Augmented Experience designers of today. The very best of them work for the Operations companies, designing the time- and space-warping augmented experiences for the human operators of autonomous machinery. The interdisciplinary ones get advanced degrees in pharmacology. Those folks are the most prized. Others work in combined teams with Pharmacologists, Neuroscientists, Cognitive Scientists, and Human Factors Engineers. Generative designers are part of those teams too. Together they make sure that the most severe potential problems appear as the most salient, that perceptual time slows down exactly when the highest probability of automated indecision is, and that all the additional contextual information required by the operator is at their peripheral fingertips and available for sensory retrieval.
Elena’s sensory reflexes are re-checked on a quarterly basis. The battery of tests she is subjected to is used for recalibration of her operations gear. Occasionally, (previously once a year, but recently increasing in frequency), her systems are upgraded, and Elena needs to complete a re-training to use a new feature. Sometimes the feature is perceptible and obvious, as in a change in the visual, auditory, tactile, or olfactory stimuli presented on her equipment while dealing with emergency situations. Other times the new feature lies in the rebalancing of the pharmacological dosing and sensory stimuli. In these latter cases, the change may not be immediately perceptible, but lead to side-effects on sleep later that night, or in less frequent cases, effects up to a week later. Before Elena went on sabbatical she was eligible for a trial of a new multi-sensory stimulation feature whose effects were computed to be minimal but not tested on human operators yet. For completing this trial, Elena was able to add an extra 2 weeks to her sabbatical. Score! Except for the indigestion Elena was feeling at this very moment. Elena woke up and threw up. It was 3 am. She left a voice memo to the Experience Squad that the multi-sensory feature is probably incompatible with alcohol, and causes side-effects of nausea and nocturnal hallucinations for the first 2 nights. Hopefully the third night will be calmer.
50 miles per hour. 45 was the previous limit on similar mountain roads, but Elena’s Operations division had completed successful trials of a new olfactory signal that bypassed certain brain pathways and decreased time to human decision by just enough to better handle the most commonly occurring emergencies. The case brought in front of the Transportation Authority required more documented situations on high risk mountain roads in order to pass the new speed requirement, so Elena’s team was being routed some of the new mountain driving trials. A red Tesla Semi 7 popped up on the right bottom screen. Location: Leh-Manali Highway. Road temperature: -2.3°C. Slope grade: 11%. Within a few seconds, the video was promoted to center screen due to the high rate of change in the probability of automatic indecision. Then a loud crack, and a chalky tang stung Elena’s sinuses. The other monitors reduced in saturation. Class 3 Emergency. High speed, treacherous conditions, experimental situation. No human lives at risk on this one, which is rare for a Class 3 Emergency, but given the nature of this trial, Elena’s team depended on a successful resolution to proceed with the speed regulations case. The severity level was elevated by their division head. Monsoon season, Himalayas. All calm hillsides hold the same silence; every landslide breaks it with a different kind of violence. Many automated tests had run successfully with combinations of weather conditions, altitude, road width, incline, tire pressure, weight distribution, visibility, … But every once in a while a very specific combination of factors warrants a human decision. Maybe it’s the way the first rock fell down the hillside that triggered the automatic indecision risk. Not Elena’s wheelhouse. Probably one of the Autonomous Risk Actuaries could tell her... Shoot, a secondary thought. Not enough Ritalin. Dark cascade pouring down towards the road. The stench of mud is suffocating. Elena’s whole body is turned to the right side of the mountainside, right hand swiping through Lidar slices. She sneezes. A pang in her back, that’s gonna hurt later. 0.8 seconds to impact. Left hand is bringing context into view - Semi 7 has a Smart Cargo Rebalancing System. “Initiate weight shift. Veer onto the outer berm.” Truck swings wide to the left, tires skim the edge of the cliff. Screen flashes green. Why does that color always signal success? Success, with a healthy dose of back pain. Voice memo to the Experience Squad: “Chalky tang irritates nasal passages. Possible side-effects of olfactory signaling of landslides include sneezing.”. Thank goodness the air in Hawaii is so fresh.
Sensory habituation has until recently been a leading cause for the early termination of Operators. The repeated exposure to bright lights, strong smells, and sharp pricks desensitizes the human brain to the sensory signaling required for normal operation, and heck, a good quality of life too. The severance package includes a (not so) healthy amount of Ketamine. But the Experience Designers have some tricks up their sleeves, and new advancements in neuroscience and pharmacology could enable resetting the brain’s circuits to counteract the effects of habituation. Many of the latest trials were still in process, and Elena would be due for the new testing post-sabbatical if she decides to go forward with the promotion. Sensory Restimulation was now a prerequisite for Level 6 Operators, even though the trials had not all cleared yet. Management could simply not afford to lose more Level 6 Operators to such quick sensory burnout after all the costs incurred by training and equipment personalization. Elena wasn’t feeling so hot. Day 5. Palm trees, Pikake outside the window, Taro pudding in the morning. The right side of her face was spasming. Another common “problem in the head” as they say. Another symptom of regular stress and anxiety. Jenn had said a few sessions of botox helped to calm the spasms, with the “calmer, more youthful facial expression” as a cherry on top. Could be written off on work insurance. Ah, to look carefree again, quite the contrast with the role. If your operator colleagues are starting to look like Hollywood’s pillow faces, that’s a fair sign there’s more than demons on the inside. Topping off the regular oral toxins with some subdermal toxins, ain’t nothing better for complete annihilation of whatever human that’s left.
Knock, knock, who’s there? Not Patrick. Patrick got a call from his kid’s school and had to go deal with it. Jenn called in sick today. Patrick’s been stepping out a lot recently. His kid ain’t doing so well, emotional regressions, acting out, the mother’s been out of their lives for a year now. Patrick recently got on a PIP for a few botched resolutions. He needs the fast money. Can’t afford another absence on his work card. He’ll be back in 20. Probably. That’s ok, Elena’s practically a Level 6, she can handle a few more emergencies at a Level 5 for 20 minutes. An extra dose of Piracetum. A few nasal breathing exercises. She does them daily, clears the passages, gets them ready for battle. Funny that these old school tricks still compete with the frills and thrills designed by the Experience Squad. Some operators at a competing firm tried to “go organic” a few years ago - no neuroactive agents, no artificial interventions - just meditation, intermittent fasting, cold exposure, sleep optimization. There was even a daily virtual call you could subscribe to - to take a restorative walk or a guided breathing exercise between sessions, on-demand, in a group. Elena popped into a few of those, until the whole hullabaloo fizzled out. It lasted maybe 5 months. Two operators quit their jobs and have become full-time influencers. The rest started missing their quotas and were let go without the usual handsome farewell gift of Ketamine and Botox. Elena also dropped most of the mind-body practices she was trying back then, but the nasal breathing exercises stuck. Going strong once a day for two years now, up to three times a day on hard weeks. F*ck! Two emergencies in 20 minutes is highly unlikely, but Poisson clustering can happen.Two screens in focus, four dimmed. If her brain could handle six situation screens, there’s a reason she has two eyes and two nostrils, right?
Kilometer 470 of Interstate 5. Tejon Pass. 43 Passengers. Seismic tremor detected on Screen 5. Screen 3: Location: Baikal-Amur Mainline. Road temperature: -51°C. Slope grade: 5%. Both screens blaring. Ice layer sensor failure on the Einride Glacia 2 Truck. Cold-induced. Brutally ironic, but for another time. Tier 2 traction was not auto-upgraded to Tier 4 in time, and the resulting mechanical jam was now preventing manual Tier 4 traction deployment. Elena started to feel the haptic notifications - a growing pulse being sent to her right lateral facial nerves to alert her to the increasing urgency of Screen 5. Baikal will have to wait a few more seconds. Elena triggers the safety subroutine reboot in the meantime to buy some time. Her non-dominant hand is ready to adjust controls if Glacia 2 starts skidding. Elena fixes her left hand to create a referential space to continue to allocate partial cognitive cycles to, but turns the rest of her body to force a higher level of focus on Screen 5, her eyes darting between both screens. Uber bus XR at 80 miles per hour on Tejon Pass. Subsurface profile shift: 3.4cm vertical delta. Not enough to register as a quake, but enough to throw off balance at this speed. Cut speed by 20, Elena thought. Tactile feedback to her right hand indicated her proposal was processed but the currently predicted course was preferred. The automatic certainty of this response shifted her attention momentarily to the Glacia 2. Her left hand made a small course correction during skidding. Non-essential. A purely human desire to add value when it is not needed. It will cost her. Screen 5. “Forcing override. Execute deceleration cascade.” Half a second too late. A hollow thud echoes through the auditory overlay as the bus’s undercarriage slaps the uneven fault-rise, jolting three passengers out of their seats. One slams shoulder first into the side wall. A little girl screams. Her head slams into the window ledge, hard. Elena’s hands tingle with static but her palms feel numb. She can no longer tell if it was her own fear response or tactile activation kicking in. The unmistakable reek of bile. Elena jolted her head back as if experiencing whiplash. Her neck felt sore, her left arm numb. On screen 5, Glacia 2 course corrected. The safety subroutine completed. Tier 4 traction deployment succeeded. Screen 3 flashed to indicate auto resolution, no further intervention required. One screen left. Eerie silence, passengers frozen in shock. Internal diagnostic scan: one passenger unresponsive. Screen flashing purple indicating the situation is being routed to Accident Triage, as a voice comes over on the cabin feed. A trauma response coordinator has begun providing reassurance to the passengers. A standard script. The voice fades in Elena’s earpiece as the flashing purple changes to a stable orange. The internal cabin dynamics are no longer in Elena’s hands, which have shifted to another team. She must now reallocate her attention to the vehicular integrity. Speed: 60 miles per hour. Elena brings context into view. No more seismic activity predicted. No structural damage, just cosmetic dents on the undercarriage. Elena triggers the Sensor Recalibration protocol and clocks off, her left arm still numb but shoulder starting to twitch. She’ll pick up some extra Voltaren from the pharmacy. She’s a regular there. “1 or 2% today?”
Elena’s on her way back to the airbnb. She spent a full day at Honolua Bay. She can’t swim as far as she used to, her back stiffens in the cold water. She’s lost some rotational mobility in her left shoulder. The salt stings her eyes. Without her decenticitizers, she struggles with self-regulation. The sun gave her a migraine. The pharmacy is closed. Well, sh*t. Location: Kahekili Highway. Road temperature: 26°C. Slope grade: 6%. Autopilot disengaged. It’s only really disengaged until a wrong turn, then it kicks in again. Elena knows that a full disengage will only be triggered if she can execute an optimal maneuver earlier than the system decision comes in, in order to temporarily inflate the probability of automated indecision. She doesn’t have her headset. You know that feeling in a dream when you want to run but your limbs are moving through molasses? Elena feels like that all the time without her gear. She’s grown used to the perceptual skewing of time. It’s difficult to think fast in this “organic” environment. Frame of mind. One long breath in, three short breaths out through the nose. Again. Again. Right turn. 200 foot drop on the left. Drive towards the boulder on the road, three short breaths, brain clears, quick turn. Boulder averted. Autopilot disengaged. Left turn. Sharp and fast. No cars, no more boulders, just the vast expanse below. Elena relaxes her left shoulder and releases her left hand. Then her right. Then her feet. One breath out. Weight shifts, chassis tips. A screen flashes on a Level 7 Operator’s dashboard.