GOING BOLDLY WHERE NO ONE
HAS GONE BEFORE
What can a talking refrigerator possibly have to say? Well, if you listen to all the AI hype, you’ll believe computers will be doing all the talking and thinking for us.
What My Refrigerator Said to Me’s twenty-one tales take you on a journey into the comic possibilities of life in the digital age, now and in the years to come. After all, why should the likes of Bill, Jeff, and Elon have all the fun imagining this futuristic stuff!
You’re sure to be amused by this book’s absurdly funny answers to such burning questions as: If computers can think, will they choose a life of crime? If your pet can talk, what will it tell you? Can science turn your brain into a desktop computer? Will there still be fortune cookies in 2052?
As is so often true of comedy, along with the laughs you’ll also find thoughtful insights into the people and devices populating our futuristic, digital world.
You get the idea. These richly imaginative tales will have you boldly going where no one has gone before–again and again!
Available in ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover formats at Amazon.com.
Reviewer Praise
What My Refrigerator Said to Me–Misadventures in the Digital Age is a witty and innovative collection that captures the comic absurdities of our modern, tech-obsessed world. The book blends humor, imagination, and social commentary to create stories that are both laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly insightful.
Each tale feels like a clever thought experiment brought to life [while] exploring how artificial intelligence, digital dependence, and human quirks collide in unexpected ways. In tone and spirit, What My Refrigerator Said to Me recalls the satire of Kurt Vonnegut or Douglas Adams, yet stands apart for its fresh, contemporary lens on the AI-driven age. It’s rare to find a collection that entertains so effortlessly while still prompting readers to reflect on what it means to be human in a world run by machines. –Theresa L. Smith, book reviewer/publicist
Four Stars
“...Whimsical entertainment...[In this book] the twenty-first century digital terrain is fraught with humorous peril ...Wetterau deserves kudos for the imaginative scenarios he puts his characters in. Each story involves something that can, or already has, gone wrong with our digitial world...”
--TC Schueler, Reader Views
Five Stars
[What My Refrigerator Said to Me] ...”takes a satirical approach to digital progress...the stories are every bit as outlandish as you’d expect, but this is purposeful, [to highlight] some of the bizarre things we’ve accepted in our future-forward culture.”
“Wetterau brings an insightful (and often hilarious) perspective to the challenges of our current technological landscape...”
--Blogger Emily Babbit Reviews
Four stars
“[Wetterau’s] humorous short stories delve into the comical and occasionally bizarre aspects of our technology-saturated lives. Rather than focusing on dystopian fears, the author uses playful imagination to highlight quirky or disquieting possibilities that come from the technological progress.”
“The premise prepares us for the lighthearted and speculative tone...Though humor is central, the stories offer moments of thoughtful insight... Scenes are outlandish but relatable.”
--Lavendar, for Long and Short Reviews
deep faked Advanced Praise
"Funny...Seriously preposterous prognostications for our digital age. This book is a twenty-one-story odyssey through some truly strange possibilities. A great read that also makes a great gift. Share the laughs!" --Ben Skrambled, The New Yolker.
"Witty, irreverent fun. Part real life in the digital age, part science fiction. Read this book on the train, the plane, or the can, but definitely not while you're driving in hands-free mode!" --Holly Mackeral, The Atlantic Catch
"Wetterau? Who the heck is this guy anyway. And why's he raining on my parade?" --Bill Grates, MEGA
LOOK INSIDE … Opening pages of the tale “The Brain Farm”
The after dinner kitchen cleanup done, Marj Olsen settled into her easy chair to read Crisis and Renewal, a bestselling book about the big quake that rocked California ten years ago, back in 2042. She’d only just begun reading the dedication page when her lights began to flicker.
“Oh, not again,” the intrepid reporter for the Goldville California Bee complained aloud. Staring at the ceiling light in anticipation of worse to come, she knew full well the cause. Mega AI Research’s supercomputer was at it again. The giant, juice-hungry beast was sucking up power from all the surrounding towns while trying to solve some obscure mathematical quandary of no particular concern to anyone there in Goldville. Except that brownouts and power outages had become a regular occurrence over the past few years since the Mega facility’s arrival.
Marj’s attention turned back to her book for a only a moment before her lights dimmed to the weak half light of a brownout. Grabbing the flashlight stationed on the side table for just this emergency, she grumbled to herself and flicked on the pen light to continue reading.
The brownout lasted but a few minutes more before the power to her apartment went off completely. Now illuminated by the little flashlight’s small pool of light, Marj sat there fuming because she knew the electricity wouldn’t come back on for at least a couple of hours.
Giving up on reading, she turned off the flashlight and sat there in the pitch dark, wondering if her boyfriend Jack had power at his cabin up in the hills. She didn’t like driving up there alone at night. The road was narrow and winding, but....
A breeze rustled the trees outside her apartment window as she succumbed to that familiar feeling of isolation and loneliness, which always accompanied her being immersed in total darkness. And as she often did, she tried willing Jack to call. That never worked, of course, so she nearly jumped out of her seat when her phone actually chirped.
“Hello, who is this?” she said to her smartphone after it displayed an unrecognized number. Somebody, at least, wanted to talk to her, she thought a bit coquettishly.
“Is this Miss Olsen? Are you the reporter for The Bee?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“I can’t tell you. But I have some information you’ll want to check out. A story for your paper.”
“My sources are always kept confidential, sir, you don’t have to--”
“I’m not going to give you my name, lady, but you should look into what’s going on at the Mega labs. They’re growing human brains.”
“What!”
“I said they’re growing human brains--”
“Do you mean brain tissue?”
“No! I mean whole brains. Human brains.”
“Mega’s supposed to be a supercomputer installation.”
“It is. But they set up a bio research lab there almost a year ago. Now they’re growing human brains. It’s like something out of that book Frankenstein.”
Marj shivered at the image coming to mind--human brains floating in bubbling liquid baths, wires and feeding tubes sprouting at odd an-gles from the pulsating, grayish white flesh. Yuk!
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. But they’re up to something. It’s that Dr. Friedrich, Herman Friedrich. He runs the lab. He’s weird and I think he must be related to that guy Frankenstein. You should do a story on him.”
“Frankenstein is a fictional--there’s no such person,” Marj insisted. “How do you know what he’s doing?” Sitting there in the dark, she couldn’t help thinking this was some kind of weird joke, but everything at Mega was so hush-hush, so very mysterious, that growing brains might just be going on. In the past she’d found it all but impossible to get anybody talking about what they really do. That of course only gave wing to all kinds of rumors.
“I work there. Not in that lab, but I hear things about it. Far as I’m concerned what he’s doing, growing human brains in plastic tanks, is not right. It must be criminal.” He sounded genuinely indignant.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Marj said finally. “But they’re very tight-lipped about anything Mega does. Can you find out more, like what he does with the brains?” A second passed and her phone went dead. She tried calling him back, but the displayed number didn’t work.
I should have known, she told herself. He’s a computer geek and they know all the tricks. Her next thought was to call Jack, but he didn’t pick up. Momentarily resentful that he wasn’t there when she needed him, she let that pass, deciding that County Police Det. Jack Gardner might be busy with a case. Or--she checked her phone--since it was already half past ten, he might have decided to just go to sleep when the power went out. Marj left an intentionally cryptic message asking him to meet her for lunch in town and went to bed.
Bright July daylight bathed the Goldville greeting Marj late the next morning as she drove to meet Jack. Thanks to the arrival of Mega’s big AI Research Facility, this once sleepy little mountain town had been transformed into a thriving suburban community nestled in a fold of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Mega’s mother ship, the sleek graphite-gray, monumental concrete and glass office complex built atop a high mountain ridge, brought with it a steady stream of nerdy computer whizzes. The deep-pocketed new arrivals quickly displaced Goldville’s aging ex-hippie artisans in the hills around town, their gleaming, cliff-hanging mansions replacing hinky tree houses and multi-colored shacks.
Visible from nearly every corner of Goldville, Mega’s mysterious laboratory loomed over the town and, thanks to the power outages, Mega was ever on the minds of those who lived there. Rumors about what went on inside the facility abounded and, not surprisingly, many speculated Mega’s big supercomputer had been tasked with predicting where the next big quake would strike.
Marj pulled her battery powered, lemon yellow replica of a VW bug into the parking lot at Goldville’s Cafe Nerdy, a computer-themed coffee house. The town’s only diner, it featured holographic menus, walls lined with poster portraits of internet innovators, extra large napkins for drawing up the next “big” idea, high amperage coffee, and “sudden death” energy drinks. Nerdy’s attempt at nerdy coffee humor extended to an ambulance parked out front with a sign on the windshield saying “Caffeinate Responsibly.” All four tires were flat.
The Marj who exited the trendy VW was twenty-something, petite, and wore her brown hair pulled back into a short ponytail. She had dressed casually in a white tank top and loose-fitting, mint green shorts, an outfit that never failed to get approving looks from boyfriend Jack.
Laptop case in hand, she strode confidently into the restaurant. A moment later she spotted Jack at a table in the back. Or rather it was his white short sleeve shirt, tie, and khaki slacks that she saw and made her wonder, again, if the man had anything else in his closet. She had no argument with the rest of the package though. Of medium build and a good foot or so taller than her, Jack had a strong jaw, an engaging smile, and the ruddy complexion of an active outdoorsman. She always had to resist a childish urge to mess up his wavy black hair.
He stood and gave her a peck on the lips as she slid next to him in the booth. “Everything okay? Your message was kind of mysterious.”
Marj smiled. He was such a sucker for a mystery. But she was too--a hazard of her profession as a journalist--she told herself.
“I got a really strange phone call last night. Somebody claiming that Mega AI has a lab where they are growing human brains.”
“I thought their geeks came already equipped--”
“Don’t start, Jack. This is serious.”
“How do you know it’s serious? Sounds like somebody’s pulling your leg. You know, like that goofy kid’s prank. Call a tobacco store and ask, ‘Do you have Sir Walter Raleigh in a can? Yes? Then let him out!’ Hang up and have a good laugh.”
“Give me a break,” Marj groaned. Jack was always the one who had to be convinced before going all in, she told herself. “The guy sounded like he was for real.”
“Could just be a nutcase, Marj.”
“I thought of that too. So I called Mega’s PR guy. Told him I want to do a story on power outages and the important work supercomputers do. You know, ease community concerns kind of puff piece. He won’t tell me what I want to know, but I’ll be able to toss a loaded question or two at him to see how he reacts. I’m supposed to be up there in an hour. Want to come along? You can be my photographer. Take a few stills for the article.”
Jack rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Was this another of Marj’s wild goose chases? Wouldn’t be the first time. But what if the whistle-blower was for real? Using human brain tissue--or actually growing it--had to be ethically wrong, if not actually illegal. Definitely the kind of thing to arouse public indignation, like that old case of fetal stem cell research. So Mega would want to keep it quiet. And where was the tissue coming from in the first place? Grave robbing as in that story about Frankenstein? From unsuspecting organ donors? For what possible use?
“I should have known you were up to something when you offered to buy lunch,” Jack said grudgingly. She smiled sweetly at him. “Okay, I’m in. I’ll take a long lunch hour. But if you’re wrong and it’s nothing, you owe me a home cooked dinner.”
She giggled girlishly, remembering how those dinners always ended up. “We can take my car.”
“That’s fine. But we should eat lunch first.”
Marj smiled. “Always thinking of your stomach.”
“Well, you’re paying....”
Security at Mega’s research facility was tight, but as Jack well knew, there was always a way in. Sometimes you just had to get creative. This afternoon, though, all it took was a call from the gate, after which they were waved on with directions to the PR office.
Mike Campbell, Mega’s vice president of media relations, was a tall, thin man, outgoing as you might expect but with a palpable air of wary reserve. Marj introduced Jack as her photographer, and they all sat down to begin the interview.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Campbell,” Marj began innocently enough, “but it seems like the brownouts and power outages are more frequent now.”
“Yes, I believe that’s the case,” Campbell answered sorrowfully, “We here at Mega always regret any inconvenience to the community. We live here too!” he announced as though it were a new, overlooked revelation. “But as you know, our exascale supercomputer does very important work, work of national importance. You can tell your readers we are routinely tasked with extremely complex questions in areas like weather prediction, aerodynamics, climate change, cryptanalysis, and quantum mechanics. Because our supercomputer is among the world’s most powerful.”
“A rumor is floating about town that one reason for the increased blackouts is that your supercomputer is calculating where the next big quake is going to hit.”
Campbell smiled. He’d heard that one himself. “I’m very sorry, but I really can’t comment on specifics of what we do here. National security, you know.”
The interview continued in much that vein with Marj holding back for the time being on the questions, though deliberately indirect, she thought might produce a tell to confirm her whistle-blower’s story. She had a sneaking suspicion about that, but it seemed almost surreal.
Marj waited to spring the trap during the planned photo op of Mega’s exascale supercomputer at the end of the interview. She hoped to catch Campbell off guard while outside the comfort of his office. When that moment finally arrived, Jack was dutifully snapping pictures of the glass-enclosed room filled with bank after bank of the supercomputer’s modules, each standing seven feet high and encased in a graphite black housing. Jack thought they looked like some sort of alien stelae left behind as monuments to some bygone civilization.
“They’re amazingly fast,” Campbell was saying to Marj, “ten to the twenty-first power--”
“Yes, but they use enormous amounts of power. Isn’t that true?” Marj objected.
“Of course...But without computers this powerful we wouldn’t be able to answer truly complex questions. To the benefit of mankind.”
“No question, they’re important. Which is why there’s been so much work done on supercomputer design.” Marj paused. “Are there any new avenues of research in supercomputer design? Radical new ideas?” she asked innocently. Jack stopped snapping pictures and with Marj focused on Campbell’s expression. There was no missing it, an ever-so-brief moment of surprise showed in the slight widening of his eyes.
Recovering, he said smoothly, “Why no. We’re always looking for those efficiencies, but there’s nothing on the horizon that I know of.”
“Nothing new,” she probed, “since energy is at a premium these days?”
“Why no,” he said a little more forcefully than intended.
“Well, then. I think we have all I need for my story, Mr. Campbell. Thanks for talking with me.”
Watching from his office window as his visitors drove out the main gate, Campbell hit the speed dial on his cell phone. “It’s me. I think she was just fishing, but I didn’t give her anything to go on. She’s got nothing, but we’d better not let Dr. Friedrich off the premises until she gets bored and moves on.” Campbell listened for a moment. “Of course he’s not going to be happy about it. But he’s being paid plenty, and he agreed to the security protocols. He knows we can’t let this get out until we’re ready.”
Marj and Jack argued all the way back down the mountain about how much (according to her) or how little (according to him) they had actually found out. Jack could be so irritatingly adamant about hard evidence that Marj nearly ran off the narrow, windy road back to Goldville a couple of times. But she had no answer for his main point--they had no proof whatsoever, just sneaking suspicions. And the only way to get proof was to talk to Dr. Friedrich or somebody working in his lab who knows about the research.
That wasn’t going to be easy. Marj had already asked around town, and if anybody actually worked in Friedrich’s lab, they weren’t owning up to it in public. Friedrich had no family and apparently has been liv-ing inside the facility itself since being hired by Mega. If nothing else, Marj thought, that pointed up just how important Friedrich’s research was to Mega.
By nightfall that day, Marj admitted--to herself at least--that she had hit a dead end and began musing, in the dark, about what to serve Jack for his home cooked meal. Mega’s supercomputer was at it again, creating yet another blackout. She’d been sitting in the dark for better than an hour when her phone chirped.
“Hello?”
“Is this Marjorie?”
“Yes. Is it you again? Are you going to tell me your name?”
“No. I saw you at the facility today. Did you find out anything?”
“Only that something is going on, but I don’t have any idea what it is.”
“You know they’re growing human brains. Isn’t that enough?”
“That’s what you say, but I don’t have any proof. Or a clue as to why they’re doing it.”
“I found out. They’re growing brains to use for small computing jobs--”
“Why in the world would they do that? They must have a budget for desktops.”
“I don’t know.”
Dumbfounded, Marj sat there in the pitch dark and didn’t speak, a hundred questions running through her mind. Had human thought, the wellspring of civilizations and all that we know, been reduced to that? Our brains now a mere mouse running in an exercise wheel of computing? A handmaiden to the supercomputers they’d brought into being? The very thought was somehow insulting.
“You have to help me prove that. My readers, the world, need to know that this is going on.”
“You can’t be serious Ms. Olsen. I could lose my job if they found out I helped you. They might even--”
Marj shivered. Sitting alone in the pitch dark only made her more paranoid. “Are they capable of resorting to that?”
“Can’t exactly ask them, lady, can I? We get absolute security drummed into us at weekly team meetings, and they have armed guards around here, so I’m guessing they’re pretty serious about protecting the corporate secrets.”
“Dr. Friedrich hasn’t been seen around town lately. I understand he lives at the Mega facility. Is there any way my friend and I can get in and talk to him? I need to get something on record.”
“That’s crazy. Even if you could get in, why would he talk to you?”
Marj didn’t answer. Her whistle-blower was right there. Dr. Friedrich wouldn’t talk about his research...unless he had good reason to. Her mind raced over the possibilities...
My Mystery Time -- Mysteries and More by Bruce Wetterau 